I agree that the solution to depression is therapy, but it seems mean and heteronormative of you to say that someone who names their website "gay robot noises" has a problem. Perhaps you meant something else?
It was possibly insensitively worded, but the entirety of your now-deleted comment nevertheless hinted at some deeper, intuitive perception. No matter how hard we try to politically correct our speech, some impressions are just rather clear. For reference: https://catgirl.ai/pages/robot/ (see „why?“ section in particular)
I genuinely wonder how one can voice said impressions in a way that is considered acceptable, without being hurtful, at the same time not missing the mark.
Anyway, software ergonomics is not the answer to depression. I believe this to be rather clear as well.
The very peculiar capitalisations in that page just seem very... Twitter. It's like a passive form of rebelling against the actual rules selectively, and capitalising random words they deem important. Fair enough Twitter doesn't have much in the form of text formatting (that I've seen), but on a personal website I'd hope you're writing MD or something where all of that is front and center.
As to your actual point, I really don't know. One question would be, do we need to say anything? I'd rather be silent than hurtful, though I fail at that semi-consistently. Even for someone within the first quarter of a century in age, I feel the goalposts for what is (considered) hurtful moving though, so I am terrified of aging away from the currently acceptable norms.
The latter part of your reply is important. My experience mirrors yours: the goalposts are constantly shifting. In such an environment you’re always going to find someone feeling offended by any remark. This inevitably leads to corporate gobbledygook and the loss of all meaning. Is saying nothing at all really a solution or just a way to avoid confrontation?
Remaining silent is certainly not a solution to the actual problem, for me it's just a heuristic to live a more convenient, less stressful life.
Being an immigrant, I was asked what the nice way to ask someone what their ethnicity was, options being things like "where are your parents from" or "what's your ethnicity". All I could say was that if I wanted to be offended, there's no way to ask me that question. If I'm assuming good faith, I'll look past cruder wording like "but where are you REALLY from?" There's so much context, emotions, and personality transmitted in face-to-face interactions, there's really no blanket rules. We lose ALL of that in online discussions, especially when dealing with character limits well-suited to rob conversations of context.
The other thing is the ability to look back through history with perfect recall. People change opinions, or are emotional, dealing with something, etc. In real life you slip up once and maybe get a puzzled look or get told to shut up. Online, well you may never escape it. I think we're trending too much towards an absolute sense of right and wrong, and stifling the possibilities to learn and evolve as a human. The pendulum will swing back over time.
For another anecdote, a friend of my partner's recently changed genders. A month or two later I remembered that, and asked my partner to check in on them and make sure they're ok. They weren't, and were having suicidal ideations, but greatly appreciated having someone check in on them which I considered a win. My partner wouldn't let up and just had to know why I asked her to do so, but when I told her it's a studied correlation, she was pissed at me for "stereotyping"... Just feels like I never escaped being a child who was constantly on the verge of getting in trouble with their abusive parent.
On the contrary, thank you. It’s the very context you wrote about that’s often missing in online conversations. Your anecdote beautifully illustrates the absurdity trap too much well-meaning tolerance eventually trips.
I’m reminded of a Red Dwarf episode (Timewave, S12E03). A crew of a space ship decided to outlaw all criticism on board, going so far as too construct a machine extracting “the inner critic” from
everybody. The Red Dwarf crew encounters them and wants to leave immediately after, because, quote: “nothing works here, especially the people.”
It’s quite straight-forward that the posts’ author struggles with mental health issues. By their own public admission (and accounting for preferred pronouns) it is transgender, hates its body and is rather inconsistent and confrontational. All fine by me. I don’t care how you find happiness or whatever else. But it should be entirely possible to remark upon those facts without experiencing retribution.
Yet somehow any remark regarding their mental health state gets self-censored by the first mention of insensitivity, no doubt fearing said retribution.
A remark regarding the mental state of a random Internet blogger who literally self-identifies as a robot (or so it says, at any rate)? That strikes me as singularly pointless. I think retracting such remarks was the right call, in the spirit of keeping the discussion focused and avoiding distracting asides.
> a child who was constantly on the verge of getting in trouble with their abusive parent
That sentence says a lot about the current cultural climate (at least in the U.S. I'm guessing). Part of the abuse is that it's illogical or unpredictable, so you never know what triggers the parent/partner's anger, and when the pain/punishment will be delivered. It makes it risky to express any opinion - so the only sure way to not offend anyone is to stay silent. That stifles communication and discussion, except for narcissists who are illogically self-confident, often extreme on either side of the debate.
Nope I'm in Australia, but the cultural differences are eroding over time, so not too far off anyway. As Rammstein wrote, "We're all living in Amerika; Coca Cola, sometimes war."
> Part of the abuse is that it's illogical or unpredictable
Yeah, doing some introspection (seriously, bath tubs are magical) I realised I've lost a lot of social confidence and skills. The previous issue was one contributing factor, as well as roughly 2 years of very minimal social interaction at all. Wonder what the long term ramifications on society will be.
I relate to your comment - silence as a coping mechanism. I sometimes break out of it by being vocal and expressing my opinions, but I noticed it often invites attacks and "primate dominance" behavior from others. In my view, the social isolation definitely has made things worse culturally - I'm noticing a lot more bullying and people being jerks to each other. Tough times for sensitive souls.
There's a fundamental conflict between expressing real human interest in and concern for other people, and negotiating an ever-shifting maze of cultural taboos enforced by official and unofficial sanction. Maybe HR can put out a 40 page handbook for resolving this and verify compliance. Or maybe we should be generous to each other, regardless of the consequences.
We often don't even understand ourselves, why do we feel the way we do
But we don't have to understand others, to be respectful to them
I feel, the thing is that this person, has yet to accept themselves, which.. at times, can take a lot of time
O well, I might also be missing a bit of context, because I can't see the original comment, as it seems to be replaced with a dot, so I apologize in that case. Sorry.
