If it’s not clear, I’m not attacking you, or saying you are racist, or anything like that. I’m saying you must be careful with your wording because as you said just now, even if it were to be shown that the migrants were at the center, it wouldn’t be their fault.
The point I’m pushing (and you’re free to disagree as it is a subjective one) is simply that "the ACT of mentioning them as a source, even tangentially, is essentially blaming them as a source. I ask that you take the downvotes on your other comments as proof of my claim.
Looking at people replying to your comment shows that mentioning the migrants as “a possible source” is easily misconstrued by readers as “blame”. This is cuz language be how it do. You can’t predict how your words will be received, or what they will mean when they are.
People receiving those words in this thread are defending the migrants. But not everyone will receive those words the same.
People who fear migrants, or people who are scared of how the influx of migrants will affect their lives (and this must be taken into account with our scaremongering clickbaitey media sadly) will read those words and have a new excuse to fear migrants. That’s why in my opinion that bringing them up as a source at all is at best burying the lede, cuz no matter what it would be their treatment (or lack thereof) after coming to this country that would be to blame. So why bring them up at all? Article’s stupid choices aside, I’m talking to you, and trying to convince you there is no good purpose.
Yes, it is true - and extremely sad - that people on social media often immediately jump to the exact & opposite conclusion as is warranted from what I said, intentionally choosing to first misunderstand me and second to act upon that misunderstanding. But that is not fully on me, especially when I said one single sentence, that could have easily meant several possible things, and is thus at worst ambiguous and therefore neutral. You yourself did this, when you said that “your idea is not realy plausible” - i.e., not “if I understand you correctly, then I think that…”, but your idea, singular, as in one, single, interpretation, with none other possible. This is, if I am not mistaken, known as the “fallacy of extremes” where if X is true then surely there is no possible way that Y could not also be true, where Y is the absolute most extreme version of X, e.g. I dislike X, therefore X is like unto Hitler.
And this is why conservatives dominate the internet. With liberals choosing to eat their own, we have to watch out for attacks from both sides, rather than merely the opposition.
But if you truly were curious what I meant… you could have simply asked? Instead, you told, and despite being wrong, doubled down on it again, shifting the topic ever so slightly so as to maintain a righteous-sounding tone. Well, congrats I suppose, b/c your response did get the same number of upvotes with fewer downvotes (btw I never downvoted you) so… I guess you “won”? But let’s face facts shall we? We both lost here, by allowing the conversation to devolve to this level. I mean that somehow what is - or rather, at least might be - happening to immigrants has been entirely lost from our back-and-forth exchange.
Kudos for at least caring about their plight though, that much I do applaud. I hope you think about this exchange and how you can improve your end, and I will promise to do the same.
My man, i have failed you. I thought i was writing up something non confrontational and still offended. I apologize and will honestly have a hard look at how i come across.
Please read my comment again. I don’t mean to say you didn’t understand it, but do, or (reinterpret it anyway) adding this context:
I never considered that you meant the worst of what people heard, in fact i think your comments, taken in context, are completely fair and fine.
What i mean, and i did say it was fair to disagree, is something we do apparently disagree on, and it is thus:
intentionally choosing to first misunderstand me and second to act upon that misunderstanding. But that is not fully on me,
This is the antithesis of my point.
First, there is nothing intentional about misinterpretations. I, perhaps did misunderstand you, but right now i ama also saying you are unintentionally misunderstanding my point. To reiterate, it is (in my view) partly your responsibility to understand how your speech is interpreted by others.
Fwiw, I agree with most of your message - blaming migrants for a disease is a cop-out, etc. - it is just that it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote!:-P (one potential exception is that they knew about hygiene from whence they came, but transitioning between climates e.g. from a very warm jungle area to one with a bitterly cold winter, could introduce a barrier, plus do not underestimate how many are literal children, whose parents may have done something like literally and physically dropped their children over the fence, then turned around and went back home, or possibly rather simply died of covid or whatever, either way thereby leaving their child to face the new area “alone” i.e. at the mercy of the people in this country to take care of such literal orphans) The rest went downhill from there.
And fwiw, you basically were telling me the opposite of what you yourself seemed to be doing: I am supposed to think hard about how my messages will be received, and adjust my words accordingly, so as to get a better response - and in particular to avoid even the tiniest spectre of a potential misunderstanding? Okay, true but… pot calling the kettle black there? Also, all those pejoratives sprinkled in there - that I made a “mistake”, that I was putting forth a “cop-out” argument, that my idea is “racist”, that my thoughts are “frivolous”, etc. Except you did not even bother to verify that I even meant any of that in the first place - you basically triggered yourself, then reacted to that phantom in your head, the whole conversation having little to no involvement with my actual words, and then when that fact was revealed, rather than apologize you doubled down further and harder, as if the prior message did not exist, except also extending it further to say that was somehow still my fault that you went off like that.
Meh, it happens though:-). The important thing is to learn from it, if you want your words to be something worth paying attention to. And yes, btw, I do acknowledge that I could have done better in my initial, one-sentence comment, regardless. It was very off-the-cuff, not deeply thought out about how others might perceive it (as the article we should have more rights presuming should have done, seeing as how it was an actual article). We both would do well to pause for a moment prior to speaking, to let our words mull over in our heads before blurting them out:-). In my case I could added simply something like “not that I blame them or anything, just coming at this from a diagnostic perspective”, or perhaps more along the lines of my later comments where I clarified that if I was to blame someone it would sooner be predatory landlords and the like. Although it is worth mentioning that there is zero possibility of avoiding ALL potential misunderstandings, especially on a topic such as this that generates such strong emotions in the readers of this article. Still, one more sentence (fragment) would definitely have helped.
Whereas in turn you could do well to listen to your own message about how easily words can be misconstrued. You basically read the article and high on those emotions, used me as a dumping ground, for a topic that I would have agreed with and actively upvoted if you had made it clear that the target was not what I had said, but instead tangentially launching off of that to some other topic entirely, e.g. about the clickbait media’s inaccurate portrayal (except they never mentioned migrants iirc?). i.e. we could have been together on this rather than on opposing sides. It is something to think about, at any rate.
As for why I brought up the topic at all, it is literally the chief and often sole job of anyone at all who works in any of the STEM fields to first diagnose an issue, prior to fixing it. e.g. if the majority of the new disease victims were children, then the response would take a different form than if they were adults. Similarly for whether they speak English well or not, or like… have access to a phone - e.g. if the “solution” is some kind of hotline that people can call to report rat infestations, then would children who don’t speak English and don’t have easy access to a phone be able to take advantage of that, to avoid the horrible conseuences of this phenomena? But anyway, you chose not to care about the reasons why I said what I said, and skipping the investigation stage entirely just jumped into your diatribe of why what I really meant (except that I didn’t mean that at all!) was bad. So perhaps I should modify what I said earlier: we both would do well to pause before speaking, but you also could add in a step to pause and listen. Well, you will do whatever you want, ofc, and I would not dream of trying to change you (b/c that’s impossible), but since you asked, that is my thought:-).
Also, you are right to seriously question yourself, particularly if there is any way that you thought what you wrote was in any universe “non-confrontational”? Instead, I see that you have decided to now triple down on how this is all my fault, for failing to consider how you might interpret what I said inside your own head. Do you see…? Well, anyway, it’s something to consider. You know, I actually do get that - heck, I have been that - but also, I moved on, and I am much happier now as a result. You’ll find your way too, if you keep going (but since you asked, no, tripling down even harder even while making mouth-noises that you are apologetic does not come across as genuine, even if you actually were attempting to be thus).
Also, you are doing it again - e.g. when you say “it is… partly your responsibility to understand how your speech is interpreted by others”, that is an obviously 100% statement, that once again has only the tiniest sliver of relevance to what we were actually discussing. I said ONE SENTENCE, obviously I did not put 20 minutes into composing an entire message about the topic. The context is completely different, b/t my comment about the article, vs. your reply to my too-brief comment.
If you truly get any of what I am saying, you will not reply again and instead spend DAYS thinking about it - I don’t need to hear the entire back-and-forth of what goes on inside your head, it is not what I came to this article nor to the Fediverse for. It is probably too much for me to hope for, but I did at least offer a fully fleshed-out response to your questions, so my conscience is clear.
If it’s not clear, I’m not attacking you, or saying you are racist, or anything like that. I’m saying you must be careful with your wording because as you said just now, even if it were to be shown that the migrants were at the center, it wouldn’t be their fault.
The point I’m pushing (and you’re free to disagree as it is a subjective one) is simply that "the ACT of mentioning them as a source, even tangentially, is essentially blaming them as a source. I ask that you take the downvotes on your other comments as proof of my claim.
Looking at people replying to your comment shows that mentioning the migrants as “a possible source” is easily misconstrued by readers as “blame”. This is cuz language be how it do. You can’t predict how your words will be received, or what they will mean when they are.
People receiving those words in this thread are defending the migrants. But not everyone will receive those words the same.
People who fear migrants, or people who are scared of how the influx of migrants will affect their lives (and this must be taken into account with our scaremongering clickbaitey media sadly) will read those words and have a new excuse to fear migrants. That’s why in my opinion that bringing them up as a source at all is at best burying the lede, cuz no matter what it would be their treatment (or lack thereof) after coming to this country that would be to blame. So why bring them up at all? Article’s stupid choices aside, I’m talking to you, and trying to convince you there is no good purpose.
Yes, it is true - and extremely sad - that people on social media often immediately jump to the exact & opposite conclusion as is warranted from what I said, intentionally choosing to first misunderstand me and second to act upon that misunderstanding. But that is not fully on me, especially when I said one single sentence, that could have easily meant several possible things, and is thus at worst ambiguous and therefore neutral. You yourself did this, when you said that “your idea is not realy plausible” - i.e., not “if I understand you correctly, then I think that…”, but your idea, singular, as in one, single, interpretation, with none other possible. This is, if I am not mistaken, known as the “fallacy of extremes” where if X is true then surely there is no possible way that Y could not also be true, where Y is the absolute most extreme version of X, e.g. I dislike X, therefore X is like unto Hitler.
And this is why conservatives dominate the internet. With liberals choosing to eat their own, we have to watch out for attacks from both sides, rather than merely the opposition.
But if you truly were curious what I meant… you could have simply asked? Instead, you told, and despite being wrong, doubled down on it again, shifting the topic ever so slightly so as to maintain a righteous-sounding tone. Well, congrats I suppose, b/c your response did get the same number of upvotes with fewer downvotes (btw I never downvoted you) so… I guess you “won”? But let’s face facts shall we? We both lost here, by allowing the conversation to devolve to this level. I mean that somehow what is - or rather, at least might be - happening to immigrants has been entirely lost from our back-and-forth exchange.
Kudos for at least caring about their plight though, that much I do applaud. I hope you think about this exchange and how you can improve your end, and I will promise to do the same.
My man, i have failed you. I thought i was writing up something non confrontational and still offended. I apologize and will honestly have a hard look at how i come across.
Please read my comment again. I don’t mean to say you didn’t understand it, but do, or (reinterpret it anyway) adding this context:
I never considered that you meant the worst of what people heard, in fact i think your comments, taken in context, are completely fair and fine.
What i mean, and i did say it was fair to disagree, is something we do apparently disagree on, and it is thus:
This is the antithesis of my point.
First, there is nothing intentional about misinterpretations. I, perhaps did misunderstand you, but right now i ama also saying you are unintentionally misunderstanding my point. To reiterate, it is (in my view) partly your responsibility to understand how your speech is interpreted by others.
If you disagree, I’m all ears.
Fwiw, I agree with most of your message - blaming migrants for a disease is a cop-out, etc. - it is just that it has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what I wrote!:-P (one potential exception is that they knew about hygiene from whence they came, but transitioning between climates e.g. from a very warm jungle area to one with a bitterly cold winter, could introduce a barrier, plus do not underestimate how many are literal children, whose parents may have done something like literally and physically dropped their children over the fence, then turned around and went back home, or possibly rather simply died of covid or whatever, either way thereby leaving their child to face the new area “alone” i.e. at the mercy of the people in this country to take care of such literal orphans) The rest went downhill from there.
And fwiw, you basically were telling me the opposite of what you yourself seemed to be doing: I am supposed to think hard about how my messages will be received, and adjust my words accordingly, so as to get a better response - and in particular to avoid even the tiniest spectre of a potential misunderstanding? Okay, true but… pot calling the kettle black there? Also, all those pejoratives sprinkled in there - that I made a “mistake”, that I was putting forth a “cop-out” argument, that my idea is “racist”, that my thoughts are “frivolous”, etc. Except you did not even bother to verify that I even meant any of that in the first place - you basically triggered yourself, then reacted to that phantom in your head, the whole conversation having little to no involvement with my actual words, and then when that fact was revealed, rather than apologize you doubled down further and harder, as if the prior message did not exist, except also extending it further to say that was somehow still my fault that you went off like that.
Meh, it happens though:-). The important thing is to learn from it, if you want your words to be something worth paying attention to. And yes, btw, I do acknowledge that I could have done better in my initial, one-sentence comment, regardless. It was very off-the-cuff, not deeply thought out about how others might perceive it (as the article we should have more rights presuming should have done, seeing as how it was an actual article). We both would do well to pause for a moment prior to speaking, to let our words mull over in our heads before blurting them out:-). In my case I could added simply something like “not that I blame them or anything, just coming at this from a diagnostic perspective”, or perhaps more along the lines of my later comments where I clarified that if I was to blame someone it would sooner be predatory landlords and the like. Although it is worth mentioning that there is zero possibility of avoiding ALL potential misunderstandings, especially on a topic such as this that generates such strong emotions in the readers of this article. Still, one more sentence (fragment) would definitely have helped.
Whereas in turn you could do well to listen to your own message about how easily words can be misconstrued. You basically read the article and high on those emotions, used me as a dumping ground, for a topic that I would have agreed with and actively upvoted if you had made it clear that the target was not what I had said, but instead tangentially launching off of that to some other topic entirely, e.g. about the clickbait media’s inaccurate portrayal (except they never mentioned migrants iirc?). i.e. we could have been together on this rather than on opposing sides. It is something to think about, at any rate.
As for why I brought up the topic at all, it is literally the chief and often sole job of anyone at all who works in any of the STEM fields to first diagnose an issue, prior to fixing it. e.g. if the majority of the new disease victims were children, then the response would take a different form than if they were adults. Similarly for whether they speak English well or not, or like… have access to a phone - e.g. if the “solution” is some kind of hotline that people can call to report rat infestations, then would children who don’t speak English and don’t have easy access to a phone be able to take advantage of that, to avoid the horrible conseuences of this phenomena? But anyway, you chose not to care about the reasons why I said what I said, and skipping the investigation stage entirely just jumped into your diatribe of why what I really meant (except that I didn’t mean that at all!) was bad. So perhaps I should modify what I said earlier: we both would do well to pause before speaking, but you also could add in a step to pause and listen. Well, you will do whatever you want, ofc, and I would not dream of trying to change you (b/c that’s impossible), but since you asked, that is my thought:-).
Also, you are right to seriously question yourself, particularly if there is any way that you thought what you wrote was in any universe “non-confrontational”? Instead, I see that you have decided to now triple down on how this is all my fault, for failing to consider how you might interpret what I said inside your own head. Do you see…? Well, anyway, it’s something to consider. You know, I actually do get that - heck, I have been that - but also, I moved on, and I am much happier now as a result. You’ll find your way too, if you keep going (but since you asked, no, tripling down even harder even while making mouth-noises that you are apologetic does not come across as genuine, even if you actually were attempting to be thus).
Also, you are doing it again - e.g. when you say “it is… partly your responsibility to understand how your speech is interpreted by others”, that is an obviously 100% statement, that once again has only the tiniest sliver of relevance to what we were actually discussing. I said ONE SENTENCE, obviously I did not put 20 minutes into composing an entire message about the topic. The context is completely different, b/t my comment about the article, vs. your reply to my too-brief comment.
If you truly get any of what I am saying, you will not reply again and instead spend DAYS thinking about it - I don’t need to hear the entire back-and-forth of what goes on inside your head, it is not what I came to this article nor to the Fediverse for. It is probably too much for me to hope for, but I did at least offer a fully fleshed-out response to your questions, so my conscience is clear.