Is this a goal people want? Especially to the exclusion of discussing the real harm the author is doing and will continue to do with the financial support this new work will bring. To take it to...
Exemplary
yall want to be a welcoming place for Potter fans to discuss that world
Is this a goal people want? Especially to the exclusion of discussing the real harm the author is doing and will continue to do with the financial support this new work will bring.
To take it to an extreme, do we want to be a "welcoming place for Nick Fuentes fans to discuss his works"? For a less extreme and somewhat more likely here example: If Neil Gaiman's work becomes the topic of a discussion, should people avoid discussing his actions?
The person who has made Rowling a political figure (and by extension caused her works to receive political commentary) is Rowling herself.
It's possible to discuss Harry Potter without discussing Rowling or Good Omens without talking about Gaiman. It's not possible to discuss Nick Fuentes without talking about Nick Fuentes (I'm not...
Exemplary
To take it to an extreme, do we want to be a "welcoming place for Nick Fuentes fans to discuss his works"? For a less extreme and somewhat more likely here example: If Neil Gaiman's work becomes the topic of a discussion, should people avoid discussing his actions?
It's possible to discuss Harry Potter without discussing Rowling or Good Omens without talking about Gaiman. It's not possible to discuss Nick Fuentes without talking about Nick Fuentes (I'm not familiar with him, but from a quick search it mostly seems like he doesn't have specific works, just a steaming pile of terrible views, which could be individually discussed without bringing him up).
Like, if every thread that mentioned America had someone posting in the comments "but what about the Epstein files!?", which is something I have seen in some other places, then it would get tiring quickly, even if you agree with the general point. It gets noisy and messy and it feels off topic, because it is.
I don't particularly care about Harry Potter, but if I did, seeing people discussing Rowling and her bigotry every comment section would get tiring quickly, and it would make me feel unwelcome. Maybe that's the point.
We could get into a big debate about ethical consumption under capitalism, but I don't think people want to hear the same points about child slavery or the Epstein files or the environment every time anything related to clothes, electronics, politics, sports, or literally any other topic comes up - even if the points are correct and well intentioned. And most of the time, people don't do this. But for some topics, like Harry Potter, they do.
I believe in the separation of the author from their art. I think someone can enjoy watching Harry Potter or Good Omens, and may want to discuss that with other people who also enjoy the work, even while disagreeing with the original creator.
I think that goes back to my point about ethical consumption under capitalism. I don't think it's possible to pay for media without funding at least one shithead bigwig producer. Being a terrible...
I think that goes back to my point about ethical consumption under capitalism.
I don't think it's possible to pay for media without funding at least one shithead bigwig producer. Being a terrible human being is pretty much a prerequisite for having enough money to produce a TV show.
In the case of Rowling, I think she has enough money that if people stopped paying her right now, she wouldn't even notice, and it wouldn't affect her bigotry at all. I do fully support piracy as an ethical alternative for those who want to watch the show without giving any money to Rowling.
In terms of supporting Rowling, I think it has much more to do with her cultural relevance than the finances (though if people are going to engage with Harry Potter anyway, I would rather they...
In terms of supporting Rowling, I think it has much more to do with her cultural relevance than the finances (though if people are going to engage with Harry Potter anyway, I would rather they pirate it, but I agree with you that she's already wealthy enough that boycots are going to have a limited effect on her actual finances). Continuing to bolster Harry Potter's cultural relevance platforms Rowling and her views, and she's said before that she considers people supporting her work to be endorsing her transphobic views and rhetoric. I think how this reflects on consuming content based on her books is pretty complex, especially in combination with the financial side of things. But this is why I think it's so important for it to come up in every thread about her work -- it probably isn't going to affect her bottom line, but it does have a tangible effect if her name is so synonymous with her vile transphobia that people think of that whenever she comes up. Granted, Tildes is a pretty small scale for that, but still.
And, for the record, I think Gaiman is a good comparison because there are definitely works of his that I'm more willing to "separate from the artist" in terms of my personal consumption or even discussion online depending on the context, but whenever his new book comes out, I think it is incredibly important that someone brings up what he's done in the comments there too -- in part because he's very transparently used the release of a new book as a distraction tactic, but also more generally because letting that behavior go and continuing to engage with his new work without even bringing it up sends a strong message that such behavior is tolerable, and I don't think we should do that.
Going to quickly disagree with the main point, mentioning or discussing America in general does not directly benefit anyone generally. I would compare it much more to, when the movie Melania came...
Like, if every thread that mentioned America had someone posting in the comments "but what about the Epstein files!?", which is something I have seen in some other places, then it would get tiring quickly, even if you agree with the general point. It gets noisy and messy and it feels off topic, because it is.
Going to quickly disagree with the main point, mentioning or discussing America in general does not directly benefit anyone generally. I would compare it much more to, when the movie Melania came out, every discussion was mocking the movie, because the success of the movie was a success to someone people think is harmful to society at large.
I think people arguing here in favour of JK Rowling have had no problem with the discussion on the Melania movie or would have no problem in relentlessly criticising if, god forbid, Trump made a movie tomorrow, even if it was not biographical (eg appeared in Home Alone 5), so I find it hypocritical that just because it mainly affects trans people in the UK, a demographic I doubt is primarily on here, then discussing the real life harm of supporting Rowling suddenly is "tiring".
My point wasn't about who benefits, but of the relevance to the discussion. But to give an example with an obvious benefactor, no one is complaining about Bezos on every post that links to The...
mentioning or discussing America in general does not directly benefit anyone generally
My point wasn't about who benefits, but of the relevance to the discussion. But to give an example with an obvious benefactor, no one is complaining about Bezos on every post that links to The Washington Post. If they did, it would probably get flagged as off topic, because the posts aren't about him (even though he profits from views on his articles), just like Harry Potter isn't about Rowling.
I mean if you want a more apt comparison, we could ask if we want this to be a safe space to discuss Kanye West's music without bringing up the things he's said publically. I would say no, most...
I mean if you want a more apt comparison, we could ask if we want this to be a safe space to discuss Kanye West's music without bringing up the things he's said publically.
I would say no, most people on this site probably do not want that. Is it possible to discuss Kanye's music without touching on the terrible person he's become? Yeah it's possible. It's probably not a good idea or desirable in any way to do that though, even if you like his music.
Unless Kanye's antisemitism is related in some way to his lyrics (and it might be - I'm not familiar with his music), I don't think it's particularly relevant or worth bringing up in a discussion...
Unless Kanye's antisemitism is related in some way to his lyrics (and it might be - I'm not familiar with his music), I don't think it's particularly relevant or worth bringing up in a discussion about any specific work of his. It should certainly be brought up in a discussion about Kanye as an artist though.
Oh. Oh no. In that case, it would be relevant to bring up the fact that the artist is an antisemite, but I think it's already pretty evident just from an analysis of the song itself. Bringing this...
Oh. Oh no.
In that case, it would be relevant to bring up the fact that the artist is an antisemite, but I think it's already pretty evident just from an analysis of the song itself.
Bringing this back to Harry Potter, if there were TERF characters/plotlines in the TV show or books, then it would be relevant to bring up JK Rowling's personal beliefs when discussing those characters or plotlines.
Rita Skeeter is described in a very trans coded way, in regards to her jawline, her "mannish" hands with fake nails. She's also predatory and deceitful. Though she's not written as explicitly...
Rita Skeeter is described in a very trans coded way, in regards to her jawline, her "mannish" hands with fake nails. She's also predatory and deceitful. Though she's not written as explicitly trans it seems quite likely that Rowling's views on gender and womanhood are on display. JKR didn't make her full transphobic turn until later so this may be as much about the UK's general bias.
She did also have a girl die due to a boy entering the girls bathroom with malicious intent, and when the girl tried to tell him to get out, she looked the basilisk in the eye and Myrtle Warren lived no more.
I mean, again, her heel turn was later but that is... Notable I think. Her post HP work highlights more of this due to the timing of it.
I just genuinely don't think this discussion would be well received either.
I hadn't noticed the rita skeeter thing, but can definitelly see it now that you mention it. Slight pushback on the voldemort is a man in the girl bayhroom hurting girls, i think it's mostly a...
I hadn't noticed the rita skeeter thing, but can definitelly see it now that you mention it.
Slight pushback on the voldemort is a man in the girl bayhroom hurting girls, i think it's mostly a coincidence that it parralleles so well with anti-trans talking point... I mean harry and ron spend plenty of time in that bathroom as well...
Certainly, as I said, it's notable but I wouldn't call it anything more than circumstantial. My point was that her views on gender absolutely show up in her work, specifically they don't show up...
Certainly, as I said, it's notable but I wouldn't call it anything more than circumstantial. My point was that her views on gender absolutely show up in her work, specifically they don't show up as much in HP as her more recent books under a different pen name. But if people are going to say it's fine to discuss the material but only the views in the work, I think they're probably not prepared for what analysis of the work reveals. And I think this sort of conversation would be considered equally annoying and off topic by folks unhappy to discuss such things.
I had a conversation about Jeremy Soule the other night with one sentence acknowledging he's a terrible pervert and the rest talking about his masterful contribution to video game music. Everybody...
I had a conversation about Jeremy Soule the other night with one sentence acknowledging he's a terrible pervert and the rest talking about his masterful contribution to video game music.
Everybody knows Rowling is a turd. Acknowledge it and do a deep dive into OP's live of the world. I see absolutely no problem with that.
I don't think those pointing out Rowling's views in these threads would disagree with what you say in this comment. The problem is, unfortunately, that some people here don't want us to even...
I don't think those pointing out Rowling's views in these threads would disagree with what you say in this comment. The problem is, unfortunately, that some people here don't want us to even acknowledge it -- the initial comment in the recent topic was about as cursory and non-confrontational as such an acknowledgement could be and it still attracted an argument.
Lol, yeah on second read I see where you're coming from. That said, some people just talk like that. The second sentence admits that it's worth having a discussion and while they're being crass...
Lol, yeah on second read I see where you're coming from. That said, some people just talk like that. The second sentence admits that it's worth having a discussion and while they're being crass about the whole thing, the sentiment is still there.
I'm not coming in with a full defence, but I'd like to point out that contemplative, caveat-laden "gentle talk" isn't for everyone. Some people just don't do it.
I'm not honestly sure what you're getting at here, and I fear I must be missing something here. I'm not objecting to the tone of any other one person's comment in terms of gentleness or whatever,...
I'm not honestly sure what you're getting at here, and I fear I must be missing something here. I'm not objecting to the tone of any other one person's comment in terms of gentleness or whatever, but rather to the multiple people throughout this topic who have commented to the effect that acknowledgement of Rowling's bigotry does not belong in threads about her work. I object to the concrete things they're insisting on, not really the tone of any specific comment.
What exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her...
Exemplary
Especially to the exclusion of
What exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her aren't requesting a weekly topic then? Tildes is for discussion, but that's clearly not the goal if you're going to veer off topic every single time. Further its not as if posting it every single time changes literally anything. The odds anyone here isn't well aware of the issues with Rowling are slim, and bluntly, it would probably be better severed to HAVE a dedicated topic on the issue if you think there are.
By extension, how much research do I need to do on every other piece of media we discuss? I can certainly think of plenty of other topics and discussions about media with problematic peoples (still living and profiting) that we suddenly don't feel the need to derail immediately. Will every discussion of media now require researching someone's position on Israel/Palestine followed by a further Segway into how some nations treat basically anyone who isn't a man? Hell if we extend it to dead people we're going to need an auto wiki link for Disney for everything they make.
Personally I don't much care what side the decision falls on. I do think from what was witnessed last time this site can't have a reasonable discussion on the issue without a ruling from Deimos . It will certainly save a lot of headache to either say "No we don't discuss her works here" or "You can discuss her works here and if so please stay on topic and create a separate topic about her behaviors". As it is now I feel like even posting this i'm risking malice tags and a ban, and just stayed away from the last topic for the same reason because "disagreement" and "malice" seem to be easily comingled in my tone.
I find it sad for the people who I know who grew up with Harry Potter that they're literally told "you can never discuss something that made a huge impact on your life because your creator sucks". As already mentioned it's hardly the first problematic piece of media, even with a living person attached. You brought up Gaiman, I grew up on Card. I do not support ANYTHING Orson Scott Card has ever said but it would also be lying to say that Ender's Game had a tremendous impact on my life in middle school. I am glad I was able to discuss his works, and his failures as a human, without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand.
Respectfully, while I don't find your tone to be malicious, I do find it to be rather disrespectful of the perspective of others. You can disagree without explicitly belittling someone's desire to...
Exemplary
Respectfully, while I don't find your tone to be malicious, I do find it to be rather disrespectful of the perspective of others. You can disagree without explicitly belittling someone's desire to highlight things they view as important. I am not trying to attack you here, these are merely the thoughts I had in response to the points you brought up, so I apologize if it comes across more hostile than I intend.
Personally I would say that any discussion of Rowling is on topic in regards to a Harry Potter related post. Just because you can seperate the author from the work, doesn't mean everyone can, nor should they be required to. Saying it changes nothing to bring these things up is, in my opinion, a very narrow and defeatist view, because people can change over time and not everyone on this site is a monolith of shared cultural knowledge. For example, someone could be aware of her being problematic without knowing the full extent to which JKR actively funds hate and harrasses people who don't deserve it. Just because you deem it unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen or that people should be disinclined to share things they view as important information that more people should be aware of.
I think knowing more about the creation and creators of the media you discuss is valuable context, but I doubt anyone here would tell you that you are required to be fully aware of everything that could possibly come up prior to engaging in a discussion on a topic. I think it more in the spirit of the site to allow additional context to be provided than reject it as off topic or a digression if someone brings up problematic views of a creator, even if you have heard it a million times. The framing of a discussion can change from post to post, and I believe allowing as much additional context and information around a topic as possible leads to a more vibrant and interesting discussion.
I understand your fear of being misconstrued and malice tagged, I have the same worries as I type this. However, I have rarely ever seen a post of this nature not be met with good faith discussion, and I feel like this is a rare place on the internet where people do try and see where you are coming from, or at least challenge your comment in a respectful way, rather than simply reporting you for disagreement.
There are also still plenty of places where fans of Harry Potter can discuss the series and their love for it. Dedicated forums and fansites still exist, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for people on a more general forum like this one to express how a discussion of a topic or creator that is harmful to them or those they love makes them feel. You can ignore it, but to say its not worth bringing up because you have read it before feels disrespectful of other's lived experience. Even in your last example, you bring up being able to discuss Card's works and failures as a human without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand as a positive aspect of your life, but is that not the opposite of what you are advocating for here? Is it not a line in the sand to say you are tired of people mentioning Rowlings failures and that bringing them up on a Harry Potter post is pointless and should be considered off topic. How is that not denying others the same luxury you were afforded with a work that affected your life? Because make no mistake, these works are affecting lives, whether those lives engage with the work or not. Directly funding an author who lobbies for legislation to remove a human being's right to exist in a form they find most comfortable to them IS affecting the lives of those people, and I think it more than valid for those people or those close to them or quite literally anybody who cares, to voice how they feel about it.
In the end, I echo the sentiment of other comments on this post; if you are tired of hearing about Rowling and Harry Potter, filter it out. If you want to discuss Harry Potter without having to hear about the author, another site is probably a better fit than here.
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. The post that this thread is referencing had space for people to discuss Harry Potter. The entire discussion/debate about the ethics of supporting...
I find it sad for the people who I know who grew up with Harry Potter that they're literally told "you can never discuss something that made a huge impact on your life because your creator sucks" ... I am glad I was able to discuss his works, and his failures as a human, without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand.
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. The post that this thread is referencing had space for people to discuss Harry Potter. The entire discussion/debate about the ethics of supporting Rowling's most recent work took place under a top-level comment that said, "I'll leave this here as a reminder and let everyone get on talking about the wizards."
The post led to the entire topic being derailed and the topic being locked. It reminds me of the old forum topics that started with "who do you like in Star Wars" or some other thing that wound up...
The post led to the entire topic being derailed and the topic being locked. It reminds me of the old forum topics that started with "who do you like in Star Wars" or some other thing that wound up with people banned because they had to go off on each other about something most people in the original topic didn't want to discuss.
I get that this is a totally different level of issue because its not just people who can't be mature about fiction, but real world implications, but if you want to discuss if this new show is going to be good, or what you hope they might fix or change, well good luck because that's going to be a verbal blood bath.
No one commented about Rowling's views in the other threads in that topic, though, and some discussion of the show and movies did happen there. Albeit not much, but there was hardly a ton to work...
No one commented about Rowling's views in the other threads in that topic, though, and some discussion of the show and movies did happen there. Albeit not much, but there was hardly a ton to work with since it's just a trailer. There was plenty of time to discuss whether you thought the show would be good in those comment threads or by leaving a new top-level comment about it, but there just wasn't actually that much discussion like that going on (I believe probably because even those who still consume Harry Potter content aren't as diehard enthused about it as they once were.) It was pretty slow well before the topic was locked.
Maybe we're thinking of different topics? There's very much a ton of discussion about exactly that and what a terrible person she is following the FYI link.
No one commented about Rowling's views in the other threads in that topic, though,
Maybe we're thinking of different topics? There's very much a ton of discussion about exactly that and what a terrible person she is following the FYI link.
There was a lot of discussion in reply to the initial comment pointing out Rowling's bigotry, yes, but there were a couple other top level comments that were not about Rowling's bigotry, one which...
There was a lot of discussion in reply to the initial comment pointing out Rowling's bigotry, yes, but there were a couple other top level comments that were not about Rowling's bigotry, one which even had a decent thread of replies discussing the shift in popularity of her work. These threads were not disrupted by the discussion in the thread about Rowling's bigotry, and no one brought discussion of Rowling's bigotry into those threads to prevent or impede other discussion of recent Harry Potter films. I myself participated, albeit not in great depth (granted, I was still insulting the quality of the second Fantastic Beasts movie, but I felt the same way about that film when I saw it in theaters prior to Rowling really going full mask-off). The existence of the thread discussing Rowling's bigotry didn't directly impede this discussion at all from what I can tell. Obviously locking the topic would ultimately stop those threads too, but replies had slowed and they weren't super active by the time the thread was locked from what I remember.
I'm going to address points 2 & 4 because those are the ones I have the strongest feelings on. For #2, I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to do research on every author, but that's very...
I'm going to address points 2 & 4 because those are the ones I have the strongest feelings on.
For #2, I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to do research on every author, but that's very different from trying to suppress others from speaking up about horrible things an author has done when they come up. If others have done that research and can share information, then that's a great way to learn, and change your mind on things without having to do the research legwork yourself.
Lots of people now know Rowling is transphobic and hateful because people do this. They often don't know the extent, so the more people raise specifics the more that information spreads too.
On #4, I'm actually in a very similar boat to you. I loved Harry Potter growing up (and still watch my DVDs once a year, though it has changed the way I feel about them), and Ender's Game is probably my favorite book I've ever read. I even like a lot of Card's other books, even though he's an awful person. Many of my other favorite creators are similar (Joss Whedon especially saddened me).
But I also feel empathy for people who like us, grew up loving these stories, but who are harmed by these authors actions. That's a lot more of a "real issue" to me than if people feel bad for a bit when they're reminded that an author they like is causing real harm.
I'm sorry but I categorically disagree its suppression to say "can we stay on topic". Again, no one is saying you can't make your own topic, nor that you shouldn't. I get that HP is in a weird...
, but that's very different from trying to suppress others from speaking up about horrible things an author has done when they come up.
I'm sorry but I categorically disagree its suppression to say "can we stay on topic". Again, no one is saying you can't make your own topic, nor that you shouldn't. I get that HP is in a weird spot because there's not a lot of easy analogues that have current media coming out and a strong association to outright evil behavior, but I see no reason that something people can't seem to discuss without locking a topic should always be allowed as that just prevents an entire area of discussion because it instantly turns into a PSA about Rowling.
But I also feel empathy for people who like us, grew up loving these stories, but who are harmed by these authors actions. That's a lot more of a "real issue" to me than if people feel bad for a bit when they're reminded that an author they like is causing real harm.
Sure, so do I. I disagree that requiring signal boosting in every discussion that might be tangential helps anything though. If this movie charts shall we also allow someone to do a "Just so you know..." Rowling link on the "top grossing films" discussion? How far out do we have to drag this?
This would be less of a problem if it didn't also quickly devolve into full on discussion of Rowling. If your goal is "here's a Rowling resource" okay I guess, but if you're going to go back and forth discussing her actions beyond that, or have other people pile in and bring up all the horrible things she's done, why shouldn't you move that to its own thread?
I think the fundamental difference in opinion is that I don't see it as "off topic" at all, so it's not "let's stay on topic" to me. Discussions of media often involve discussions around those...
I think the fundamental difference in opinion is that I don't see it as "off topic" at all, so it's not "let's stay on topic" to me.
Discussions of media often involve discussions around those involved in its creation. We talk about actors, writers, directors, comedians, producers, poets all the time when talking about their creations.
We see this with controversial artists and creators pretty regularly, I'm not sure why we'd need to treat Harry Potter any differently.
One of the incredible manga stories I inhaled when I was young was written by an unrepentant pedophile. Literally. Convicted and not at all sorry for what he did. Something I learnt about only two...
One of the incredible manga stories I inhaled when I was young was written by an unrepentant pedophile. Literally. Convicted and not at all sorry for what he did. Something I learnt about only two decades or so after I read the books.
It never tarnished the books themselves for me because I simply didn't know, but it does mean I'll try to never spend money on his IP again (which totally sucks because I miss like one small volume out of the entire set). For me, especially younger me, I couldn't care less about who wrote or created the stuff. Their lives are entirely separate from me and I can only do so much with so many rings of separation between us. I try to be kind to the people I can directly interact with, and push back on people that I can directly influence around me. Otherwise, death of the author rings true. For me.
But not everyone is me. I can understand how people feel they need to deplatform the content entirely. I don't agree as I don't think it will change anything, but I understand.
To that end, if people are happier not to discuss HP, then I won't. There's no world in which discussing Harry Potter is more important than someone requesting you don't.
I really would rather keep anything US related out of my line of sight, and yet people on this forum keep responding with entirely (even self admittedly) US centric views generalized like they're...
There's no world in which discussing Harry Potter is more important than someone requesting you don't.
I really would rather keep anything US related out of my line of sight, and yet people on this forum keep responding with entirely (even self admittedly) US centric views generalized like they're universal truths. Would it really be reasonable for me to demand everybody stop discussing anything US related on tildes? Somehow nobody ever thought so, they just told me to deal with it every single time. This can be quite frustrating.
Would it also be reasonable for me to comment on every war/atrocity the US has committed, on every single post related to the US or tagged as US related? And then say that it's just so people are aware? And label every single post criticizing the US as exemplary, even if it's not directly related to what's being posted? That's not spreading awareness, that's just being disruptive. People cannot help being from the US just like people cannot help having read/watched Harry Potter in the past and enjoying it.
Anyways, I just filter out US tagged posts and move on, which is what I recommend everyone does with whatever bothers them.
I think what the us has done historically is a pretty bad parallel to the harry potter case. The main idea behind not supporting harry potter/rowling is that your money going into harry potter are...
I think what the us has done historically is a pretty bad parallel to the harry potter case. The main idea behind not supporting harry potter/rowling is that your money going into harry potter are funneled into making lives worse for trans people. A better parallel imho would be how paying for hollywood war movies adds money into the us army which is then used to bomb iran and also recruiting people into doing so. Or maybe how having us centric view directly hurts people in the third world (I don't know if it does, but if you believe so it would be a good comparison to make). I don't know what is right for the discussion on tildes, just trying to clarify the arguments.
I think the main thing about the 2nd point is that it's arbitrary. If you aren't researching everything, then you're endorsing that it is OK to financially support horrible people as long you...
For #2, I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to do research on every author, but that's very different from trying to suppress others from speaking up about horrible things an author has done when they come up. If others have done that research and can share information, then that's a great way to learn, and change your mind on things without having to do the research legwork yourself.
Lots of people now know Rowling is transphobic and hateful because people do this. They often don't know the extent, so the more people raise specifics the more that information spreads too.
I think the main thing about the 2nd point is that it's arbitrary. If you aren't researching everything, then you're endorsing that it is OK to financially support horrible people as long you choose to remain ignorant of it. I venture to say that if we cracked open everyone's financials in here and followed where the money they spent goes to, everyone in here is supporting some kind of evil and some kind of oppression of others. No one is innocent here, I would bet on it.
I agree that if you're not actively researching everything you may ignorantly and accidentally financially support something you're against. I think that's part of why I think it's a good idea for...
I agree that if you're not actively researching everything you may ignorantly and accidentally financially support something you're against.
I think that's part of why I think it's a good idea for people to share problems about a person or company or whatever whenever it gets mentioned. Then you become informed and can make a conscious decision: follow your ethics and stop supporting or decide you don't really care and continue to do so.
It's not an arbitrary position to me to support people calling out Rowling's anti-trans actions when people talk about Harry Potter, or Card's homophobia, or Whedon's abusive behavior when discussing Buffy or Firefly.
Asking people to research themselves first is high minded and principled, but I think unrealistic. If we suppress people from talking about it then more people will remain ignorant.
But the way it's applied is arbitrary. It's like a different version of GoFundMe. If you know anything about how GoFundMe or similar sites are being used, especially ones that get into mainstream...
I think that's part of why I think it's a good idea for people to share problems about a person or company or whatever whenever it gets mentioned. Then you become informed and can make a conscious decision: follow your ethics and stop supporting or decide you don't really care and continue to do so.
But the way it's applied is arbitrary. It's like a different version of GoFundMe. If you know anything about how GoFundMe or similar sites are being used, especially ones that get into mainstream news, it's a bunch of feel good bullshit for people to pat themselves on the back for falling for the most creative sob stories. Giving millions of dollars to a few people who have just the right stories to pull on your heartstrings while there are tons of other people suffering under the same or worse conditions who get nothing. Tell me how that make sense. It's not unfamiliar in my experience that they end up being bullshit scams or such.
If we suppress people from talking about it then more people will remain ignorant.
Just to be clear, I'm not the person who posted the parent comment you replied to. Some people may have a different interpretation or takeaway from that comment than I did, which I didn't perceive a suggestion of suppression for certain talking points. And of course in my prior reply I made no implication whatsoever to suppression of any discussion.
I'm saying that if you make your decisions on what to boycott based on what other people tell you is bad, that is arbitrary and to me, similar to the example I used about how GoFundMe is used. I didn't suggest people shouldn't be able to use GoFundMe in that way, like you're free to give your $20 or whatever to someone who ends up getting millions while someone else who was suffering the same fate is getting nothing. So if you're just boycotting what other people tell you to boycott, whenever it conveniently pops up in front of your face, what kind of justice are you really imparting?
I think we're talking about very different things here. I'm not at all suggesting to blindly boycott things others don't like and doing so arbitrarily or without thought. What I am suggesting is...
I think we're talking about very different things here. I'm not at all suggesting to blindly boycott things others don't like and doing so arbitrarily or without thought.
What I am suggesting is that people should be free share their thoughts when someone is being discussed that does things they think are amoral. I'm not arbitrarily picking specifically on Rowling, loads of famous people do terrible stuff and deserve to be called out, call them all out! I listed a few people who created works I like that I think are reprehensible.
OP seems to want a safe space for HP fans to talk about HP without people bringing up the real harm Rowling is doing to people:
if yall want this platform to be a place where Potter fans can discuss the series
a decision probably need to be made regarding how to handle the folks that feel the need to always bring up Rowling's view on trans-folks whenever Harry Potter gets brought up
but if yall want to be a welcoming place for Potter fans to discuss that world without being told to go fuck themselves and then have the whole post be locked down, probably might want to do something about that.
I'm not saying that means all the people who like HP have to boycott it, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't make their feelings part of the discussion. I say the same thing for any thread with a problematic figurehead.
People can then make the informed choice whether they want to boycott or support instead of putting their heads in the sand.
That isn't at all what the OP said. I still don't understand how that is being understood that way. The point of the original post appears to be that the topics get locked because bringing up JKR...
OP seems to want a safe space for HP fans to talk about HP without people bringing up the real harm Rowling is doing to people:
That isn't at all what the OP said. I still don't understand how that is being understood that way. The point of the original post appears to be that the topics get locked because bringing up JKR results in inflammatory discussion which causes the topic to be locked. So sure, indirectly that can be interpreted as, don't talk about JKR, but what they said directly that contradicts it is also a part you cut out.
To be clear, I am not advocating suppressing either side as I prefer to have dialogue rather than censor it.
So they would probably not care so much about mentions of JKR if those mentions of JKR also didn't result in the topic being locked.
What I am suggesting is that people should be free share their thoughts when someone is being discussed that does things they think are amoral. I'm not arbitrarily picking specifically on Rowling, loads of famous people do terrible stuff and deserve to be called out, call them all out! I listed a few people who created works I like that I think are reprehensible.
And that is my point. You just singled out famous people. Why are only famous people ones worth calling out? I know, it's a bit pedantic and nitpicky and you probably meant for that to convey that everyone should be called out, but what I'm saying is that people often focus on the wrong things. Relying on popular sentiment or whatever conveniently pops up in front of you is not evaluating how those names even get there or their real impacts compared to other things you could be boycotting. Do you know how much JKR contributes to anti-trans groups than anyone else? What if you're funding someone who spends 10 times as much on anti-trans messaging as JKR, but they aren't as visible or noticeable? How do you know that you're not?
If you really want to get into the weeds of things, which is really off topic but shows how dumb it is what people focus on, arguably the people and organizations who support copyright law in its current form, whether they helped it get here or they are making it worse or helping it be as bad as it is now, have created a situation where someone like JKR gets ungodly sums of money, like those people are arguably worse than JKR, because they not only enabled someone like JKR to get into the situation she is in now, but they also have enabled other people to have ridiculous amounts of money that they shouldn't have. Without the totally broken copyright laws that exist right now, JKR wouldn't be nearly as rich, and wouldn't still be making money off HP. And there's not only JKR to reckon with, but tons of others, and if not for AI there would likely be future JKRs to follow.
Given the context in the post I'm confused how it could be read any other way. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that. OP claimed to not want to suppress anyone, says JKR discussion on HP...
Given the context in the post I'm confused how it could be read any other way. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that. OP claimed to not want to suppress anyone, says JKR discussion on HP doesn't work, is asking for a decision, and clearly aligns with one side, so I'm not really sure how else to square that hole.
I definitely do mean this would apply to not just famous people, but I feel like that rarely comes up. If some hypothetical racist neighbour makes a movie and we're talking about it, I absolutely support people calling that out.
As for there being others and JKR not being the only anti-trans supporter, sure that's true. She's an influential billionaire who uses her assets to spread hate, so of course she'll be talked about a lot. Other less public people should be called on it too, but they don't come up in conversation as much. I don't think "there are worse people out there" means you give up and only call out the single worst person in existence. Systemically this is a problem and we should do what we can to move the needle.
I don't think it does either, what I'm trying to convey isn't that you can only call out the worst offender that exists, it's the component where I think some people are going past just calling...
I don't think "there are worse people out there" means you give up and only call out the single worst person in existence. Systemically this is a problem and we should do what we can to move the needle.
I don't think it does either, what I'm trying to convey isn't that you can only call out the worst offender that exists, it's the component where I think some people are going past just calling out JKR, they're calling out people who watch or consume Harry Potter/JKR content. Not to raise awareness, but on the fundamental basis that they see it as an either "You're with me or you're against me" basis. You're either an enemy, or an ally, and an ally wouldn't watch or consume any content that has anything to do with JKR. This is what I think is what results in getting the topic locked, which is what really underlies the basis of this post being created.
One of my points is that you can make anyone an enemy if you have that mindset. If we had access to everyone's purchases in here, we could make an enemy out of every single person. Even the brightest angel can be made into a demon if that's the mindset you approach it with. So why are we drawing the line that people who are still into Harry Potter are the enemies? Let me be clear, I don't think most people here are seeing it that way, but some of the more charged comments to me do convey that, and the overall voting activity and signal boosting amplifies the effects of those charged comments. It would be different if I was describing a comment that had no votes, and there was no other context around it that indicated people may agree with it, then I'd not even talk about it as though it has any kind of backing that isn't even worth mentioning.
Also I didn't initially start out talking about people being worse than JKR either, that only came from my last comment. What I am trying to convey with mentioning that is how fickle attention can be. The idea that someone who is worse can escape attention and the criticism that comes with it is illustrative of the fickleness. If it's not based on who is doing the most harm, then what is the criteria for who is being targeted? And again, I don't really care what individuals choose to put their focus on even if it's not the most logical to me. I think all of us have our own personal logic to who deserves to be boycotted or called out and I'm fine with everyone attempting to persuade others to see their point of view but that's also different than 'you're with me or you're against me'. That's not simple persuasion.
Just to be clear where I'm coming from on it, I don't care much at all about Harry Potter, I never read the books, have only watched the movies a few times and never paid for them, never watched Fantastic Beasts or had anything to do with any other things JKR has made, so I've probably contributed less financially to JKR than most people here. I also think there's a certain oddness to that too. I'm apparently not a fervent JKR hater to the point where I'm going to go out of my way to tell everyone how much she sucks as a person, and I don't have a problem with people who still consume Harry Potter content. So am I on the 'bad' side? Even if I have given JKR less money than the people who are now on the 'good' side?
No one can answer this but you. I'm not being facetious or sarcastic. You decide what "side" you're on. While others can still have opinions about your choices, either because you share them or...
So am I on the 'bad' side?
No one can answer this but you. I'm not being facetious or sarcastic. You decide what "side" you're on. While others can still have opinions about your choices, either because you share them or because the opinions you hold are included in something they describe... You hold the only key to your ethics. If it bothers you that many people disagree (as indicated by votes), it may be something worth reexamining. Or it may not be.
A dozen people could give their opinions; but absolutely no one else can actually answer the question you're asking but you.
I get that you're not saying that facetiously or sarcastically, but the question was sort of rhetorical, or perhaps some other word that I don't know to describe what I mean. I don't think there...
I get that you're not saying that facetiously or sarcastically, but the question was sort of rhetorical, or perhaps some other word that I don't know to describe what I mean. I don't think there is a 'bad' or 'good' side in that way, not that there isn't any ethical components at all, but rather that they don't squarely fall to bad or good. However I perceive some others to think that it does work that way, and the question is geared towards that. But it's also rhetorical because I don't believe in that black and white thinking. So it does not personally concern me what someone thinks of me on that level, not because I don't care about ethics but because I don't believe ethics can be simplified to that degree. I wasn't seeking a genuine answer for my own gratification or awareness, rather to highlight a contradiction that I felt was present in the posed scenario in the form of a question.
I get that. At the same time, I think you're kind of dying on a hill, in a way that made me uncertain that you weren't also feeling some kind of way. I think you're sort of tilting at a windmill...
I get that. At the same time, I think you're kind of dying on a hill, in a way that made me uncertain that you weren't also feeling some kind of way.
I think you're sort of tilting at a windmill in that your objections don't really reflect the reality that I see - people can and do care about multiple things, really most of us don't spend this much time on any one topic very often, and Rowling as a very rich, very virulently anti-trans person is pretty much the ur-example of being the worst version.
But there's always the chance that talking about anything means we're not talking about something worse. I mean we're both here on tildes in this thread instead of talking about the inhumane conditions of people being held in ICE custody. Of course if we were talking about that we'd be ignoring the US and Israeli bombing of Iran. Of course if we were talking about that we'd be ignoring genocide...
But I don't think the solution is never to talk about anything or to stop talking about something that matters to me (or you, or whomever) because there are bigger/worse/different problems out there. Harry Potter may be the equivalent of a stubbed toe in the scheme of the world. But if you've experienced or watched others experience a bunch worse for being trans, having someone say you should ignore the stubbed toe and let everyone talk about how great the thing that keeps hurting your toe is can still sucks.
We don't have to only focus on the most efficient, most important, largest worst thing. I think this thing sucks, and I have the education and energy to discuss that it sucks and why, so I do. If there are bigger and worse things to focus attention on, please lost about them too, I read more than I comment, as unlikely as that may seem today.
But despite you not genuinely asking the questions, I think people do react out of the cognitive dissonance of feeling disapproved of for the thing they like. I suggest examining that dissonance and not being defensive about it, but in the end no one can control what others think about them, only what they do with that feeling and what their ethics/morals lead them to.
I don't expect people not to talk about them. It does not bother me that people express their ideas. What I don't like is when people simply try to reduce the situation into 'you're with me or...
But I don't think the solution is never to talk about anything or to stop talking about something that matters to me (or you, or whomever) because there are bigger/worse/different problems out there. Harry Potter may be the equivalent of a stubbed toe in the scheme of the world. But if you've experienced or watched others experience a bunch worse for being trans, having someone say you should ignore the stubbed toe and let everyone talk about how great the thing that keeps hurting your toe is can still sucks.
I don't expect people not to talk about them. It does not bother me that people express their ideas. What I don't like is when people simply try to reduce the situation into 'you're with me or against me' and is often employed to try to make people feel bad that they don't go all the way to a level that the person deems the minimum line. It's not that they disagree on a fundamental level, it's that they don't agree enough. The 'you're with me or you're against me' is a cheap method of trying to guilt someone who is mostly in agreement into fully agreeing but just not quite as much as you want. You recognize they value similar ethics and know that it might make them feel worse if another person of similar values makes them feel bad for not being fully on board. This is probably the hill you perceive me dying on.
Notably, that tactic doesn't work on anyone who is completely in disagreement with you on a fundamental level, which is why it's generally not employed in that scenario. It's already established, they're against you.
In another comment chain you discussed with another user how you don't agree that some conversations can push people away from viewpoints, I already read the whole chain of comments there so I don't expect you to repeat yourself for my sake, but I do think the other side of that perspective aligns with what I'm describing.
To be clear I don't find it useful to worry about pushing people away because they don't like how I converse, especially in a public thread not a personal conversation. And yeah, if someone has a...
To be clear I don't find it useful to worry about pushing people away because they don't like how I converse, especially in a public thread not a personal conversation. And yeah, if someone has a reactionary response (the "eat more meat because you wanted me to be vegetarian" sort of thing) I don't really think they were actually in any likelihood of being wooed by kinder words. And i think the portrayal of the previous thread here in this one is inaccurate.
But I'm not saying it's black or white so you're not really disagreeing with me anyway. If that's your only point though I think it's drifted quite a bit as your posts talk about all the other stuff I was responding to. Just my reading, and it's late so maybe I'm off. The hill I perceived was the "why her and not _____" that kept coming up.
I see them as connected. I don't think it has drifted at all. "why her and not ____" is that I perceive comments moralizing and leveraging the "you're with me or you're against me" tactic, and I'm...
But I'm not saying it's black or white so you're not really disagreeing with me anyway. If that's your only point though I think it's drifted quite a bit as your posts talk about all the other stuff I was responding to. Just my reading, and it's late so maybe I'm off. The hill I perceived was the "why her and not _____" that kept coming up.
I see them as connected. I don't think it has drifted at all. "why her and not ____" is that I perceive comments moralizing and leveraging the "you're with me or you're against me" tactic, and I'm saying that if everyone behaved the same way, we could all do the same thing to everyone else in here. "why her and not ____" is the idea that we could pick anything else and we could all do for every person in here if we knew enough about them. Which is an absolutely atrocious approach in dealing with people. No one wins, everyone loses, and everyone hates each other. All because it's a tactic designed to strong arm people who have similar ethics to yourself, but not exactly the same and not for every single subject. So "why her and not [insert subject that is personally impacting me in similar ways that other subject is personally impacting someone else]".
I don't really agree that this is how the conversations go. I don't think I'd reply as much if I thought it was "with or against" because there would not be nearly so much to explain in that case....
I don't really agree that this is how the conversations go. I don't think I'd reply as much if I thought it was "with or against" because there would not be nearly so much to explain in that case. Maybe I should try it, you make it sound almost relaxing.
But I don't know that anything else here is productive. I get your point but don't agree with the underlying assumptions in relation to this topic.
I can really only speak for myself, but I do agree that it's very hard (basically impossible really) to fully ethically consume anything in capitalism. You're right that everyone is going to have...
I can really only speak for myself, but I do agree that it's very hard (basically impossible really) to fully ethically consume anything in capitalism. You're right that everyone is going to have made purchases that someone (heck probably even themselves) would find unethical.
I don't have a hardline "purchasing X makes make you good/bad by definition" policy. To me it's more of a spectrum and an indicator of someone's overall morals.
I'm apparently not a fervent JKR hater to the point where I'm going to go out of my way to tell everyone how much she sucks as a person, and I don't have a problem with people who still consume Harry Potter content. So am I on the 'bad' side? Even if I have given JKR less money than the people who are now on the 'good' side?
I'm going to answer this since you asked, I think my answer is more mild than you might expect, but either way please don't take it as an attack on you or anything.
I would consider this behaviour to be on the "bystander" side of things. I think it's less ethical than someone who is raising awareness and trying to reduce the effectiveness of her hate. It's more ethical than someone actively supporting her. It makes me "think less of you" but it doesn't automatically make you "a bad person" if that makes sense.
It's the same for other people as well, I hold no special place for Harry Potter and Rowling here. If we were commenting in a thread asking moderators to stop people from bringing up Kanye's antisemitism in threads when he releases a new album instead I'd feel pretty similar.
As for the last part, I do think there's an important aspect of awareness. If you bought her books 20 years ago and didn't know about her hate, I don't hold that against you. If you do so today, knowing full well what she will use that money to do, then I do think that's worse. It doesn't make you evil, but it would lower my opinion of you.
This is why I think it's good to allow these conversations around an artist so that the awareness is there, and support becomes an explicit choice. If we had known what she would have done earlier, maybe she'd have less money to use to harm people.
I don't take it as an attack. It doesn't bother me. I recognize that it probably puts me on the "bystander" side in that particular aspect. But I also know that in the way that I could be...
I'm going to answer this since you asked, I think my answer is more mild than you might expect, but either way please don't take it as an attack on you or anything.
I would consider this behaviour to be on the "bystander" side of things. I think it's less ethical than someone who is raising awareness and trying to reduce the effectiveness of her hate. It's more ethical than someone actively supporting her. It makes me "think less of you" but it doesn't automatically make you "a bad person" if that makes sense.
I don't take it as an attack. It doesn't bother me. I recognize that it probably puts me on the "bystander" side in that particular aspect. But I also know that in the way that I could be characterized as a "bystander" in this aspect of this subject, you're a "bystander" on other aspects of other subjects. I know it because it's impossible for you to not be. So while you may think less of me, which I have no real control over so I can't worry about it that much, I can attempt to explain why I think that's not an ideal outcome. If I were to think like that, less of you because you're a bystander in something else, and you think less of me on this subject, what's actually gained from that 'trade' so to speak? What is lost because of it? To me, the loss outweighs the gain.
As for the last part, I do think there's an important aspect of awareness. If you bought her books 20 years ago and didn't know about her hate, I don't hold that against you. If you do so today, knowing full well what she will use that money to do, then I do think that's worse. It doesn't make you evil, but it would lower my opinion of you.
Fair enough. I agree with that. But if I were to take it to a more extreme level, and this is partly going back to why I think we can pick on anyone for anything, and it was brought up in the other thread where some comments attempted to equivocate on the issue, anyone who was subscribed to HBO Max or Max or whatever they were calling it at the time someone subscribed to it, was supporting JKR because they were supporting Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers owns distribution for Harry Potter and were the likely candidate to make continuing Harry Potter content. I don't even view it as much of a stretch to say that subscribing to HBO Max may have actually led to the creation of the show. I have never subscribed to HBO Max. Not because I thought they were going to make a Harry Potter TV series, but if I was not a 'bystander', I would have known better than to subscribe to HBO Max.
Was it The Good Place where nobody went to heaven since the industrial era began because every action had at least a bit of unforgivable sin by proxy in it?
I venture to say that if we cracked open everyone's financials in here and followed where the money they spent goes to
Was it The Good Place where nobody went to heaven since the industrial era began because every action had at least a bit of unforgivable sin by proxy in it?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, that much is definite. However, in this case, we are actively aware of where this money goes and to what end, and advocating for others to not...
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, that much is definite. However, in this case, we are actively aware of where this money goes and to what end, and advocating for others to not continue to offer support despite knowing the real harm that is evident should not be written off. When you are aware of how evil that powers that be truly are, you'll have to make decisions on what you can live without and what you can't.
American centric pov for an example, but I know that the automotive industry is harmful to the entire planet and human life, but I cannot live my life in the majority of my country without automotive access. I know that JKR is hugely problematic and wants to legislate certain groups out of existence, and I can live without Harry Potter, and so I chose to not give any money to her or the franchise in anyway. And I see no harm in advocating for others to do the same. We aren't all innocent, and we are all going to have things we decide we cant live without that others may dislike, but I don't see how that lessens the value of advocating to cause less harm in ways where we can relatively easily make the choice to live without. You don't have to listen, but I dont think we should discourage people from speaking up because you can "gotcha!" them on something in their bank account that also supports problematic endeavors.
My point isn't even to make a "gotcha" type of post anymore than people who are trying to point out that JKR is a transphobe is trying to make some kind of "gotcha" post. I bet most people know...
I know that JKR is hugely problematic and wants to legislate certain groups out of existence, and I can live without Harry Potter, and so I chose to not give any money to her or the franchise in anyway. And I see no harm in advocating for others to do the same. We aren't all innocent, and we are all going to have things we decide we cant live without that others may dislike, but I don't see how that lessens the value of advocating to cause less harm in ways where we can relatively easily make the choice to live without. You don't have to listen, but I dont think we should discourage people from speaking up because you can "gotcha!" them on something in their bank account that also supports problematic endeavors.
My point isn't even to make a "gotcha" type of post anymore than people who are trying to point out that JKR is a transphobe is trying to make some kind of "gotcha" post. I bet most people know that at this point, just like most people know their money goes to shitheels somewhere down the line. My primary point is that the application of this type of 'justice' is arbitrary and there's a lot of moralizing about it. I just find it rather peculiar for people to moralize about an arbitrary application of justice, like great, you spent an inordinate amount of time and focus on one issue to attempt to shut others down, and all the meanwhile, you conveniently get to ignore all the other things you personally are supporting that are objectionable while doing it. Like it's easy to avoid being told the money you spend on your toothpaste or underwear or whatever is going to pieces of shit because you're spending so much time in one thread talking about JKR or in another thread talking about whatever else. How convenient that it works out, the more you moralize to others about their wrongdoings, you also get to escape scrutiny for your own actions.
Just because people's posts about JKR are all you're seeing doesn't make that all that they worry about. People have a lot to their lives, and you're only seeing a very small part of it.
Just because people's posts about JKR are all you're seeing doesn't make that all that they worry about. People have a lot to their lives, and you're only seeing a very small part of it.
I have no doubt you have experienced the type of people you are describing here, I have as well. But is it not a massive generalization to lump everyone who advocates awareness into the category...
I have no doubt you have experienced the type of people you are describing here, I have as well. But is it not a massive generalization to lump everyone who advocates awareness into the category of those who are trying to "Gotcha!" others with a lack of awareness on whatever issue they devote attention to? You are assuming a lot about people, mainly that they are ignoring those issues at all, or that they are trying to shut others down to conveniently ignore doing any introspection or avoid receiving scrutiny on themselves. And sure, some people do fall in that category, but I think the users on this forum deserve a bit more benefit of the doubt and good faith engagement than you are offering. I honestly can't say say I saw what you're describing in the responses here, if anything they were more thoughtful and reasonable than my gut instinct would have expected when reading the initial post. It just seems like a lot of bias and preconceived notions to assign to people that you dont really have any idea of beyond what they put to text here, which from what I can see doesnt seem to support that which you are describing.
I don't believe that I'm generalizing as much as you say, because I'm not saying everyone who advocates awareness is in that category. The vast majority of the comments I think are fine. You want...
I don't believe that I'm generalizing as much as you say, because I'm not saying everyone who advocates awareness is in that category. The vast majority of the comments I think are fine. You want to make sure people know JKR is a transphobe, great, that's good. But if your goal is to make people who already know this feel bad about watching Harry Potter because JKR gets money either directly or indirectly from it, that's the moralizing that I'm talking about. And I do believe there are some comments on here where that is the goal.
Mostly off topic here, but i like to push back on the idea that you cann't live without a car. Many people do, out of necessity, even in the US. So really you feel like you cann't live without the...
Mostly off topic here, but i like to push back on the idea that you cann't live without a car.
Many people do, out of necessity, even in the US.
So really you feel like you cann't live without the convenience of a car, but you could.
You could move closer to your work, use a bike or bus and rent a car for those exception where you cann't easely do without.
but there are no bike lanes, or reliable bus network
Then lobby for one. But if you don't feel scared shitless everyday with your bike on the road, you probably won't be able to summon enough motivation to do so. Democracies's weak spot is that they tend to react to needs instead of anticipating them. Until enough people NEED to take the bus or the bike lane, none will be built.
So really you can live without a car, with some inconveniences, just like with consuming HP.
Just to be clear, my point is that you should do without both!
Ineffective rant over.
Believe me, I wish I could live without a personal vehicle, and I do get where you're coming from, but the U.S. is a pretty varied place and the majority of the country is pretty rural. Being 30...
Believe me, I wish I could live without a personal vehicle, and I do get where you're coming from, but the U.S. is a pretty varied place and the majority of the country is pretty rural. Being 30 miles from the closest hospital is reality for large swathes of people in the country, and you don't wanna be without a car when there's an emergency in an area like that. But if we take it to a semi urban environment like where I live, there's multiple factors that can make what you describe difficult. A bike might not be physically viable for everybody, whether due to job proximity or health reasons. Moving close to a place of work can be financially unavailable to people, if they can even find something close by. Some places dont have have bus networks at all, let alone a semi functional one. In my state at least you can't rent a car until you're at least 26, and even then you usually need a credit check or funds to even do that. There are a multitude of reasons a car can be both inaccessible and required depending on where you live and what financial situation you are in. I guess a more accurate statement would by my life and options would be dramatically limited without a vehicle.
The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans...
What exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her aren't requesting a weekly topic then? Tildes is for discussion, but that's clearly not the goal if you're going to veer off topic every single time. Further its not as if posting it every single time changes literally anything. The odds anyone here isn't well aware of the issues with Rowling are slim, and bluntly, it would probably be better severed to HAVE a dedicated topic on the issue if you think there are.
The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans uncomfortable". That is excluding a major aspect of the new productions. I didn't make the choice that JK Rowling was going to plow her fortune into "For Women Scotland" or set up the JK Rowling Women's Fund to take rights away from trans people (rather successfully, in the UK).
And that using her funds in a big way and achieving success is what makes Rowling different and worse than e.g. James Woods. Woods has some shit views. His actions based on those views have mainly been tweeting about them. That makes separating the art from the artist much easier. This also applies to people tweeting their takes on Israel/Palestine conflict. People tweeting their views are whatever, seperate the art from the artist if you like. If they declared that revenue from their properties was going directly to fund settlers or Hamas on the other hand, that might be a little harder.
I also think that what the original author and first executive producer says she is going to use her (presumably decently large) revenue share from the show is not off topic to announcements about the show.
I find it sad for the people who I know who grew up with Harry Potter that they're literally told "you can never discuss something that made a huge impact on your life because your creator sucks".
What's done is done. I too enjoyed the original books and movies as a kid growing up and it was a disappointment to see what Rowling became. I don't begrudge anyone for these properties having a place in their heart despite the author. But that doesn't mean you have to support the new adaptation (especially as it hopes to displace the movies they're apparently fond of).
No, the request is to not do that when its not what the topic is about because if you want to discuss that it should be its own topic, as with basically every other topic on this site. There is...
The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans uncomfortable"
No, the request is to not do that when its not what the topic is about because if you want to discuss that it should be its own topic, as with basically every other topic on this site. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from bringing up your own topics on the subject to discuss.
That's not how things work anywhere. It's like discussing Space Mountain and forbidding people from saying that they like another roller coaster more or less than it. When you discuss any topic...
That's not how things work anywhere. It's like discussing Space Mountain and forbidding people from saying that they like another roller coaster more or less than it. When you discuss any topic you have to discuss it in relationship to the world it is in, and that means that Rowling will forever be a part of anything that has to do with Harry Potter. To deny that is to deny reality, harming many people in the process.
This is in the post. Where are you getting that from again?
To be clear, I am not advocating suppressing either side as I prefer to have dialogue rather than censor it.
This is in the post.
The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans uncomfortable".
How is the request different from the status quo if you think that people should keep discussing the author? The post is asking for a change, what other change could it be?
How is the request different from the status quo if you think that people should keep discussing the author? The post is asking for a change, what other change could it be?
The prior post got locked. Perhaps you didn't see the prior post that sparked this post or how that post ended up getting locked, but then again, if you didn't, I find it rather peculiar to post...
The prior post got locked. Perhaps you didn't see the prior post that sparked this post or how that post ended up getting locked, but then again, if you didn't, I find it rather peculiar to post on this one as if you know something when you don't have a clue what happened.
So the request is really about the posts not getting locked because people who don't want anyone to like Harry Potter anymore can easily get posts locked about Harry Potter.
I expect this show to be kind of mediocre. It’s extremely rare for a TV show to be interesting to me. That said, if there was an incredibly entertaining TV show made by literal Nazis I’d...
I expect this show to be kind of mediocre. It’s extremely rare for a TV show to be interesting to me. That said, if there was an incredibly entertaining TV show made by literal Nazis I’d definitely watch it, but in a way where they got no money from me.
But I can see online discussions being less ethically clear as you might cause a bystander to pay for the media.
I grew up with HP and so I have positive (albeit complicated) feelings about the series, but I would really not consider my positive feelings on any piece of media as a major part of my identity....
I grew up with HP and so I have positive (albeit complicated) feelings about the series, but I would really not consider my positive feelings on any piece of media as a major part of my identity. Elevating one specific media series to the point where its fans need a disclaimer about potential discussions seems rather odd to me, and I don't think this suggestion makes a ton of sense in the context of this community. This is not Reddit.
I think most community members learn through trial and error which topics have strong opinions associated with them, and I think the best thing to do would be for ardent HP fans to recognize that there's a fair number of trans folks here, that they are deeply harmed by the actions of JKR, and they may want to weigh in on any discussion that brings her up. The best thing for ardent HP fans would be to recognize that and not get bogged down in arguments about it, and not take personally the anger or despair of people who are being actively harmed and marginalized by her activities. At the end of the day, HP is just a media franchise. It's not that deep. If you feel like you can't have the conversations you want to have here, this isn't the right place for you.
As one of the people who does feel the need to always bring up Rowling's horrific and harmful politics, I will continue to do so. I personally care a lot more about the real harm being done to...
Exemplary
As one of the people who does feel the need to always bring up Rowling's horrific and harmful politics, I will continue to do so. I personally care a lot more about the real harm being done to trans people than I care about the feelings of fans of Harry Potter, and that's not a position that will change.
Just for once I'd prefer to have a little place on the internet that doesn't cater to Harry Potter fans over trans people.
I like this thinking. There are many places on the internet to get excited about Harry Potter and ignore the bigotry, but there are few that are willing to do the opposite. And I would...
I like this thinking. There are many places on the internet to get excited about Harry Potter and ignore the bigotry, but there are few that are willing to do the opposite. And I would (personally) prefer that we are one of those places that really does actually care.
if yall want this platform to be a place where trans folks and people who care about them can feel safe while a new HP series drops soon (and maybe be renewed) then a decision probably needs to be...
Exemplary
if yall want this platform to be a place where trans folks and people who care about them can feel safe while a new HP series drops soon (and maybe be renewed) then a decision probably needs to be made regarding how to handle the folks that feel the need to always talk about how great the show is despite how much active harm Rowling is doing to the trans community.
To be clear, I am not advocating suppressing either side as I prefer to have dialogue rather than censor it. but if yall want to be a welcoming place for trans folks to exist without being told to go fuck themselves for objecting to content funding hateful narratives and then have the whole post be locked down, probably might want to do something about that.
I hope this is the best place to put this as I do not know where else to put it.
I felt the original took a POV despite saying it didn't, so I reflected it to demonstrate the point.
Idk if you think the anti-Rowling people are noise, just ignore them and continue posting and discussing. If they repeatedly butt into irrelevant subthreads, that arguably violates the don’t be an...
Exemplary
Idk if you think the anti-Rowling people are noise, just ignore them and continue posting and discussing. If they repeatedly butt into irrelevant subthreads, that arguably violates the don’t be an asshole, and you can still just ignore them. Just keep discussing things. Let their messages go in one eye and out the other.
It’s not that big of a deal to just not read things that you don’t care about. I don’t think any rules or moderation is needed unless it crosses a line into harassment etc.
without being told to go fuck themselves
If it gets to that point, then report the message.
You see the mixed messaging problem right? Obviously the severity of your examples are different, but there's a point where it feels like its been made clear you just have to "deal with it"
that arguably violates the don’t be an asshole
If it gets to that point, then report the message.
You see the mixed messaging problem right? Obviously the severity of your examples are different, but there's a point where it feels like its been made clear you just have to "deal with it"
Your first comment is about how someone is arguably violating don't be an asshole, but you should just ignore them and move on. Your second comment says that you should report the message....
Your first comment is about how someone is arguably violating don't be an asshole, but you should just ignore them and move on.
Your second comment says that you should report the message.
Obviously, in your second point, they are WELL BEYOND the don't be an asshole, but there's an issue where one person can feel like someone else is being an asshole but you don't bother to report it because "just deal with it" is the acceptable outcome due to a mixture of differences of opinions/pressure/previous outcomes/whatever.
In one post you're telling someone to just ignore possible rule violations and report others.
When I said "it arguably violates 'don't be an asshole'", I mean that at that point you do have grounds to report them and absolutely can, but even in the worse case scenario where nothing...
When I said "it arguably violates 'don't be an asshole'", I mean that at that point you do have grounds to report them and absolutely can, but even in the worse case scenario where nothing happens, you always can always just ignore them, not that you shouldn't report those.
Basically, the point is, if you just ignore all the anti-Rowling people, the most disruptive thing they can do is like reply to every post discussing the episode, but even that isn't all that disruptive, and they have a good shot of being temp banned.
It's ultimately asymmetric - it takes far more effort to write an angry reply than it takes to just ignore someone (which is practically effortless).
Deimos personally decides when posts get locked, and he tends to have a reasonable threshold for doing so. A single Harry Potter fan arguing in the replies with people pointing out JKR's vileness...
Deimos personally decides when posts get locked, and he tends to have a reasonable threshold for doing so. A single Harry Potter fan arguing in the replies with people pointing out JKR's vileness would have to be pretty dogged or hostile to get the thread locked by themselves, based on my impression of Deimos's moderation style. In any case, I don't think the solution is to ban people from bringing up very relevant information about the author is a remotely proportionate solution to the problem of people starting arguments with the those pointing out what she stands for in these threads.
If you insist that something needs to be done on a moderation front to prevent people from bringing up JKR's transphobia because you're scared people arguing about it will get the thread locked,...
Exemplary
If you insist that something needs to be done on a moderation front to prevent people from bringing up JKR's transphobia because you're scared people arguing about it will get the thread locked, you're proposing some sort of restriction on people's ability to post about it. If you're just saying "I think JKR's views are off-topic in a thread about an adaptation of her work that she executive produced", use the existing "off-topic" label, then.
If you want to discuss Harry Potter without being bothered by annoying people who don't like fawning over the work of someone who literally wants to snuff them out of existence, go to r/HarryPotter.
As a side note, I myself even participated in some of the discussion that didn't center around JKR's bigotry in the most recent topic. You don't seem to have participated at all, unless it was using a different account. If you're actually interested in discussions of new Harry Potter adaptations happening outside of discussing JKR's disgusting beliefs, actually doing the discussing is a pretty key part of that.
Not really. There are plenty of people who have been banned for not properly discussing and engaging on plenty of topics. If every time I bring up cooking beef two people who can't get along...
If you insist that something needs to be done on a moderation front to prevent people from bringing up JKR's transphobia because you're scared people arguing about it will get the thread locked, you're proposing some sort of restriction on people's ability to post about it.
Not really. There are plenty of people who have been banned for not properly discussing and engaging on plenty of topics. If every time I bring up cooking beef two people who can't get along launch into a vegetarian tirade that gets old fast.
Banning people for bringing up JKR's transphobia in these threads would be even harsher and would also constitute restricting discussion of her views arguably to an even greater extent than...
Banning people for bringing up JKR's transphobia in these threads would be even harsher and would also constitute restricting discussion of her views arguably to an even greater extent than locking and/or deleting threads about it. Based on the number of others here in this comments section who say they, like me, will not stop bringing up Rowling's bigotry in threads about her work, it would also entail banning a pretty large number of people.
I don't really care if you find the discussion tiring. You're free to ignore it and label it as noise in that case.
I am not at all recommending people be banned for bringing up JKR's transphobia. I am pointing out that people have been banned for a variety of topics that I'm sure most if not all here would...
I am not at all recommending people be banned for bringing up JKR's transphobia.
I am pointing out that people have been banned for a variety of topics that I'm sure most if not all here would agree on because they could not discuss them maturely
I guess I don't really see the relevance to my earlier comment, then. In the context of OP's original post, it seems pretty clear that OP wants people to stop bringing up the topic. If there were...
I guess I don't really see the relevance to my earlier comment, then. In the context of OP's original post, it seems pretty clear that OP wants people to stop bringing up the topic. If there were wildly inappropriate or immature comments from people bringing up Rowling's bigotry in the last thread, they've been deleted without a trace -- the discussion I see in the locked thread gets heated, but nothing that's all that egregious for Tildes and certainly nothing ban worthy.
I do apologize for jumping to conclusions regarding what you brought up, though. I think I was mentally juxtaposing your observation about people getting banned for such behavior and this line from OP's original post:
a decision probably need to be made regarding how to handle the folks that feel the need to always bring up Rowling's view on trans-folks whenever Harry Potter gets brought up
The combination of those two sentiments, even though they're from different parties in the discussion, is probably what led to me incorrectly inferring you were suggesting banning people for commenting on Rowling's bigotry in these threads.
Tildes has a system of labeling posts. One of those labels is "off-topic" and another is "noise". Both these labels, when applied by multiple users, result in a negative multiplier to the upvotes...
Tildes has a system of labeling posts. One of those labels is "off-topic" and another is "noise". Both these labels, when applied by multiple users, result in a negative multiplier to the upvotes on a comment when determining its ranking, and iirc posts labeled as "noise" are also automatically collapsed and don't ping people on replies. If you actually believe that bringing up JKR's beliefs in a thread about her work is off-topic, you are free to use one or both of these labels, which are designed for exactly the purpose of handling off-topic or non-constructive comments.
If a single person is responsible for getting multiple posts locked, eventually I’m sure Deimos would give them a warning or ban them, especially if they were being disruptive and outright being...
If a single person is responsible for getting multiple posts locked, eventually I’m sure Deimos would give them a warning or ban them, especially if they were being disruptive and outright being hostile and commenting personal attacks.
Edit: but I would also rather lose posts about Harry Potter than lose members of Tildes.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing is stopping people who want to discuss the series from just creating a new thread and @ing the other people who were actively discussing the show, right?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing is stopping people who want to discuss the series from just creating a new thread and @ing the other people who were actively discussing the show, right?
There's probably not anything stopping people from doing that, but presumably it's a grey area. In many places, that would be like circumventing moderator action. Since Deimos doesn't provide...
There's probably not anything stopping people from doing that, but presumably it's a grey area. In many places, that would be like circumventing moderator action. Since Deimos doesn't provide reason for his actions and there's no specific outline for what should be the response to those actions, it's unclear.
The locked topic could be perceived as "don't talk about this particular thing ever again", but I don't necessarily think that is intended to be how it works either, in that case I assume it would be deleted. More so I think it would unofficially be "let things cool off before talking about that again". But who knows.
Oh, interesting; I'd have taken it as "this discussion got out of hand, if you want to discuss it this is not the right way to go about that", but that may be way off the mark
Oh, interesting; I'd have taken it as "this discussion got out of hand, if you want to discuss it this is not the right way to go about that", but that may be way off the mark
Well that's the reason why people haven't done it or are hesitant to do it, because there's no guidance or clarity. I could see it being the way you said as well, but even then, how do you know...
Well that's the reason why people haven't done it or are hesitant to do it, because there's no guidance or clarity. I could see it being the way you said as well, but even then, how do you know what the "right way to go about that" is?
I think even this meta topic/question kinda reaches into that grey area as well. It kind of reinforces your perception, that perhaps having a 'meta' type conversation is the "right way to go about it", but who knows?
If I imagine the scenario where this meta topic didn't happen, and someone just re-posted the same trailer video again, how are we to assume anything would play out any differently? And if we cheat and use some knowledge gained from this meta topic, where people have stated that they will continue to comment about JKR on every Harry Potter post, then even more so we can assume it would play out very similarly. Given that Deimos didn't say what prompted his response or why he took that action, and because things can be deleted without anyone knowing what was said, there's very little clarity and just going back and looking at it alone isn't necessarily enough in part because things can be deleted with no evidence remaining of what was said or if that is what prompted it.
If I was Deimos, and I locked a topic because people can't discuss the topic in a manner that doesn't require my intervention, and then someone creates another topic that turns into the same thing that then requires my intervention again, perhaps I would see that as someone circumventing my action of shutting down the prior topic.
Yeah, completely fair. I think there's a balance being struck between excessive drain on Desmos and stuff getting out of hand, but I agree that does kind of leave us stumbling blindly in the dark...
Yeah, completely fair. I think there's a balance being struck between excessive drain on Desmos and stuff getting out of hand, but I agree that does kind of leave us stumbling blindly in the dark sometimes. Clearly this topic wasn't quite the right way to go about things either, given how it's ended up!
Yes, that's why I sensed this topic was a grey area as well. Meta topics regarding moderation in general don't fare well here from what I've noticed, if only because much of the information needed...
Yes, that's why I sensed this topic was a grey area as well. Meta topics regarding moderation in general don't fare well here from what I've noticed, if only because much of the information needed to facilitate those meta topics is obscured and only available to Deimos. They're also ultimately pointless, even if data was available, the only person who has any authority and power isn't going to participate in it.
Deimos is generally regarded as a benevolent dictator which I think matches his intentions, but also an uninterested dictator as well. It seems to be more of an obligation than an interest at this point. I would personally not envy his situation in this specific aspect either, because there aren't really any good options. Perhaps if talklittle and bauke are still making progress one day someone may be able to spin up a successor to relieve him of the burden.
Jesus this thread is exhausting. I really don’t think it needs to be that hard. If you want to discuss new Harry Potter productions, discuss them. If you want to point out JKR being a transphobe...
Exemplary
Jesus this thread is exhausting.
I really don’t think it needs to be that hard.
If you want to discuss new Harry Potter productions, discuss them.
If you want to point out JKR being a transphobe (among other items) and how it is influencing the new show/movie/podcast, point it out.
If you don’t want to read the meta-commentary in (2), label it as off-topic and move on.
I didn't really think Harry Potter forum drama was going to be the thread that blew up on Tildes, this is on track to be one of the most active threads of all time ~.~ I think your comment as well...
I didn't really think Harry Potter forum drama was going to be the thread that blew up on Tildes, this is on track to be one of the most active threads of all time ~.~
I think your comment as well as most others in this thread provides the balanced approach that should be taken.
Same!! I find it especially interesting (and a little funny, but more in a absurdist way) that I somehow MISSED THERE WAS GOING TO BE A NEW HARRY POTTER SERIES??? I had no g.d. idea. I'm a huge,...
Same!! I find it especially interesting (and a little funny, but more in a absurdist way) that I somehow MISSED THERE WAS GOING TO BE A NEW HARRY POTTER SERIES???
I had no g.d. idea.
I'm a huge, HUGE Harry Potter fan, have been since I was 9...
But I'm also an ally.
So whilst I love the books, love the movies... I haven't watched or read or bought anything since Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 1. I watched that movie and just felt awful the whole time, like my enjoyment was just completely sucked out of it.
So I haven't kept up with it. Can't believe it took this thread to let me know they're doing a huge show, teen-me would've been screaming in excitement. 32-year-old-me is just sad that that cow ruined a great world for all of us, sigh.
I'm seeing you describe this again and again throughout here despite the thread that precipitated this having – to my knowledge – no instance of this occurring, which makes this feel kinda...
I'm seeing you describe this again and again throughout here despite the thread that precipitated this having – to my knowledge – no instance of this occurring, which makes this feel kinda disingenuous. It's one thing if it's a hypothetical you're worried about, but you're not making it sound like one, and you're bringing it up an awful lot for something that didn't actually happen.
I mean, that quote is specifically not directed to a specific person. If someone does feel it is directed to them wouldn't that be because they fall under one of those groups and not the harry...
I mean, that quote is specifically not directed to a specific person. If someone does feel it is directed to them wouldn't that be because they fall under one of those groups and not the harry potter fan part.
You're complaining about someone supposedly saying for people in general 'to go fuck themselves', but then providing a quote mainly aimed at TERFs. Unless you're a TERF (to which I hope you're...
You're complaining about someone supposedly saying for people in general 'to go fuck themselves', but then providing a quote mainly aimed at TERFs. Unless you're a TERF (to which I hope you're not), this should not apply to you?
The mechanics of what you should be pushing is 'hey, the previous thread got heated and killed the discussion due to it being locked, and I would like some kind of mechanic to counteract this problem,' and that alone would be a valid conversation to have. But it's sounding like you're trying to two-fer this conversation by additionally condemning a perspective that gets in the way of talking about a series you like. I don't think that approach is going to net you any gains. I think pursuing the forum mechanics and what can change there is going to be the most productive, because the rest is going to fall into the trap of subjective bias and moral blockades that will not let the conversation move forward.
I did not miss that. In that case, use the malice label and move on. If it gets locked, oh well. Sometimes it happens. Edit: I think you are severely misinterpreting Fae’s comment in that thread....
I did not miss that. In that case, use the malice label and move on. If it gets locked, oh well. Sometimes it happens.
Edit: I think you are severely misinterpreting Fae’s comment in that thread. She directed the fuck to TERFs, transphobes, and wishy-washy allies. It was not directed toward you specifically. (And I don’t even see your name in the thread.)
You can assume incorrectly. Gavin Newsom's ilk is more who I was speaking of. I respect your right to ignore my comments but if you're going to keep talking about me, I'm going to keep correcting...
You can assume incorrectly. Gavin Newsom's ilk is more who I was speaking of. I respect your right to ignore my comments but if you're going to keep talking about me, I'm going to keep correcting the record. There's zero indication the thread was locked due to my post and I did not tell everyone in the thread to fuck themselves.
It's not a thing on Tildes. And since they're quoting my comment from the other thread I'd find it unlikely if it was a thing on Tildes. I'm aware they're making a choice, and that's fine, it's...
It's not a thing on Tildes. And since they're quoting my comment from the other thread I'd find it unlikely if it was a thing on Tildes.
I'm aware they're making a choice, and that's fine, it's why I made a post pointing it out and clarifying what was said, because the narrative as presented is inaccurate IMO.
Entirely possible or using some custom something or other, but again they're quoting my previous post so I believe this is a deliberate choice. Which is again, fine, unless they want to spend the...
Entirely possible or using some custom something or other, but again they're quoting my previous post so I believe this is a deliberate choice.
Which is again, fine, unless they want to spend the whole time very obviously misrepresenting me, my posts and the entire thread. I can live with them never replying, I'm sure I'm one of the personalities they dislike, but if they're talking about me like I'm not around, I'll correct the record.
Having looked up the comment chain in question, I will say I think it is to me in no way clear that that was your intent, and fully understand if someone reading your statement takes it as a...
You can assume incorrectly. Gavin Newsom's ilk is more who I was speaking of.
Having looked up the comment chain in question, I will say I think it is to me in no way clear that that was your intent, and fully understand if someone reading your statement takes it as a direct comment on them for not being more firmly against supporting JK Rowling, whether financially (by paying for things she gets a cut off), or circumstantially (e.g. by watching on HBO even if it wouldn't give additional money to her now but it might make the future prospects of the Harry Potter IP more valuable because of good viewership statistics).
I think the reason for this is that the discussion was on what counted as support or endorsement of JK Rowling's hate and bigotry, and it seems much more reasonable to me that your comment would be meant to be pertinent to the ongoing discussion in that comment chain (meaning the 'wishy washy "ally"' is the one who still watches the show on HBO) rather than an off-handed veiled remark regarding some US politician or people like him.
Is "trans people demand too much" a reference to one of his statements and you meant it to be clear that way?
OP wasn't involved in the conversation and didn't ask for clarification, I don't really care that they misread me - I have written quite a bit more in detail, including that I know people who are...
Having looked up the comment chain in question, I will say I think it is to me in no way clear that that was your intent, and fully understand if someone reading your statement takes it as a direct comment on them for not being more firmly against supporting JK Rowling, whether financially (by paying for things she gets a cut off), or circumstantially (e.g. by watching on HBO even if it wouldn't give additional money to her now but it might make the future prospects of the Harry Potter IP more valuable because of good viewership statistics).
I think the reason for this is that the discussion was on what counted as support or endorsement of JK Rowling's hate and bigotry, and it seems much more reasonable to me that your comment would be meant to be pertinent to the ongoing discussion in that comment chain (meaning the 'wishy washy "ally"' is the one who still watches the show on HBO) rather than an off-handed veiled remark regarding some US politician or people like him.
Is "trans people demand too much" a reference to one of his statements and you meant it to be clear that way?
OP wasn't involved in the conversation and didn't ask for clarification, I don't really care that they misread me - I have written quite a bit more in detail, including that I know people who are HP fans and don't hate them. They clearly weren't reading anything else. If such a misunderstanding has occured in the thread I'd gladly have clarified in the moment.
And no one in the conversation had said anything remotely like "I was an ally but trans folks ask too much." The political message of "trans people asking too much" has been present since before the 2024 election when trans issues became the scapegoat of MANY people on the center left. And in the past year and change, it's been really rough to continually hear.
This is by no means behavior limited to Newsom (and for all I know there were TERFs in the thread too,) he was just the most obvious example of the sort of person I think should be addressed in the described manner. But it would be like me saying "fuck politicians" and someone hopping in and announcing they were running for office. Either way, the comment was however certainly not directed at the person I was replying to either.
But key is that I was not frustratedly telling everyone present to fuck themselves. The thread was not shut down when I made that post but hours later. My post nor my post flag was not removed as such things usually are if a problem. I cannot know but I don't think I went too far.
I am almost always up for explaining for clarity. I don't feel OP is describing things in good faith, hence my openness about my words and intent.
I can fully understand the desire for people to want to be able to discuss something like Harry Potter without always having to hear about Rowling's views. After all, pretty much everyone already...
Exemplary
I can fully understand the desire for people to want to be able to discuss something like Harry Potter without always having to hear about Rowling's views. After all, pretty much everyone already knows that she's transphobic by now, and also heavy-handed moralizing can start to grate over time, even when it's something you agree with or support.
Let's call this the "leave it alone, already" reflex.
People who like Harry Potter, or people who are sick of hearing about Rowling's transphobia, probably feel this pretty strongly.
What I would encourage those people to consider, however, is that queer people also have our own "leave it us alone, already" reflexes, and they are equally if not more strained, in large part because Rowling, well, won't leave trans people alone. They are a frequent talking point for her, and she takes explicit, repeated actions to invalidate and hurt them.
So, if we consider a hypothetical Harry Potter discussion topic here: it's not that some of our commenters won't just "leave it alone, already" -- it's that Rowling herself won't do the same, which is the primary driver for bringing up her behavior in the first place.
I think this can help us allocate our frustrations appropriately. Yes, it's frustrating when topics get derailed, and yes, nobody loves when someone else yucks your yum, but I'd argue that the cause of this lies less with users here and more with Rowling's continued anti-trans crusade.
And to expand on this, it's not just that JKR won't leave trans people alone, it's also that the rest of our society won't either, spurred on by her and people like her. Sometimes the HP...
And to expand on this, it's not just that JKR won't leave trans people alone, it's also that the rest of our society won't either, spurred on by her and people like her.
Sometimes the HP conversation is more of a last straw, the equivalent of someone stepping on your foot after a day where you got splashed by a car going through a puddle, broke your phone and got harassed by the police. Your foot being stepped on still hurts but you're also just done.
But if she left trans people alone, those conversations would stop being a stubbed toe at all.
Thank you. I was trying to find the way to explain my thoughts, but kept popping into this thread and leaving because I wasn’t sure how to phrase it. I think you’ve hit my thoughts pretty closely,...
Thank you. I was trying to find the way to explain my thoughts, but kept popping into this thread and leaving because I wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
I think you’ve hit my thoughts pretty closely, and worded probably nicer than I would’ve.
Personally, if I saw a topic discussing Harry Potter with zero mention of Rowling’s transphobia, I would be worried that many of the people whose comments I enjoy seeing have moved on from this site…and I would feel obligated to say something at least mentioning it in passing.
Because while transphobia, and discussions about Harry Potter, do not affect me directly, they do affect people negatively, who are just trying to live their lives without a daily reminders that there are people out there who hate them. And I don’t want them to end up seeing a thread here where no one is out there at least attempting to defend them. Everyone has a right to exist.
I think it would be very cool if Potter fans could just discuss the series and franchise in a different part of the internet, simply because - whatever we think about that whole debate - we all...
Exemplary
I think it would be very cool if Potter fans could just discuss the series and franchise in a different part of the internet, simply because - whatever we think about that whole debate - we all know that this topic is distressing for many people here (and I think it's not hard to understand why people are upset).
So I feel it would just be the right thing to do to discuss it elsewhere.
There are many things I would like to discuss with the people on this site. If I were looking forward to this show, it would not be one of the things I'd like to discuss on Tildes.
There are many things I would like to discuss with the people on this site. If I were looking forward to this show, it would not be one of the things I'd like to discuss on Tildes.
Why can’t the same advice of “ignore it and move on” apply here? To be clear I know you’re not the one suggesting that, but would it bother you if you never saw it?
Why can’t the same advice of “ignore it and move on” apply here? To be clear I know you’re not the one suggesting that, but would it bother you if you never saw it?
I agree with you regarding 99.9% of other topics that people should just ignore it and move on. I try to do exactly that with most parts of US politics. But Rowling is actively threatening the...
I agree with you regarding 99.9% of other topics that people should just ignore it and move on. I try to do exactly that with most parts of US politics.
But Rowling is actively threatening the existence of trans people. That's just pretty fucking hard to ignore.
And the sacrifice of all other Tildes members in this discussion would be to simply not discuss a media franchise on this site.
I feel that these two things are so uneven in their importance and meaning that this could be a moment where a community like this could try to do a decent thing. Without the need to discuss pages of art vs. artist and all the other facets of this topic.
Just take a step back for once to make it a bit easier for many people here to be on this site without having to feel a metaphoric gun to their head. Just out of kindness.
If you want to discuss HP fandom in an echo chamber where extremely relevant harmful information isn't shared regarding the series' authors politics, go make yourself a HP discord and police it...
Exemplary
If you want to discuss HP fandom in an echo chamber where extremely relevant harmful information isn't shared regarding the series' authors politics, go make yourself a HP discord and police it how you like.
If you're mad that people will continually bring up Rowling's self-inflicted hate in HP related threads, maybe ask yourself why an imaginary fantasy world is more important to be discussed than the real harm her actions have on real world people.
I doubt the discussion and mention of JK Rowling was really even that big of an issue, that's not the takeaway I'm getting. The issue is the topics get locked which prevents further discussion....
I doubt the discussion and mention of JK Rowling was really even that big of an issue, that's not the takeaway I'm getting. The issue is the topics get locked which prevents further discussion.
There's also a bit of gamification of the systems on those conversations with signal elevation through exemplary labeling, but I'm sure even that could be overlooked for most. Like this post here has a much higher than ordinary amount of exemplary labels.
That's just the reality of this site though, some topics are literally just not capable of being handled here because there's no active moderation. That's surely not the official stance, but it seems to work that way in practice. There's no point in complaining about it as far as I am concerned.
I read back through the locked thread, it's not deleted. I don't see where someone said everyone could "go fuck themselves." I don't even see actual insults. Could you clarify what things you're...
I read back through the locked thread, it's not deleted. I don't see where someone said everyone could "go fuck themselves." I don't even see actual insults. Could you clarify what things you're referring to?
ETA: Let me be clear I said fuck TERFs and Transphobes and people who are wishy washy allies, on principle. I did not tell anyone there to fuck themselves. I did not insult any individual. My post was not deleted. I do not believe it to be the reason why the thread was locked as it was hours before it was and Malice reports get handled quickly. And I was not frustrated. Those statements are said with joy not anger.
Additional edit, this was from 2021 and the cast has more complicated feelings about the property as years go on, but an example of joyful use of said language
OP has not responded and I suspect that this is because they were referring to me and continue to do so with the comments about "personalities" and don't want to engage with me. But I feel the...
OP has not responded and I suspect that this is because they were referring to me and continue to do so with the comments about "personalities" and don't want to engage with me. But I feel the need to set the record straight because the two instances of the word "fuck" in that thread are from me - one with the aside of fuck terfs, and the other stating
One can argue that it doesn't matter that much proportionally, and I'd just say stand for fucking something, or don't, but don't pretend to.
in response to a comment with which I agreed.
OP continues repeating the narrative of the thread getting closed after "someone" decides to tell everyone who likes Harry Potter to fuck themselves and that insults were being thrown around, etc. There were not IMO insults being thrown around the thread and the thread was not closed after my statement
The thread was not deleted, and although a comment or two might have been I did not see any disappear and did not see any exemplary posts removed nor anyone be insulted by people objecting, nor by people objecting to the objections. Nor do I see any sort of "you're trash if you even subscribe to HBO". The closest I saw was the statement about how watching the show contributed to bigotry and follow up discussions regarding how.
As "annoying" as this thread of discussion may have been, it was almost certainly closed due to being contentious and reports being made, but I personally (for whatever my opinion matters) don't think any post there crossed the line to be malicious. And I object to what seem to be intentional implications that my post was to "blame" with a lack of any clarifying comment and OP declining to respond to the request for clarification. That is their right, but I feel the previous thread is being misrepresented.
I've read your quote a few times in context and I really can't quite understand exactly what you're trying to get across, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a read that isn't meant as an...
I've read your quote a few times in context and I really can't quite understand exactly what you're trying to get across, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a read that isn't meant as an insult when you add "but don't pretend to", since accusing someone of pretending to stand for something is very much an insult.
This is the entire comment, again, in response to someone I was agreeing with. I accused no individual (or group) of pretending, that was in response to a fictional "one" who "could argue". Lots...
Precisely. She takes the money and explicitly spends it on hurting trans people. Spending money on it put pennies in her pocket that she'll spend elsewhere.
One can argue that it doesn't matter that much proportionally, and I'd just say stand for fucking something, or don't, but don't pretend to.
This is the entire comment, again, in response to someone I was agreeing with. I accused no individual (or group) of pretending, that was in response to a fictional "one" who "could argue".
Lots of things could be insulting, that's not the same as insulting someone nor was that post removed as malicious.
That post is intended to be insulting to anyone who might disagree with you. Just because it wasn’t removed doesn’t mean it’s not insulting. Hell I don’t even know if it was tagged or worth Deimos...
That post is intended to be insulting to anyone who might disagree with you.
Just because it wasn’t removed doesn’t mean it’s not insulting. Hell I don’t even know if it was tagged or worth Deimos time to review if it was but I don’t really see how you can claim no insults were thrown around just because you didn’t throw them directly at someone
It is not intended to be insulting, no, it's saying that my opinion is people should stand for things or not stand for them, but not pretend to stand for them. It was not directed at any specific...
It is not intended to be insulting, no, it's saying that my opinion is people should stand for things or not stand for them, but not pretend to stand for them. It was not directed at any specific Tildes poster or other individual.
And while I've been clear about not knowing what labels are applied and what decisions are made, I think if that comment got flagged I'd laugh at the person flagging a less witty version of a Hamilton quote. Even OP didn't complain about that one.
By this standard your comment about people not being mature when discussing fiction is an insult. So sure, we're all big meanies I guess. But if we can call the president an asshole, and call everything enshittification, we can probably say "people should stand for something" with the word "fuck" attached somewhere in the sentence.
This site has no active moderation. There is one person who has stereotypical moderator capabilities, the owner of the site, and from what I can tell, they do not actively browse the site looking...
Then again, if tildes is OK with that, fine. But I just wanted to point out that doing so will make this website in its entirety unfriendly to Potter fans, and if that's what tildes wants, that's fine too. but at least make it clear in the rules.
This site has no active moderation. There is one person who has stereotypical moderator capabilities, the owner of the site, and from what I can tell, they do not actively browse the site looking for infractions or such. From what I gather, they do not make money off the site, and instead the site costs them money to maintain, and they have a full time job doing something else and therefore this site hasn't gotten feature updates in years. They also don't want to give other people moderation capabilities from what I recall seeing in past conversations. Likely the site doesn't have all the features or functionality to support that without giving other people more than desired amounts of access and power, which would then require someone to develop those features and as I said, that's not happening at the moment.
The more likely outcome in my perspective to come from a call or demand for action is anything that requires less of Deimos (the owner and sole moderator), up to or including dissolution of the site. Again, that part is purely my speculation of how I see the situation.
I'm not a fan of how easy it is for people to get topics locked for things they don't want others to discuss, but that is a function of a site that only has one moderator who doesn't seem to have a lot of free time and doesn't spend all of that free time on this site. It's easier and faster for him to just lock the topic rather than have to deal with the social issues of declaring hard set rules and enforcing them or digging through the weeds to sort out how to better handle the situation.
To be honest. If I were about to make a grand declaration about moderation policies and all that, I would make sure to know how the community is moderated first. I realize this is a bit direct,...
interesting information to know truth be told.
To be honest. If I were about to make a grand declaration about moderation policies and all that, I would make sure to know how the community is moderated first. I realize this is a bit direct, but there is no shortage of discussions about this and the footer also links to docs about all of this.
Which combined with your refusal to talk to certain people while stil talking about them honestly just doesn't give good faith vibes to me.
perhaps it should just be made aware to Potter fans that they have to be ready to deal with being called transphobic and being repeatedly reminded of Rowling's views on trans-folks
As far as I can tell the first didn't happen. Though I do think that if you do know about Rowling's view on certain groups you should honestly question if you want to send money her way by buying HP related things and watching new materials that come out.
It also isn't an either or thing. I have fond memories of reading the Harry Potter books and watching the movies. Those are experiences from before I was aware of Rowling's view on things and as such those experiences haven't changed. I still have those memories, I just will not support future works of her.
And to be honest, I think it is perfectly fair for people to ask that some consideration if a topic is posted like the one about the new series. So, yeah, if you decide to keep watching new HP works even though you are already aware of Rowling's views then I think it is only fair that you will keep running into people who will remind you about that.
I'll leave it to you to decide if you think that means you are also being called transphobic. But, I do think it does warrant some self reflection.
Just to be clear, the site has responsive moderation as far as I can tell, in that if you do something to generate a response from Deimos, Deimos does respond, but as far as I can tell, he does...
Just to be clear, the site has responsive moderation as far as I can tell, in that if you do something to generate a response from Deimos, Deimos does respond, but as far as I can tell, he does not go looking for things to moderate and if you look at his post/comment history, he does not post much. He could be just a lurker, but again, just from all the pieces I've put together, that isn't the impression I have. I would guess that if everyone here started throwing mud at each other and calling each other vile names but no one ever labeled any of the comments as malice or tagged him, Deimos probably wouldn't see it or know about it and the topic would remain unmoderated in that hypothetical scenario.
It sounds to me that you've hit the nail on the head here, and that sounds like a pretty good resolution to me. Personally I would say that wanting to discuss the show does not make you...
perhaps it should just be made aware to Potter fans that they have to be ready to deal with being called transphobic and being repeatedly reminded of Rowling's views on trans-folks without engaging, if they want to discuss on here
It sounds to me that you've hit the nail on the head here, and that sounds like a pretty good resolution to me. Personally I would say that wanting to discuss the show does not make you transphobic, but I think it is a reasonable opinion for someone to hold and share if they think it does. I would see more of a problem if the discussion on transphobia had spilled out of the top level comment it was under, then I'd suggest it was perhaps disruptive. In an ideal world just the top level comment in question could have been locked, but I guess that's not something that's possible on Tildes
I'm assuming that you're making this post in good faith, so it should probably be explained at some point that this thinking is something of a trap — wanting a dialogue does not make things just...
Exemplary
To be clear, I am not advocating suppressing either side as I prefer to have dialogue rather than censor it.
I'm assuming that you're making this post in good faith, so it should probably be explained at some point that this thinking is something of a trap — wanting a dialogue does not make things just or fair, as sometimes something simply shouldn't be debated. Forgive me a logical extreme to illustrate my point when I say: We don't debate the pros or cons of eugenics, for example, because making that a debate implies that there are points in favor that deserve consideration.1
Similarly, I don't think this is necessarily something that has to be debated. It's pretty well established at this point that Harry Potter works tend to support the author, and that the author in turn is a horrid bigot with entirely too much money already. I don't think it's fair to want these concerns obfuscated by extended back-and-forth. I understand that people who just want to enjoy a funny wizard show2 might feel attacked, or that they may wish for calmer discussions about this.
But the reality in turn is that if we do that – if we let ourselves get hung up on civility as the be-all-end-all – then we're implying that peace is more important than justice. This show hurts people in very real ways, and choosing to watch it regardless is exactly the kind of passivity that so enables those harms. Nobody wants to be tense, but for the sake of marginalized groups, this is very much a situation that calls for it.
We have, in fact, had a few discussions that came quite close to debating the pros and cons of eugenics. It's been a few years, and I don't really feel like going digging, but it has happened more...
We don't debate the pros or cons of eugenics, for example, because making that a debate implies that there are points in favor that deserve consideration.
We have, in fact, had a few discussions that came quite close to debating the pros and cons of eugenics. It's been a few years, and I don't really feel like going digging, but it has happened more than once that folks here though it would be fun to "devil's advocate" eugenics.
Personally I don't see discussing a topic and even considering multiple viewpoints as endorsing those viewpoints. I think saying "eugenics is a good thing" would be bad, but - to me - discussing...
Personally I don't see discussing a topic and even considering multiple viewpoints as endorsing those viewpoints. I think saying "eugenics is a good thing" would be bad, but - to me - discussing the pros and cons of it or any other controversial/evil topic isn't a bad thing and is an opportunity to broaden ones understanding of the world and form more informed opinions.
If I get in trouble for asking someone why they felt inclined to offer up eugenics as an example of something worth discussing seriously, them this might not be the right site for me.
If I get in trouble for asking someone why they felt inclined to offer up eugenics as an example of something worth discussing seriously, them this might not be the right site for me.
Like I said, I hear you, and I get it. I do want you around. It's just far enough off topic and I don't want the thread shut down if possible. But I also have my previously saved posts full of...
Like I said, I hear you, and I get it. I do want you around. It's just far enough off topic and I don't want the thread shut down if possible. But I also have my previously saved posts full of anti-eugenics info hanging around, so. You know. Just felt worth saying something but with zero intent to control your choice
Eugenics is worth discussing because labeling something as too bad to even discuss makes you the thought police and provides the other side free rein to make whatever points they want.
Eugenics is worth discussing because labeling something as too bad to even discuss makes you the thought police and provides the other side free rein to make whatever points they want.
My thought is that banning discussion of eugenics would mean that we'd never get the info in NotFae's anti-eugenics folder. Both literally and metaphorically. Open discussion doesn't require...
My thought is that banning discussion of eugenics would mean that we'd never get the info in NotFae's anti-eugenics folder. Both literally and metaphorically. Open discussion doesn't require anyone to take a "pro" stance, and it does risk someone taking that stance (even vociferously!). But then we get all the good info that supports the anti-eugenics stance. If they or anyone else open a topic about how awful eugenics is, and here's why, that seems to be allowable. We're not here to muzzle people.
Same reason why I think we allow the HP/JKR discussion as long as it doesn't devolve into direct attacks. Anti-JKRs (like me, full disclosure) can freely speak up, and HPers can live with the uncomfortable feeling of loving something made by someone extremely hateful and harmful. I find the argument that having to "deal with" (i.e. acknowledge and feel uncomfortable about) the anti-JKR reminders is too exhausting, unfriendly, or whatever else, to be worthy of a welcome-to-the-free-market-of-ideas-and-shrug response.
Anyway, my first paragraph was more important. Sorry for the ramble, but I'm sticking to it.
The person I responded to literally opened up the topic of discussing the pros and cons eugenics. That was what I was responding to. People will discuss whatever, there's academic discussions to...
The person I responded to literally opened up the topic of discussing the pros and cons eugenics. That was what I was responding to.
People will discuss whatever, there's academic discussions to be had about fascism and racism and genocide and all of the evils of the world. But I don't think anyone goes into them with a "what are the pros and cons of slavery?" mindset with intellectual honesty.
Inhumanity can and must be discussed, but you don't have to act like there's an upside to it.
Yeah, I agree with you. I suppose that wasn't directed specifically at you, despite my response in general being to you. I hope the person above does benefit from it at least.
Yeah, I agree with you. I suppose that wasn't directed specifically at you, despite my response in general being to you. I hope the person above does benefit from it at least.
I think abstract discussion of topics' suitability for discussion is on topic and appropriate here, but I don't think diving in to a specific topic's discussion would be. That being said, I think...
I think abstract discussion of topics' suitability for discussion is on topic and appropriate here, but I don't think diving in to a specific topic's discussion would be.
That being said, I think this one will be quick and not too devisive: I don't know of any pros of eugenics, but I would find it interesting to find out what people thought they were provided that were done so alongside a discussion of it's negatives (though not in this thread!), and I think it could provide an opportunity for deeping my understanding of why such things are bad
It seems odd to share the undue weight description and then go on to discuss what everyone knows about Rowling because it really seems to me that people who aren't terminally online don't think or...
It seems odd to share the undue weight description and then go on to discuss what everyone knows about Rowling because it really seems to me that people who aren't terminally online don't think or care about what JK Rowling has said. That's not to say it doesn't matter, just that it appears to be a bit self-defeating.
It really frustrates me when people call "caring about the extreme bigotry of JK Rowling" things that only terminally online people care about. Frankly, it's gross to say this.
It really frustrates me when people call "caring about the extreme bigotry of JK Rowling" things that only terminally online people care about. Frankly, it's gross to say this.
I have seen the sentiment that "regular" (phrased in different ways) people don't care about things like JKR or trans women at the Olympics, and I find it likely that most folks' model of regular...
I have seen the sentiment that "regular" (phrased in different ways) people don't care about things like JKR or trans women at the Olympics, and I find it likely that most folks' model of regular people doesn't really include queer and trans folks.
And it's not really logical under "have more important things to worry about." I have a partner with major medical issues, am emotionally and financially strained, and am dealing with my own chronic pain and mental health. There's a war on driving prices up and killing innocent people among many other "big" things. I still care about not supporting transphobic shit. I still care about ICE arresting people. Other folks I know care about this too. It's probably much more about being willing and able to turn one's empathy towards perceived "outsider" groups.
But we're all regular people too. Regular people care about this.
I've had plenty of people around me that had (and some still have) no idea about her opinions on the matter. They happily bought Hogwarts Legacy because "hey cool harry potter from my youth". To...
I've had plenty of people around me that had (and some still have) no idea about her opinions on the matter. They happily bought Hogwarts Legacy because "hey cool harry potter from my youth".
To me, it seems futile to try and deplatform something that has such a large following of people that genuinely do not know why it's a problem.
I don't say this to make an argument why we should discuss HP, I think we're not missing much by not doing so and we have a lot to gain by giving some people here some peace of mind. Because we do know. So we shouldn't.
I'm saying it because there is some truth to it. Which is why that point is so often repeated.
It never became a big news thing around these parts outside of the internet, so most people never heard of it. At least here in this country.
Not all money spent on JK is because people support her opinions, I'd go as far as to say that most people don't and it's even likelier they don't even know her opinions. People just really like HP for what it meant to them then.
I read that as rather than I don't know which updawg intended, but I thought it might be helpful to point out
I read that as
because it really seems to me that people who aren't terminally online don't think or care about what JK Rowling has said (and so it is worth informing them about it)
rather than
because it really seems to me that people who aren't terminally online don't think or care about what JK Rowling has said (and that is a reasonable position to have)
I don't know which updawg intended, but I thought it might be helpful to point out
Neither, exactly. Just that you can't argue we shouldn't spend time on things that most people don't worry about and then directly turn around and say that means we should really focus on this...
Neither, exactly. Just that you can't argue we shouldn't spend time on things that most people don't worry about and then directly turn around and say that means we should really focus on this thing most people are totally unaware of. But I suppose that's closer to #1.
And then you also shouldn't twist the words of someone who supports you just to create an insult out of whole cloth.
I wasn't aware of Daryl Davis, so thank you for letting me know about him! In this case, I should clarify that when I say things shouldn't be debated, I was speaking in the context of a public...
I wasn't aware of Daryl Davis, so thank you for letting me know about him!
In this case, I should clarify that when I say things shouldn't be debated, I was speaking in the context of a public forum such as this. In private, engaging peacefully can have very real and very useful results, as Davis proves.
In public, though? Even if it does work, it will serve to have two damaging effects: First, if one of the participants is a terrible person, it will provide publicity for them; and second, it helps drag approval for the given horrible thing closer towards the Overton window of acceptable discourse. Neither of these things are okay.
If you want to convince someone with awful beliefs to let them go, and you feel strongly you're capable enough to do so, I won't tell you to stop. But that's hard, risky, and needs the right time. Any situation with an audience is not that time.
Both. The key is in having an audience. If you've got an audience, so too does the person you're hoping to convince — this is a kind of platforming, and platforming harmful views is a terrible...
Both. The key is in having an audience. If you've got an audience, so too does the person you're hoping to convince — this is a kind of platforming, and platforming harmful views is a terrible idea.
Not to mention that it's harder for someone to genuinely listen to you and reconsider their views when they've got a bunch of eyes on them. If those eyes agree with them, they'll be overconfident, if the eyes disagree, they'll get defensive. It's just not helpful.
There aren't really mods or admins in the traditional sense, just Deimos and some users that have more tagging and topic moving powers. It's up to us to maintain community and not to let things...
There aren't really mods or admins in the traditional sense, just Deimos and some users that have more tagging and topic moving powers. It's up to us to maintain community and not to let things get to the point of needing intervention.
If someone posts media from a problematic creator, it seems appropriately on topic to point it out. I don't care if "everyone knows already."
If folks are telling other folks to go fuck themselves, that's is a problem and does need to be handled, but that's not specific to Harry Potter.
Can I suggest a pragmatic and utilitarian solution? I don’t think that there is much net utilitarian benefit in comments that discuss her transphobia on every post. Most people on tildes are...
Exemplary
Can I suggest a pragmatic and utilitarian solution?
I don’t think that there is much net utilitarian benefit in comments that discuss her transphobia on every post. Most people on tildes are already aware about her transphobia and the general situation with her.
If the aim is to further trans rights, and make the world a better place, isn’t the best thing to not push all the people who aren’t already aware/care away from where they can be influenced? I’m guessing most of the most transphobic HP fans aren’t a member of tildes. The people who are here are likely to be at least empathatic to transgender view points. I find the whole ‘If you aren’t 100% with me then you are against me’ strategy ends up backfiring more often then not and drives polarisation rather than reproachment.
So as for the pragmatic part: for post that are about Harry Potter, but not primarily JK Rowling, have one comment (autogenerated if possible) which points out “JK Rowling uses her financial success as a measure of support for her ideas. If you are still going to watch this show, why not donate to a pro trans charity? Here is a list <link>.”
I feel a donation to a protrans support charity can likely do more good then the minimal change in opinion from ‘stern’ (for want of a better word) comments.
That way, Harry Potter fans are not pushed away, can be part of the community (and able to be influenced in a positive atmosphere), there is a net moral and financial good to trans groups, and for HP fans who are still going to watch it, a way to reduce any perceived moral harm.
For posts more about JKR rather than HP, then feel free to discuss however you see fit.
The alternative to this as I see it is HP fans get pushed away from the site towards sites which are properly transphobic and their opinions get hardened in a negative way.
If you don’t agree with this or me, please don’t crucify me. It’s a suggestion for discussion, isn’t particularly well thought through, and is trying to be a solution that most people can get on board with. For me, it is the best solution I can think of to a difficult problem which is bound to piss some people off regardless of what we do.
I don't agree with the idea that one should avoid talking about something because it will "push people away". It's akin to the "a black person was mean to me so now I'm not supporting Black Lives...
I don't agree with the idea that one should avoid talking about something because it will "push people away". It's akin to the "a black person was mean to me so now I'm not supporting Black Lives Matter" narratives. In my experience those folks weren't actually allies.
It’s not about ‘not talking’ about something, but more the approach. The approach used in the comments on HP posts about her transphobia is not in my opinion there to convince people to change...
It’s not about ‘not talking’ about something, but more the approach. The approach used in the comments on HP posts about her transphobia is not in my opinion there to convince people to change their minds. I can’t quite put it in words, but it feels more dogmatic, and aimed at an audience who already feels that way? Echo chamber style I guess is the closest phrase I can describe it as. It’s certainly not a compassionate way to help change people’s minds, and I would argue unlikely to be effective in achieving a net good.
Also I’m afraid I don’t understand your analogy? It doesn’t seem the same thing at all. Maybe I’m missing the point.
You proposed not "pushing away" people so they'll stay by avoiding being too aggressive and thus influencing them into being more pro-trans. I do not believe that people who react to direct...
You proposed not "pushing away" people so they'll stay by avoiding being too aggressive and thus influencing them into being more pro-trans.
I do not believe that people who react to direct "here's what's up and why this transphobic stuff is bad" messages in such a way that they'll leave or somehow harden their hearts to trans people were really allies in the first place. In that they did not have strong convictions, likely at all. The comments here have mostly been informative and explanatory, not "fuck you you wizard lover, burn in hell"
I know people who like Harry Potter, who eat at Chick-fil-A, or who shop at Hobby Lobby. I don't hate them. But when the topic comes up I don't avoid talking about it either. And I don't think a donation - a trans indulgence if you will - makes up for the harm of continuing to platform and raise the status of Rowling.
I wish the cognitive dissonance would be enough, but speaking up, often in ways people find annoying and inconvenient is much more how change happens in contrast with being told not to make such a fuss.
I think here we fundamentally disagree on an axiomatic matter. I do think there is more room for change and growth, particularly in a compassionate (my buzzword it seems) environment. I have...
I think here we fundamentally disagree on an axiomatic matter. I do think there is more room for change and growth, particularly in a compassionate (my buzzword it seems) environment. I have personally found the tone of the comments ‘stern’ for the lack of a better word. While posts don’t literally say ‘fuck you wizard lover burn in hell’ I do think some of the comments do indirectly imply that/a moral failing which means they would burn in hell if there was one. I don’t think that’s effective, or helpful.
In general I don’t get on with a dogmatic/ “my way or the highway” approach, and communities are ultimately based on a degree of compromise. People are able to not quite see eye to eye on everything and still be a member of the same community, and still even get on. People can come to different conclusions on different matters based on how they weigh up moral pros and cons. Yes there are evil people out there, but most people are not. The left wing often has a problem with pragmatic compromise, which is why it is so often splintered, fragmented and full of infighting.
In my mind it’s also the route of partisan politics in general which ruins politics for me. Us vs them isn’t productive.
Edit: and re a donation, I would argue there must be a value where a donation does make a difference- if you donated £1 billion then I don’t see how it could not be an overall net good. Then it becomes a qualitative maths problem, and personally I reckon if you donate more than the total value of a show you watch (given how only a small fraction would end up in JKR pocket) it probably is a net good. I think you can achieve a lot more with a positive donation than through a boycott. But that is my opinion and is not evidence based.
I don't agree that this is how the conversations go, but that's a matter of perspective that is informing the rest of your comment and mine. I have long since decided not to sacrifice who I am or...
I don't agree that this is how the conversations go, but that's a matter of perspective that is informing the rest of your comment and mine. I have long since decided not to sacrifice who I am or how I feel based on how I'm received. All doing so has gotten me in the past is still more criticism and less consideration for my identities. Who I am, is often kind and compassionate, and also direct and honest. I don't think that approaches the equivalent of "if you watch you'd go to hell if it existed. "
I don't believe in atoning by donation, aka again, indulgences. Maybe that's the post-Luther Catholic in me. JKR has donated a lot of money to charity, not just anti-trans groups, but she's still hurting people.
I'm non-binary, not a binary trans person and far less of a target, but I can say for me and not on behalf of the GNC community, that I don't want a "I feel bad but I'm talking about the show" donation. Donate if you think it's the right thing to do, or don't if you can't or don't want to. But I certainly don't vote to free anyone from whatever sins they may have against trans people for it. No one here is donating a billion dollars to anything so I don't think it's relevant.
Fair enough if that’s your experience. For what it’s worth, I usually adopt a ‘non violent communication’ and with real people, and when ai speak from my true self, it often works far better than...
Fair enough if that’s your experience. For what it’s worth, I usually adopt a ‘non violent communication’ and with real people, and when ai speak from my true self, it often works far better than I expect. Doesn’t work as well with assholes though. And for the record I’m not saying you are telling HP fans to go to hell, but I found rereading the whole thread some comments could be interpreted to say that or at least infer it.
I have no strong feelings about whether donations makes it right or wrong, but my gut feeling is on a utilitarian point of view (which is only one aspect of ethics) it probably does cause a net positive and allows for compromise which to me is most important. And I chose a billion to prove a point, but I would say it’s also true for £1000 or even £100. You could do a lot to undo any harm JKR does with the £1 or whatever she gets from each person who watches the show. But I hear your point of view too, that for you personally it doesn’t help.
I have a Counseling degree and I'm quite familiar with where NVC stems from though not specifically trained in it! All I can say is I have absolutely changed minds online and in person. I am...
I have a Counseling degree and I'm quite familiar with where NVC stems from though not specifically trained in it!
All I can say is I have absolutely changed minds online and in person. I am generally intentional but I remain authentic and my communication varies some due to the constraints of the environment but not due to the opinions of people who reply.
I will never fit myself into a box that will satisfy everyone else without suffocating my soul. My personal gender euphoria comes in part from when I manage not to even try to start squeezing into the box. It feels so good.
That’s not quite what I’m saying. It would be more of a message which makes it’s clear it’s controversial, links to a page about the controversy and links to program charity list. It’s a...
That’s not quite what I’m saying. It would be more of a message which makes it’s clear it’s controversial, links to a page about the controversy and links to program charity list. It’s a compromise to allow different groups to get along without derailing a conversation.
But I get your point on a visceral level, I don’t like the idea of someone else determining right or wrong for me. But on an abstract level all communities have some things they consider correct axiomatic beliefs: e.g. people are equal, please don’t torture people, slavery isn’t okay etc. it’s probably acceptable to codify things like that (and probably fit into the don’t be an asshole rule).
It’s ultimately up to Deimos about whether disagreeing with protrans points in a non asshole way is deemed acceptable or non acceptable for this community, and probably is the point that underlies most of this thread.
I don’t know how more direct you could be about specifying what the correct belief is than by promoting charities. I don’t know if you read the locked thread, but people weren’t even being...
That’s not quite what I’m saying. It would be more of a message which makes it’s clear it’s controversial, links to a page about the controversy and links to program charity list.
I don’t know how more direct you could be about specifying what the correct belief is than by promoting charities.
disagreeing with protrans points
I don’t know if you read the locked thread, but people weren’t even being anti-trans, they were simply questioning how much effect there would be from an existing HBO subscriber choosing to watch the content. There’s a lot of distance between discussing the economics of viewer metrics and promoting trans hate.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m generally pro-trans on almost all issues. But I would oppose this kind of thing for all topics that I have strong opinions on. I wouldn’t like automated pushing of pro-choice, pro-Ukraine, pro-Democrat, pro-Liberal/NDP, and so on either.
I like the idea, but I would argue that it probably would be more beneficial if it was more general and not just about JKR. Like a bot that - based on tags - would fetch the Wiki article of the...
I like the idea, but I would argue that it probably would be more beneficial if it was more general and not just about JKR. Like a bot that - based on tags - would fetch the Wiki article of the creator of whatever product is being talked about. Most Wiki articles should contain all of the controversial points of any public figure, so this should work just as well.
I say this because I doubt how a disclaimer made specifically for JKR would matter on Tildes. I may be wrong, but I bet that >95% of people here at least know that JKR is transphobic (or at the very, very least, that she's controversial).
I really like the idea of a new norm on tildes that the top post is a disclaimer with short summary of problematic association and mitigating strats... I would rather this wasn't automated. First...
I really like the idea of a new norm on tildes that the top post is a disclaimer with short summary of problematic association and mitigating strats...
I would rather this wasn't automated. First one on the scene posts it, then everyone votes it to the top.
This would give us some kind of positive tradition distinguishing us from other forum, and something to work together to maintain, and it doesn't require any work from deimos who i assume has a life too...
Plus it sounds like the sort of super woke shit that could keep away the ultra far right but in practice be reasonable enough that reasonable right wing could get behind.
I wonder if that would lead to more problems. It’s an invitation to cause off topic on every possible topic, and depending on the person posting it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate/fair, or even...
I wonder if that would lead to more problems. It’s an invitation to cause off topic on every possible topic, and depending on the person posting it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate/fair, or even might be more pro right wing.
I think it would be better for set controversial topics with a fixed well thought out message that’s not going to just cause grief and conflict.
I don't think discussion of a creator's views is off-topic when discussing their work, so I don't see the risk of it starting off-topic discussion. That said, in my experience when creators are...
I don't think discussion of a creator's views is off-topic when discussing their work, so I don't see the risk of it starting off-topic discussion. That said, in my experience when creators are sufficiently controversial or at least when their positions on certain topics are sufficiently well-known, it's already the case here on Tildes that usually someone will comment pointing that out and starting a thread about it. How heated that thread gets varies significantly, though.
Those are valid concerns. Maybe then a weekly topic were we collectively discuss and build concensus on what message we should use and for which topics. Then the first one on the scene can copy...
Those are valid concerns.
Maybe then a weekly topic were we collectively discuss and build concensus on what message we should use and for which topics.
Then the first one on the scene can copy paste the adequate message and we only vote it up if its the genuine agreed upon message.
If concessus builds toward a right wing troll message, then tildes has allready been lost anyway...
I just really like the idea of self imposed norms from the community.
Seems like this is what tags and labels are for, which you can filter out if some content is upsetting for you to see. Checking the trailer post, I don't think this necessarily calls for admin...
Seems like this is what tags and labels are for, which you can filter out if some content is upsetting for you to see.
Checking the trailer post, I don't think this necessarily calls for admin intervention even, unless people start flinging insults at each other. The giant comment chain was hidden away from me when I opened the post, so looks like labels are working as intended. This, I think, is what makes Tildes superior to, for instance, reddit, where on topic posts would be downvoted to hell.
Genuine question, how often do you find yourself defending the work of a transphobic author that the personalities of other people on the site would be an issue? Why can't you mark those comments...
given the personalities of some of the people I observe being on this website alot, I doubt it will be the last time.
Genuine question, how often do you find yourself defending the work of a transphobic author that the personalities of other people on the site would be an issue? Why can't you mark those comments as malice or ignore them?
I have jk rowling as a topic tag filter because I genuinely never wish to read or hear anything about that woman for the rest of my life. I expect that a decision to be inclusive to transgendered...
I have jk rowling as a topic tag filter because I genuinely never wish to read or hear anything about that woman for the rest of my life.
if yall want this platform to be a place where Potter fans can discuss the series that will drop soon and be around for 10 years, then a decision probably need to be made regarding how to handle the folks that feel the need to always bring up Rowling's view on trans-folks whenever Harry Potter gets brought up.
I expect that a decision to be inclusive to transgendered individuals or Harry Potter fans is mutually exclusive.
How about we just trust the community a bit and see instead of preemptively picking a side? Most potter fan are lgbt-friendly and would probably prefer to be made aware that JKR considers...
How about we just trust the community a bit and see instead of preemptively picking a side?
Most potter fan are lgbt-friendly and would probably prefer to be made aware that JKR considers royalties as some kind of public support for her activism.
Repetitive discussion aren't bad. Repetition is the mother of learning.
For context: I intentionally missed this, but there was a thread a couple days ago which got locked due to, what I'd imagine was, tonnes of people slinging "Malice" tags at each other in order to...
For context: I intentionally missed this, but there was a thread a couple days ago which got locked due to, what I'd imagine was, tonnes of people slinging "Malice" tags at each other in order to make a point.
(edit) I think this question has come up because whenever someone says "Harry Potter cool", people pour into the comment section to remind them that their support legitimizes the beliefs of a cruel and petty woman hellbent on eliminating trans women from Earth. This repetitive discussion distressed the people who wanted to talk about wizards, hence the thread.
That just comes with the territory of the website though. I’ve posted two Harry Potter related things here that got locked, the trailer you linked to and also an article about the video game...
That just comes with the territory of the website though. I’ve posted two Harry Potter related things here that got locked, the trailer you linked to and also an article about the video game selling so well.
This is mostly a hyper woke space and when you join the website I think it’s likely that you’re already aware that it is that. I’ve pushed back on some things that I think the consensus meta of places like this have been operating under since the 2010s but I generally pick and choose those battles. But I do understand the nature of this place and the slant it takes.
Although I will say I was surprised by how things got off the rails by a simple trailer.
It was not my impression that Malice labels were "slung" around. I know I didn't use any and the only post I saw sinking low was the one the conversation was under for purportedly being off topic....
It was not my impression that Malice labels were "slung" around. I know I didn't use any and the only post I saw sinking low was the one the conversation was under for purportedly being off topic. I know some folks explicitly used that label to get deimos' attention because they thought said post should not have been exemplary. (It was IMO)
I can't see, obviously, as it isn't public but I don't like to assume bad faith labeling as a rule.
JXM's exemplary post was perfect in this thread, concise and non preachy, gentle reminder and gone. Couldn't we have some kind of banner reading something like: On any thread with the harry potter...
JXM's exemplary post was perfect in this thread, concise and non preachy, gentle reminder and gone.
Couldn't we have some kind of banner reading something like:
jkr author of HP, considers royalties as support for her deeply troubling activism. Would you like to know more?
On any thread with the harry potter tag?
Or just posted by someone on the thread and vote boosted to the top.
This would make sure there is a slight itch (which really shouldn't go away), and also an easy mitigating solution is implied (piracy).
The initial comment about JKR in the recent topic about the miniseries trailer was basically the same as what you describe in that banner, minus the link. The problem is that some people started...
The initial comment about JKR in the recent topic about the miniseries trailer was basically the same as what you describe in that banner, minus the link. The problem is that some people started arguments in the replies insisting that even comments like this are off-topic and shouldn't be brought up in threads about Harry Potter. Those arguments are what descended into something that merited locking the thread afaik, but given how relatively non-confrontational the initial comment was, it's pretty clear that even the most passive acknowledgement of JKR's public stance on trans people in these topics will lead to people arguing about how it should be removed.
Just replying to say, thank you for an original suggestion, at least. I don't think I can continue looking at this thread for my own mental health, though, so I'm bowing out.
Just replying to say, thank you for an original suggestion, at least.
I don't think I can continue looking at this thread for my own mental health, though, so I'm bowing out.
Take care. These topics come in waves, it happens every few weeks, it'll recede soon, hang on. Most people ARE compassionate and wouldn't hurt people knowingly for no reasons.
Take care.
These topics come in waves, it happens every few weeks, it'll recede soon, hang on. Most people ARE compassionate and wouldn't hurt people knowingly for no reasons.
Put simply, OP, imagine you come across a bunch of people happily discussing a story written by a person that not only wishes you were dead, but has spent millions of dollars convincing other...
Put simply, OP, imagine you come across a bunch of people happily discussing a story written by a person that not only wishes you were dead, but has spent millions of dollars convincing other people that you should die also.
Do you not think you would be put out by this? Would you just sit there and roll over as people discussed giving more money by proxy to the person who's spending millions of dollars with the aim being your, personal death?
This is basically the situation people find themselves in with JK Rowling, and you should probably try walking in other people's shoes before dying on this hill.
The entire internet is a safe-space for Harry Potter and JK Rowling's bigotry, maybe we don't have to do this here? One thing I know for sure is that I'll definitely keep posting about how anyone...
The entire internet is a safe-space for Harry Potter and JK Rowling's bigotry, maybe we don't have to do this here?
One thing I know for sure is that I'll definitely keep posting about how anyone who monetarily supports her is funding anti-trans hate.
I don't know. It's hard to say. Potentially. Since these services have all watch data, if nobody watched Harry Potter but still paid for the service, they would not renew the next season and JKR...
I don't know. It's hard to say. Potentially.
Since these services have all watch data, if nobody watched Harry Potter but still paid for the service, they would not renew the next season and JKR would stop being paid. So watching might be more important than paying for the service.
These services have lots of non-problematic shows, including many shows about and created by 2SLGBTQI+ people, so that has to be considered also.
From a pragmatic perspective, I don't think Tildes is a good place for that conversation and you should probably try to find somewhere else. More generally: sometimes it would be nice to be able...
From a pragmatic perspective, I don't think Tildes is a good place for that conversation and you should probably try to find somewhere else.
More generally: sometimes it would be nice to be able to post a link and discuss it in "death of the author" mode where we discuss the work itself rather than everything else the author has done, but many people here disagree and will definitely feel free to bring it up. Particularly in this case.
I am with skybrian. This site is definitely not the place to discuss Harry Potter. This thread is not bringing out the best of the community. There are plenty of other places where Harry Potter...
I am with skybrian.
This site is definitely not the place to discuss Harry Potter.
This thread is not bringing out the best of the community.
There are plenty of other places where Harry Potter can be discussed.
This is not the place for us non LGBT+ folks to discuss things inflammatory to the LGBT+ community, and it never will be.
I value this response. Please know... Many of us have had threads deleted, threads moved, and threads locked. I expect something similar to happen to this thread in a few. There is likely to be no...
I value this response. Please know... Many of us have had threads deleted, threads moved, and threads locked. I expect something similar to happen to this thread in a few. There is likely to be no explanation. Sometimes for the good of the community these threads simply disappear. Deimos' moderation style can take a little getting used too. But it works.
I find that sad to read. Personally I'd like to do what I can to push things towards more empathetic and considerate but heavy/divisive conversations. I see Tildes as a place that does foster...
I find that sad to read. Personally I'd like to do what I can to push things towards more empathetic and considerate but heavy/divisive conversations. I see Tildes as a place that does foster discussion and empathetic and considerate communication, refreshingly so, and I think we should try and continue that whether or not the topic is heavy or divisive.
I would enjoy it if there could be spaces online for the sort of discussion you hope for, but I don't see how Tildes can be one of those spaces. Look at what became of this person's attempt at...
I see Tildes as a place that does foster discussion and empathetic and considerate communication, refreshingly so, and I think we should try and continue that whether or not the topic is heavy or divisive.
I would enjoy it if there could be spaces online for the sort of discussion you hope for, but I don't see how Tildes can be one of those spaces. Look at what became of this person's attempt at discussion, or what remains of it, with them presumably banned, their identity and words gone, while responses to them remain.
I've actually often in those spaces in person, even recently, but there is perhaps a wider question as to whether they can exist publicly online. Talking with people directly, in person, perhaps creates a certain empathy, as does the ability to curate the people who are in the discussion, and the confidence that what is said is heard only there.
Tildes is ultimately a space for discussion within a narrow American and Western European progressive capitalist viewpoint, sometimes masquerading as something other than capitalist but ultimately intolerant of views to the left as much as to the right, aggressively enforced by a handful of regulars whose names show up again and again, and backed by moderating actions. There's nothing wrong with it being that space, but it would perhaps be better if the community were more open and honest with itself about what Tildes is.
I noted in the previous thread that I don't believe a conversation about the criticisms of the work itself would be better received - will there be the same reaction when discussing how Harry...
I noted in the previous thread that I don't believe a conversation about the criticisms of the work itself would be better received - will there be the same reaction when discussing how Harry Potter's fatphobia is pervasive - Dudley is too much like a pig to be turned into one - or how her main female character falls into he "not like the other girls" narrative and is consistently described as annoying and naive and derided by the MC and their friend (and everyone) for opposing slavery, as she should be praised for her intellectualism but derided for her empathy?
Because I suspect instead it'll get treated exactly the same as talking about Rowling's beliefs, portrayed as this OP and other comments did, as telling people to fuck off if they like something or that they're fatphobic and misogynist for watching. Despite these being conversations I can have with "regular people who aren't terminally online" without it being a fight to even acknowledge a trope exists.
Would it just be ok to say "Christ what an asshole" in every thread?
Or talk about how the show is enshittification of media just like Marvel slop? What are the bounds if you don't want to hear about this one topic. How the fandom is being super racist about Snape? Because that's a downer too.
I too genuinely wish HP would go away and people would read another book and make media from other properties. But if it's going to be around, it feels like this is mostly complaining about having to share space with people who have genuine criticisms of the creator and the work.
Fandom is being racist about Snape? How? he turns out to be one of the most selfless and competent character in the end. But now people know he is trully one of the good guys from the beginning,...
Fandom is being racist about Snape? How? he turns out to be one of the most selfless and competent character in the end. But now people know he is trully one of the good guys from the beginning, how can anyone be negative against him?
Because his actor is a Black man. Besides the "Professor Snoop" and "Snape is straight out of Compton" type jokes there's a lot of racist comments including some from white supremacists who seem...
Because his actor is a Black man. Besides the "Professor Snoop" and "Snape is straight out of Compton" type jokes there's a lot of racist comments including some from white supremacists who seem to idolize the character (based on their content) others from people that "just think he needs to match the book" in a way that is reminiscent of every time someone in a near all white cast is cast as a POC.
Personally from a criticism of the work perspective, Snape is functionally a Nazi who only does good things out of a one-sided, unrequited obsessive love for one girl. It doesn't stop him from being a wizard supremacist, he just seems to carve her out as "one of the good ones." He still joins the bad guys and does who knows what before he flips. He's outright abusive to the children he is responsible for and entirely biased in his work. If Lily hadn't been threatened or killed he'd probably never have changed. Someone with so little care for others at all is not someone I can call a "good guy".
Oh yes totally, abusive and all, not fantasy setting angel of good, more complex than that. I really like that the bad guy could flip to good. And through the power of love (unrequited and...
Oh yes totally, abusive and all, not fantasy setting angel of good, more complex than that.
I really like that the bad guy could flip to good. And through the power of love (unrequited and obsessive, sure, but solid enough to motivate him decades after her death, he didn't revert back to nazi). It's kind of a redemption story.
And i really didn't expect it when it was revealed, so I guess the whiplash made me like him more.
It just sort of was one more thing that confirmed him as a horrible person for me. A racist to everyone except "that one guy he's one of the good ones" who never stops actually being a racist,...
It just sort of was one more thing that confirmed him as a horrible person for me. A racist to everyone except "that one guy he's one of the good ones" who never stops actually being a racist, just doesn't like that "that guy" got killed, isn't a good dude to me.
I don't think the books hold up the way, say, Hunger Games does because I think she relies on tropes that sound like they should work and they don't. Which is part of my "please read something else" cry (which is not really serious, most folks do)
I don't think snape was racist after he turned. Lily being "one of the good ones" showed him that he was wrong. He had to prentend to still be racist because he was a mole. Why else would he keep...
I don't think snape was racist after he turned. Lily being "one of the good ones" showed him that he was wrong. He had to prentend to still be racist because he was a mole.
Why else would he keep it up after her death. In fact there were both possible outcome : voldemort though that snape reverted to racist after her death, while dumbledore trusted that snape had changed. The story showed dumbledore right.
He does still tend to be genuinely abusive because old habit die hard, and abuse isn't only done by racist. But I think you're being unfair to snape when you make him a racist for playing the role of a racist in order to help the good guys.
Now, i have to remind myself that snape is a fictional caracter who doesn't need me to defend him...
From a litterary perspective, yeah, it's a kids book and doesn't deserve all the praise. I do think the age appropriate theme progression with harry's age are well done. Never read hunger game, didn't enjoy the movie, way too many tropes...
idk if you're aware but they casted a black man as Snape in the new HBO show and it was received predictably well by certain parts of the HP fandom. By predictably well I mean people were racist.
idk if you're aware but they casted a black man as Snape in the new HBO show and it was received predictably well by certain parts of the HP fandom.
Tildes topics are rooms reserved for discussing a thing. Top level comments are magic tables within those rooms that grow to accommodate as many participants as needed based on interest in...
Tildes topics are rooms reserved for discussing a thing.
Top level comments are magic tables within those rooms that grow to accommodate as many participants as needed based on interest in discussing a particular aspect of thing.
If someone walks into the room but doesn’t like the aspects of thing being discussed at any existing table, they make a new table.
If someone doesn’t like the conversations at a particular table, they ignore the conversation at that other table.
Everything is fine. Unless the people sitting at a particular table have a food fight, throw drinks at each other, start shouting (not just the standard everyone talks louder in rooms with many people and it’s annoying because if we all kept speaking quietly it wouldn’t get loud thing), etc.
Tildes works like that. But even better than the magical “real life” analogy.
Because we have filters to ignore “rooms,” we won’t even see them when walking down the hall.
Because we have tags, we can do a “hey, could you bring the volume down a bit please” thing without actually engaging with people and it eventually pushes those conversations further away into a corner of the room.
There’s no decision to be made here. If you like discussing Harry Potter (a thing), remember there might be a table discussing its author (an aspect of thing). Don’t walk into those rooms, ignore that table, or use the site features to push that table into the corner.
If this were in person and someone brought up JK Rowling once or twice, cool. If someone kept it up after that, they'd probably not be invited to future discussions. As a site, maybe just ban...
If this were in person and someone brought up JK Rowling once or twice, cool. If someone kept it up after that, they'd probably not be invited to future discussions. As a site, maybe just ban specific topics outright rather than pretending like people can freely discuss. Either that or ask participants to be respectful: you said your piece and constantly repeating it past a certain point is not respectful to your fellow members.
Yea I agree with this. I don't like HP or JK Rowling. If people want to discuss them, fine. If people want to point out she's a bigot, fine. But if it turns into constant harassment or brigading...
Yea I agree with this.
I don't like HP or JK Rowling. If people want to discuss them, fine. If people want to point out she's a bigot, fine. But if it turns into constant harassment or brigading it would be a bit like a vegan scold constantly hanging out in a "what are you cooking this week" thread, i.e. not productive for anyone.
We're risking splitting this community over something as banal as Harry Potter. Tildes has always been that weird corner of the internet with overly-winded, thoughtful comments (a phrase that's...
We're risking splitting this community over something as banal as Harry Potter. Tildes has always been that weird corner of the internet with overly-winded, thoughtful comments (a phrase that's been thrown around to the point of cliche) interspersed with a progressive political bent and a pro-LGBT+ through line. Sure, there are plenty of places with wordy discussions and plenty of other places that are aggressively progressive, but this is the only community I know of that manages to thread both of these ideals successfully.
And I get it. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson and the gang are all about my age, so I literally grew up with them. But the more I learned about J.K. Rowling's bigoted beliefs, and the more she continued to double down, the less I could enjoy the franchise. Eventually I decided the best thing I could do was to simply disengage with the wizarding world altogether. But I understand that Harry Potter was much more important for some people than for me, and that for these people it might not be so easy to leave that series behind. And you know, I get that, too. I've been vegetarian for long enough to know that sometimes the best thing you can do is lead by example. I'm not going to lecture my mom on why she shouldn't buy a Harry Potter backpack when it's one of the few things of whimsy she enjoys. We live in a world where it's impossible to be the best versions of ourselves, and sometimes it's worth compromising just a little bit to get along with the ones we love.
But what I wouldn't do is invite my mildly homophobic relatives to a gay bar. That lack of an invitation would not be for my relatives's sake, but rather for the patrons of that bar who deserve their safe space.
So for those insisting on the right to discuss Harry Potter here anyway, despite there being much more suitable forums elsewhere, I implore you to consider what you might lose: You threaten to drive out a core constituent of our community, changing the fabric of this website, all so that we can have maybe a few dozen on-topic comments about a media franchise.
Is that really more important than supporting our trans friends?
Pragmatically, with the collapsible comment structure on Tildes and the great filtering tools on offer, I think the two sides presented here can coexist. Time and again, the community here has...
Pragmatically, with the collapsible comment structure on Tildes and the great filtering tools on offer, I think the two sides presented here can coexist. Time and again, the community here has demonstrated a wonderful capacity for thoughtful and compassionate discourse, so I would like to think the thread from the other day to be an anomaly rather than a portent of things to come.
While we're here, I would like to explore another potential outcome. It's heartening that we've already seen cast from this new show speak out against Rowling's disgusting behaviour . Admittedly, Lithgow could have been more forceful here, but I hope it is a sign of things to come. Similar to how the developers of Hogwart's Legacy threw a middle finger up at JK by including a positive trans character in the game, I also see potential in this new production to widen the divide between Rowling and her creation, as well as even rectify some of the more troublesome material in the source. Perhaps the show could be used as a vehicle to increase visibility and acceptance for LGBT+ and other marginalised communities. Who knows, maybe a new generation discovering these stories will also through them - and perhaps communities such as this - learn lessons of tolerance and compassion that will ultimately overcome the efforts and resources of one hateful woman.
Yes, yes, this is all incredibly wishful thinking on my part, but fuck, gotta keep some hope in humanity, eh?
Rowling is the primary executive producer and as far as I know has creative control. This both means that a legacy style countering of her message is incredibly unlikely, and also she probably...
Perhaps the show could be used as a vehicle to increase visibility and acceptance for LGBT+ and other marginalised communities.
Rowling is the primary executive producer and as far as I know has creative control. This both means that a legacy style countering of her message is incredibly unlikely, and also she probably gets a much bigger cut as it is adapting her novels directly and she’s a prominent member of the production, unlike legacy which merely licenses the franchise IP
Yeah, I hadn't looked that closely, and even just by virtue of being a big budget production it is unlikely to rock the boat. The reason that I wanted to present an alternative scenario is that...
Yeah, I hadn't looked that closely, and even just by virtue of being a big budget production it is unlikely to rock the boat. The reason that I wanted to present an alternative scenario is that there are some outside, underdog factors - call them 'cultural wildcards' - that we can't foresee. Maybe there's shake ups, some cast go rogue, or an activist wing of the fandom gains some traction. If the show proves popular then that's more opportunities to highlight what shit Rowling has been up to, more chances to increase awareness and create allies - which brings us back to the subject at hand. I think the episodic discussion threads should be allowed, and we should also make space for gentle reminders of the harm behind the magic and where/how fans are best able to show their support for the trans community.
That depends on with whom I am coexisting. Are we talking about people who do their best to avoid the harms of the franchise even as they consume it, i.e. donating to charities to offset it, or...
I think the two sides presented here can coexist.
That depends on with whom I am coexisting. Are we talking about people who do their best to avoid the harms of the franchise even as they consume it, i.e. donating to charities to offset it, or ensuring they don't financially support the media in question? Or are we talking people who're willing to write off the suffering of trans people as "not enough for me to care" just for the sake of media they like?
I want to believe we're talking about the former, but part of the problem is that responsible consumption of media like this requires at least some degree of awareness to be spread when discussing it,1 lest that awareness be lost among those who know it, or never learned for those who don't. And yet complaints about that very thing seem to have been what caused this hubbub. That worries me.
I have no problem with people who enjoy Harry Potter but take necessary steps to ensure that their enjoyment does not hurt trans people. But if it should turn out that what we're considering is the latter group, who'd prefer an easy carelessness — well, that's not really a group I'm keen on sharing a space with.
1. Or at least, this is necessary while the author is still alive, profiting, and actively using said profits to hurt people. For say, H.P. Lovecraft, this knowledge is useful and good, but I wouldn't think it required.
Someone like Lovecraft might be relevant from a "hey just a heads up these beliefs of his make it into his books" POV. Which Rowling has issues with too. But agreed that it's not a concern as far...
Someone like Lovecraft might be relevant from a "hey just a heads up these beliefs of his make it into his books" POV. Which Rowling has issues with too. But agreed that it's not a concern as far as financially supporting him since he's quite dead.
I meant a more general sense of there can be discussions focused purely on the content of the media (plot, production, acting, design, etc.) alongside discussion of the ethical issues surrounding....
I meant a more general sense of there can be discussions focused purely on the content of the media (plot, production, acting, design, etc.) alongside discussion of the ethical issues surrounding. A post can have multiple comment chains, and each can develop independently. I do see where you're coming from though and appreciate your concerns. I am not saying we should be tolerating bigots in our community, not in the least. Please read my previous comment as intended to address a technological point rather a moral one.
What I would like to say is that, for example, when two people are perhaps discussing the production design - "that big outside shot was cool, you can actually see a lot of the castle was based on...", that kind of thing - that we could give enough benefit of the doubt, presume the participants to be of good character, and allow a rather benign conversation to continue uninterrupted. If the ethical discussion is also present in another chain within the post, as it should be, then those participants will have read it too and be aware.
Online EV discussions tend to get derailed by anti-Musk sentiment. Like on Bluesky, someone will post consumer rankings of EVs and if Tesla places anywhere near the top, the conversation just...
Online EV discussions tend to get derailed by anti-Musk sentiment. Like on Bluesky, someone will post consumer rankings of EVs and if Tesla places anywhere near the top, the conversation just shifts away from the actual data. Makes it hard to have a productive discussion about the cars themselves.
This is hard for me to balance because Musk deserves no support. But it is very frustrating and makes the attempts at discussion effectively useless.
Honestly one of the main reasons I'm so glad that Tesla is rapidly losing its lead (if its not already gone) when it comes to EVs. It'll be refreshing to be able to support the movement without...
Honestly one of the main reasons I'm so glad that Tesla is rapidly losing its lead (if its not already gone) when it comes to EVs. It'll be refreshing to be able to support the movement without having to support the muskrat. Public sentiment towards EVs has been set back years because of his actions.
If only we could be so lucky with SpaceX.... but that's probably not going to happen any time soon.
I don't know how Bluesky works, but Tildes seems to support this; I imagine discussions on EV data would still have been possible had the been a single, collapsible top level comment in which the...
I don't know how Bluesky works, but Tildes seems to support this; I imagine discussions on EV data would still have been possible had the been a single, collapsible top level comment in which the anti-Musk sentiment could take place
...You know, the fact this thread has gotten almost 200 comments so fast probably says something. What it says, I don't know, but it says something. My own thoughts: I don't know how many people...
...You know, the fact this thread has gotten almost 200 comments so fast probably says something. What it says, I don't know, but it says something.
My own thoughts: I don't know how many people will avidly discuss the show. Even without discussing Rowling, she has cast a dark shadow on it, particularly among demographics like here on Tildes. I still see fanfic crossovers regularly so I know it's still popular, but its "public" popularity (for lack of a better way to phrase it) has taken a massive hit. I expect most of the interest nowadays would just be to compare it to the original movies, rather than fanatically analyzing and raving about the world building.
......or they might watch to find more ammunition to critique Rowling based on what scenes and plotlines get adapted. I know there's some other controversial stuff involving the house elves at least.
So uh, you actually may have a valid point about how the threads could get more activity about criticizing Rowling than discussing Harry Potter. I don't think it would reach quite the level where Deimos would have to intervene though, since Tildes is usually fairly civil... But yeah, I could see the majority of comments being about her and her views, or about... well, whether people should just NOT talk about her given we're all very aware of her views. Basically, this topic but as a comment chain.
My own suggestion: have a reminder/disclaimer in the post that Rowling sucks and should not be given direct support, and leave it at that. At this point we're all very aware of that, so bringing it up wouldn't really add anything new unless she makes a new messed up statement directly in relation to the show. I do have some faith in the Tildes community to keep things civil and know when to just avoid a certain topic.
(Personal note: I'm not a fan, but I've previously gone on record about how I can't fully fault people for still liking the series given how pervasive it is in pop culture for my generation (tail-end Millennial, borderline Gen Z). MANY people were literally shaped into who they are today by the connections they made due to shared interests in Harry Potter, or by hobbies and interests they picked up due to being inspired by it. I genuinely don't think any other piece of modern media has had THIS powerful and widespread of an influence on people.
So, as much as I loathe Rowling, I don't want to demonize any and all discussion of Harry Potter. At this point, one of my reasons for loathing Rowling is how her bigotry has tainted an unfathomable amount of cherished memories. I'm not even a fan of Harry Potter myself, but as an avid fan of other media, I can sympathize with how hard it is to totally ditch all fondness for something that, again, helped shape you as a person. The vast majority of people can't permanently turn off an interest in one day, and in my experience, we'll always have a soft spot for some big piece of media from our childhoods no matter how long it's been since we saw it.
So... I don't want to demonize and censor talk of Harry Potter or people who still identify as fans so long as they acknowledge Rowling herself sucks. I genuinely hope for a day that official Harry Potter media uses the world building she created to celebrate and explore transgender identity and other identities she has denied, as a big middle finger to her bigoted views.)
In response to only your first point, I think that it says something lovely about the community here, which is that we want to chime in about how to handle issues like this. A "what kind of...
In response to only your first point, I think that it says something lovely about the community here, which is that we want to chime in about how to handle issues like this. A "what kind of community do we want to be" sort of thing. It's like a small town with a lively town hall meeting. :)
I understand that while people are bringing up great points about whether or not this is a problem that needs solving, the actual solution here is quite simple. Tildes has a labeling system which...
I understand that while people are bringing up great points about whether or not this is a problem that needs solving, the actual solution here is quite simple.
Tildes has a labeling system which allows people to label comments, marking them as exemplary, offtopic, malice etc, right? While this is geared towards the quality of the messages instead of the messages themself, I propose either a sitewide new label, or a label for a new group about harry potter called "meta" such that people can chose whether or not to filter out meta comments in their settings and/or in the sidebar.
The reason for the new label instead of "offtopic" is because "offtopic" pertains to the quality, when we are discussing about the type of content of the message instead. This is more fair than blanket applying offtopic to genuine relevent meta disscusions.
Maybe, to expand this further, we can change this from a "label" (which, as I said is mostly used to acertain quality) to a "tag" on a comment thread, which can be site-wide-defined tags or page-based-defined based on the consensus and need of the community. This would also help in self marking the type of comment, which isn't possible in the label system.
If a comment is tagged as meta (or if the commenter themselves tags it when posting, if they are given the ability?), it can be understood that the comment thread is meant for meta discussions. This, combined with the filtering means if people don't want to see such discussions, they have every means to do so, while preserving the ablity to have such conversations at all - which is too integral to the philosophy of tildes to blockade on a case-by-case basis which is bound to upset some or the other group of people due to its opinionated nature.
With the filteration method, the ability to choose what to see is retained by individual users - and that is the only simple way to have this level of control over what you see without impacting other peoples right to comment.
On the implementation side, I wonder if we can add a "fight" tag/label, such that fighting threads don't impact activity numbers? This could help prevent bumping toxic posts to the top if a fight break out.
Finally, I should bring up that being "sick" of meta discussions is in itself a meta disscusion, so if someone wants to discuss about that general emotion rather than a solution, I suppose theres nothing stopping that - it is no different from bringing back an already discussed discussion, which is an older problem with forums and does not need urgent addression.
Many people responding here have fallen for the false belief of something called "ethical capitalism". Essentially, in western countries, three ideas dominate: capitalism, social Darwinism, and...
Many people responding here have fallen for the false belief of something called "ethical capitalism". Essentially, in western countries, three ideas dominate: capitalism, social Darwinism, and brand identity. All three of these are bullshit, yet somehow we decided to combine them into the 21st century's ethical system. "I am vocally against Harry Potter because I don't want money going to Rowling" is a symptom of this.
Given the political lean of this view, I don't need to go into detail on the "bullshit" point. Capitalism is how society exploits survival needs to make us slaves for others. The idea that buying one thing is good and another is wrong misses the inherent bad in buying / selling. Likewise, social Darwinism trying to rid a social gene pool of the "inferior" by harming the weak is awful. Yet it pervades every aspect of society, in this case making us think of a zero sum game where we make our money go a certain direction and wipe out others. All of this is packaged together into branding: "buy our product, would you want your friends to know you bought the competition that has 10% more evil?"
Even if you don't buy the fundamental wrongness of this "ethical capitalism", at least let us concede that it's a terrible moral economy. This is because money is fungible. Suppose you don't buy a Harry Potter book and keep the money in your wallet. The royalties don't go to Rowling, but neither does the bookstore profit. They decide to lay off their cashier. Medical bills piling up and fearing about what to eat next week, he drives home, parks in the garage, and leaves the engine on.
Spooked by my explanation, you decide instead to buy a coffee from the bookstore. The barista's wage is also paid, finally he's saved enough to quit this dead end job and start his podcast - his right wing podcast, where his real talent lies. Followers are amassed, a political movement is launched, and now that cup of coffee is leading to transgender people in camps. The coffee cup label told you the amount of caffeine, added sugar, etc, but not about this.
Swearing off coffee, you get in your friend's divested, green focused ETF. She tells you no royalties for Rowling, no wages for a reactionary barista. One of the companies is developing affordable drugs that might help the cashier - she's off to party with them tonight. But that company is also bundled in SPY. And JK's wealth is all in stocks. So now Rowling's enjoying your contribution to the exponential growth of her financial - and thus political - powers. Actually, due to wealth imbalances, every positive economic contribution you make is biased towards rich people's benefit. Hey, at least if you show someone your portfolio they'll see how ethical you are.
In the old days if you wanted to be ethical, maybe you sacrificed some food to a deity, said some prayers, did some meditation, etc. The Catholics may be on to something here. Why should they bother paying attention to whether the label on the wine bottle conveys their values or not? At the end of the day, it is transformed in its very essence to ethically sourced(?) blood. Well still don't drink too much. But my point is if you want to do good in the world, engage with people using your unique essence and pure intentions instead of making do with a corrupt system.
There is another argument we should consider, divorced from ethical capitalism. Imagine that you are a bit of a playboy. More than a bit. Every week you're out trying to land a girl. Sometimes you fib about who you are or what you want. Sometimes she drinks more than she wanted. One day you get diagnosed with a resistant strand of HIV. You ask your Catholic friend if this is God's judgement. But he's given up his belief, and says "surely not, because it is arbitrary for God to punish you while that scammer drug company CEO is doing great." Still wanting spiritual advice, you appeal to your Buddhist buddy. But he too is spiritually discouraged, and says "why should karma come for you and not that right-wing podcaster?" It does seem unfair, with the bills piling up and news of your layoff.
What they failed to consider is a world where divine judgement or karma or whatever is imperfect. And if what is natural is what is ethical, why should you not be imperfect? In this sense, I think people could go after Harry Potter, even if it is arbitrary. Even if the rules of the game seem flawed. Even if it is not necessarily effective to promoting good in the world. Much like protests can turn into riots and end up harming the people they claim to want to protect. In a way, because it is flawed it is also unique and sincere.
So here is my advice. First, practically speaking, if you want to talk about Harry Potter, I think you could probably do so by just using the off topic label anytime things get political. Tildes has a well balanced user moderation system, unlike say a Reddit where voices are wiped out by exponential (down) voting power. But you might also concede that sometimes conflict is arbitrary, and give up. Still, feel good knowing there is no special moral imperative for you to not enjoy the Netflix series. Just like I sympathize with someone who refuses to watch because there's too much pain there. It's not the core of ethics.
Idk, I think you can boycott the KKK without worrying about the white sheet manufacturers. No one is perfect nor can they be, but accepting that isn't the same as using it as an excuse to do what...
Idk, I think you can boycott the KKK without worrying about the white sheet manufacturers. No one is perfect nor can they be, but accepting that isn't the same as using it as an excuse to do what I want rather than what I think is right. And that's internal, not about showing anyone else anything.
But this sounds like you're saying to change the world instead of trying to exist more ethically in the fucked up space we have, rather than doing one while working on the other (in our copious spare time.) Which is your call, but I don't think that we're deluded this is the ideal. This just is.
In fact we should worry about the white sheet manufacturers. The fact that this is offensive to our moral intuition is a product of society. It would be disastrous for capitalism if we did. Focus...
In fact we should worry about the white sheet manufacturers. The fact that this is offensive to our moral intuition is a product of society. It would be disastrous for capitalism if we did.
Focus on buying / selling, this part is key. Imagine a farmers market. Person AA selling cakes is a KKK members; BB is not. You decide to buy from BB. AA starves to death. Where is the ethics in that? Furthermore, it turns out that BB uses the profits to buy a white sheet for their bed. The sheet manufacture wakes up one morning, turns on the news, and sees his work at a KKK march. A minority of their sales compared to beds. But there is nobody hiring at the blue sheet factory, so he is forced to enslave himself making white ones (much less to write poetry, enjoy a fine summer day, etc).
Now ignore those fundamental flaws, and focus on the practical. BB skips the bedsheets and buys some carrots instead. The carrot grower buys a lottery ticket and wins generational wealth to spend on his political preferences. Too bad, he's the head of the klan. Money is fungible, you can't control where it goes. And even if you could trace and weigh every potential path, at least in the United States you would find that it accumulates not with you or me, but with the ultra rich (like Elon Musk), who have access to exponential growth.
The buying / selling part is crucial. If I said you had to support the KKK to protect the sheet manufacturers, this would require you to compromise your sincere identity. But what you buy has no impact on your actual identity, despite what advertisers want us to believe. Practically speaking you wouldn't want to walk down the street in a white hood, but fundamentally the clothing you wear has no connection to who you are as an individual.
But I wanted the last part of my post to be concessionary. Given that the world is flawed, you may choose to boycott Harry Potter having conceded that the strategy is corrupted at its core, potentially counterproductive, etc. If you met Rowling one day and she offered objections similar to mine, you could simply remind her that earthquakes kill both the good and the bad. If arbitrariness bothers her, she should've thought of that when she got upset about transgender people.
My core issue is about moral obligation. I think we have many such obligations in our lives, which are centered on our sincere personal actions in the world. But given the core corruption of the system, and the imperfectness of trying to work within it, what we buy and sell is not one of them. So you can choose to boycott yourself, but to impose that as a measure of another's moral character is where things break down.
Book stores have other books besides Harry Potter, particularly in kids and YA literature. I dunno man, it just seems like we all have a choice in how we choose to spend our time and money. True,...
Book stores have other books besides Harry Potter, particularly in kids and YA literature.
I dunno man, it just seems like we all have a choice in how we choose to spend our time and money. True, there is no ethical capitalism, but that shouldn't give you carte blanche to just say "screw it, buy everything". You can choose your battles, you can choose what issues do and don't align with your values and your pocketbook at a given time.
Harry Potter is, to me, a very easy thing to just ... not buy into. I have kids at the age range that Harry Potter is aimed at. They like Percy Jackson way more. And Rick Riordan is, from everything I've seen, a pretty stand up person. It's easy to buy a Percy Jackson or Winston Chu book instead of Harry Potter.
To circumvent the plot hole, please imagine that the profit margin of a coffee in my imaginary bookstore is equivalent to a given book. The right-wing barista set the coffee price too high,...
To circumvent the plot hole, please imagine that the profit margin of a coffee in my imaginary bookstore is equivalent to a given book. The right-wing barista set the coffee price too high, perhaps that's why the cashier's employment was so precarious. His poor fiscal expertise being another reason the public was foolish to vote for him is also canon.
I suggest creating a "JK Rowling is a bitch" megathread, so that everyone who thinks she is a bitch can talk freely about how much of a bitch she is without pestering fans of the franchise....
I suggest creating a "JK Rowling is a bitch" megathread, so that everyone who thinks she is a bitch can talk freely about how much of a bitch she is without pestering fans of the franchise.
Besides, at the most, you* are being like the vegan screaming "meat is murder" in a steakhouse. Do you really think you'll convince anyone? Do you even want to?
If someone screamed "meat is murder" while I enjoyed my steak, I would probably eat even more meat out of spite. Just saying.
[*]: I was not about talking any particular person but rather all of those who previously engaged in the described behavior.
It really does have the vibe of a sit in protest action rather than a discussion. Ironically I feel like there actually wouldn’t be that much attention on the series if not for the arguing. Like...
It really does have the vibe of a sit in protest action rather than a discussion. Ironically I feel like there actually wouldn’t be that much attention on the series if not for the arguing. Like the only reason I even clicked into this (or the other) thread was because there’s like 200 comments on it.
It’s more engagement than Tildes sees on almost any other topic and it is creating an environment of unhealthy beef only thinking.
Genuine, not sarcastic, are you imagining that fans and haters alike filter the topic and thus no one comments on it? Because that's the only way I see a "both sides" thing working and I'm not...
Genuine, not sarcastic, are you imagining that fans and haters alike filter the topic and thus no one comments on it? Because that's the only way I see a "both sides" thing working and I'm not sure I track what you mean otherwise.
I don't think the jk rowling tag will appear as an author tag on everything related to the new Harry Potter show*. This discussion is also more of a society thing than a media thing. * Ironically,...
I don't think the jk rowling tag will appear as an author tag on everything related to the new Harry Potter show*. This discussion is also more of a society thing than a media thing.
* Ironically, there isn't even a rowling tag on this post
I would, for purely rhetorical reasons, like to discuss this piece of art, but not its creator. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg
I would, for purely rhetorical reasons, like to discuss this piece of art, but not its creator.
Looks like watercolor. The architecture is quite beautifully rendered, but it does seem like the artist gave up on whatever they were trying to do in the bottom right (is it a fountain, maybe?)....
Looks like watercolor. The architecture is quite beautifully rendered, but it does seem like the artist gave up on whatever they were trying to do in the bottom right (is it a fountain, maybe?). The women on the bottom right also looks a bit like a cryptid.
Overall, as a landscape, the use of value to create form is pretty good, and I like that use of softer edges to imply distance on the building.
Compositionally it's somewhat weak - there doesn't seem to be a clear focal point. The detailing on the main face of the building seems like it would be the focal point, but it gets jutted quite far to the left.
I suppose everyone has their own line, but IMO I think it's actually less ethically dubious than discussing JK Rowling. The later is alive, and you can argue that discussion promotes her work,...
I suppose everyone has their own line, but IMO I think it's actually less ethically dubious than discussing JK Rowling. The later is alive, and you can argue that discussion promotes her work, which supports financially whatever she's doing, whereas Hitler is like, very dead, and no amount of talking about his adolescent watercolors (nor did the version of the person who painted that do anything evil yet) is going to change that.
Discussion and support are separate things. Often it's important to analyze how some of the most evil people thought in their own writing to see where things go wrong.
I really enjoyed this comment, it is a lovely way of illustrating how even the discussion of controversial or divisive media can be enriching. Personally I think discussing works by terrible...
I really enjoyed this comment, it is a lovely way of illustrating how even the discussion of controversial or divisive media can be enriching.
Personally I think discussing works by terrible people is absolutely fine provided everyone is aware of the author and their actions/views, and is not an endorsement of those actions/views.
Just to really "derail" this discussion (not that there is one), oh, so you think we should not only negotiate with terrorists but just give them what they want? We should just appease the bigots...
Just to really "derail" this discussion (not that there is one), oh, so you think we should not only negotiate with terrorists but just give them what they want? We should just appease the bigots and hope they are satisfied?
If not for his name in the URL, that would have been simple for me. I wouldn't have recognized it and the signature isn't legible enough to notice it without studying it more (even then) and I...
If not for his name in the URL, that would have been simple for me. I wouldn't have recognized it and the signature isn't legible enough to notice it without studying it more (even then) and I wouldn't have done that ordinarily.
I know you're being ironic about it to highlight the nature of the conversation about HP by further mentioning the discussion of the artist is off-topic, but since said artist is long dead and in...
I know you're being ironic about it to highlight the nature of the conversation about HP by further mentioning the discussion of the artist is off-topic, but since said artist is long dead and in no way benefits from it at this point I imagine many people could probably discuss it without as many qualms these days.
I would be one of those people. I wouldn't in this scenario since it's not a genuine offer but also because I don't really respond to that kind of art, it does not really provoke anything to me. I'd probably look at it for a few seconds and then forget about it. It is possible that I've even seen it before and just don't remember it.
I don't actually understand your point here. You can absolutely discuss this art without talking about the artist. It's... fine. The lines/perspective are a bit off in places, the shadows are...
I don't actually understand your point here. You can absolutely discuss this art without talking about the artist. It's... fine. The lines/perspective are a bit off in places, the shadows are incorrect in places, and it sort of seems like the artist gave up before finishing some of the mid-ground people/ghosts.
I guess if this came up in an art discussion, there may be questions about why this piece. And maybe at that point, it would come back to "surprise! it's Hitler!", but if this was hanging in a hotel lobby, I probably wouldn't give it a second glance. And if it were hanging in an art gallery, I'd wonder why they thought it was good enough to display.
Right, and if I saw this in a hotel lobby, I would leave that hotel and never return. And probably post a review to warn others. Because I don’t think this is a piece of art you truly can separate...
Right, and if I saw this in a hotel lobby, I would leave that hotel and never return. And probably post a review to warn others. Because I don’t think this is a piece of art you truly can separate from the artist.
Yeah, so we can do it without being accuses that we are nazi. Yes? ... Yes? Purely theoretical, is it ok to say that you like this artwork without being accused that you are nazi? I kinda like the...
Yeah, so we can do it without being accuses that we are nazi. Yes? ... Yes?
Purely theoretical, is it ok to say that you like this artwork without being accused that you are nazi? I kinda like the pallet of the colors of this image.
Is this a goal people want? Especially to the exclusion of discussing the real harm the author is doing and will continue to do with the financial support this new work will bring.
To take it to an extreme, do we want to be a "welcoming place for Nick Fuentes fans to discuss his works"? For a less extreme and somewhat more likely here example: If Neil Gaiman's work becomes the topic of a discussion, should people avoid discussing his actions?
The person who has made Rowling a political figure (and by extension caused her works to receive political commentary) is Rowling herself.
It's possible to discuss Harry Potter without discussing Rowling or Good Omens without talking about Gaiman. It's not possible to discuss Nick Fuentes without talking about Nick Fuentes (I'm not familiar with him, but from a quick search it mostly seems like he doesn't have specific works, just a steaming pile of terrible views, which could be individually discussed without bringing him up).
Like, if every thread that mentioned America had someone posting in the comments "but what about the Epstein files!?", which is something I have seen in some other places, then it would get tiring quickly, even if you agree with the general point. It gets noisy and messy and it feels off topic, because it is.
I don't particularly care about Harry Potter, but if I did, seeing people discussing Rowling and her bigotry every comment section would get tiring quickly, and it would make me feel unwelcome. Maybe that's the point.
We could get into a big debate about ethical consumption under capitalism, but I don't think people want to hear the same points about child slavery or the Epstein files or the environment every time anything related to clothes, electronics, politics, sports, or literally any other topic comes up - even if the points are correct and well intentioned. And most of the time, people don't do this. But for some topics, like Harry Potter, they do.
I believe in the separation of the author from their art. I think someone can enjoy watching Harry Potter or Good Omens, and may want to discuss that with other people who also enjoy the work, even while disagreeing with the original creator.
Yeah, but this doesn't work when the artist is still alive and profiting from their art, and using those profits to further a mission of hate.
I think that goes back to my point about ethical consumption under capitalism.
I don't think it's possible to pay for media without funding at least one shithead bigwig producer. Being a terrible human being is pretty much a prerequisite for having enough money to produce a TV show.
In the case of Rowling, I think she has enough money that if people stopped paying her right now, she wouldn't even notice, and it wouldn't affect her bigotry at all. I do fully support piracy as an ethical alternative for those who want to watch the show without giving any money to Rowling.
In terms of supporting Rowling, I think it has much more to do with her cultural relevance than the finances (though if people are going to engage with Harry Potter anyway, I would rather they pirate it, but I agree with you that she's already wealthy enough that boycots are going to have a limited effect on her actual finances). Continuing to bolster Harry Potter's cultural relevance platforms Rowling and her views, and she's said before that she considers people supporting her work to be endorsing her transphobic views and rhetoric. I think how this reflects on consuming content based on her books is pretty complex, especially in combination with the financial side of things. But this is why I think it's so important for it to come up in every thread about her work -- it probably isn't going to affect her bottom line, but it does have a tangible effect if her name is so synonymous with her vile transphobia that people think of that whenever she comes up. Granted, Tildes is a pretty small scale for that, but still.
And, for the record, I think Gaiman is a good comparison because there are definitely works of his that I'm more willing to "separate from the artist" in terms of my personal consumption or even discussion online depending on the context, but whenever his new book comes out, I think it is incredibly important that someone brings up what he's done in the comments there too -- in part because he's very transparently used the release of a new book as a distraction tactic, but also more generally because letting that behavior go and continuing to engage with his new work without even bringing it up sends a strong message that such behavior is tolerable, and I don't think we should do that.
Going to quickly disagree with the main point, mentioning or discussing America in general does not directly benefit anyone generally. I would compare it much more to, when the movie Melania came out, every discussion was mocking the movie, because the success of the movie was a success to someone people think is harmful to society at large.
I think people arguing here in favour of JK Rowling have had no problem with the discussion on the Melania movie or would have no problem in relentlessly criticising if, god forbid, Trump made a movie tomorrow, even if it was not biographical (eg appeared in Home Alone 5), so I find it hypocritical that just because it mainly affects trans people in the UK, a demographic I doubt is primarily on here, then discussing the real life harm of supporting Rowling suddenly is "tiring".
My point wasn't about who benefits, but of the relevance to the discussion. But to give an example with an obvious benefactor, no one is complaining about Bezos on every post that links to The Washington Post. If they did, it would probably get flagged as off topic, because the posts aren't about him (even though he profits from views on his articles), just like Harry Potter isn't about Rowling.
I mean if you want a more apt comparison, we could ask if we want this to be a safe space to discuss Kanye West's music without bringing up the things he's said publically.
I would say no, most people on this site probably do not want that. Is it possible to discuss Kanye's music without touching on the terrible person he's become? Yeah it's possible. It's probably not a good idea or desirable in any way to do that though, even if you like his music.
Unless Kanye's antisemitism is related in some way to his lyrics (and it might be - I'm not familiar with his music), I don't think it's particularly relevant or worth bringing up in a discussion about any specific work of his. It should certainly be brought up in a discussion about Kanye as an artist though.
It’s unfortunately very relevant to his lyrics.
Oh. Oh no.
In that case, it would be relevant to bring up the fact that the artist is an antisemite, but I think it's already pretty evident just from an analysis of the song itself.
Bringing this back to Harry Potter, if there were TERF characters/plotlines in the TV show or books, then it would be relevant to bring up JK Rowling's personal beliefs when discussing those characters or plotlines.
Rita Skeeter is described in a very trans coded way, in regards to her jawline, her "mannish" hands with fake nails. She's also predatory and deceitful. Though she's not written as explicitly trans it seems quite likely that Rowling's views on gender and womanhood are on display. JKR didn't make her full transphobic turn until later so this may be as much about the UK's general bias.
She did also have a girl die due to a boy entering the girls bathroom with malicious intent, and when the girl tried to tell him to get out, she looked the basilisk in the eye and Myrtle Warren lived no more.
I mean, again, her heel turn was later but that is... Notable I think. Her post HP work highlights more of this due to the timing of it.
I just genuinely don't think this discussion would be well received either.
I hadn't noticed the rita skeeter thing, but can definitelly see it now that you mention it.
Slight pushback on the voldemort is a man in the girl bayhroom hurting girls, i think it's mostly a coincidence that it parralleles so well with anti-trans talking point... I mean harry and ron spend plenty of time in that bathroom as well...
Certainly, as I said, it's notable but I wouldn't call it anything more than circumstantial. My point was that her views on gender absolutely show up in her work, specifically they don't show up as much in HP as her more recent books under a different pen name. But if people are going to say it's fine to discuss the material but only the views in the work, I think they're probably not prepared for what analysis of the work reveals. And I think this sort of conversation would be considered equally annoying and off topic by folks unhappy to discuss such things.
I had a conversation about Jeremy Soule the other night with one sentence acknowledging he's a terrible pervert and the rest talking about his masterful contribution to video game music.
Everybody knows Rowling is a turd. Acknowledge it and do a deep dive into OP's live of the world. I see absolutely no problem with that.
I don't think those pointing out Rowling's views in these threads would disagree with what you say in this comment. The problem is, unfortunately, that some people here don't want us to even acknowledge it -- the initial comment in the recent topic was about as cursory and non-confrontational as such an acknowledgement could be and it still attracted an argument.
Lol, yeah on second read I see where you're coming from. That said, some people just talk like that. The second sentence admits that it's worth having a discussion and while they're being crass about the whole thing, the sentiment is still there.
I'm not coming in with a full defence, but I'd like to point out that contemplative, caveat-laden "gentle talk" isn't for everyone. Some people just don't do it.
I'm not honestly sure what you're getting at here, and I fear I must be missing something here. I'm not objecting to the tone of any other one person's comment in terms of gentleness or whatever, but rather to the multiple people throughout this topic who have commented to the effect that acknowledgement of Rowling's bigotry does not belong in threads about her work. I object to the concrete things they're insisting on, not really the tone of any specific comment.
I only read the first comment, not the thread. I'm probably missing plenty of context.
What exclusion? What rule is there that you can't make your own topic to discuss Rowlings real world damage? Why is it that the same people who feel the need to bring it up on any topic with her aren't requesting a weekly topic then? Tildes is for discussion, but that's clearly not the goal if you're going to veer off topic every single time. Further its not as if posting it every single time changes literally anything. The odds anyone here isn't well aware of the issues with Rowling are slim, and bluntly, it would probably be better severed to HAVE a dedicated topic on the issue if you think there are.
By extension, how much research do I need to do on every other piece of media we discuss? I can certainly think of plenty of other topics and discussions about media with problematic peoples (still living and profiting) that we suddenly don't feel the need to derail immediately. Will every discussion of media now require researching someone's position on Israel/Palestine followed by a further Segway into how some nations treat basically anyone who isn't a man? Hell if we extend it to dead people we're going to need an auto wiki link for Disney for everything they make.
Personally I don't much care what side the decision falls on. I do think from what was witnessed last time this site can't have a reasonable discussion on the issue without a ruling from Deimos . It will certainly save a lot of headache to either say "No we don't discuss her works here" or "You can discuss her works here and if so please stay on topic and create a separate topic about her behaviors". As it is now I feel like even posting this i'm risking malice tags and a ban, and just stayed away from the last topic for the same reason because "disagreement" and "malice" seem to be easily comingled in my tone.
I find it sad for the people who I know who grew up with Harry Potter that they're literally told "you can never discuss something that made a huge impact on your life because your creator sucks". As already mentioned it's hardly the first problematic piece of media, even with a living person attached. You brought up Gaiman, I grew up on Card. I do not support ANYTHING Orson Scott Card has ever said but it would also be lying to say that Ender's Game had a tremendous impact on my life in middle school. I am glad I was able to discuss his works, and his failures as a human, without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand.
Respectfully, while I don't find your tone to be malicious, I do find it to be rather disrespectful of the perspective of others. You can disagree without explicitly belittling someone's desire to highlight things they view as important. I am not trying to attack you here, these are merely the thoughts I had in response to the points you brought up, so I apologize if it comes across more hostile than I intend.
Personally I would say that any discussion of Rowling is on topic in regards to a Harry Potter related post. Just because you can seperate the author from the work, doesn't mean everyone can, nor should they be required to. Saying it changes nothing to bring these things up is, in my opinion, a very narrow and defeatist view, because people can change over time and not everyone on this site is a monolith of shared cultural knowledge. For example, someone could be aware of her being problematic without knowing the full extent to which JKR actively funds hate and harrasses people who don't deserve it. Just because you deem it unlikely doesn't mean it can't happen or that people should be disinclined to share things they view as important information that more people should be aware of.
I think knowing more about the creation and creators of the media you discuss is valuable context, but I doubt anyone here would tell you that you are required to be fully aware of everything that could possibly come up prior to engaging in a discussion on a topic. I think it more in the spirit of the site to allow additional context to be provided than reject it as off topic or a digression if someone brings up problematic views of a creator, even if you have heard it a million times. The framing of a discussion can change from post to post, and I believe allowing as much additional context and information around a topic as possible leads to a more vibrant and interesting discussion.
I understand your fear of being misconstrued and malice tagged, I have the same worries as I type this. However, I have rarely ever seen a post of this nature not be met with good faith discussion, and I feel like this is a rare place on the internet where people do try and see where you are coming from, or at least challenge your comment in a respectful way, rather than simply reporting you for disagreement.
There are also still plenty of places where fans of Harry Potter can discuss the series and their love for it. Dedicated forums and fansites still exist, and I think it is perfectly reasonable for people on a more general forum like this one to express how a discussion of a topic or creator that is harmful to them or those they love makes them feel. You can ignore it, but to say its not worth bringing up because you have read it before feels disrespectful of other's lived experience. Even in your last example, you bring up being able to discuss Card's works and failures as a human without it instantly devolving to lines in the sand as a positive aspect of your life, but is that not the opposite of what you are advocating for here? Is it not a line in the sand to say you are tired of people mentioning Rowlings failures and that bringing them up on a Harry Potter post is pointless and should be considered off topic. How is that not denying others the same luxury you were afforded with a work that affected your life? Because make no mistake, these works are affecting lives, whether those lives engage with the work or not. Directly funding an author who lobbies for legislation to remove a human being's right to exist in a form they find most comfortable to them IS affecting the lives of those people, and I think it more than valid for those people or those close to them or quite literally anybody who cares, to voice how they feel about it.
In the end, I echo the sentiment of other comments on this post; if you are tired of hearing about Rowling and Harry Potter, filter it out. If you want to discuss Harry Potter without having to hear about the author, another site is probably a better fit than here.
This seems like a bit of an exaggeration. The post that this thread is referencing had space for people to discuss Harry Potter. The entire discussion/debate about the ethics of supporting Rowling's most recent work took place under a top-level comment that said, "I'll leave this here as a reminder and let everyone get on talking about the wizards."
The post led to the entire topic being derailed and the topic being locked. It reminds me of the old forum topics that started with "who do you like in Star Wars" or some other thing that wound up with people banned because they had to go off on each other about something most people in the original topic didn't want to discuss.
I get that this is a totally different level of issue because its not just people who can't be mature about fiction, but real world implications, but if you want to discuss if this new show is going to be good, or what you hope they might fix or change, well good luck because that's going to be a verbal blood bath.
No one commented about Rowling's views in the other threads in that topic, though, and some discussion of the show and movies did happen there. Albeit not much, but there was hardly a ton to work with since it's just a trailer. There was plenty of time to discuss whether you thought the show would be good in those comment threads or by leaving a new top-level comment about it, but there just wasn't actually that much discussion like that going on (I believe probably because even those who still consume Harry Potter content aren't as diehard enthused about it as they once were.) It was pretty slow well before the topic was locked.
Maybe we're thinking of different topics? There's very much a ton of discussion about exactly that and what a terrible person she is following the FYI link.
There was a lot of discussion in reply to the initial comment pointing out Rowling's bigotry, yes, but there were a couple other top level comments that were not about Rowling's bigotry, one which even had a decent thread of replies discussing the shift in popularity of her work. These threads were not disrupted by the discussion in the thread about Rowling's bigotry, and no one brought discussion of Rowling's bigotry into those threads to prevent or impede other discussion of recent Harry Potter films. I myself participated, albeit not in great depth (granted, I was still insulting the quality of the second Fantastic Beasts movie, but I felt the same way about that film when I saw it in theaters prior to Rowling really going full mask-off). The existence of the thread discussing Rowling's bigotry didn't directly impede this discussion at all from what I can tell. Obviously locking the topic would ultimately stop those threads too, but replies had slowed and they weren't super active by the time the thread was locked from what I remember.
I see I misunderstood what you meant by thread.
Notably, you said "had" space, not "has" space. Not sure how you don't see how that conflicts with what you're saying.
I'm going to address points 2 & 4 because those are the ones I have the strongest feelings on.
For #2, I don't think it's anyone's responsibility to do research on every author, but that's very different from trying to suppress others from speaking up about horrible things an author has done when they come up. If others have done that research and can share information, then that's a great way to learn, and change your mind on things without having to do the research legwork yourself.
Lots of people now know Rowling is transphobic and hateful because people do this. They often don't know the extent, so the more people raise specifics the more that information spreads too.
On #4, I'm actually in a very similar boat to you. I loved Harry Potter growing up (and still watch my DVDs once a year, though it has changed the way I feel about them), and Ender's Game is probably my favorite book I've ever read. I even like a lot of Card's other books, even though he's an awful person. Many of my other favorite creators are similar (Joss Whedon especially saddened me).
But I also feel empathy for people who like us, grew up loving these stories, but who are harmed by these authors actions. That's a lot more of a "real issue" to me than if people feel bad for a bit when they're reminded that an author they like is causing real harm.
I'm sorry but I categorically disagree its suppression to say "can we stay on topic". Again, no one is saying you can't make your own topic, nor that you shouldn't. I get that HP is in a weird spot because there's not a lot of easy analogues that have current media coming out and a strong association to outright evil behavior, but I see no reason that something people can't seem to discuss without locking a topic should always be allowed as that just prevents an entire area of discussion because it instantly turns into a PSA about Rowling.
Sure, so do I. I disagree that requiring signal boosting in every discussion that might be tangential helps anything though. If this movie charts shall we also allow someone to do a "Just so you know..." Rowling link on the "top grossing films" discussion? How far out do we have to drag this?
This would be less of a problem if it didn't also quickly devolve into full on discussion of Rowling. If your goal is "here's a Rowling resource" okay I guess, but if you're going to go back and forth discussing her actions beyond that, or have other people pile in and bring up all the horrible things she's done, why shouldn't you move that to its own thread?
I think the fundamental difference in opinion is that I don't see it as "off topic" at all, so it's not "let's stay on topic" to me.
Discussions of media often involve discussions around those involved in its creation. We talk about actors, writers, directors, comedians, producers, poets all the time when talking about their creations.
We see this with controversial artists and creators pretty regularly, I'm not sure why we'd need to treat Harry Potter any differently.
One of the incredible manga stories I inhaled when I was young was written by an unrepentant pedophile. Literally. Convicted and not at all sorry for what he did. Something I learnt about only two decades or so after I read the books.
It never tarnished the books themselves for me because I simply didn't know, but it does mean I'll try to never spend money on his IP again (which totally sucks because I miss like one small volume out of the entire set). For me, especially younger me, I couldn't care less about who wrote or created the stuff. Their lives are entirely separate from me and I can only do so much with so many rings of separation between us. I try to be kind to the people I can directly interact with, and push back on people that I can directly influence around me. Otherwise, death of the author rings true. For me.
But not everyone is me. I can understand how people feel they need to deplatform the content entirely. I don't agree as I don't think it will change anything, but I understand.
To that end, if people are happier not to discuss HP, then I won't. There's no world in which discussing Harry Potter is more important than someone requesting you don't.
I really would rather keep anything US related out of my line of sight, and yet people on this forum keep responding with entirely (even self admittedly) US centric views generalized like they're universal truths. Would it really be reasonable for me to demand everybody stop discussing anything US related on tildes? Somehow nobody ever thought so, they just told me to deal with it every single time. This can be quite frustrating.
Would it also be reasonable for me to comment on every war/atrocity the US has committed, on every single post related to the US or tagged as US related? And then say that it's just so people are aware? And label every single post criticizing the US as exemplary, even if it's not directly related to what's being posted? That's not spreading awareness, that's just being disruptive. People cannot help being from the US just like people cannot help having read/watched Harry Potter in the past and enjoying it.
Anyways, I just filter out US tagged posts and move on, which is what I recommend everyone does with whatever bothers them.
While I share the frustration of a US centric internet, that has nothing to do with who you are as a person.
I think what the us has done historically is a pretty bad parallel to the harry potter case. The main idea behind not supporting harry potter/rowling is that your money going into harry potter are funneled into making lives worse for trans people. A better parallel imho would be how paying for hollywood war movies adds money into the us army which is then used to bomb iran and also recruiting people into doing so. Or maybe how having us centric view directly hurts people in the third world (I don't know if it does, but if you believe so it would be a good comparison to make). I don't know what is right for the discussion on tildes, just trying to clarify the arguments.
I think the main thing about the 2nd point is that it's arbitrary. If you aren't researching everything, then you're endorsing that it is OK to financially support horrible people as long you choose to remain ignorant of it. I venture to say that if we cracked open everyone's financials in here and followed where the money they spent goes to, everyone in here is supporting some kind of evil and some kind of oppression of others. No one is innocent here, I would bet on it.
I agree that if you're not actively researching everything you may ignorantly and accidentally financially support something you're against.
I think that's part of why I think it's a good idea for people to share problems about a person or company or whatever whenever it gets mentioned. Then you become informed and can make a conscious decision: follow your ethics and stop supporting or decide you don't really care and continue to do so.
It's not an arbitrary position to me to support people calling out Rowling's anti-trans actions when people talk about Harry Potter, or Card's homophobia, or Whedon's abusive behavior when discussing Buffy or Firefly.
Asking people to research themselves first is high minded and principled, but I think unrealistic. If we suppress people from talking about it then more people will remain ignorant.
But the way it's applied is arbitrary. It's like a different version of GoFundMe. If you know anything about how GoFundMe or similar sites are being used, especially ones that get into mainstream news, it's a bunch of feel good bullshit for people to pat themselves on the back for falling for the most creative sob stories. Giving millions of dollars to a few people who have just the right stories to pull on your heartstrings while there are tons of other people suffering under the same or worse conditions who get nothing. Tell me how that make sense. It's not unfamiliar in my experience that they end up being bullshit scams or such.
Just to be clear, I'm not the person who posted the parent comment you replied to. Some people may have a different interpretation or takeaway from that comment than I did, which I didn't perceive a suggestion of suppression for certain talking points. And of course in my prior reply I made no implication whatsoever to suppression of any discussion.
I'm saying that if you make your decisions on what to boycott based on what other people tell you is bad, that is arbitrary and to me, similar to the example I used about how GoFundMe is used. I didn't suggest people shouldn't be able to use GoFundMe in that way, like you're free to give your $20 or whatever to someone who ends up getting millions while someone else who was suffering the same fate is getting nothing. So if you're just boycotting what other people tell you to boycott, whenever it conveniently pops up in front of your face, what kind of justice are you really imparting?
I think we're talking about very different things here. I'm not at all suggesting to blindly boycott things others don't like and doing so arbitrarily or without thought.
What I am suggesting is that people should be free share their thoughts when someone is being discussed that does things they think are amoral. I'm not arbitrarily picking specifically on Rowling, loads of famous people do terrible stuff and deserve to be called out, call them all out! I listed a few people who created works I like that I think are reprehensible.
OP seems to want a safe space for HP fans to talk about HP without people bringing up the real harm Rowling is doing to people:
I'm not saying that means all the people who like HP have to boycott it, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't make their feelings part of the discussion. I say the same thing for any thread with a problematic figurehead.
People can then make the informed choice whether they want to boycott or support instead of putting their heads in the sand.
That isn't at all what the OP said. I still don't understand how that is being understood that way. The point of the original post appears to be that the topics get locked because bringing up JKR results in inflammatory discussion which causes the topic to be locked. So sure, indirectly that can be interpreted as, don't talk about JKR, but what they said directly that contradicts it is also a part you cut out.
So they would probably not care so much about mentions of JKR if those mentions of JKR also didn't result in the topic being locked.
And that is my point. You just singled out famous people. Why are only famous people ones worth calling out? I know, it's a bit pedantic and nitpicky and you probably meant for that to convey that everyone should be called out, but what I'm saying is that people often focus on the wrong things. Relying on popular sentiment or whatever conveniently pops up in front of you is not evaluating how those names even get there or their real impacts compared to other things you could be boycotting. Do you know how much JKR contributes to anti-trans groups than anyone else? What if you're funding someone who spends 10 times as much on anti-trans messaging as JKR, but they aren't as visible or noticeable? How do you know that you're not?
If you really want to get into the weeds of things, which is really off topic but shows how dumb it is what people focus on, arguably the people and organizations who support copyright law in its current form, whether they helped it get here or they are making it worse or helping it be as bad as it is now, have created a situation where someone like JKR gets ungodly sums of money, like those people are arguably worse than JKR, because they not only enabled someone like JKR to get into the situation she is in now, but they also have enabled other people to have ridiculous amounts of money that they shouldn't have. Without the totally broken copyright laws that exist right now, JKR wouldn't be nearly as rich, and wouldn't still be making money off HP. And there's not only JKR to reckon with, but tons of others, and if not for AI there would likely be future JKRs to follow.
Given the context in the post I'm confused how it could be read any other way. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that. OP claimed to not want to suppress anyone, says JKR discussion on HP doesn't work, is asking for a decision, and clearly aligns with one side, so I'm not really sure how else to square that hole.
I definitely do mean this would apply to not just famous people, but I feel like that rarely comes up. If some hypothetical racist neighbour makes a movie and we're talking about it, I absolutely support people calling that out.
As for there being others and JKR not being the only anti-trans supporter, sure that's true. She's an influential billionaire who uses her assets to spread hate, so of course she'll be talked about a lot. Other less public people should be called on it too, but they don't come up in conversation as much. I don't think "there are worse people out there" means you give up and only call out the single worst person in existence. Systemically this is a problem and we should do what we can to move the needle.
I don't think it does either, what I'm trying to convey isn't that you can only call out the worst offender that exists, it's the component where I think some people are going past just calling out JKR, they're calling out people who watch or consume Harry Potter/JKR content. Not to raise awareness, but on the fundamental basis that they see it as an either "You're with me or you're against me" basis. You're either an enemy, or an ally, and an ally wouldn't watch or consume any content that has anything to do with JKR. This is what I think is what results in getting the topic locked, which is what really underlies the basis of this post being created.
One of my points is that you can make anyone an enemy if you have that mindset. If we had access to everyone's purchases in here, we could make an enemy out of every single person. Even the brightest angel can be made into a demon if that's the mindset you approach it with. So why are we drawing the line that people who are still into Harry Potter are the enemies? Let me be clear, I don't think most people here are seeing it that way, but some of the more charged comments to me do convey that, and the overall voting activity and signal boosting amplifies the effects of those charged comments. It would be different if I was describing a comment that had no votes, and there was no other context around it that indicated people may agree with it, then I'd not even talk about it as though it has any kind of backing that isn't even worth mentioning.
Also I didn't initially start out talking about people being worse than JKR either, that only came from my last comment. What I am trying to convey with mentioning that is how fickle attention can be. The idea that someone who is worse can escape attention and the criticism that comes with it is illustrative of the fickleness. If it's not based on who is doing the most harm, then what is the criteria for who is being targeted? And again, I don't really care what individuals choose to put their focus on even if it's not the most logical to me. I think all of us have our own personal logic to who deserves to be boycotted or called out and I'm fine with everyone attempting to persuade others to see their point of view but that's also different than 'you're with me or you're against me'. That's not simple persuasion.
Just to be clear where I'm coming from on it, I don't care much at all about Harry Potter, I never read the books, have only watched the movies a few times and never paid for them, never watched Fantastic Beasts or had anything to do with any other things JKR has made, so I've probably contributed less financially to JKR than most people here. I also think there's a certain oddness to that too. I'm apparently not a fervent JKR hater to the point where I'm going to go out of my way to tell everyone how much she sucks as a person, and I don't have a problem with people who still consume Harry Potter content. So am I on the 'bad' side? Even if I have given JKR less money than the people who are now on the 'good' side?
No one can answer this but you. I'm not being facetious or sarcastic. You decide what "side" you're on. While others can still have opinions about your choices, either because you share them or because the opinions you hold are included in something they describe... You hold the only key to your ethics. If it bothers you that many people disagree (as indicated by votes), it may be something worth reexamining. Or it may not be.
A dozen people could give their opinions; but absolutely no one else can actually answer the question you're asking but you.
I get that you're not saying that facetiously or sarcastically, but the question was sort of rhetorical, or perhaps some other word that I don't know to describe what I mean. I don't think there is a 'bad' or 'good' side in that way, not that there isn't any ethical components at all, but rather that they don't squarely fall to bad or good. However I perceive some others to think that it does work that way, and the question is geared towards that. But it's also rhetorical because I don't believe in that black and white thinking. So it does not personally concern me what someone thinks of me on that level, not because I don't care about ethics but because I don't believe ethics can be simplified to that degree. I wasn't seeking a genuine answer for my own gratification or awareness, rather to highlight a contradiction that I felt was present in the posed scenario in the form of a question.
I get that. At the same time, I think you're kind of dying on a hill, in a way that made me uncertain that you weren't also feeling some kind of way.
I think you're sort of tilting at a windmill in that your objections don't really reflect the reality that I see - people can and do care about multiple things, really most of us don't spend this much time on any one topic very often, and Rowling as a very rich, very virulently anti-trans person is pretty much the ur-example of being the worst version.
But there's always the chance that talking about anything means we're not talking about something worse. I mean we're both here on tildes in this thread instead of talking about the inhumane conditions of people being held in ICE custody. Of course if we were talking about that we'd be ignoring the US and Israeli bombing of Iran. Of course if we were talking about that we'd be ignoring genocide...
But I don't think the solution is never to talk about anything or to stop talking about something that matters to me (or you, or whomever) because there are bigger/worse/different problems out there. Harry Potter may be the equivalent of a stubbed toe in the scheme of the world. But if you've experienced or watched others experience a bunch worse for being trans, having someone say you should ignore the stubbed toe and let everyone talk about how great the thing that keeps hurting your toe is can still sucks.
We don't have to only focus on the most efficient, most important, largest worst thing. I think this thing sucks, and I have the education and energy to discuss that it sucks and why, so I do. If there are bigger and worse things to focus attention on, please lost about them too, I read more than I comment, as unlikely as that may seem today.
But despite you not genuinely asking the questions, I think people do react out of the cognitive dissonance of feeling disapproved of for the thing they like. I suggest examining that dissonance and not being defensive about it, but in the end no one can control what others think about them, only what they do with that feeling and what their ethics/morals lead them to.
I don't expect people not to talk about them. It does not bother me that people express their ideas. What I don't like is when people simply try to reduce the situation into 'you're with me or against me' and is often employed to try to make people feel bad that they don't go all the way to a level that the person deems the minimum line. It's not that they disagree on a fundamental level, it's that they don't agree enough. The 'you're with me or you're against me' is a cheap method of trying to guilt someone who is mostly in agreement into fully agreeing but just not quite as much as you want. You recognize they value similar ethics and know that it might make them feel worse if another person of similar values makes them feel bad for not being fully on board. This is probably the hill you perceive me dying on.
Notably, that tactic doesn't work on anyone who is completely in disagreement with you on a fundamental level, which is why it's generally not employed in that scenario. It's already established, they're against you.
In another comment chain you discussed with another user how you don't agree that some conversations can push people away from viewpoints, I already read the whole chain of comments there so I don't expect you to repeat yourself for my sake, but I do think the other side of that perspective aligns with what I'm describing.
To be clear I don't find it useful to worry about pushing people away because they don't like how I converse, especially in a public thread not a personal conversation. And yeah, if someone has a reactionary response (the "eat more meat because you wanted me to be vegetarian" sort of thing) I don't really think they were actually in any likelihood of being wooed by kinder words. And i think the portrayal of the previous thread here in this one is inaccurate.
But I'm not saying it's black or white so you're not really disagreeing with me anyway. If that's your only point though I think it's drifted quite a bit as your posts talk about all the other stuff I was responding to. Just my reading, and it's late so maybe I'm off. The hill I perceived was the "why her and not _____" that kept coming up.
I see them as connected. I don't think it has drifted at all. "why her and not ____" is that I perceive comments moralizing and leveraging the "you're with me or you're against me" tactic, and I'm saying that if everyone behaved the same way, we could all do the same thing to everyone else in here. "why her and not ____" is the idea that we could pick anything else and we could all do for every person in here if we knew enough about them. Which is an absolutely atrocious approach in dealing with people. No one wins, everyone loses, and everyone hates each other. All because it's a tactic designed to strong arm people who have similar ethics to yourself, but not exactly the same and not for every single subject. So "why her and not [insert subject that is personally impacting me in similar ways that other subject is personally impacting someone else]".
I don't really agree that this is how the conversations go. I don't think I'd reply as much if I thought it was "with or against" because there would not be nearly so much to explain in that case. Maybe I should try it, you make it sound almost relaxing.
But I don't know that anything else here is productive. I get your point but don't agree with the underlying assumptions in relation to this topic.
I can really only speak for myself, but I do agree that it's very hard (basically impossible really) to fully ethically consume anything in capitalism. You're right that everyone is going to have made purchases that someone (heck probably even themselves) would find unethical.
I don't have a hardline "purchasing X makes make you good/bad by definition" policy. To me it's more of a spectrum and an indicator of someone's overall morals.
I'm going to answer this since you asked, I think my answer is more mild than you might expect, but either way please don't take it as an attack on you or anything.
I would consider this behaviour to be on the "bystander" side of things. I think it's less ethical than someone who is raising awareness and trying to reduce the effectiveness of her hate. It's more ethical than someone actively supporting her. It makes me "think less of you" but it doesn't automatically make you "a bad person" if that makes sense.
It's the same for other people as well, I hold no special place for Harry Potter and Rowling here. If we were commenting in a thread asking moderators to stop people from bringing up Kanye's antisemitism in threads when he releases a new album instead I'd feel pretty similar.
As for the last part, I do think there's an important aspect of awareness. If you bought her books 20 years ago and didn't know about her hate, I don't hold that against you. If you do so today, knowing full well what she will use that money to do, then I do think that's worse. It doesn't make you evil, but it would lower my opinion of you.
This is why I think it's good to allow these conversations around an artist so that the awareness is there, and support becomes an explicit choice. If we had known what she would have done earlier, maybe she'd have less money to use to harm people.
I don't take it as an attack. It doesn't bother me. I recognize that it probably puts me on the "bystander" side in that particular aspect. But I also know that in the way that I could be characterized as a "bystander" in this aspect of this subject, you're a "bystander" on other aspects of other subjects. I know it because it's impossible for you to not be. So while you may think less of me, which I have no real control over so I can't worry about it that much, I can attempt to explain why I think that's not an ideal outcome. If I were to think like that, less of you because you're a bystander in something else, and you think less of me on this subject, what's actually gained from that 'trade' so to speak? What is lost because of it? To me, the loss outweighs the gain.
Fair enough. I agree with that. But if I were to take it to a more extreme level, and this is partly going back to why I think we can pick on anyone for anything, and it was brought up in the other thread where some comments attempted to equivocate on the issue, anyone who was subscribed to HBO Max or Max or whatever they were calling it at the time someone subscribed to it, was supporting JKR because they were supporting Warner Brothers and Warner Brothers owns distribution for Harry Potter and were the likely candidate to make continuing Harry Potter content. I don't even view it as much of a stretch to say that subscribing to HBO Max may have actually led to the creation of the show. I have never subscribed to HBO Max. Not because I thought they were going to make a Harry Potter TV series, but if I was not a 'bystander', I would have known better than to subscribe to HBO Max.
Was it The Good Place where nobody went to heaven since the industrial era began because every action had at least a bit of unforgivable sin by proxy in it?
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, that much is definite. However, in this case, we are actively aware of where this money goes and to what end, and advocating for others to not continue to offer support despite knowing the real harm that is evident should not be written off. When you are aware of how evil that powers that be truly are, you'll have to make decisions on what you can live without and what you can't.
American centric pov for an example, but I know that the automotive industry is harmful to the entire planet and human life, but I cannot live my life in the majority of my country without automotive access. I know that JKR is hugely problematic and wants to legislate certain groups out of existence, and I can live without Harry Potter, and so I chose to not give any money to her or the franchise in anyway. And I see no harm in advocating for others to do the same. We aren't all innocent, and we are all going to have things we decide we cant live without that others may dislike, but I don't see how that lessens the value of advocating to cause less harm in ways where we can relatively easily make the choice to live without. You don't have to listen, but I dont think we should discourage people from speaking up because you can "gotcha!" them on something in their bank account that also supports problematic endeavors.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, but that doesn't absolve anyone from attempting to reduce the harm done.
Exactly, thank you finding the concise way to word what I was trying to express. One of the reasons I love this site.
My point isn't even to make a "gotcha" type of post anymore than people who are trying to point out that JKR is a transphobe is trying to make some kind of "gotcha" post. I bet most people know that at this point, just like most people know their money goes to shitheels somewhere down the line. My primary point is that the application of this type of 'justice' is arbitrary and there's a lot of moralizing about it. I just find it rather peculiar for people to moralize about an arbitrary application of justice, like great, you spent an inordinate amount of time and focus on one issue to attempt to shut others down, and all the meanwhile, you conveniently get to ignore all the other things you personally are supporting that are objectionable while doing it. Like it's easy to avoid being told the money you spend on your toothpaste or underwear or whatever is going to pieces of shit because you're spending so much time in one thread talking about JKR or in another thread talking about whatever else. How convenient that it works out, the more you moralize to others about their wrongdoings, you also get to escape scrutiny for your own actions.
Just because people's posts about JKR are all you're seeing doesn't make that all that they worry about. People have a lot to their lives, and you're only seeing a very small part of it.
I have no doubt you have experienced the type of people you are describing here, I have as well. But is it not a massive generalization to lump everyone who advocates awareness into the category of those who are trying to "Gotcha!" others with a lack of awareness on whatever issue they devote attention to? You are assuming a lot about people, mainly that they are ignoring those issues at all, or that they are trying to shut others down to conveniently ignore doing any introspection or avoid receiving scrutiny on themselves. And sure, some people do fall in that category, but I think the users on this forum deserve a bit more benefit of the doubt and good faith engagement than you are offering. I honestly can't say say I saw what you're describing in the responses here, if anything they were more thoughtful and reasonable than my gut instinct would have expected when reading the initial post. It just seems like a lot of bias and preconceived notions to assign to people that you dont really have any idea of beyond what they put to text here, which from what I can see doesnt seem to support that which you are describing.
I don't believe that I'm generalizing as much as you say, because I'm not saying everyone who advocates awareness is in that category. The vast majority of the comments I think are fine. You want to make sure people know JKR is a transphobe, great, that's good. But if your goal is to make people who already know this feel bad about watching Harry Potter because JKR gets money either directly or indirectly from it, that's the moralizing that I'm talking about. And I do believe there are some comments on here where that is the goal.
Mostly off topic here, but i like to push back on the idea that you cann't live without a car.
Many people do, out of necessity, even in the US.
So really you feel like you cann't live without the convenience of a car, but you could.
You could move closer to your work, use a bike or bus and rent a car for those exception where you cann't easely do without.
Then lobby for one. But if you don't feel scared shitless everyday with your bike on the road, you probably won't be able to summon enough motivation to do so. Democracies's weak spot is that they tend to react to needs instead of anticipating them. Until enough people NEED to take the bus or the bike lane, none will be built.
So really you can live without a car, with some inconveniences, just like with consuming HP.
Just to be clear, my point is that you should do without both!
Ineffective rant over.
Believe me, I wish I could live without a personal vehicle, and I do get where you're coming from, but the U.S. is a pretty varied place and the majority of the country is pretty rural. Being 30 miles from the closest hospital is reality for large swathes of people in the country, and you don't wanna be without a car when there's an emergency in an area like that. But if we take it to a semi urban environment like where I live, there's multiple factors that can make what you describe difficult. A bike might not be physically viable for everybody, whether due to job proximity or health reasons. Moving close to a place of work can be financially unavailable to people, if they can even find something close by. Some places dont have have bus networks at all, let alone a semi functional one. In my state at least you can't rent a car until you're at least 26, and even then you usually need a credit check or funds to even do that. There are a multitude of reasons a car can be both inaccessible and required depending on where you live and what financial situation you are in. I guess a more accurate statement would by my life and options would be dramatically limited without a vehicle.
The request is "Please don't discuss what a bigot JKR is (and how it relates to where she is directing her largest expenditure) when discussing the new adaptation, as that makes HP fans uncomfortable". That is excluding a major aspect of the new productions. I didn't make the choice that JK Rowling was going to plow her fortune into "For Women Scotland" or set up the JK Rowling Women's Fund to take rights away from trans people (rather successfully, in the UK).
And that using her funds in a big way and achieving success is what makes Rowling different and worse than e.g. James Woods. Woods has some shit views. His actions based on those views have mainly been tweeting about them. That makes separating the art from the artist much easier. This also applies to people tweeting their takes on Israel/Palestine conflict. People tweeting their views are whatever, seperate the art from the artist if you like. If they declared that revenue from their properties was going directly to fund settlers or Hamas on the other hand, that might be a little harder.
I also think that what the original author and first executive producer says she is going to use her (presumably decently large) revenue share from the show is not off topic to announcements about the show.
What's done is done. I too enjoyed the original books and movies as a kid growing up and it was a disappointment to see what Rowling became. I don't begrudge anyone for these properties having a place in their heart despite the author. But that doesn't mean you have to support the new adaptation (especially as it hopes to displace the movies they're apparently fond of).
No, the request is to not do that when its not what the topic is about because if you want to discuss that it should be its own topic, as with basically every other topic on this site. There is absolutely nothing stopping you from bringing up your own topics on the subject to discuss.
That's not how things work anywhere. It's like discussing Space Mountain and forbidding people from saying that they like another roller coaster more or less than it. When you discuss any topic you have to discuss it in relationship to the world it is in, and that means that Rowling will forever be a part of anything that has to do with Harry Potter. To deny that is to deny reality, harming many people in the process.
This is in the post.
Where are you getting that from again?
How is the request different from the status quo if you think that people should keep discussing the author? The post is asking for a change, what other change could it be?
The prior post got locked. Perhaps you didn't see the prior post that sparked this post or how that post ended up getting locked, but then again, if you didn't, I find it rather peculiar to post on this one as if you know something when you don't have a clue what happened.
So the request is really about the posts not getting locked because people who don't want anyone to like Harry Potter anymore can easily get posts locked about Harry Potter.
Autocorrect is a motherfucker. The correct word is "segue". I'll delete this after you fix it. Vaya con Dios.
I expect this show to be kind of mediocre. It’s extremely rare for a TV show to be interesting to me. That said, if there was an incredibly entertaining TV show made by literal Nazis I’d definitely watch it, but in a way where they got no money from me.
But I can see online discussions being less ethically clear as you might cause a bystander to pay for the media.
I grew up with HP and so I have positive (albeit complicated) feelings about the series, but I would really not consider my positive feelings on any piece of media as a major part of my identity. Elevating one specific media series to the point where its fans need a disclaimer about potential discussions seems rather odd to me, and I don't think this suggestion makes a ton of sense in the context of this community. This is not Reddit.
I think most community members learn through trial and error which topics have strong opinions associated with them, and I think the best thing to do would be for ardent HP fans to recognize that there's a fair number of trans folks here, that they are deeply harmed by the actions of JKR, and they may want to weigh in on any discussion that brings her up. The best thing for ardent HP fans would be to recognize that and not get bogged down in arguments about it, and not take personally the anger or despair of people who are being actively harmed and marginalized by her activities. At the end of the day, HP is just a media franchise. It's not that deep. If you feel like you can't have the conversations you want to have here, this isn't the right place for you.
As one of the people who does feel the need to always bring up Rowling's horrific and harmful politics, I will continue to do so. I personally care a lot more about the real harm being done to trans people than I care about the feelings of fans of Harry Potter, and that's not a position that will change.
Just for once I'd prefer to have a little place on the internet that doesn't cater to Harry Potter fans over trans people.
I like this thinking. There are many places on the internet to get excited about Harry Potter and ignore the bigotry, but there are few that are willing to do the opposite. And I would (personally) prefer that we are one of those places that really does actually care.
if yall want this platform to be a place where trans folks and people who care about them can feel safe while a new HP series drops soon (and maybe be renewed) then a decision probably needs to be made regarding how to handle the folks that feel the need to always talk about how great the show is despite how much active harm Rowling is doing to the trans community.
To be clear, I am not advocating suppressing either side as I prefer to have dialogue rather than censor it. but if yall want to be a welcoming place for trans folks to exist without being told to go fuck themselves for objecting to content funding hateful narratives and then have the whole post be locked down, probably might want to do something about that.
I hope this is the best place to put this as I do not know where else to put it.
I felt the original took a POV despite saying it didn't, so I reflected it to demonstrate the point.
Edited for small edit and grammar
Idk if you think the anti-Rowling people are noise, just ignore them and continue posting and discussing. If they repeatedly butt into irrelevant subthreads, that arguably violates the don’t be an asshole, and you can still just ignore them. Just keep discussing things. Let their messages go in one eye and out the other.
It’s not that big of a deal to just not read things that you don’t care about. I don’t think any rules or moderation is needed unless it crosses a line into harassment etc.
If it gets to that point, then report the message.
You see the mixed messaging problem right? Obviously the severity of your examples are different, but there's a point where it feels like its been made clear you just have to "deal with it"
Genuinely no, what is the mixed messaging?
Your first comment is about how someone is arguably violating don't be an asshole, but you should just ignore them and move on.
Your second comment says that you should report the message.
Obviously, in your second point, they are WELL BEYOND the don't be an asshole, but there's an issue where one person can feel like someone else is being an asshole but you don't bother to report it because "just deal with it" is the acceptable outcome due to a mixture of differences of opinions/pressure/previous outcomes/whatever.
In one post you're telling someone to just ignore possible rule violations and report others.
When I said "it arguably violates 'don't be an asshole'", I mean that at that point you do have grounds to report them and absolutely can, but even in the worse case scenario where nothing happens, you always can always just ignore them, not that you shouldn't report those.
Basically, the point is, if you just ignore all the anti-Rowling people, the most disruptive thing they can do is like reply to every post discussing the episode, but even that isn't all that disruptive, and they have a good shot of being temp banned.
It's ultimately asymmetric - it takes far more effort to write an angry reply than it takes to just ignore someone (which is practically effortless).
Deimos personally decides when posts get locked, and he tends to have a reasonable threshold for doing so. A single Harry Potter fan arguing in the replies with people pointing out JKR's vileness would have to be pretty dogged or hostile to get the thread locked by themselves, based on my impression of Deimos's moderation style. In any case, I don't think the solution is to ban people from bringing up very relevant information about the author is a remotely proportionate solution to the problem of people starting arguments with the those pointing out what she stands for in these threads.
If you insist that something needs to be done on a moderation front to prevent people from bringing up JKR's transphobia because you're scared people arguing about it will get the thread locked, you're proposing some sort of restriction on people's ability to post about it. If you're just saying "I think JKR's views are off-topic in a thread about an adaptation of her work that she executive produced", use the existing "off-topic" label, then.
If you want to discuss Harry Potter without being bothered by annoying people who don't like fawning over the work of someone who literally wants to snuff them out of existence, go to r/HarryPotter.
As a side note, I myself even participated in some of the discussion that didn't center around JKR's bigotry in the most recent topic. You don't seem to have participated at all, unless it was using a different account. If you're actually interested in discussions of new Harry Potter adaptations happening outside of discussing JKR's disgusting beliefs, actually doing the discussing is a pretty key part of that.
Not really. There are plenty of people who have been banned for not properly discussing and engaging on plenty of topics. If every time I bring up cooking beef two people who can't get along launch into a vegetarian tirade that gets old fast.
Banning people for bringing up JKR's transphobia in these threads would be even harsher and would also constitute restricting discussion of her views arguably to an even greater extent than locking and/or deleting threads about it. Based on the number of others here in this comments section who say they, like me, will not stop bringing up Rowling's bigotry in threads about her work, it would also entail banning a pretty large number of people.
I don't really care if you find the discussion tiring. You're free to ignore it and label it as noise in that case.
I am not at all recommending people be banned for bringing up JKR's transphobia.
I am pointing out that people have been banned for a variety of topics that I'm sure most if not all here would agree on because they could not discuss them maturely
I guess I don't really see the relevance to my earlier comment, then. In the context of OP's original post, it seems pretty clear that OP wants people to stop bringing up the topic. If there were wildly inappropriate or immature comments from people bringing up Rowling's bigotry in the last thread, they've been deleted without a trace -- the discussion I see in the locked thread gets heated, but nothing that's all that egregious for Tildes and certainly nothing ban worthy.
I do apologize for jumping to conclusions regarding what you brought up, though. I think I was mentally juxtaposing your observation about people getting banned for such behavior and this line from OP's original post:
The combination of those two sentiments, even though they're from different parties in the discussion, is probably what led to me incorrectly inferring you were suggesting banning people for commenting on Rowling's bigotry in these threads.
Tildes has a system of labeling posts. One of those labels is "off-topic" and another is "noise". Both these labels, when applied by multiple users, result in a negative multiplier to the upvotes on a comment when determining its ranking, and iirc posts labeled as "noise" are also automatically collapsed and don't ping people on replies. If you actually believe that bringing up JKR's beliefs in a thread about her work is off-topic, you are free to use one or both of these labels, which are designed for exactly the purpose of handling off-topic or non-constructive comments.
You can label anyone's posts without engaging in any other way with the thread.
If a single person is responsible for getting multiple posts locked, eventually I’m sure Deimos would give them a warning or ban them, especially if they were being disruptive and outright being hostile and commenting personal attacks.
Edit: but I would also rather lose posts about Harry Potter than lose members of Tildes.
Doesn't really seem like this is in good faith given what you say here ngl.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing is stopping people who want to discuss the series from just creating a new thread and @ing the other people who were actively discussing the show, right?
There's probably not anything stopping people from doing that, but presumably it's a grey area. In many places, that would be like circumventing moderator action. Since Deimos doesn't provide reason for his actions and there's no specific outline for what should be the response to those actions, it's unclear.
The locked topic could be perceived as "don't talk about this particular thing ever again", but I don't necessarily think that is intended to be how it works either, in that case I assume it would be deleted. More so I think it would unofficially be "let things cool off before talking about that again". But who knows.
Oh, interesting; I'd have taken it as "this discussion got out of hand, if you want to discuss it this is not the right way to go about that", but that may be way off the mark
Well that's the reason why people haven't done it or are hesitant to do it, because there's no guidance or clarity. I could see it being the way you said as well, but even then, how do you know what the "right way to go about that" is?
I think even this meta topic/question kinda reaches into that grey area as well. It kind of reinforces your perception, that perhaps having a 'meta' type conversation is the "right way to go about it", but who knows?
If I imagine the scenario where this meta topic didn't happen, and someone just re-posted the same trailer video again, how are we to assume anything would play out any differently? And if we cheat and use some knowledge gained from this meta topic, where people have stated that they will continue to comment about JKR on every Harry Potter post, then even more so we can assume it would play out very similarly. Given that Deimos didn't say what prompted his response or why he took that action, and because things can be deleted without anyone knowing what was said, there's very little clarity and just going back and looking at it alone isn't necessarily enough in part because things can be deleted with no evidence remaining of what was said or if that is what prompted it.
If I was Deimos, and I locked a topic because people can't discuss the topic in a manner that doesn't require my intervention, and then someone creates another topic that turns into the same thing that then requires my intervention again, perhaps I would see that as someone circumventing my action of shutting down the prior topic.
Yeah, completely fair. I think there's a balance being struck between excessive drain on Desmos and stuff getting out of hand, but I agree that does kind of leave us stumbling blindly in the dark sometimes. Clearly this topic wasn't quite the right way to go about things either, given how it's ended up!
Yes, that's why I sensed this topic was a grey area as well. Meta topics regarding moderation in general don't fare well here from what I've noticed, if only because much of the information needed to facilitate those meta topics is obscured and only available to Deimos. They're also ultimately pointless, even if data was available, the only person who has any authority and power isn't going to participate in it.
Deimos is generally regarded as a benevolent dictator which I think matches his intentions, but also an uninterested dictator as well. It seems to be more of an obligation than an interest at this point. I would personally not envy his situation in this specific aspect either, because there aren't really any good options. Perhaps if talklittle and bauke are still making progress one day someone may be able to spin up a successor to relieve him of the burden.
Every instance I've seen was exactly that, or at least appeared to me to be.
Jesus this thread is exhausting.
I really don’t think it needs to be that hard.
I didn't really think Harry Potter forum drama was going to be the thread that blew up on Tildes, this is on track to be one of the most active threads of all time ~.~
I think your comment as well as most others in this thread provides the balanced approach that should be taken.
Same!! I find it especially interesting (and a little funny, but more in a absurdist way) that I somehow MISSED THERE WAS GOING TO BE A NEW HARRY POTTER SERIES???
I had no g.d. idea.
I'm a huge, HUGE Harry Potter fan, have been since I was 9...
But I'm also an ally.
So whilst I love the books, love the movies... I haven't watched or read or bought anything since Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them 1. I watched that movie and just felt awful the whole time, like my enjoyment was just completely sucked out of it.
So I haven't kept up with it. Can't believe it took this thread to let me know they're doing a huge show, teen-me would've been screaming in excitement. 32-year-old-me is just sad that that cow ruined a great world for all of us, sigh.
I'm seeing you describe this again and again throughout here despite the thread that precipitated this having – to my knowledge – no instance of this occurring, which makes this feel kinda disingenuous. It's one thing if it's a hypothetical you're worried about, but you're not making it sound like one, and you're bringing it up an awful lot for something that didn't actually happen.
I mean, that quote is specifically not directed to a specific person. If someone does feel it is directed to them wouldn't that be because they fall under one of those groups and not the harry potter fan part.
You know, between this thread and your past thread on "wokeism" I'm having some serious doubts about your honesty in these interactions.
You're complaining about someone supposedly saying for people in general 'to go fuck themselves', but then providing a quote mainly aimed at TERFs. Unless you're a TERF (to which I hope you're not), this should not apply to you?
The mechanics of what you should be pushing is 'hey, the previous thread got heated and killed the discussion due to it being locked, and I would like some kind of mechanic to counteract this problem,' and that alone would be a valid conversation to have. But it's sounding like you're trying to two-fer this conversation by additionally condemning a perspective that gets in the way of talking about a series you like. I don't think that approach is going to net you any gains. I think pursuing the forum mechanics and what can change there is going to be the most productive, because the rest is going to fall into the trap of subjective bias and moral blockades that will not let the conversation move forward.
I did not miss that. In that case, use the malice label and move on. If it gets locked, oh well. Sometimes it happens.
Edit: I think you are severely misinterpreting Fae’s comment in that thread. She directed the fuck to TERFs, transphobes, and wishy-washy allies. It was not directed toward you specifically. (And I don’t even see your name in the thread.)
You can assume incorrectly. Gavin Newsom's ilk is more who I was speaking of. I respect your right to ignore my comments but if you're going to keep talking about me, I'm going to keep correcting the record. There's zero indication the thread was locked due to my post and I did not tell everyone in the thread to fuck themselves.
I don't know if it's a thing on Tildes, but if it is b3_k1nd_rw1nd might have blocked you and might just not be seeing your comments
It's not a thing on Tildes. And since they're quoting my comment from the other thread I'd find it unlikely if it was a thing on Tildes.
I'm aware they're making a choice, and that's fine, it's why I made a post pointing it out and clarifying what was said, because the narrative as presented is inaccurate IMO.
I think some people pull off blocking users via adblocking rules. There has been some discussion previously on this, but I don't have a link offhand.
Entirely possible or using some custom something or other, but again they're quoting my previous post so I believe this is a deliberate choice.
Which is again, fine, unless they want to spend the whole time very obviously misrepresenting me, my posts and the entire thread. I can live with them never replying, I'm sure I'm one of the personalities they dislike, but if they're talking about me like I'm not around, I'll correct the record.
Thanks :)
Having looked up the comment chain in question, I will say I think it is to me in no way clear that that was your intent, and fully understand if someone reading your statement takes it as a direct comment on them for not being more firmly against supporting JK Rowling, whether financially (by paying for things she gets a cut off), or circumstantially (e.g. by watching on HBO even if it wouldn't give additional money to her now but it might make the future prospects of the Harry Potter IP more valuable because of good viewership statistics).
I think the reason for this is that the discussion was on what counted as support or endorsement of JK Rowling's hate and bigotry, and it seems much more reasonable to me that your comment would be meant to be pertinent to the ongoing discussion in that comment chain (meaning the 'wishy washy "ally"' is the one who still watches the show on HBO) rather than an off-handed veiled remark regarding some US politician or people like him.
Is "trans people demand too much" a reference to one of his statements and you meant it to be clear that way?
OP wasn't involved in the conversation and didn't ask for clarification, I don't really care that they misread me - I have written quite a bit more in detail, including that I know people who are HP fans and don't hate them. They clearly weren't reading anything else. If such a misunderstanding has occured in the thread I'd gladly have clarified in the moment.
And no one in the conversation had said anything remotely like "I was an ally but trans folks ask too much." The political message of "trans people asking too much" has been present since before the 2024 election when trans issues became the scapegoat of MANY people on the center left. And in the past year and change, it's been really rough to continually hear.
This is by no means behavior limited to Newsom (and for all I know there were TERFs in the thread too,) he was just the most obvious example of the sort of person I think should be addressed in the described manner. But it would be like me saying "fuck politicians" and someone hopping in and announcing they were running for office. Either way, the comment was however certainly not directed at the person I was replying to either.
But key is that I was not frustratedly telling everyone present to fuck themselves. The thread was not shut down when I made that post but hours later. My post nor my post flag was not removed as such things usually are if a problem. I cannot know but I don't think I went too far.
I am almost always up for explaining for clarity. I don't feel OP is describing things in good faith, hence my openness about my words and intent.
You can be better than this.
I can fully understand the desire for people to want to be able to discuss something like Harry Potter without always having to hear about Rowling's views. After all, pretty much everyone already knows that she's transphobic by now, and also heavy-handed moralizing can start to grate over time, even when it's something you agree with or support.
Let's call this the "leave it alone, already" reflex.
People who like Harry Potter, or people who are sick of hearing about Rowling's transphobia, probably feel this pretty strongly.
What I would encourage those people to consider, however, is that queer people also have our own "leave
itus alone, already" reflexes, and they are equally if not more strained, in large part because Rowling, well, won't leave trans people alone. They are a frequent talking point for her, and she takes explicit, repeated actions to invalidate and hurt them.So, if we consider a hypothetical Harry Potter discussion topic here: it's not that some of our commenters won't just "leave it alone, already" -- it's that Rowling herself won't do the same, which is the primary driver for bringing up her behavior in the first place.
I think this can help us allocate our frustrations appropriately. Yes, it's frustrating when topics get derailed, and yes, nobody loves when someone else yucks your yum, but I'd argue that the cause of this lies less with users here and more with Rowling's continued anti-trans crusade.
And to expand on this, it's not just that JKR won't leave trans people alone, it's also that the rest of our society won't either, spurred on by her and people like her.
Sometimes the HP conversation is more of a last straw, the equivalent of someone stepping on your foot after a day where you got splashed by a car going through a puddle, broke your phone and got harassed by the police. Your foot being stepped on still hurts but you're also just done.
But if she left trans people alone, those conversations would stop being a stubbed toe at all.
Thank you. I was trying to find the way to explain my thoughts, but kept popping into this thread and leaving because I wasn’t sure how to phrase it.
I think you’ve hit my thoughts pretty closely, and worded probably nicer than I would’ve.
Personally, if I saw a topic discussing Harry Potter with zero mention of Rowling’s transphobia, I would be worried that many of the people whose comments I enjoy seeing have moved on from this site…and I would feel obligated to say something at least mentioning it in passing.
Because while transphobia, and discussions about Harry Potter, do not affect me directly, they do affect people negatively, who are just trying to live their lives without a daily reminders that there are people out there who hate them. And I don’t want them to end up seeing a thread here where no one is out there at least attempting to defend them. Everyone has a right to exist.
If you’d commented this earlier I think the thread wouldn’t have nearly as many comments.
I think it would be very cool if Potter fans could just discuss the series and franchise in a different part of the internet, simply because - whatever we think about that whole debate - we all know that this topic is distressing for many people here (and I think it's not hard to understand why people are upset).
So I feel it would just be the right thing to do to discuss it elsewhere.
There are many things I would like to discuss with the people on this site. If I were looking forward to this show, it would not be one of the things I'd like to discuss on Tildes.
Why can’t the same advice of “ignore it and move on” apply here? To be clear I know you’re not the one suggesting that, but would it bother you if you never saw it?
I agree with you regarding 99.9% of other topics that people should just ignore it and move on. I try to do exactly that with most parts of US politics.
But Rowling is actively threatening the existence of trans people. That's just pretty fucking hard to ignore.
And the sacrifice of all other Tildes members in this discussion would be to simply not discuss a media franchise on this site.
I feel that these two things are so uneven in their importance and meaning that this could be a moment where a community like this could try to do a decent thing. Without the need to discuss pages of art vs. artist and all the other facets of this topic.
Just take a step back for once to make it a bit easier for many people here to be on this site without having to feel a metaphoric gun to their head. Just out of kindness.
If you want to discuss HP fandom in an echo chamber where extremely relevant harmful information isn't shared regarding the series' authors politics, go make yourself a HP discord and police it how you like.
If you're mad that people will continually bring up Rowling's self-inflicted hate in HP related threads, maybe ask yourself why an imaginary fantasy world is more important to be discussed than the real harm her actions have on real world people.
I doubt the discussion and mention of JK Rowling was really even that big of an issue, that's not the takeaway I'm getting. The issue is the topics get locked which prevents further discussion.
There's also a bit of gamification of the systems on those conversations with signal elevation through exemplary labeling, but I'm sure even that could be overlooked for most. Like this post here has a much higher than ordinary amount of exemplary labels.
That's just the reality of this site though, some topics are literally just not capable of being handled here because there's no active moderation. That's surely not the official stance, but it seems to work that way in practice. There's no point in complaining about it as far as I am concerned.
I read back through the locked thread, it's not deleted. I don't see where someone said everyone could "go fuck themselves." I don't even see actual insults. Could you clarify what things you're referring to?
ETA: Let me be clear I said fuck TERFs and Transphobes and people who are wishy washy allies, on principle. I did not tell anyone there to fuck themselves. I did not insult any individual. My post was not deleted. I do not believe it to be the reason why the thread was locked as it was hours before it was and Malice reports get handled quickly. And I was not frustrated. Those statements are said with joy not anger.
Additional edit, this was from 2021 and the cast has more complicated feelings about the property as years go on, but an example of joyful use of said language
OP has not responded and I suspect that this is because they were referring to me and continue to do so with the comments about "personalities" and don't want to engage with me. But I feel the need to set the record straight because the two instances of the word "fuck" in that thread are from me - one with the aside of fuck terfs, and the other stating
in response to a comment with which I agreed.
OP continues repeating the narrative of the thread getting closed after "someone" decides to tell everyone who likes Harry Potter to fuck themselves and that insults were being thrown around, etc. There were not IMO insults being thrown around the thread and the thread was not closed after my statement
The thread was not deleted, and although a comment or two might have been I did not see any disappear and did not see any exemplary posts removed nor anyone be insulted by people objecting, nor by people objecting to the objections. Nor do I see any sort of "you're trash if you even subscribe to HBO". The closest I saw was the statement about how watching the show contributed to bigotry and follow up discussions regarding how.
As "annoying" as this thread of discussion may have been, it was almost certainly closed due to being contentious and reports being made, but I personally (for whatever my opinion matters) don't think any post there crossed the line to be malicious. And I object to what seem to be intentional implications that my post was to "blame" with a lack of any clarifying comment and OP declining to respond to the request for clarification. That is their right, but I feel the previous thread is being misrepresented.
I've read your quote a few times in context and I really can't quite understand exactly what you're trying to get across, but I'm having a hard time coming up with a read that isn't meant as an insult when you add "but don't pretend to", since accusing someone of pretending to stand for something is very much an insult.
This is the entire comment, again, in response to someone I was agreeing with. I accused no individual (or group) of pretending, that was in response to a fictional "one" who "could argue".
Lots of things could be insulting, that's not the same as insulting someone nor was that post removed as malicious.
That post is intended to be insulting to anyone who might disagree with you.
Just because it wasn’t removed doesn’t mean it’s not insulting. Hell I don’t even know if it was tagged or worth Deimos time to review if it was but I don’t really see how you can claim no insults were thrown around just because you didn’t throw them directly at someone
It is not intended to be insulting, no, it's saying that my opinion is people should stand for things or not stand for them, but not pretend to stand for them. It was not directed at any specific Tildes poster or other individual.
And while I've been clear about not knowing what labels are applied and what decisions are made, I think if that comment got flagged I'd laugh at the person flagging a less witty version of a Hamilton quote. Even OP didn't complain about that one.
By this standard your comment about people not being mature when discussing fiction is an insult. So sure, we're all big meanies I guess. But if we can call the president an asshole, and call everything enshittification, we can probably say "people should stand for something" with the word "fuck" attached somewhere in the sentence.
This site has no active moderation. There is one person who has stereotypical moderator capabilities, the owner of the site, and from what I can tell, they do not actively browse the site looking for infractions or such. From what I gather, they do not make money off the site, and instead the site costs them money to maintain, and they have a full time job doing something else and therefore this site hasn't gotten feature updates in years. They also don't want to give other people moderation capabilities from what I recall seeing in past conversations. Likely the site doesn't have all the features or functionality to support that without giving other people more than desired amounts of access and power, which would then require someone to develop those features and as I said, that's not happening at the moment.
The more likely outcome in my perspective to come from a call or demand for action is anything that requires less of Deimos (the owner and sole moderator), up to or including dissolution of the site. Again, that part is purely my speculation of how I see the situation.
I'm not a fan of how easy it is for people to get topics locked for things they don't want others to discuss, but that is a function of a site that only has one moderator who doesn't seem to have a lot of free time and doesn't spend all of that free time on this site. It's easier and faster for him to just lock the topic rather than have to deal with the social issues of declaring hard set rules and enforcing them or digging through the weeds to sort out how to better handle the situation.
To be honest. If I were about to make a grand declaration about moderation policies and all that, I would make sure to know how the community is moderated first. I realize this is a bit direct, but there is no shortage of discussions about this and the footer also links to docs about all of this.
Which combined with your refusal to talk to certain people while stil talking about them honestly just doesn't give good faith vibes to me.
As far as I can tell the first didn't happen. Though I do think that if you do know about Rowling's view on certain groups you should honestly question if you want to send money her way by buying HP related things and watching new materials that come out.
It also isn't an either or thing. I have fond memories of reading the Harry Potter books and watching the movies. Those are experiences from before I was aware of Rowling's view on things and as such those experiences haven't changed. I still have those memories, I just will not support future works of her.
And to be honest, I think it is perfectly fair for people to ask that some consideration if a topic is posted like the one about the new series. So, yeah, if you decide to keep watching new HP works even though you are already aware of Rowling's views then I think it is only fair that you will keep running into people who will remind you about that.
I'll leave it to you to decide if you think that means you are also being called transphobic. But, I do think it does warrant some self reflection.
Just to be clear, the site has responsive moderation as far as I can tell, in that if you do something to generate a response from Deimos, Deimos does respond, but as far as I can tell, he does not go looking for things to moderate and if you look at his post/comment history, he does not post much. He could be just a lurker, but again, just from all the pieces I've put together, that isn't the impression I have. I would guess that if everyone here started throwing mud at each other and calling each other vile names but no one ever labeled any of the comments as malice or tagged him, Deimos probably wouldn't see it or know about it and the topic would remain unmoderated in that hypothetical scenario.
It sounds to me that you've hit the nail on the head here, and that sounds like a pretty good resolution to me. Personally I would say that wanting to discuss the show does not make you transphobic, but I think it is a reasonable opinion for someone to hold and share if they think it does. I would see more of a problem if the discussion on transphobia had spilled out of the top level comment it was under, then I'd suggest it was perhaps disruptive. In an ideal world just the top level comment in question could have been locked, but I guess that's not something that's possible on Tildes
I'm assuming that you're making this post in good faith, so it should probably be explained at some point that this thinking is something of a trap — wanting a dialogue does not make things just or fair, as sometimes something simply shouldn't be debated. Forgive me a logical extreme to illustrate my point when I say: We don't debate the pros or cons of eugenics, for example, because making that a debate implies that there are points in favor that deserve consideration.1
Similarly, I don't think this is necessarily something that has to be debated. It's pretty well established at this point that Harry Potter works tend to support the author, and that the author in turn is a horrid bigot with entirely too much money already. I don't think it's fair to want these concerns obfuscated by extended back-and-forth. I understand that people who just want to enjoy a funny wizard show2 might feel attacked, or that they may wish for calmer discussions about this.
But the reality in turn is that if we do that – if we let ourselves get hung up on civility as the be-all-end-all – then we're implying that peace is more important than justice. This show hurts people in very real ways, and choosing to watch it regardless is exactly the kind of passivity that so enables those harms. Nobody wants to be tense, but for the sake of marginalized groups, this is very much a situation that calls for it.
1. For a related topic, see Wikipedia's policy on undue weight.
2. Not that it's a very fun show when you dig into its issues, though.
We have, in fact, had a few discussions that came quite close to debating the pros and cons of eugenics. It's been a few years, and I don't really feel like going digging, but it has happened more than once that folks here though it would be fun to "devil's advocate" eugenics.
I suppose I meant "shouldn't," then, because that's disgusting.
Folks here can get really hung up on deeply unnecessary steelmanning, I think.
Personally I don't see discussing a topic and even considering multiple viewpoints as endorsing those viewpoints. I think saying "eugenics is a good thing" would be bad, but - to me - discussing the pros and cons of it or any other controversial/evil topic isn't a bad thing and is an opportunity to broaden ones understanding of the world and form more informed opinions.
What are the pros of eugenics?
I get the point but this does feel like it will get the thread locked or you in trouble. Your call, just suggesting otherwise.
If I get in trouble for asking someone why they felt inclined to offer up eugenics as an example of something worth discussing seriously, them this might not be the right site for me.
Like I said, I hear you, and I get it. I do want you around. It's just far enough off topic and I don't want the thread shut down if possible. But I also have my previously saved posts full of anti-eugenics info hanging around, so. You know. Just felt worth saying something but with zero intent to control your choice
Eugenics is worth discussing because labeling something as too bad to even discuss makes you the thought police and provides the other side free rein to make whatever points they want.
My thought is that banning discussion of eugenics would mean that we'd never get the info in NotFae's anti-eugenics folder. Both literally and metaphorically. Open discussion doesn't require anyone to take a "pro" stance, and it does risk someone taking that stance (even vociferously!). But then we get all the good info that supports the anti-eugenics stance. If they or anyone else open a topic about how awful eugenics is, and here's why, that seems to be allowable. We're not here to muzzle people.
Same reason why I think we allow the HP/JKR discussion as long as it doesn't devolve into direct attacks. Anti-JKRs (like me, full disclosure) can freely speak up, and HPers can live with the uncomfortable feeling of loving something made by someone extremely hateful and harmful. I find the argument that having to "deal with" (i.e. acknowledge and feel uncomfortable about) the anti-JKR reminders is too exhausting, unfriendly, or whatever else, to be worthy of a welcome-to-the-free-market-of-ideas-and-shrug response.
Anyway, my first paragraph was more important. Sorry for the ramble, but I'm sticking to it.
I'd rather you stick around here too.
The person I responded to literally opened up the topic of discussing the pros and cons eugenics. That was what I was responding to.
People will discuss whatever, there's academic discussions to be had about fascism and racism and genocide and all of the evils of the world. But I don't think anyone goes into them with a "what are the pros and cons of slavery?" mindset with intellectual honesty.
Inhumanity can and must be discussed, but you don't have to act like there's an upside to it.
Yeah, I agree with you. I suppose that wasn't directed specifically at you, despite my response in general being to you. I hope the person above does benefit from it at least.
I think abstract discussion of topics' suitability for discussion is on topic and appropriate here, but I don't think diving in to a specific topic's discussion would be.
That being said, I think this one will be quick and not too devisive: I don't know of any pros of eugenics, but I would find it interesting to find out what people thought they were provided that were done so alongside a discussion of it's negatives (though not in this thread!), and I think it could provide an opportunity for deeping my understanding of why such things are bad
It seems odd to share the undue weight description and then go on to discuss what everyone knows about Rowling because it really seems to me that people who aren't terminally online don't think or care about what JK Rowling has said. That's not to say it doesn't matter, just that it appears to be a bit self-defeating.
It really frustrates me when people call "caring about the extreme bigotry of JK Rowling" things that only terminally online people care about. Frankly, it's gross to say this.
I have seen the sentiment that "regular" (phrased in different ways) people don't care about things like JKR or trans women at the Olympics, and I find it likely that most folks' model of regular people doesn't really include queer and trans folks.
And it's not really logical under "have more important things to worry about." I have a partner with major medical issues, am emotionally and financially strained, and am dealing with my own chronic pain and mental health. There's a war on driving prices up and killing innocent people among many other "big" things. I still care about not supporting transphobic shit. I still care about ICE arresting people. Other folks I know care about this too. It's probably much more about being willing and able to turn one's empathy towards perceived "outsider" groups.
But we're all regular people too. Regular people care about this.
I've had plenty of people around me that had (and some still have) no idea about her opinions on the matter. They happily bought Hogwarts Legacy because "hey cool harry potter from my youth".
To me, it seems futile to try and deplatform something that has such a large following of people that genuinely do not know why it's a problem.
I don't say this to make an argument why we should discuss HP, I think we're not missing much by not doing so and we have a lot to gain by giving some people here some peace of mind. Because we do know. So we shouldn't.
I'm saying it because there is some truth to it. Which is why that point is so often repeated.
It never became a big news thing around these parts outside of the internet, so most people never heard of it. At least here in this country.
Not all money spent on JK is because people support her opinions, I'd go as far as to say that most people don't and it's even likelier they don't even know her opinions. People just really like HP for what it meant to them then.
To me that sounds like a reason to discuss HP works and to bring up Rowling and her transphobia, rather than a reason to avoid discussing them
I agree with you, but I don't want to make people feel unwanted by doing so. For me, that choice is easy.
I read that as
rather than
I don't know which updawg intended, but I thought it might be helpful to point out
Neither, exactly. Just that you can't argue we shouldn't spend time on things that most people don't worry about and then directly turn around and say that means we should really focus on this thing most people are totally unaware of. But I suppose that's closer to #1.
And then you also shouldn't twist the words of someone who supports you just to create an insult out of whole cloth.
I wasn't aware of Daryl Davis, so thank you for letting me know about him!
In this case, I should clarify that when I say things shouldn't be debated, I was speaking in the context of a public forum such as this. In private, engaging peacefully can have very real and very useful results, as Davis proves.
In public, though? Even if it does work, it will serve to have two damaging effects: First, if one of the participants is a terrible person, it will provide publicity for them; and second, it helps drag approval for the given horrible thing closer towards the Overton window of acceptable discourse. Neither of these things are okay.
If you want to convince someone with awful beliefs to let them go, and you feel strongly you're capable enough to do so, I won't tell you to stop. But that's hard, risky, and needs the right time. Any situation with an audience is not that time.
Both. The key is in having an audience. If you've got an audience, so too does the person you're hoping to convince — this is a kind of platforming, and platforming harmful views is a terrible idea.
Not to mention that it's harder for someone to genuinely listen to you and reconsider their views when they've got a bunch of eyes on them. If those eyes agree with them, they'll be overconfident, if the eyes disagree, they'll get defensive. It's just not helpful.
There aren't really mods or admins in the traditional sense, just Deimos and some users that have more tagging and topic moving powers. It's up to us to maintain community and not to let things get to the point of needing intervention.
If someone posts media from a problematic creator, it seems appropriately on topic to point it out. I don't care if "everyone knows already."
If folks are telling other folks to go fuck themselves, that's is a problem and does need to be handled, but that's not specific to Harry Potter.
Can I suggest a pragmatic and utilitarian solution?
I don’t think that there is much net utilitarian benefit in comments that discuss her transphobia on every post. Most people on tildes are already aware about her transphobia and the general situation with her.
If the aim is to further trans rights, and make the world a better place, isn’t the best thing to not push all the people who aren’t already aware/care away from where they can be influenced? I’m guessing most of the most transphobic HP fans aren’t a member of tildes. The people who are here are likely to be at least empathatic to transgender view points. I find the whole ‘If you aren’t 100% with me then you are against me’ strategy ends up backfiring more often then not and drives polarisation rather than reproachment.
So as for the pragmatic part: for post that are about Harry Potter, but not primarily JK Rowling, have one comment (autogenerated if possible) which points out “JK Rowling uses her financial success as a measure of support for her ideas. If you are still going to watch this show, why not donate to a pro trans charity? Here is a list <link>.”
I feel a donation to a protrans support charity can likely do more good then the minimal change in opinion from ‘stern’ (for want of a better word) comments.
That way, Harry Potter fans are not pushed away, can be part of the community (and able to be influenced in a positive atmosphere), there is a net moral and financial good to trans groups, and for HP fans who are still going to watch it, a way to reduce any perceived moral harm.
For posts more about JKR rather than HP, then feel free to discuss however you see fit.
The alternative to this as I see it is HP fans get pushed away from the site towards sites which are properly transphobic and their opinions get hardened in a negative way.
If you don’t agree with this or me, please don’t crucify me. It’s a suggestion for discussion, isn’t particularly well thought through, and is trying to be a solution that most people can get on board with. For me, it is the best solution I can think of to a difficult problem which is bound to piss some people off regardless of what we do.
I don't agree with the idea that one should avoid talking about something because it will "push people away". It's akin to the "a black person was mean to me so now I'm not supporting Black Lives Matter" narratives. In my experience those folks weren't actually allies.
It’s not about ‘not talking’ about something, but more the approach. The approach used in the comments on HP posts about her transphobia is not in my opinion there to convince people to change their minds. I can’t quite put it in words, but it feels more dogmatic, and aimed at an audience who already feels that way? Echo chamber style I guess is the closest phrase I can describe it as. It’s certainly not a compassionate way to help change people’s minds, and I would argue unlikely to be effective in achieving a net good.
Also I’m afraid I don’t understand your analogy? It doesn’t seem the same thing at all. Maybe I’m missing the point.
You proposed not "pushing away" people so they'll stay by avoiding being too aggressive and thus influencing them into being more pro-trans.
I do not believe that people who react to direct "here's what's up and why this transphobic stuff is bad" messages in such a way that they'll leave or somehow harden their hearts to trans people were really allies in the first place. In that they did not have strong convictions, likely at all. The comments here have mostly been informative and explanatory, not "fuck you you wizard lover, burn in hell"
I know people who like Harry Potter, who eat at Chick-fil-A, or who shop at Hobby Lobby. I don't hate them. But when the topic comes up I don't avoid talking about it either. And I don't think a donation - a trans indulgence if you will - makes up for the harm of continuing to platform and raise the status of Rowling.
I wish the cognitive dissonance would be enough, but speaking up, often in ways people find annoying and inconvenient is much more how change happens in contrast with being told not to make such a fuss.
I think here we fundamentally disagree on an axiomatic matter. I do think there is more room for change and growth, particularly in a compassionate (my buzzword it seems) environment. I have personally found the tone of the comments ‘stern’ for the lack of a better word. While posts don’t literally say ‘fuck you wizard lover burn in hell’ I do think some of the comments do indirectly imply that/a moral failing which means they would burn in hell if there was one. I don’t think that’s effective, or helpful.
In general I don’t get on with a dogmatic/ “my way or the highway” approach, and communities are ultimately based on a degree of compromise. People are able to not quite see eye to eye on everything and still be a member of the same community, and still even get on. People can come to different conclusions on different matters based on how they weigh up moral pros and cons. Yes there are evil people out there, but most people are not. The left wing often has a problem with pragmatic compromise, which is why it is so often splintered, fragmented and full of infighting.
In my mind it’s also the route of partisan politics in general which ruins politics for me. Us vs them isn’t productive.
Edit: and re a donation, I would argue there must be a value where a donation does make a difference- if you donated £1 billion then I don’t see how it could not be an overall net good. Then it becomes a qualitative maths problem, and personally I reckon if you donate more than the total value of a show you watch (given how only a small fraction would end up in JKR pocket) it probably is a net good. I think you can achieve a lot more with a positive donation than through a boycott. But that is my opinion and is not evidence based.
I don't agree that this is how the conversations go, but that's a matter of perspective that is informing the rest of your comment and mine. I have long since decided not to sacrifice who I am or how I feel based on how I'm received. All doing so has gotten me in the past is still more criticism and less consideration for my identities. Who I am, is often kind and compassionate, and also direct and honest. I don't think that approaches the equivalent of "if you watch you'd go to hell if it existed. "
I don't believe in atoning by donation, aka again, indulgences. Maybe that's the post-Luther Catholic in me. JKR has donated a lot of money to charity, not just anti-trans groups, but she's still hurting people.
I'm non-binary, not a binary trans person and far less of a target, but I can say for me and not on behalf of the GNC community, that I don't want a "I feel bad but I'm talking about the show" donation. Donate if you think it's the right thing to do, or don't if you can't or don't want to. But I certainly don't vote to free anyone from whatever sins they may have against trans people for it. No one here is donating a billion dollars to anything so I don't think it's relevant.
Fair enough if that’s your experience. For what it’s worth, I usually adopt a ‘non violent communication’ and with real people, and when ai speak from my true self, it often works far better than I expect. Doesn’t work as well with assholes though. And for the record I’m not saying you are telling HP fans to go to hell, but I found rereading the whole thread some comments could be interpreted to say that or at least infer it.
I have no strong feelings about whether donations makes it right or wrong, but my gut feeling is on a utilitarian point of view (which is only one aspect of ethics) it probably does cause a net positive and allows for compromise which to me is most important. And I chose a billion to prove a point, but I would say it’s also true for £1000 or even £100. You could do a lot to undo any harm JKR does with the £1 or whatever she gets from each person who watches the show. But I hear your point of view too, that for you personally it doesn’t help.
I have a Counseling degree and I'm quite familiar with where NVC stems from though not specifically trained in it!
All I can say is I have absolutely changed minds online and in person. I am generally intentional but I remain authentic and my communication varies some due to the constraints of the environment but not due to the opinions of people who reply.
I will never fit myself into a box that will satisfy everyone else without suffocating my soul. My personal gender euphoria comes in part from when I manage not to even try to start squeezing into the box. It feels so good.
I can’t say I like the idea of actually codifying the set of correct beliefs on topics right into the site’s software.
That’s not quite what I’m saying. It would be more of a message which makes it’s clear it’s controversial, links to a page about the controversy and links to program charity list. It’s a compromise to allow different groups to get along without derailing a conversation.
But I get your point on a visceral level, I don’t like the idea of someone else determining right or wrong for me. But on an abstract level all communities have some things they consider correct axiomatic beliefs: e.g. people are equal, please don’t torture people, slavery isn’t okay etc. it’s probably acceptable to codify things like that (and probably fit into the don’t be an asshole rule).
It’s ultimately up to Deimos about whether disagreeing with protrans points in a non asshole way is deemed acceptable or non acceptable for this community, and probably is the point that underlies most of this thread.
I don’t know how more direct you could be about specifying what the correct belief is than by promoting charities.
I don’t know if you read the locked thread, but people weren’t even being anti-trans, they were simply questioning how much effect there would be from an existing HBO subscriber choosing to watch the content. There’s a lot of distance between discussing the economics of viewer metrics and promoting trans hate.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m generally pro-trans on almost all issues. But I would oppose this kind of thing for all topics that I have strong opinions on. I wouldn’t like automated pushing of pro-choice, pro-Ukraine, pro-Democrat, pro-Liberal/NDP, and so on either.
I like the idea, but I would argue that it probably would be more beneficial if it was more general and not just about JKR. Like a bot that - based on tags - would fetch the Wiki article of the creator of whatever product is being talked about. Most Wiki articles should contain all of the controversial points of any public figure, so this should work just as well.
I say this because I doubt how a disclaimer made specifically for JKR would matter on Tildes. I may be wrong, but I bet that >95% of people here at least know that JKR is transphobic (or at the very, very least, that she's controversial).
I really like the idea of a new norm on tildes that the top post is a disclaimer with short summary of problematic association and mitigating strats...
I would rather this wasn't automated. First one on the scene posts it, then everyone votes it to the top.
This would give us some kind of positive tradition distinguishing us from other forum, and something to work together to maintain, and it doesn't require any work from deimos who i assume has a life too...
Plus it sounds like the sort of super woke shit that could keep away the ultra far right but in practice be reasonable enough that reasonable right wing could get behind.
I wonder if that would lead to more problems. It’s an invitation to cause off topic on every possible topic, and depending on the person posting it wouldn’t necessarily be accurate/fair, or even might be more pro right wing.
I think it would be better for set controversial topics with a fixed well thought out message that’s not going to just cause grief and conflict.
Also, I do wonder if it would just end up like Life of Brian’s People Front of Judea.
I don't think discussion of a creator's views is off-topic when discussing their work, so I don't see the risk of it starting off-topic discussion. That said, in my experience when creators are sufficiently controversial or at least when their positions on certain topics are sufficiently well-known, it's already the case here on Tildes that usually someone will comment pointing that out and starting a thread about it. How heated that thread gets varies significantly, though.
Those are valid concerns.
Maybe then a weekly topic were we collectively discuss and build concensus on what message we should use and for which topics.
Then the first one on the scene can copy paste the adequate message and we only vote it up if its the genuine agreed upon message.
If concessus builds toward a right wing troll message, then tildes has allready been lost anyway...
I just really like the idea of self imposed norms from the community.
Seems like this is what tags and labels are for, which you can filter out if some content is upsetting for you to see.
Checking the trailer post, I don't think this necessarily calls for admin intervention even, unless people start flinging insults at each other. The giant comment chain was hidden away from me when I opened the post, so looks like labels are working as intended. This, I think, is what makes Tildes superior to, for instance, reddit, where on topic posts would be downvoted to hell.
Genuine question, how often do you find yourself defending the work of a transphobic author that the personalities of other people on the site would be an issue? Why can't you mark those comments as malice or ignore them?
It really did not happen.
I have
jk rowlingas a topic tag filter because I genuinely never wish to read or hear anything about that woman for the rest of my life.I expect that a decision to be inclusive to transgendered individuals or Harry Potter fans is mutually exclusive.
How about we just trust the community a bit and see instead of preemptively picking a side?
Most potter fan are lgbt-friendly and would probably prefer to be made aware that JKR considers royalties as some kind of public support for her activism.
Repetitive discussion aren't bad. Repetition is the mother of learning.
For context: I intentionally missed this, but there was a thread a couple days ago which got locked due to, what I'd imagine was, tonnes of people slinging "Malice" tags at each other in order to make a point.
(edit) I think this question has come up because whenever someone says "Harry Potter cool", people pour into the comment section to remind them that their support legitimizes the beliefs of a cruel and petty woman hellbent on eliminating trans women from Earth. This repetitive discussion distressed the people who wanted to talk about wizards, hence the thread.
That just comes with the territory of the website though. I’ve posted two Harry Potter related things here that got locked, the trailer you linked to and also an article about the video game selling so well.
This is mostly a hyper woke space and when you join the website I think it’s likely that you’re already aware that it is that. I’ve pushed back on some things that I think the consensus meta of places like this have been operating under since the 2010s but I generally pick and choose those battles. But I do understand the nature of this place and the slant it takes.
Although I will say I was surprised by how things got off the rails by a simple trailer.
It was not my impression that Malice labels were "slung" around. I know I didn't use any and the only post I saw sinking low was the one the conversation was under for purportedly being off topic. I know some folks explicitly used that label to get deimos' attention because they thought said post should not have been exemplary. (It was IMO)
I can't see, obviously, as it isn't public but I don't like to assume bad faith labeling as a rule.
Sorry. I shouldn't have guessed.
My apologies for dragging you back, I didn't see you were stepping out, please don't feel the need to reply or anything
JXM's exemplary post was perfect in this thread, concise and non preachy, gentle reminder and gone.
Couldn't we have some kind of banner reading something like:
On any thread with the harry potter tag?
Or just posted by someone on the thread and vote boosted to the top.
This would make sure there is a slight itch (which really shouldn't go away), and also an easy mitigating solution is implied (piracy).
The initial comment about JKR in the recent topic about the miniseries trailer was basically the same as what you describe in that banner, minus the link. The problem is that some people started arguments in the replies insisting that even comments like this are off-topic and shouldn't be brought up in threads about Harry Potter. Those arguments are what descended into something that merited locking the thread afaik, but given how relatively non-confrontational the initial comment was, it's pretty clear that even the most passive acknowledgement of JKR's public stance on trans people in these topics will lead to people arguing about how it should be removed.
Just replying to say, thank you for an original suggestion, at least.
I don't think I can continue looking at this thread for my own mental health, though, so I'm bowing out.
Take care.
These topics come in waves, it happens every few weeks, it'll recede soon, hang on. Most people ARE compassionate and wouldn't hurt people knowingly for no reasons.
Put simply, OP, imagine you come across a bunch of people happily discussing a story written by a person that not only wishes you were dead, but has spent millions of dollars convincing other people that you should die also.
Do you not think you would be put out by this? Would you just sit there and roll over as people discussed giving more money by proxy to the person who's spending millions of dollars with the aim being your, personal death?
This is basically the situation people find themselves in with JK Rowling, and you should probably try walking in other people's shoes before dying on this hill.
The entire internet is a safe-space for Harry Potter and JK Rowling's bigotry, maybe we don't have to do this here?
One thing I know for sure is that I'll definitely keep posting about how anyone who monetarily supports her is funding anti-trans hate.
Hey, do you agree that anyone who pays for HBO, Amazon Prime and Apple TV subscription actively contributing monetarily to anti-trans hate?
I don't know. It's hard to say. Potentially.
Since these services have all watch data, if nobody watched Harry Potter but still paid for the service, they would not renew the next season and JKR would stop being paid. So watching might be more important than paying for the service.
These services have lots of non-problematic shows, including many shows about and created by 2SLGBTQI+ people, so that has to be considered also.
Thank you for the answering. I was really curious to understand your point of view.
From a pragmatic perspective, I don't think Tildes is a good place for that conversation and you should probably try to find somewhere else.
More generally: sometimes it would be nice to be able to post a link and discuss it in "death of the author" mode where we discuss the work itself rather than everything else the author has done, but many people here disagree and will definitely feel free to bring it up. Particularly in this case.
I am with skybrian.
This site is definitely not the place to discuss Harry Potter.
This thread is not bringing out the best of the community.
There are plenty of other places where Harry Potter can be discussed.
This is not the place for us non LGBT+ folks to discuss things inflammatory to the LGBT+ community, and it never will be.
I value this response. Please know... Many of us have had threads deleted, threads moved, and threads locked. I expect something similar to happen to this thread in a few. There is likely to be no explanation. Sometimes for the good of the community these threads simply disappear. Deimos' moderation style can take a little getting used too. But it works.
I find that sad to read. Personally I'd like to do what I can to push things towards more empathetic and considerate but heavy/divisive conversations. I see Tildes as a place that does foster discussion and empathetic and considerate communication, refreshingly so, and I think we should try and continue that whether or not the topic is heavy or divisive.
I would enjoy it if there could be spaces online for the sort of discussion you hope for, but I don't see how Tildes can be one of those spaces. Look at what became of this person's attempt at discussion, or what remains of it, with them presumably banned, their identity and words gone, while responses to them remain.
I've actually often in those spaces in person, even recently, but there is perhaps a wider question as to whether they can exist publicly online. Talking with people directly, in person, perhaps creates a certain empathy, as does the ability to curate the people who are in the discussion, and the confidence that what is said is heard only there.
Tildes is ultimately a space for discussion within a narrow American and Western European progressive capitalist viewpoint, sometimes masquerading as something other than capitalist but ultimately intolerant of views to the left as much as to the right, aggressively enforced by a handful of regulars whose names show up again and again, and backed by moderating actions. There's nothing wrong with it being that space, but it would perhaps be better if the community were more open and honest with itself about what Tildes is.
I noted in the previous thread that I don't believe a conversation about the criticisms of the work itself would be better received - will there be the same reaction when discussing how Harry Potter's fatphobia is pervasive - Dudley is too much like a pig to be turned into one - or how her main female character falls into he "not like the other girls" narrative and is consistently described as annoying and naive and derided by the MC and their friend (and everyone) for opposing slavery, as she should be praised for her intellectualism but derided for her empathy?
Because I suspect instead it'll get treated exactly the same as talking about Rowling's beliefs, portrayed as this OP and other comments did, as telling people to fuck off if they like something or that they're fatphobic and misogynist for watching. Despite these being conversations I can have with "regular people who aren't terminally online" without it being a fight to even acknowledge a trope exists.
Would it just be ok to say "Christ what an asshole" in every thread?
Or talk about how the show is enshittification of media just like Marvel slop? What are the bounds if you don't want to hear about this one topic. How the fandom is being super racist about Snape? Because that's a downer too.
I too genuinely wish HP would go away and people would read another book and make media from other properties. But if it's going to be around, it feels like this is mostly complaining about having to share space with people who have genuine criticisms of the creator and the work.
Fandom is being racist about Snape? How? he turns out to be one of the most selfless and competent character in the end. But now people know he is trully one of the good guys from the beginning, how can anyone be negative against him?
Because his actor is a Black man. Besides the "Professor Snoop" and "Snape is straight out of Compton" type jokes there's a lot of racist comments including some from white supremacists who seem to idolize the character (based on their content) others from people that "just think he needs to match the book" in a way that is reminiscent of every time someone in a near all white cast is cast as a POC.
Personally from a criticism of the work perspective, Snape is functionally a Nazi who only does good things out of a one-sided, unrequited obsessive love for one girl. It doesn't stop him from being a wizard supremacist, he just seems to carve her out as "one of the good ones." He still joins the bad guys and does who knows what before he flips. He's outright abusive to the children he is responsible for and entirely biased in his work. If Lily hadn't been threatened or killed he'd probably never have changed. Someone with so little care for others at all is not someone I can call a "good guy".
Oh yes totally, abusive and all, not fantasy setting angel of good, more complex than that.
I really like that the bad guy could flip to good. And through the power of love (unrequited and obsessive, sure, but solid enough to motivate him decades after her death, he didn't revert back to nazi). It's kind of a redemption story.
And i really didn't expect it when it was revealed, so I guess the whiplash made me like him more.
It just sort of was one more thing that confirmed him as a horrible person for me. A racist to everyone except "that one guy he's one of the good ones" who never stops actually being a racist, just doesn't like that "that guy" got killed, isn't a good dude to me.
I don't think the books hold up the way, say, Hunger Games does because I think she relies on tropes that sound like they should work and they don't. Which is part of my "please read something else" cry (which is not really serious, most folks do)
I don't think snape was racist after he turned. Lily being "one of the good ones" showed him that he was wrong. He had to prentend to still be racist because he was a mole.
Why else would he keep it up after her death. In fact there were both possible outcome : voldemort though that snape reverted to racist after her death, while dumbledore trusted that snape had changed. The story showed dumbledore right.
He does still tend to be genuinely abusive because old habit die hard, and abuse isn't only done by racist. But I think you're being unfair to snape when you make him a racist for playing the role of a racist in order to help the good guys.
Now, i have to remind myself that snape is a fictional caracter who doesn't need me to defend him...
From a litterary perspective, yeah, it's a kids book and doesn't deserve all the praise. I do think the age appropriate theme progression with harry's age are well done. Never read hunger game, didn't enjoy the movie, way too many tropes...
idk if you're aware but they casted a black man as Snape in the new HBO show and it was received predictably well by certain parts of the HP fandom.
By predictably well I mean people were racist.
I think it’s because the new actor is black.
Tildes topics are rooms reserved for discussing a thing.
Top level comments are magic tables within those rooms that grow to accommodate as many participants as needed based on interest in discussing a particular aspect of thing.
If someone walks into the room but doesn’t like the aspects of thing being discussed at any existing table, they make a new table.
If someone doesn’t like the conversations at a particular table, they ignore the conversation at that other table.
Everything is fine. Unless the people sitting at a particular table have a food fight, throw drinks at each other, start shouting (not just the standard everyone talks louder in rooms with many people and it’s annoying because if we all kept speaking quietly it wouldn’t get loud thing), etc.
Tildes works like that. But even better than the magical “real life” analogy.
Because we have filters to ignore “rooms,” we won’t even see them when walking down the hall.
Because we have tags, we can do a “hey, could you bring the volume down a bit please” thing without actually engaging with people and it eventually pushes those conversations further away into a corner of the room.
There’s no decision to be made here. If you like discussing Harry Potter (a thing), remember there might be a table discussing its author (an aspect of thing). Don’t walk into those rooms, ignore that table, or use the site features to push that table into the corner.
If this were in person and someone brought up JK Rowling once or twice, cool. If someone kept it up after that, they'd probably not be invited to future discussions. As a site, maybe just ban specific topics outright rather than pretending like people can freely discuss. Either that or ask participants to be respectful: you said your piece and constantly repeating it past a certain point is not respectful to your fellow members.
Yea I agree with this.
I don't like HP or JK Rowling. If people want to discuss them, fine. If people want to point out she's a bigot, fine. But if it turns into constant harassment or brigading it would be a bit like a vegan scold constantly hanging out in a "what are you cooking this week" thread, i.e. not productive for anyone.
We're risking splitting this community over something as banal as Harry Potter. Tildes has always been that weird corner of the internet with overly-winded, thoughtful comments (a phrase that's been thrown around to the point of cliche) interspersed with a progressive political bent and a pro-LGBT+ through line. Sure, there are plenty of places with wordy discussions and plenty of other places that are aggressively progressive, but this is the only community I know of that manages to thread both of these ideals successfully.
And I get it. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson and the gang are all about my age, so I literally grew up with them. But the more I learned about J.K. Rowling's bigoted beliefs, and the more she continued to double down, the less I could enjoy the franchise. Eventually I decided the best thing I could do was to simply disengage with the wizarding world altogether. But I understand that Harry Potter was much more important for some people than for me, and that for these people it might not be so easy to leave that series behind. And you know, I get that, too. I've been vegetarian for long enough to know that sometimes the best thing you can do is lead by example. I'm not going to lecture my mom on why she shouldn't buy a Harry Potter backpack when it's one of the few things of whimsy she enjoys. We live in a world where it's impossible to be the best versions of ourselves, and sometimes it's worth compromising just a little bit to get along with the ones we love.
But what I wouldn't do is invite my mildly homophobic relatives to a gay bar. That lack of an invitation would not be for my relatives's sake, but rather for the patrons of that bar who deserve their safe space.
So for those insisting on the right to discuss Harry Potter here anyway, despite there being much more suitable forums elsewhere, I implore you to consider what you might lose: You threaten to drive out a core constituent of our community, changing the fabric of this website, all so that we can have maybe a few dozen on-topic comments about a media franchise.
Is that really more important than supporting our trans friends?
Pragmatically, with the collapsible comment structure on Tildes and the great filtering tools on offer, I think the two sides presented here can coexist. Time and again, the community here has demonstrated a wonderful capacity for thoughtful and compassionate discourse, so I would like to think the thread from the other day to be an anomaly rather than a portent of things to come.
While we're here, I would like to explore another potential outcome. It's heartening that we've already seen cast from this new show speak out against Rowling's disgusting behaviour . Admittedly, Lithgow could have been more forceful here, but I hope it is a sign of things to come. Similar to how the developers of Hogwart's Legacy threw a middle finger up at JK by including a positive trans character in the game, I also see potential in this new production to widen the divide between Rowling and her creation, as well as even rectify some of the more troublesome material in the source. Perhaps the show could be used as a vehicle to increase visibility and acceptance for LGBT+ and other marginalised communities. Who knows, maybe a new generation discovering these stories will also through them - and perhaps communities such as this - learn lessons of tolerance and compassion that will ultimately overcome the efforts and resources of one hateful woman.
Yes, yes, this is all incredibly wishful thinking on my part, but fuck, gotta keep some hope in humanity, eh?
Rowling is the primary executive producer and as far as I know has creative control. This both means that a legacy style countering of her message is incredibly unlikely, and also she probably gets a much bigger cut as it is adapting her novels directly and she’s a prominent member of the production, unlike legacy which merely licenses the franchise IP
Yeah, I hadn't looked that closely, and even just by virtue of being a big budget production it is unlikely to rock the boat. The reason that I wanted to present an alternative scenario is that there are some outside, underdog factors - call them 'cultural wildcards' - that we can't foresee. Maybe there's shake ups, some cast go rogue, or an activist wing of the fandom gains some traction. If the show proves popular then that's more opportunities to highlight what shit Rowling has been up to, more chances to increase awareness and create allies - which brings us back to the subject at hand. I think the episodic discussion threads should be allowed, and we should also make space for gentle reminders of the harm behind the magic and where/how fans are best able to show their support for the trans community.
That depends on with whom I am coexisting. Are we talking about people who do their best to avoid the harms of the franchise even as they consume it, i.e. donating to charities to offset it, or ensuring they don't financially support the media in question? Or are we talking people who're willing to write off the suffering of trans people as "not enough for me to care" just for the sake of media they like?
I want to believe we're talking about the former, but part of the problem is that responsible consumption of media like this requires at least some degree of awareness to be spread when discussing it,1 lest that awareness be lost among those who know it, or never learned for those who don't. And yet complaints about that very thing seem to have been what caused this hubbub. That worries me.
I have no problem with people who enjoy Harry Potter but take necessary steps to ensure that their enjoyment does not hurt trans people. But if it should turn out that what we're considering is the latter group, who'd prefer an easy carelessness — well, that's not really a group I'm keen on sharing a space with.
1. Or at least, this is necessary while the author is still alive, profiting, and actively using said profits to hurt people. For say, H.P. Lovecraft, this knowledge is useful and good, but I wouldn't think it required.
Someone like Lovecraft might be relevant from a "hey just a heads up these beliefs of his make it into his books" POV. Which Rowling has issues with too. But agreed that it's not a concern as far as financially supporting him since he's quite dead.
I meant a more general sense of there can be discussions focused purely on the content of the media (plot, production, acting, design, etc.) alongside discussion of the ethical issues surrounding. A post can have multiple comment chains, and each can develop independently. I do see where you're coming from though and appreciate your concerns. I am not saying we should be tolerating bigots in our community, not in the least. Please read my previous comment as intended to address a technological point rather a moral one.
What I would like to say is that, for example, when two people are perhaps discussing the production design - "that big outside shot was cool, you can actually see a lot of the castle was based on...", that kind of thing - that we could give enough benefit of the doubt, presume the participants to be of good character, and allow a rather benign conversation to continue uninterrupted. If the ethical discussion is also present in another chain within the post, as it should be, then those participants will have read it too and be aware.
Also, if you look at the original post, nobody really seems to want to discuss the actual content, so who cares?
Online EV discussions tend to get derailed by anti-Musk sentiment. Like on Bluesky, someone will post consumer rankings of EVs and if Tesla places anywhere near the top, the conversation just shifts away from the actual data. Makes it hard to have a productive discussion about the cars themselves.
This is hard for me to balance because Musk deserves no support. But it is very frustrating and makes the attempts at discussion effectively useless.
Honestly one of the main reasons I'm so glad that Tesla is rapidly losing its lead (if its not already gone) when it comes to EVs. It'll be refreshing to be able to support the movement without having to support the muskrat. Public sentiment towards EVs has been set back years because of his actions.
If only we could be so lucky with SpaceX.... but that's probably not going to happen any time soon.
I don't know how Bluesky works, but Tildes seems to support this; I imagine discussions on EV data would still have been possible had the been a single, collapsible top level comment in which the anti-Musk sentiment could take place
It's really going to be a mess, trying to talk about it at all, on this platform. I agree with the sentiments of the original post.
...You know, the fact this thread has gotten almost 200 comments so fast probably says something. What it says, I don't know, but it says something.
My own thoughts: I don't know how many people will avidly discuss the show. Even without discussing Rowling, she has cast a dark shadow on it, particularly among demographics like here on Tildes. I still see fanfic crossovers regularly so I know it's still popular, but its "public" popularity (for lack of a better way to phrase it) has taken a massive hit. I expect most of the interest nowadays would just be to compare it to the original movies, rather than fanatically analyzing and raving about the world building.
......or they might watch to find more ammunition to critique Rowling based on what scenes and plotlines get adapted. I know there's some other controversial stuff involving the house elves at least.
So uh, you actually may have a valid point about how the threads could get more activity about criticizing Rowling than discussing Harry Potter. I don't think it would reach quite the level where Deimos would have to intervene though, since Tildes is usually fairly civil... But yeah, I could see the majority of comments being about her and her views, or about... well, whether people should just NOT talk about her given we're all very aware of her views. Basically, this topic but as a comment chain.
My own suggestion: have a reminder/disclaimer in the post that Rowling sucks and should not be given direct support, and leave it at that. At this point we're all very aware of that, so bringing it up wouldn't really add anything new unless she makes a new messed up statement directly in relation to the show. I do have some faith in the Tildes community to keep things civil and know when to just avoid a certain topic.
(Personal note: I'm not a fan, but I've previously gone on record about how I can't fully fault people for still liking the series given how pervasive it is in pop culture for my generation (tail-end Millennial, borderline Gen Z). MANY people were literally shaped into who they are today by the connections they made due to shared interests in Harry Potter, or by hobbies and interests they picked up due to being inspired by it. I genuinely don't think any other piece of modern media has had THIS powerful and widespread of an influence on people.
So, as much as I loathe Rowling, I don't want to demonize any and all discussion of Harry Potter. At this point, one of my reasons for loathing Rowling is how her bigotry has tainted an unfathomable amount of cherished memories. I'm not even a fan of Harry Potter myself, but as an avid fan of other media, I can sympathize with how hard it is to totally ditch all fondness for something that, again, helped shape you as a person. The vast majority of people can't permanently turn off an interest in one day, and in my experience, we'll always have a soft spot for some big piece of media from our childhoods no matter how long it's been since we saw it.
So... I don't want to demonize and censor talk of Harry Potter or people who still identify as fans so long as they acknowledge Rowling herself sucks. I genuinely hope for a day that official Harry Potter media uses the world building she created to celebrate and explore transgender identity and other identities she has denied, as a big middle finger to her bigoted views.)
Tildes doesn't get a ton of old-school forum drama, I think that might be partly why its so active.
In response to only your first point, I think that it says something lovely about the community here, which is that we want to chime in about how to handle issues like this. A "what kind of community do we want to be" sort of thing. It's like a small town with a lively town hall meeting. :)
I understand that while people are bringing up great points about whether or not this is a problem that needs solving, the actual solution here is quite simple.
Tildes has a labeling system which allows people to label comments, marking them as exemplary, offtopic, malice etc, right? While this is geared towards the quality of the messages instead of the messages themself, I propose either a sitewide new label, or a label for a new group about harry potter called "meta" such that people can chose whether or not to filter out meta comments in their settings and/or in the sidebar.
The reason for the new label instead of "offtopic" is because "offtopic" pertains to the quality, when we are discussing about the type of content of the message instead. This is more fair than blanket applying offtopic to genuine relevent meta disscusions.
Maybe, to expand this further, we can change this from a "label" (which, as I said is mostly used to acertain quality) to a "tag" on a comment thread, which can be site-wide-defined tags or page-based-defined based on the consensus and need of the community. This would also help in self marking the type of comment, which isn't possible in the label system.
If a comment is tagged as meta (or if the commenter themselves tags it when posting, if they are given the ability?), it can be understood that the comment thread is meant for meta discussions. This, combined with the filtering means if people don't want to see such discussions, they have every means to do so, while preserving the ablity to have such conversations at all - which is too integral to the philosophy of tildes to blockade on a case-by-case basis which is bound to upset some or the other group of people due to its opinionated nature.
With the filteration method, the ability to choose what to see is retained by individual users - and that is the only simple way to have this level of control over what you see without impacting other peoples right to comment.
On the implementation side, I wonder if we can add a "fight" tag/label, such that fighting threads don't impact activity numbers? This could help prevent bumping toxic posts to the top if a fight break out.
Finally, I should bring up that being "sick" of meta discussions is in itself a meta disscusion, so if someone wants to discuss about that general emotion rather than a solution, I suppose theres nothing stopping that - it is no different from bringing back an already discussed discussion, which is an older problem with forums and does not need urgent addression.
Many people responding here have fallen for the false belief of something called "ethical capitalism". Essentially, in western countries, three ideas dominate: capitalism, social Darwinism, and brand identity. All three of these are bullshit, yet somehow we decided to combine them into the 21st century's ethical system. "I am vocally against Harry Potter because I don't want money going to Rowling" is a symptom of this.
Given the political lean of this view, I don't need to go into detail on the "bullshit" point. Capitalism is how society exploits survival needs to make us slaves for others. The idea that buying one thing is good and another is wrong misses the inherent bad in buying / selling. Likewise, social Darwinism trying to rid a social gene pool of the "inferior" by harming the weak is awful. Yet it pervades every aspect of society, in this case making us think of a zero sum game where we make our money go a certain direction and wipe out others. All of this is packaged together into branding: "buy our product, would you want your friends to know you bought the competition that has 10% more evil?"
Even if you don't buy the fundamental wrongness of this "ethical capitalism", at least let us concede that it's a terrible moral economy. This is because money is fungible. Suppose you don't buy a Harry Potter book and keep the money in your wallet. The royalties don't go to Rowling, but neither does the bookstore profit. They decide to lay off their cashier. Medical bills piling up and fearing about what to eat next week, he drives home, parks in the garage, and leaves the engine on.
Spooked by my explanation, you decide instead to buy a coffee from the bookstore. The barista's wage is also paid, finally he's saved enough to quit this dead end job and start his podcast - his right wing podcast, where his real talent lies. Followers are amassed, a political movement is launched, and now that cup of coffee is leading to transgender people in camps. The coffee cup label told you the amount of caffeine, added sugar, etc, but not about this.
Swearing off coffee, you get in your friend's divested, green focused ETF. She tells you no royalties for Rowling, no wages for a reactionary barista. One of the companies is developing affordable drugs that might help the cashier - she's off to party with them tonight. But that company is also bundled in SPY. And JK's wealth is all in stocks. So now Rowling's enjoying your contribution to the exponential growth of her financial - and thus political - powers. Actually, due to wealth imbalances, every positive economic contribution you make is biased towards rich people's benefit. Hey, at least if you show someone your portfolio they'll see how ethical you are.
In the old days if you wanted to be ethical, maybe you sacrificed some food to a deity, said some prayers, did some meditation, etc. The Catholics may be on to something here. Why should they bother paying attention to whether the label on the wine bottle conveys their values or not? At the end of the day, it is transformed in its very essence to ethically sourced(?) blood. Well still don't drink too much. But my point is if you want to do good in the world, engage with people using your unique essence and pure intentions instead of making do with a corrupt system.
There is another argument we should consider, divorced from ethical capitalism. Imagine that you are a bit of a playboy. More than a bit. Every week you're out trying to land a girl. Sometimes you fib about who you are or what you want. Sometimes she drinks more than she wanted. One day you get diagnosed with a resistant strand of HIV. You ask your Catholic friend if this is God's judgement. But he's given up his belief, and says "surely not, because it is arbitrary for God to punish you while that scammer drug company CEO is doing great." Still wanting spiritual advice, you appeal to your Buddhist buddy. But he too is spiritually discouraged, and says "why should karma come for you and not that right-wing podcaster?" It does seem unfair, with the bills piling up and news of your layoff.
What they failed to consider is a world where divine judgement or karma or whatever is imperfect. And if what is natural is what is ethical, why should you not be imperfect? In this sense, I think people could go after Harry Potter, even if it is arbitrary. Even if the rules of the game seem flawed. Even if it is not necessarily effective to promoting good in the world. Much like protests can turn into riots and end up harming the people they claim to want to protect. In a way, because it is flawed it is also unique and sincere.
So here is my advice. First, practically speaking, if you want to talk about Harry Potter, I think you could probably do so by just using the off topic label anytime things get political. Tildes has a well balanced user moderation system, unlike say a Reddit where voices are wiped out by exponential (down) voting power. But you might also concede that sometimes conflict is arbitrary, and give up. Still, feel good knowing there is no special moral imperative for you to not enjoy the Netflix series. Just like I sympathize with someone who refuses to watch because there's too much pain there. It's not the core of ethics.
Idk, I think you can boycott the KKK without worrying about the white sheet manufacturers. No one is perfect nor can they be, but accepting that isn't the same as using it as an excuse to do what I want rather than what I think is right. And that's internal, not about showing anyone else anything.
But this sounds like you're saying to change the world instead of trying to exist more ethically in the fucked up space we have, rather than doing one while working on the other (in our copious spare time.) Which is your call, but I don't think that we're deluded this is the ideal. This just is.
In fact we should worry about the white sheet manufacturers. The fact that this is offensive to our moral intuition is a product of society. It would be disastrous for capitalism if we did.
Focus on buying / selling, this part is key. Imagine a farmers market. Person AA selling cakes is a KKK members; BB is not. You decide to buy from BB. AA starves to death. Where is the ethics in that? Furthermore, it turns out that BB uses the profits to buy a white sheet for their bed. The sheet manufacture wakes up one morning, turns on the news, and sees his work at a KKK march. A minority of their sales compared to beds. But there is nobody hiring at the blue sheet factory, so he is forced to enslave himself making white ones (much less to write poetry, enjoy a fine summer day, etc).
Now ignore those fundamental flaws, and focus on the practical. BB skips the bedsheets and buys some carrots instead. The carrot grower buys a lottery ticket and wins generational wealth to spend on his political preferences. Too bad, he's the head of the klan. Money is fungible, you can't control where it goes. And even if you could trace and weigh every potential path, at least in the United States you would find that it accumulates not with you or me, but with the ultra rich (like Elon Musk), who have access to exponential growth.
The buying / selling part is crucial. If I said you had to support the KKK to protect the sheet manufacturers, this would require you to compromise your sincere identity. But what you buy has no impact on your actual identity, despite what advertisers want us to believe. Practically speaking you wouldn't want to walk down the street in a white hood, but fundamentally the clothing you wear has no connection to who you are as an individual.
But I wanted the last part of my post to be concessionary. Given that the world is flawed, you may choose to boycott Harry Potter having conceded that the strategy is corrupted at its core, potentially counterproductive, etc. If you met Rowling one day and she offered objections similar to mine, you could simply remind her that earthquakes kill both the good and the bad. If arbitrariness bothers her, she should've thought of that when she got upset about transgender people.
My core issue is about moral obligation. I think we have many such obligations in our lives, which are centered on our sincere personal actions in the world. But given the core corruption of the system, and the imperfectness of trying to work within it, what we buy and sell is not one of them. So you can choose to boycott yourself, but to impose that as a measure of another's moral character is where things break down.
Book stores have other books besides Harry Potter, particularly in kids and YA literature.
I dunno man, it just seems like we all have a choice in how we choose to spend our time and money. True, there is no ethical capitalism, but that shouldn't give you carte blanche to just say "screw it, buy everything". You can choose your battles, you can choose what issues do and don't align with your values and your pocketbook at a given time.
Harry Potter is, to me, a very easy thing to just ... not buy into. I have kids at the age range that Harry Potter is aimed at. They like Percy Jackson way more. And Rick Riordan is, from everything I've seen, a pretty stand up person. It's easy to buy a Percy Jackson or Winston Chu book instead of Harry Potter.
To circumvent the plot hole, please imagine that the profit margin of a coffee in my imaginary bookstore is equivalent to a given book. The right-wing barista set the coffee price too high, perhaps that's why the cashier's employment was so precarious. His poor fiscal expertise being another reason the public was foolish to vote for him is also canon.
I suggest creating a "JK Rowling is a bitch" megathread, so that everyone who thinks she is a bitch can talk freely about how much of a bitch she is without pestering fans of the franchise.
Besides, at the most, you* are being like the vegan screaming "meat is murder" in a steakhouse. Do you really think you'll convince anyone? Do you even want to?
If someone screamed "meat is murder" while I enjoyed my steak, I would probably eat even more meat out of spite. Just saying.
[*]: I was not about talking any particular person but rather all of those who previously engaged in the described behavior.
It really does have the vibe of a sit in protest action rather than a discussion. Ironically I feel like there actually wouldn’t be that much attention on the series if not for the arguing. Like the only reason I even clicked into this (or the other) thread was because there’s like 200 comments on it.
It’s more engagement than Tildes sees on almost any other topic and it is creating an environment of unhealthy beef only thinking.
You can ask deimos. Or just create it and see what happens.
There's filter functionality on Tildes, use it. That goes for both sides of this argument..
Genuine, not sarcastic, are you imagining that fans and haters alike filter the topic and thus no one comments on it? Because that's the only way I see a "both sides" thing working and I'm not sure I track what you mean otherwise.
I don't think the
jk rowlingtag will appear as an author tag on everything related to the new Harry Potter show*. This discussion is also more of asocietything than amediathing.* Ironically, there isn't even a rowling tag on this post
I would, for purely rhetorical reasons, like to discuss this piece of art, but not its creator.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/Adolf_Hitler_-_Wien_Oper.jpg
Looks like watercolor. The architecture is quite beautifully rendered, but it does seem like the artist gave up on whatever they were trying to do in the bottom right (is it a fountain, maybe?). The women on the bottom right also looks a bit like a cryptid.
Overall, as a landscape, the use of value to create form is pretty good, and I like that use of softer edges to imply distance on the building.
Compositionally it's somewhat weak - there doesn't seem to be a clear focal point. The detailing on the main face of the building seems like it would be the focal point, but it gets jutted quite far to the left.
I should clarify, I have zero interest in discussing art made by a bigot, let alone Adolf Hitler.
I suppose everyone has their own line, but IMO I think it's actually less ethically dubious than discussing JK Rowling. The later is alive, and you can argue that discussion promotes her work, which supports financially whatever she's doing, whereas Hitler is like, very dead, and no amount of talking about his adolescent watercolors (nor did the version of the person who painted that do anything evil yet) is going to change that.
Discussion and support are separate things. Often it's important to analyze how some of the most evil people thought in their own writing to see where things go wrong.
I really enjoyed this comment, it is a lovely way of illustrating how even the discussion of controversial or divisive media can be enriching.
Personally I think discussing works by terrible people is absolutely fine provided everyone is aware of the author and their actions/views, and is not an endorsement of those actions/views.
For purely historical reasons, I hope that the artist gets into art school.
Just to really "derail" this discussion (not that there is one), oh, so you think we should not only negotiate with terrorists but just give them what they want? We should just appease the bigots and hope they are satisfied?
Yeah I don't really see a point in replying to this... Joke? It's too aggressive in tone for me to think it's a good idea.
If not for his name in the URL, that would have been simple for me. I wouldn't have recognized it and the signature isn't legible enough to notice it without studying it more (even then) and I wouldn't have done that ordinarily.
Knowing now what you know, would you like to discuss the art purely on its merits? We won't allow discussion of the artist, that's off topic.
I know you're being ironic about it to highlight the nature of the conversation about HP by further mentioning the discussion of the artist is off-topic, but since said artist is long dead and in no way benefits from it at this point I imagine many people could probably discuss it without as many qualms these days.
I would be one of those people. I wouldn't in this scenario since it's not a genuine offer but also because I don't really respond to that kind of art, it does not really provoke anything to me. I'd probably look at it for a few seconds and then forget about it. It is possible that I've even seen it before and just don't remember it.
I don't actually understand your point here. You can absolutely discuss this art without talking about the artist. It's... fine. The lines/perspective are a bit off in places, the shadows are incorrect in places, and it sort of seems like the artist gave up before finishing some of the mid-ground people/ghosts.
I guess if this came up in an art discussion, there may be questions about why this piece. And maybe at that point, it would come back to "surprise! it's Hitler!", but if this was hanging in a hotel lobby, I probably wouldn't give it a second glance. And if it were hanging in an art gallery, I'd wonder why they thought it was good enough to display.
Right, and if I saw this in a hotel lobby, I would leave that hotel and never return. And probably post a review to warn others. Because I don’t think this is a piece of art you truly can separate from the artist.
I'm genuinely interested: is that because you consider hanging a piece of art by Hitler to be an endorsement of his actions/views?
Yes.
Yeah, so we can do it without being accuses that we are nazi. Yes? ... Yes?
Purely theoretical, is it ok to say that you like this artwork without being accused that you are nazi? I kinda like the pallet of the colors of this image.