Having pseudonymous identities is one of the reasons I prefer the reddit/threadiverse style of social media to Facebook/IG where alts are heavily discouraged.
I think a lot of people use alts. There are all kinds of scripts and tools and tutorials about how to manage them. If you dont see the need that's fine for you.
I imagine a system where you get two ballots: your "real" ballot that actually has an effect and your "principled" ballot which is reported separately and has no impact.
probably the best thing I ever heard about this guy
And put my hands up gestured in like “what the fuck are you doing”?
Where I live we don't have a hand gesture for that. I am curious what it entails?
So this guy was sitting there watching a video or whatever, probably not attending to his surroundings, when out of nowhere some other person is suddenly right in front of his face confronting him, waving his hands around. Since your description of the hand gesture is "what the fuck"--- a pretty hostile thing to communicate to a stranger by any method--- wouldn't you say there is a possibility that it was interpreted as menacing?
Even if you do know better than to start a fight on public transit, this guy doesn't know you. People start fights for less. He's not reading your mind, to know you are thinking like sun tzu, and would therefor not attack from a position of weakness like the seat in front. People get stabbed on busses and trains for minor insults. Don't you think he could have just been cautious?
Or conversely, he knew himself to be potentially violent. Maybe he was trying to hold himself back from starting a fight and thought backing down was just the best strategy to exit the situation. I've known people who have control to a point and they sometimes do weird things to keep themselves from that point.
I literally watched a game today and one of the players made that gesture to his own teammates when he made a mistake. I doubt he was expected to get punched by them either.
Ah. I see.
So did the team mate then respond in a manner such as
Look cunt you obviously seem to know it’s not right if you acting like that so why you being a knobhead? Just because no one will call you out?
And then carry such a grudge as to later recount it and their dissatisfaction with the person even having made the error? Or the team mates acknowledged it and everyone moved on? Even if there was more teasing afterwards, you have to understand the context is that everyone who was playing a video game made a choice to do that with each other specifically, whereas this guy did not make a choice to be in a confrontation with you. You were just happening at him. And by your telling of the story, you were so mad thinking about "the old days" BS by the time you said something there basically was nothing he could have done to make you feel better. Don't you think there is a possibility your body language was communicating more than you are even able to describe here? Even exactly as described it sounds menacing. But don't you think he could have somehow gotten the feeling that you were mad at him as an avatar for all the problems and degeneration of the modern times?
You were a stranger of unknown intention and capacities. This man likely wanted you to leave him alone and go away. Even if you are correct and he did feel shame at being noticed for his rudeness, felt bad for interrupting your thoughts, and intended to concede to you a moral victory, he was probably also aware at the potential threat. Which, in a video game, is a non issue. That's one of the things about video games: they are fake.
I don't think it's wrong to make requests of people around you. You wanna ask people to be quiet, that's fine. But you need to learn how to do it in a peaceable way. Think of it as modeling the behavior you want to see. You want others to be quiet, unobtrusive and considerate, then you should be quiet, unobtrusive and considerate. You can still assert your needs and desires. Sometimes you will be accommodated and other times you won't be. If, as you say, the guy was completely apologetic because he knew what he had done was wrong, then you could have been really pleasant about it, no "wtf" hand gestures, and you would still have gotten what you wanted. You could have even said "thank you, I appreciate your consideration" and smiled and been happy about it. Would have been a totally different story to tell here in the thread. All under your control.
A chill person who is motivated to get along with others so we can all live in peace. :) Yup a real scourge over here.
By "Stay on their phone" you mean keep doing as they were (ignoring your request) right?
I don't know why everyone here is so grumpy about other people enjoying their phones but if you are grumpy about it, I think politely asking someone to turn the volume down or whatever is the best way to deal with it. If it's really so unpopular they'll be getting always asked to turn their phones down and eventually get earbuds or subtitles or whatever.
I'd be interested if you phrased it as a question somehow, maybe it might be more fruitful. Less dramatic/tense for you. Like maybe "excuse me I was just wondering if there is a reason you are playing that so loud? It's bothering me." Would need to workshop the phrasing to be less dickish than that. But maybe you'd get some kind of interaction you'd learn about other perspectives. There must be a reason right? Like idk I only ever play things out loud by mistake when Bluetooth or the AUX fails and I find it humiliating for anyone to know what dumb podcasts I have on. Sometimes I take the earbuds out and hold them away from my head to make sure nobody can hear even by accident the stupid shit I am listening to. I would love to know more about how people are just doing everything with no worries in public. Maybe they have a useful philosophical contribution I hadn't thought of. Or maybe they can explain to you why you shouldn't be bothered.
How about this: "Hi, I was just wondering how you find it when other people are playing things really loud on their phones?"
Honestly, it's a bit passive aggressive but that would probably be more likely to make them turn it off immediately as they might not want to engage in a conversation like that. However every so often someone might take you up on the conversation and you could share a few minutes together as humans.
No. The person responded by trying to diffuse things:
he was like “sorry sorry sorry. Okay” and he put his hands up.
That doesn't convey any sense of guilt, it conveys that he was trying to avoid a fight. he put his hands up. That's how you show someone, "look, I'm not a threat, I'm not going to hurt you. you win." It's a strategic decision, not an admission of culpability.
He backed down and surrendered in the situation because it wasn't worth getting into a confrontation about it. Unlike the commenter, he was able to keep this interaction in perspective.
And it's this part that makes me think wanderer was probably threatening and rude. If wanderer made a normal, calm, polite comment/request, this is an unlikely reaction. It is likely occurring because the person on the phone thought they were in some danger.
how does it go?
You got what you wanted and you're angry about it. YOU are the problem.
I can only imagine what a dick you probably are all the time. Even by your own telling in this story you sound like you were probably rude or even threatening to a stranger because they made you so mildly uncomfortable.
Not even really because you were uncomfortable, but because you are roiling mad about cell phone etiquette having declined since "back in the day". Whatever that means.
What a bunch of misanthropes. If you want silence wear earplugs.
I like to live in the world with people and people loooove music. And they love their family going on with gossip. And animal videos. And cartoons and soap operas. And people talking about the love of god. They love watching baseball. Etc.
The one time I can ever recall being annoyed was some guy watching video about covid conspiracies. I thought about arguing with him but I just got up and moved to another part of the train stop.
People's speakers aren't that good, you can easily escape the sound by moving if it is so bothersome. Or, learn to enjoy the company of people who differ from you rather than pretending there is some virtue in being a narrow minded jerk. Life is better.
so what's wrong with floppy disks?
This was a comment on Vancouver librarians caught in the middle of the culture war by @zephyreks but I ended up writing so much I thought I'd make it a new post. Hope that is OK.
The term "culture war" is excessively very dismissive. The subjects that people take issue to here are matters of material well being.
People in the article and comments are using the word "ban" alot. I don't think there is any request to "ban" anything. It is just the one library. When something is "banned" it is prohibited from all sources. After actually taking a look at the list of books I don't think any of them should be removed from the collection on the basis of the complaints. I do think some of them could be re-shelved. But getting all worked up about a few random complaints that literally anyone can make because they are in a bad mood, and obliquely referring to nazis/holocaust is going way overboard.
I also don't see that anyone is "caught in the middle" of anything. Some people made complaints. People are always complaining about any large organization. They dismissed the complaints and as far as I can tell, that was the end of it? I got very bored reading off topic commentary so maybe I missed something.
about the books
I was curious so I did some looking at the actual titles since the person who wrote this article didn't have time I guess because they did so much interviewing ideologues instead. There are 3 themes in the target books.
theme 1: lgbt and sex positive books for young people
Looks like about 1/3 of the target works are pro-LGBT/sexpositive and seeking to explain this to some young audiences. I wasn't familiar with Cory Silverberg so I looked up the amazon page for You Know, Sex:
In a bright graphic format featuring four dynamic middle schoolers, You Know, Sex grounds sex education in social justice, covering not only the big three of puberty—hormones, reproduction, and development—but also power, pleasure, and how to be a decent human being.
I added emphasis because.... what a thing to complain about.
To me this book sounds perfectly nice. But whoever requests for it to be removed likely thinks it'll cause kids to come to harm. Who knows what kinds of delusional thinking motivated the specific complaint. But it isn't "culture war" because they are under the impression that this book will be dangerous physically and socially and spiritually.
theme 2: racist caricatures and other hate imagery in children's books
Another 1/3 of the complaints are about children's books depicting racist or hateful imagery. I think these complaints are legitimate. Books like this should be available for adults but not circulated to little kids! They are of historical interest, not entertainment.
I borrowed Asterix the Gladiator from the Internet Archive Library and flipped through it. Here is one of panels which is probably at issue. (I am not sure about the etiquette/politics of sharing this. I would consider feedback in the direction of not sharing racist material.) I have blurred out the actual caricature but described what is depicted in text. I put it in the spoiler. Summary: it's exactly what you think it'll be.
spoiler
This panel depicts a person with dark brown skin, a very small skull, eyes so close together that they touch and are crossed, a huge open mouth with giant red lips (larger than skull) and one tooth sticking out, wide nose, big ears, goofy body language.
I don't care to actually read this so I don't know what the plot is about. But I can say that flipping through it, the people with brown skin only come into view a few times in dozens of pages. They are not characters in the story, just devices the author occasionally employs. They are present 1-3 panels at a time.
They look to be in positions of servitude. They do not perform their jobs properly and are therefor deserving subjects of violence by the characters with pink skin. Many pages earlier, a masseurs with brown skin gives too deep a massage to a solider with pink skin. So the soldier beats him. The masseur's boss complains: "You have no right to beat up my masseurs! They're horribly expensive this season!" The most superficial joke being that the only reason not to beat the person with brown skin is the economic impact on some other person with pink skin. The person with brown skin has no lines and is depicted in a racist, caricatured way similar to the spoiler above. Except instead of being goofy he is big and strong. So strong he casually (and presumably accidentally) hurts the person with pink skin. Once he is punched so hard he flies across the room, he disappears from the story.
I remember when I was a kid, seeing this kind of thing. This series looks vaguely framiliar but there is a whole cannon of this shit. My parents did their best to raise me explicitly anti racist and I recognized the messaging as vile. I understood that it was communicating a generalized degradation and inhumanity related to perceived race. In both the presence (as objects) and their absence (as full characters). I remember being confused why people I thought of as "good" would have stuff like this lying around. But I am sure that it got into my head anyway. Sometimes really horrid stereotype illustrations I saw as a kid pop into my mind's eye. I wish I didn't have those in my brain because they are despicable. If an adult intentionally wishes to study hate lit it is different.
This is the kind of thing that teaches from a young age "black lives don't matter". Black people only involved as props, punchlines, animalistic, deserving subjects of violence etc.
There are a bazillion kids books that aren't trash like this. I vote to move these to whatever the dewey decimal is for historical hate literature, in the adult section. Possibly in the Reference library to convey the seriousness. I didn't investigate the other children's books but it seems that they are all on a similar theme and not appropriate for kids.
theme 3: right wing nutjobs
The remaining 1/3 of the books are more recent publications which appear to be regressive shitty books full of lies. I know the Shrier book has been thoroughly widely debunked criticized rebuked. It is full of medical falsehoods and her own weird fantasies misrepresented as scientific. It primarily advocates for denial of health care to trans people. This is not "culture war". She literally wants to seize control and manipulate the balance of chemicals in the bodies of other people. It is as material as you can get.
The other books by the likes of Beck, Ngo are certainly full of bullshit. Judging by the title and my understanding of the authors, they will probably be encouraging violence. I had never heard of Forbes before. The book is highly rated on amazon and the top rated review begins:
Fantastic book. As a supporter of those bands I found that the information in it is invaluable.
Emphasis added. Reviewer is a fan of white supremacist music and ideas. All the positive reviews are from people who are straight up white power jackasses.
I found this review on goodreads that I think is probably accurate:
This thing is f***ng nightmare. Read it for research on a project. It ended up being really valuable as a primary source, but if you're not literally writing a book about white nationalist skinheads, I can't imagine wanting to read the biased blathering of a bunch of racist boneheads reminiscing about their glory days.
This person also describes who there is value in the book even though the topic really sucks.
It seems like this book gives really shitty people good feelings about themselves. That sucks. When this kind of people feel good about themselves, they like to go around kicking the shit out of people who are just minding their own business. They form militias and murder. The reason someone was bothered by this book is likely because they know it can help stir the pot and encourage street violence. I know people who've been targeted by these douche bags. It's serious.
This book costs about $200-300 to purchase. It should be in the reference library with all the other expensive books, not in circulation.
Victims of Communism memorial faces call to remove over 330 names linked to Nazis, fascists out of 550! MOST OF THEM.
This has been known for a long time. Back in 2021 Victims of communism memorial received donations honouring fascists, Nazi collaborators, according to website