When it all goes political at the end, what exactly does the author think happened in colleges. He uses the word 'woke' as if a horrible plague struck.
Maybe, I'm just sheltered, and civilization did collapse at some point in the last decade, so can someone point to a summary of what people in his bubble think happened?
> The specific way that lefties will dismiss this problem will be to say, hey, who cares, it’s just adolescents on TikTok. They won’t affirmatively say that it’s good that thousands of teenagers claim to have spontaneously developed an extremely rare and very punishing mental illness, because that’s stupid, so they’ll say it just doesn’t matter, and really it’s weird that you’re paying attention to this. I’ve already established why I care - I believe that this behavior, and the broader suite of 21st century progressive attitudes towards mental health, are doing immense damage to vulnerable young people. But also we’ve seen this movie before.
> People pretend that this never happened, now, but in the early and mid-2010s, the stock lefty response to woke insanity at college was not to say that the kids were right and their politics were good. That was a rarely-encountered defense. No, the sneering and haughty response to complaints about, say, incredibly broad trigger warning policies that would effectively give students the option to skip any material they wanted to was, “hey, it’s just college! They’re crazy kids, who cares? Why are you paying so much attention?” Of course, first it was just elite liberal arts colleges, tiny little places, who cares about what happens there. And then it was just college. And then it was just college and Tumblr, and then college and Tumblr and Twitter, and then it was media and the arts, and then all the think tanks and nonprofits, and when it had reached a certain saturation point the defense changed: now it was good. Just like that, overnight, the “it doesn’t matter if that’s happening” sneering defense switched to the “yes that’s happening and it’s good that is’s happening” sneering defense. From an argument of irrelevancy to an argument of affirmation in no time at all, and absolutely no acknowledgment that what they were dismissing as meaningless the day before they were now defending on the merits.
HN just had an article on the front page yesterday talking about how Google Docs will now suggest you not use words like “motherboard” and “landlord”, and instead use more “inclusive” language. This stuff has literally gone from “it’s just college kids” to “it’s just Google”. And please, no “you can just build your own Google Docs” responses.
Here's someone making fun of people who get upset about this kind of language evolution, written in 1985 and clearly exasperated from reading the kind of nonsense for years before that:
deBoer is a partisan providing raw meat to a partisan audience. If you're on his side the style of showering contempt on your adversaries is thrilling, if you're on the other side it's grating.
Such articles usually get flagged sooner or later.
Maybe, I'm just sheltered, and civilization did collapse at some point in the last decade, so can someone point to a summary of what people in his bubble think happened?
> The specific way that lefties will dismiss this problem will be to say, hey, who cares, it’s just adolescents on TikTok. They won’t affirmatively say that it’s good that thousands of teenagers claim to have spontaneously developed an extremely rare and very punishing mental illness, because that’s stupid, so they’ll say it just doesn’t matter, and really it’s weird that you’re paying attention to this. I’ve already established why I care - I believe that this behavior, and the broader suite of 21st century progressive attitudes towards mental health, are doing immense damage to vulnerable young people. But also we’ve seen this movie before.
> People pretend that this never happened, now, but in the early and mid-2010s, the stock lefty response to woke insanity at college was not to say that the kids were right and their politics were good. That was a rarely-encountered defense. No, the sneering and haughty response to complaints about, say, incredibly broad trigger warning policies that would effectively give students the option to skip any material they wanted to was, “hey, it’s just college! They’re crazy kids, who cares? Why are you paying so much attention?” Of course, first it was just elite liberal arts colleges, tiny little places, who cares about what happens there. And then it was just college. And then it was just college and Tumblr, and then college and Tumblr and Twitter, and then it was media and the arts, and then all the think tanks and nonprofits, and when it had reached a certain saturation point the defense changed: now it was good. Just like that, overnight, the “it doesn’t matter if that’s happening” sneering defense switched to the “yes that’s happening and it’s good that is’s happening” sneering defense. From an argument of irrelevancy to an argument of affirmation in no time at all, and absolutely no acknowledgment that what they were dismissing as meaningless the day before they were now defending on the merits.