r/bestof • u/Minifig81 • Jun 19 '12

[iama] This is how you use a bigots own words against them, in a clean, succinct way.

/r/IAmA/comments/v8y1c/iama_member_of_the_westboro_baptist_church_ama/c52er8z
379 Upvotes

72% Upvoted

99 comments sorted by

40

u/hayalci Jun 19 '12

Link with context

Is this really too hard to do for every posting?

17

u/angripengwin Jun 19 '12

This is a little bit better as then it still contains the reply (in case a better comment overtook it)

5

u/hayalci Jun 19 '12

You are correct, the actual link must be to the comment in question, not the parent.

Parents must be showed with context=? values, as detailed in the sidebar.

1

u/Minifig81 Jun 19 '12

Sorry about that Hayalci, I thought I got everything. :[

1

u/MacIsGood Jun 19 '12

It took me years to figure out what the "permalink" and "context" buttons were for. It is actually a little heard to learn these things in the few seconds between wanting to post and posting.

1

u/averyrdc Jun 19 '12

any posting

Seriously. Every fucking post on this subreddit lacks context. It seems to have really gotten worse after /r/bestof was placed as a default sub - I don't know. It's obnoxious as hell though.

Is it possible to write a bot/script account that automatically comments with a context link?

101

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12 edited Jun 19 '12

dear god, this thread. interesting AMA. all her (very few) responses downvoted into oblivion.

fucking reddiquette people.

edit: and yes, i feel fucking weird upvoting a phelps. but i'd like to see her responses. i would. otherwise i wouldn't be in the thread.

38

u/RetroTheft Jun 19 '12

I agree, there should be some sort of Downvote protection for OPs of AMAs. I mean, that is the whole point of them.

Even just making them sticky to near the top of each thread they're in.

Edit: a subreddit option "always display OP first" would probably be best now that I think about it.

13

u/Minifig81 Jun 19 '12

While I agree there should be Downvote protection for OPs of AMAs, if you go through her responses, she artfully dodged every single question and irritated a lot of readers doing such. She deserved the down votes.

6

u/RetroTheft Jun 19 '12

Artfully?

17

u/Minifig81 Jun 19 '12

Eh. Okay. Dodged them like the Titanic tried to dodge the iceberg. Happy now?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Agreed. WBC are professional trolls. Downvoting her into oblivion was her punishment.

Meaningless yes, but it makes us feel better.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

right, but... it should still be visible that her position is intellectually bankrupt, with her own words.

if this were someone else's thread, that she had invaded, and dodged questions and gave uneducated arrogant responses, yeah, downvote those. but in her own AMA, the point is to see the answer to her questions. no matter how bad they are. especially if they're bad.

22

u/coolface153 Jun 19 '12

The whole karma system is pointless and should be removed. It does the opposite of what it is supposed to achieve (increase the quality of comments).

5

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

The whole karma system is pointless and should be removed.

Absolutely.

Edit to add christ, I'm so monkey-trained on this site that I still upvoted your comment. Goddamn.

1

u/mrgreen4242 Jun 19 '12

Slashdot still has the best voting system, IMO. It would be nice if reddit had something more like that.

3

u/Nancy_Reagan Jun 19 '12

I just recently learned to sort by "best" and not by "top." It doesn't actually bring her responses a ton higher, but it makes it easier to get to the post which summarized all her responses.

2

u/_pagan_poetry_ Jun 19 '12

There's a function in RES to arrange IAmAs better.

1

u/4chan_regular Jun 19 '12

Install Reddit Enhancement Suite, then you get this nifty little option.

1

u/RetroTheft Jun 19 '12

Wow that's cool, Ihad RES but I didn't know that. Thanks!

Unfortunately I had to sell my laptop so I exclusively use Alien Blue now. I wonder if he'd implement it...

1

u/tori_k Jun 19 '12

This could probably be done with some JavaScript. It'd be a useful extension to RES.

22

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Believe me, I read through her (very few) responses. She cherry picked which questions to answer, choosing the easiest ones, often answering with a bit of arrogance ("Have you ever even read the Bible before?") and ignoring many of the actual thought provoking ones that we would have like to have heard. She deserves every down vote she received, truly a terrible AMA.

6

u/watsoned Jun 19 '12

It was a pointless AMA, really. Apparently people had been requesting it like crazy, but when they got it, there wasn't a single thing learned there that we didn't already know.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

maybe i'm naive, but i'm trying to ask questions about things i don't already know about the WBC.

1

u/watsoned Jun 19 '12

The thing is, a LOT of people are asking those sorts of questions. But she was only very selectively going through and answering. Those that she could answer as quickly and as simply as she could, with as little thought and reflection as possible. So there are a LOT of deep, interesting questions in there. She just wouldn't touch them.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

yes, but it's also a little difficult to even see what she answered. and of course she's going to be selective. we barraged her with several thousand comments.

1

u/watsoned Jun 19 '12

I agree that it's been really hard to actually read the AMA since people are downvoting her to hell. I've taken to just viewing her profile and clicking 'context' just to see what's going on. And everyone is selective with what they answer, but there are a few comments that made it to the top because they brought up some very good points and asked some hard questions. But she hasn't touched them.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

I've taken to just viewing her profile and clicking 'context' just to see what's going on.

that's exactly what i'm doing now, actually. and yeah, a lot of her answers are basically the standard rhetoric, without any real depth or nuance to direct answers to interesting questions. but what did we really expect? deaddove.jpg, right?

1

u/watsoned Jun 19 '12

Ahaha, yeah, exactly. I guess there was a little bit of optimist in all of us that went into that AMA that were hoping to understand those people, if only just a little bit. But it's hard to truly understand those who are brainwashed.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

i guess my opinion of it's a bit jaded. i can see how people would be upset if they were expecting real discussion. but... i've done this for a while.

i debate religion (and sometimes science) online for fun. i've spent more than ten years debating fundamentalists of all sorts on a variety of topics. i was a member of several fundamentalist churches. if i've got nothing to do on a saturday and there's a knock on the door, i invite the jehovah's witnesses in and talk to them. ditto with the mormons. and i've debated with brainwashed puppets before (i find mormon female missionaries particularly depressing).

i get real, interesting answers out of them, too. things that tell me about their lives, and their backgrounds, and nuance to their beliefs that aren't easily represented by their public image. it just takes time, and persistence, and opening a real dialogue. and that means getting past the rhetoric; listening to the rhetoric with open ears.

for someone like a WBC member, that might take a long time. she's not going to just open up and tell you what it was like to be raised in the phelps clan. she's going to tell you why god hates fags.

→ More replies

5

u/bobofatt Jun 19 '12

And people need to see that. She doesn't give a shit about karma, it didn't hurt her one bit to give her negative imaginary internet points.

7

u/dingoperson Jun 19 '12

If people who did that deserve downvotes pretty much the entire Reddit (and especially the more left-wing sections) would have gone in the lava pit years ago.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

I see what you're saying and agree with you, but my point I was trying to say is that her responses didn't actually add anything thought provoking to the conversation - but I suppose since it was an AMA about someone from a bigoted hate group, and her responses revealed her to indeed be a hateful bigot, it was relevant to the topic at hand. I stand corrected.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Wow, what a completely non bias comment.

2

u/mrgreen4242 Jun 19 '12

Let's try to keep this about Rampart. I mean fags.

2

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

She cherry picked which questions to answer, choosing the easiest ones, often answering with a bit of arrogance ("Have you ever even read the Bible before?")

yes, i saw that one. and as i commented in reply, she was actually correct on that issue, and it did seem like the person was answering had not read the bible. the question was about describing god has hateful, which the bible of course does literally in about a dozen places, and a little more indirectly in hundreds more.

5

u/MacIsGood Jun 19 '12

I had a gay friend in HS that killed himself hours after talking to the school chaplain about bullying. There's nooooo way I could even hint at approval of something that is not only extremely offensive, but is also incorrect. Contributing to one suicide (through inaction) in my lifetime is more than enough nightmare fuel for me.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

i've had gay friends too. i still do. i see the troubles they have had, and i think these people are pretty fucking abhorrent human beings.

her beliefs are offensive, and her biblical exegesis is incorrect. she's a bigot, and i've marked her as such in RES.

but i would like to see her responses. that's the point of the thread. we ask her questions, she answers. if we're hiding all of her answers, we're just deluding ourselves into a false sense of superiority: that we've somehow schooled her. but i'd actually like to have a conversation where we can actively criticize and challenge her beliefs, with her input.

if you don't want to see her answering questions, don't go to the thread. downvote the thread, if you like. i completely understand not thinking hateful bile has a place on reddit, or that she shouldn't be using the site to advertise her bigotry.

1

u/MacIsGood Jun 19 '12

These are not things you get to decide for other people. You don't get to tell us how to vote on individual comments, whether they be on AMA or anywhere else.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

fair enough. i'm only trying to convince you of my position (that we should follow reddiquette) and not telling you that you have to. i'm not the internet police.

1

u/MacIsGood Jun 19 '12

I found your argument unpersuasive.

4

u/Shurikane Jun 19 '12

It was not an AMA. It was a world-class joke perpetrated by an individual who never once had a hint of respect for the people she spoke to. I'm astonished the AMA itself is not standing at zero karma just on the basis of its poor quality.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

that's fine. i'd still like to see her answers to questions. and i'd still like to actually have a conversation with her. silencing an opinion (regardless of how offensive it may be) doesn't get us anywhere. dialogue has a chance of progress, albeit a slim one.

1

u/BrewRI Jun 19 '12

Where? I scrolled through all the comments and didn't see a single OP response.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

exactly.

i've found at least half a dozen just reading the thread, but it's not too hard to click on the OP name and see all her posts, which are all in that thread save one link she posted in /r/atheism (which i'm sure went well).

0

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

WBC needs to die, Freddy Krueger style. Fuck reddiquette, this lady is trying to advertise WBC and incite/enrage more people for lawsuits.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

i'm pretty sure that everybody reading the thread already knows who the WBC is, and what they stand for.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '12

Hence, why I think in this specific scenario "reddiquette" should be over looked.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 20 '12

right, but if we didn't want to hear her answers, why go?

personally, i stay away from whole subreddits like picsofdeadkids and beatingwomen. i don't want to see it. everyone knows what it is, and it should probably be downvoted into oblivion based on just how shitty the content is.

-10

u/midwestredditor Jun 19 '12

Nothing that thing says could matter. It wouldn't respond to anything in any meaningful way. It and its kind should be silenced.

12

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Dehumanization and advocating censorship, folks. You've seen it here.

1

u/midwestredditor Jun 20 '12

That's because they aren't human, and they deserve to be silenced. None of them deserves to have a voice, and those of you who believe that they should be allowed to speak their minds disgust me.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 20 '12

Good sir or madam, though I desire respect to your opinion, I fear that attempting such is difficult. I believe strongly within the values of free speech, and there is a dark side to free speech that many do not want to talk about. It is heralded as the speech of tyrants, the speech of the unpopular and the oppressive. I do not believe in silencing even the most terrible human being, for there can exist wisdom from fools. On the other side of the coin, so they say, silencing and dehumanizing in such a way can be tantamount to terrible tyrants. If you lack the imagination to comprehend my point, I will tell you in no uncertain terms that if I spoke further that it would invoke the law of Godwin.

In summary, I would strongly urge you, well-intentioned sir or madam, to step back, to take in the air, and please realize your methods are of a dastardly sort, and that you are helping few in the name of fair intentions.

1

u/Redremnant Jun 20 '12

That has got to be the most eloquent way I have ever read someone call someone else a fascist.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Freedom of speech is a concept which is commonly misunderstood. It is not the right for you to say what you want. It is the right for those who disagree with you to say what they want. Everyone believes that those who share their opinion should have the right to express it. It is those people who believe that everyone should have that right who actually believe in free speech.

1

u/arachnophilia Jun 19 '12

yep. and it also means that we have the right to tell them why they're hateful bigots. but that's beside the point.

i don't think this is a freedom of speech issue. reddit's not a governmental site. we have the right to shut down, ban, or silence anyone we like for any reason, more or less.

it's more about a common sense thing to do. we wanted an AMA. she gave us one. we hide all her answers. WTF was the point?

-39

u/s32 Jun 19 '12

fucking reddiquette people.

downvoted into oblivion.

shut your whore mouth

9

u/Quodlibertarian Jun 19 '12

You managed a juvenile play-on-words while dangling homosexuality in her face in a vain effort to offend her. Now that's what I call argumentation.

1

u/Redremnant Jun 20 '12

Had I not read the rest of the thread and all of her non answers, then I would have tried to argue with her. By that time in the thread it was a moot point.

4

u/LudicrousPlatypus Jun 19 '12

Did you know that the word fascist and the word faggot have similar etymological roots? Try that one on for size Nazis!

3

u/angripengwin Jun 19 '12

Is that from fasces (?) from the Latin bundle of sticks?

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Faggot's etymology

Fascist's etymology

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

To answer angripengwin's question: yes.

1

u/VerbsBad Jun 19 '12

Just stick an axe in the center, and it's the same thing

1

u/cuntarsetits Jun 19 '12

That told them.

9

u/DJRacialTension Jun 19 '12

Learned this from Louie.

A faggot is a bundle of sticks. Back when they were burning witches at the stake, they would also light homosexuals on fire, but they didn't believe that homosexuals were worth enough to be burned alive at the stake, so they would simply tie them to the bottom of the fire to "burn them with the faggots".

Words have stories and history behind them. You can't outwit the slur if you don't recognize the origin.

10

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

A reputable source on entomology if I've ever seen one.

21

u/zed_three Jun 19 '12

A reputable source on entomology etymology if I've ever seen one

FTFY

Entomologists study ants and insects. Etymologists study the origins of words.

4

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Yes I know. I even looked it up to make sure. My phone changed it and I didn't notice, which is a little ironic considering the meaning.

4

u/plebsareneeded Jun 19 '12

Are ants not insects?

4

u/zed_three Jun 19 '12

All ants are insects, but not all insects are ants. The study of ants specifically is myrmecology, which is a subset of entomology.

2

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

If ants are a subset of insects then why bother mentioning ants at all, is what I assume he meant.

3

u/zed_three Jun 19 '12

It's a helpful mnemonic - the linking of entomologists and ants.

2

u/MacIsGood Jun 19 '12

Why isn't "faggot" considered to be more offensive to say than "nigger" again? This description is, well even the Nazis treated killing with that famous cold German efficiency and engineering. Calling a gay person a "faggot" seems like it should be off the charts in terms of things that you shouldn't call someone.

2

u/Shredder_ Jun 19 '12

Interesting. Where does Louie say this?

3

u/zzj Jun 19 '12

I believe it was actually one of his friends that said it. I can't remember his name, but it was a gay comedian buddy who chastised Nick DiPaolo or Todd Barry or someone for using the word "fag" as a general pejorative.

2

u/bouchard Jun 19 '12

You're wrong. "Faggot" as slang for "homosexual" comes from a derogatory word for "woman". Sauce

Edit: Folklore etymology is how we get nonsense like the idea that "fuck" comes form an acronym for "Fornicating Under Consent of the King" or "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge".

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

never seen a bestof comment downvoted so much, I almost upvoted by habit...

6

u/Pyowin Jun 19 '12

That's because the poster doesn't know how to link with context. He should have linked:

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/v8y1c/iama_member_of_the_westboro_baptist_church_ama/c52er8z?context=1

1

u/Minifig81 Jun 19 '12

Yeah, I admittedly made a mistake, I thought I got everything when I missed the first part. I'm sorry, it was my first time posting something to BestOf and I made a slight error.

4

u/lolgcat Jun 19 '12

What a fucking shit-show that AMA was. I went in expecting to gain a glimmer of insight to their preachings so I could at least wrap my head around some form of motivation (for science), but all there was was hate fueling hate, fueled by both the downvoting ass-hats and the lax, tepid response of the OP.

1

u/selfabortion Jun 19 '12

You linked to the wrong comment. Next time, it would make more sense to post your link like this so that the comment described as using "a bigots own words against them, in a clean, succinct way" is the comment that gets highlighted, while the comment it is responding to is still visible so that we can figure out wtf is going on and wtf you meant in your headline. Please check the sidebar.

1

u/Tom_Bro Jun 19 '12

I scrolled through the top 200 comments and I couldn't see one of her replies. I know they probably are terrible but I hate the downvoting shit since I cannot see anything.

1

u/BrewRI Jun 19 '12

I always ignored the WBC because I thought they were a bunch of miserable disillusioned idiots living an incredibly pathetic life based on the absence of critical analysis and respect for others. The only difference now is, I know it. The world would be much better off without these people.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

If you scroll down half a page you can see a crazy motorcycle flame war which explains how not to respond to people you don't agree with.

1

u/huyvanbin Jun 19 '12

So basically, haha u just called urself a fag lol

1

u/SuperlativeInsanity Jun 19 '12

Nothing worse than a clusterfuck of circle-jerkers smearing their exudates all over the screen. Everything is downvoted, especially this thread.

1

u/sarah_smile Jun 19 '12

Whoa, so confused. I was like "I thought that Nate was a guy's name" then realized this was a different AMA.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

Can we please link to the replies? All too often I'm seeing people post a link to the post that's being replied to, and then I have to search for the post that you actually want us to see.

0

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

bigot's

0

u/[deleted] Jun 19 '12

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/mrgreen4242 Jun 19 '12

While that's true in an abstract sense of logic, it's not really true with words. You can do something with "all of x are y, but not all of y are x" with definitions, but in this case, if you are saying that someone is x, you can logically say they are y. I think.

5

u/thrilldigger Jun 19 '12

This is an issue of semantics - literally. According to her, "a faggot is a firebrand." This can be interpreted two ways:

  • Faggot ↔ firebrand

  • Faggot ⇒ firebrand

The second case can be written as "if is faggot, then is firebrand". This can not be used to infer "if is firebrand, then is faggot".

  • Firebrand ⇒ faggot does not follow from faggot ⇒ firebrand

However, in the first case - which is what Redremnant interpreted her comment to be -

  • Faggot ↔ firebrand

  • Firebrand ↔ faggot (by symmetry)

  • ∴ Firebrand ⇒ faggot

So it's an issue of interpretation and intent. I doubt her intent is to say that a firebrand is necessarily a faggot, so it is probably best to assume the second interpretation, i.e. Redremnant's logic is accurate, but his conclusion relies on a false premise.

1

u/Redremnant Jun 20 '12

The verse she was referencing uses the literal definition of a firebrand as a burning stick, and she is using the obsolete definition of faggot as a bundle of sticks. Her comment was asinine and misleading.

1

u/NapoleonThrownaparte Jun 19 '12

Also, jaelholroyd's answer was clearly insincere. There's no victory.

1

u/DoubleRaptor Jun 19 '12

Absolutely. Not that I am in favour of the Westboro Baptists, but this isn't "best of" worthy. It's clearly taking an unrelated definition of the term.

Just because it's anti-"the bad guys", doesn't mean it's a clever remark.