Important clarification/FAQ
I am not calling to coddle or excuse the behavior of bigoted men in any way!
I am calling to be kind and understanding to young men (often ages 10-20) who are very manipulable and succeptible to the massive anti feminist propaganda machine. Hope this clarifies that very important distinction. :)
Very good comments that express key points:
- Detailed summary of the situation if you’re wondering what’s going on
- The rhetorical value of the bear hypothetical and what this means for you
- One example of why the long-term rhetorical value of the hypothetical is poor, in the context of intersectionality
- What does disenfranchisement mean in this context?
- The importance of not asking women to tone down their expressions of fear and frustration
- “But why can’t they just say it nicely?”
- The importance of participation in kindness toward young men, specifically outside the context of people speaking their experiences
Edit: This post has now been removed and restored twice. I want to encourage you all:
Be decent to one another
I think this post is a valuable thing given the current state of the Fediverse, please don’t fuck it up for us by being toxic in the comments.
I mean something that satire gets pretty rightfully dogged for a lot of the time, as a schtick, is a lack of nuanced understanding of an issue. Like south park’s manbearpig schtick, or maybe like, I dunno, borat. Idiocracy. Office space, maybe, dunno, haven’t seen that one, don’t know too much satire. Tropic thunder, I guess, right. None of these are really nuanced portrayals of what they’re satirizing, because to do so is kind of antithetical to the genre.
that’s exactly the point, you provide a point that is so aggressively anti-nuance, that it forces people to reckon with the concept of nuance internally. Because obviously they shouldn’t be believing what you say.
Satire is hard, you have to do it correctly, and once done correctly it can be a very powerful tool. Everyone cites a modest proposal as a really good example of satire, because it is. You can’t just walk up to someone and exclaim yourself to be a nazi, walk away, and then go “no actually that was satire”
Ah, yeah, I see. I think if you’re going for that, the satire has to be more well-calculated than most tends to be. It can’t just be like, an extreme portrayal of opinions, because then you’ll either Poe’s law yourself into getting people that agree, or you’ll offend perhaps a target audience that needs their mind changed. I think I have noticed that I have had more success trying to kind of like, find a gap there, and then turn it around. Shitting in the street is likely to get you arrested sort of thing, if done as protest, RIP modern diogenes. But filling a cup with your own spit and then drinking it, that’s very weird, not something that anyone can really verbalize any logical opposition to, and is offensive. I don’t have any like, good political illustrations of that kind of satire, but, I’d go with something along those lines, something that can very obviously point out a flaw.
that’s kind of my problem with satire, is that i don’t think most people truly understand what satire is, they just write shitty humor and go “it’s satirical” when in reality, it’s just incredibly laden in irony, and you don’t understand the difference.
True satire IMO, is something that is so reprehensible, that it is literally impossible to believe, but not so reprehensible that it’s forbidden speak.
I’ve been toying with political satire myself, a couple good examples i’ve drummed up over the years are “human rights were a mistake” “i think eugenics is good actually” (although i don’t really like that one tbh) currently my favorite is what i refer to as “weaponized apathy” which is more performative satire than anything. You find something that you shouldn’t be apathetic to, and then become apathetic to it, and everything immediately surrounding it, preferably that includes the potential for your death. (you’re making a point, not an argument here) though the difficulty with the last two are contextual bindings, because it’s not trivial to just slot those in to everyday speak, you have to lead in and out from them. Otherwise they fall flat.
For me it’s less pointing out a flaw, and forcing people to think about things, because i think that helps. Also lets be honest, it’s funny watching people react.
Yeah see the problem with the first two examples you came up with is that I can count a lot of people I’ve interacted with that believe that shit. Maybe I need to get new friend groups, but it’s really hard to avoid poe’s law online, because you can find basically anyone who will believe any random shit you come up with, if you try hard enough. There aren’t any strawmen online anymore, there’s just viewpoints. Weaponized apathy is pretty good though I like that one. Going to a protest and just like bringing a grill and being like “I just want to grill for god’s sake”. You’ve arrived at the function to grill but also to be apathetic in public where people will see your apathy, very nice, very absurd.
Ooh, new strat I just remembered exists that might solve this issue a little bit, self-contradictory satire. It gets everyone really mad, but also it’s impossible to conceptualize of what’s actually being said without putting in a little bit of thought to actually sus out what’s happening there. Being a pro-life fundamentalist christian that thinks of life as happening at conception, but also being early term pro-abortion and pro stem cell research, pro-test tube babies, pro-genetic modification. God creates the man at conception, and we are trying to act more in the image of god, it’s only right to toy with life in the same way, maybe. I dunno, just spitballing, but maybe something like that could work as a satire. A satire of nothing, a satire of someone that doesn’t exist, I guess. A satire of everyone, total hypothetical.
i think part of the trick for all of them is weaponized apathy to be honest. Because with something like human rights, you could be a queer person for example, and say that you shouldn’t have human rights, even though you’re literally married for example. The entire point is hitting people with something that makes so little sense it forces them to think about it properly.
yeah, that would be epic, i should totally do that some day. Show up to a protest and start doing community work for free for no fucking reason lol. Pathetic millennial (a now dead channel that i used to enjoy) did that a few times as a shtick, it was pretty good.
yeah that could be another good one, the problem there is that it’s very LAMF material, much like gay republicans being attacked by their own political party.
satire of nothing/everyone might also be a really good way of bringing out the extremely non personable nature of these things