Okay, I'm gonna need some help here.

[conuly]

It's like banging my head against a wall, but more painful. And if I'm going to keep wasting my time on this futile effort, I could at least get a little company there.

I mean, I'm not wrong, am I? My facts aren't wrong, are they? My thoughts aren't missing a crucial point, are they? This person IS being willfully annoying, right?

HELP ME OUT HERE I FEEL SO ALONE.

Also, I didn't know this as I don't really follow celebrity anything (I'm lucky if I know who a certain star IS, much less what they've done and why people care) or watch many movies or TV shows (I do watch TV, of course, but I seem to limit myself to three or four shows. If I add a new one, an old one inevitably drops off my list), but I'm realizing it now by looking at these pictures...

WOW does that girl look like her dad. Will Smith? HIS DAUGHTER LOOKS JUST LIKE HIM.

It's sorta creepy to look at, but I'm sure as she gets older it'll be more her face and less her dad as a young girl. (Kinda like a kid down her block who looks spookily like her grandmother... or she did at four. Creepy seeing a four year old who looks like a 50 year old woman, but now that she's 12 even though her face hasn't changed, it looks like HER instead of her grandma.)

Comments

[erisiansaint]

The problem is that you're arguing a) with an idiot who b) thinks "lol" makes everything ok, who c) genuinely doesn't care who's cast and whether it's appropriate for the character. That person claims to say it's all about the talent, but what that person really means is "I'm not auditioning, so I don't care." It's a spectacular display of privilege and jerkiness.

Did I mention that that particular person came across as having about as much intelligence as your average vacuum cleaner? (I'd say turnip, but I've discovered that I like turnips, they're very good food and good for you.)

But it's not just you. You couldn't get your point across because that person genuinely doesn't care. Or is trolling.

[conuly]

I know, it's a lost cause. I should never have started, but now that I have I want to finish. Triumphantly. NOW, DAMNIT!

[erisiansaint]

It took me a few minutes not to respond entirely rudely to that person. I have no patience for people who intentionally abuse the language and refuse to see that there are huge problems with race and gender and how people are cast because they can't be bothered. It's sheer laziness.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

You were doing all right until you started mind-reading. Telling other people what they think or why they think it is an 'automatic lose' in any argument; telling them that you know what they think on account of their race is racism, plain and simple.

I didn't think she was being willfully annoying. Inadvertently annoying, yeah, because of the chat-speak, but a lot of people use chat-speak online. She's obviously young and/or naive - else she would have known better than to even comment in such a discussion - and probably had no idea she was setting herself up to be a target.

Ordinarily I'm on your side in this sort of thing, but you can't justly call it a triumph unless it's an honorable triumph, and this one isn't looking that way so far. If you insist on the validity of 'race', and, worse, on the notion that one can tell a person's thoughts from their skin color, then you're perpetuating the very same bullshit you claim to stand against. Further, mocking someone for disagreeing with you, even if her disagreement is based on poor logic and limited experience, is not doing anything to further the cause of education and harmony.

Yeah, she set herself up as a target, and now I see a bunch of other people have jumped on the mind-reading bandwagon, having a good old relational-aggression time for themselves. Oh, what a lot they know about this chickie, based on just the few words she wrote, and her icon, of course.

By the same token, what a lot I know from what I've read of their writing, eh? Enough to know that just the little I've said here (and my icon of course, by Sulamith Wulfing) is setting me up to be the next target. That's okay; those who wish may indulge themselves, but I have to say, Connie, this whole thing is unworthy of you, and from your comments, I think you know that.

I could, of course, be mistaken.

[erisiansaint]

Wait, that was me who doesn't like the chatspeak, I'm the one who said that about the 'lol'ing.

But I don't like chatspeak. It's lazy, as I said further up, and saying 'lol' and breezing on without any further words to indicate that they know that their position is somewhat offensive or uncaring is just rude.

Anyway, I think you're conflating a lot of what I said with a lot of what Connie said.

Also, you're not going to be /my/ target. You actually take the trouble to offer your opinion with capital letters, punctuation, clarity, and some thought. Nor is it an unworthy opinion, just that I think you're taking someone else to task for what I said about the chatspeak and the mocking.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Anyway, I think you're conflating a lot of what I said with a lot of what Connie said."

??? Why do you think this? Read my text over again, I believe you will see that it is not so.

I know it was you who didn't like the chatspeak, but you aren't the only one who doesn't like it. Connie asked if the chick was being deliberately annoying; the use of chatspeak was the only thing I could see that might be construed as such. Granted, it's very annoying when one is trying to explain something and the explained-to doesn't get it, but that isn't the explained-to being annoying; it's the explainer being annoyed.

The mocking I was referring to was not yours. It was her "I wonder why I even bother. Some people..." comment, which is sideways as well as derisive. You were the person I was referring to as jumping on the mind-reading bandwagon, calling names and making attributions on the basis of extremely scanty evidence.

For example: "saying 'lol' and breezing on without any further words to indicate that they know that their position is somewhat offensive or uncaring is just rude." - how exactly are you deriving "I know my position is somewhat offensive and uncaring" from "lol"? Isn't that a pretty short and ambiguous sample upon which to base such an interpretation? How do you know what she thinks, what she cares or does not care about, from three letters of uninflected text?

"A spectacular display of privilege and jerkiness" - another harsh character-judgement made on the basis of almost no data. It's practically a textbook illustration of the word prejudice, pre-judging: deciding that one knows all about a person on the basis of a very few traits deemed to be stereotypical. I don't follow celebrities, so don't know who the person in her icon may be, but I can see how it might well be interpreted as the Face of Jerky White Privilege by someone who wished to see it that way. However, that's probably not why she chose it.

*shrugs* Yes, I write fluently in Academian, and have to deliberately stop myself from talking that way, which results in my verbal speech coming out fairly idiosyncratic. I'm also fluent in old-school 733t, and in earlier decades had people on Usenet threatening to packet-bomb me back to the Stone Age for using it too much. One can't gauge the intelligence of people by their online chat. One definitely can't gauge the intelligence of anybody by their ability to handle the mechanics of writing: that's what is called ableist.

I was born with near-perfect Spellcheck. It's not something I achieved, or worked for; it's not even a conscious process; just a 'wild talent'. My brilliant engineer brother, who was ten times the student I was, can't spell his way out of a paper bag, and has to rely on his computer's Spellcheck. I always figured any child of mine would inherit my spelling, but she didn't; she inherited her uncle's instead. Therefore, I have no patience with Spelling Nazis who think the ability to spell signifies either innate intelligence or commitment to scholarship. It doesn't; making fun of people for their poor spelling is on a level with making fun of them for poor hearing.

[conuly]

You're right.

[conuly]

Oh, wait, I thought you were talking to me.

But you're still right, I'm drifting into the wrong territory here myself. Need to take a deep breath and calm down. It's just one person.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

I was talking to you - you were the one who asked if she was being wilfully annoying. I agree with bayushi about the excessive chatspeak, because I do find that annoying, but I don't think it's deliberate. I seem to recall having embraced more than one cool jargon with excessive enthusiasm in my youth, and looking back, I'm sure a number of my elders must have longed to smack me for it, but I didn't realize that at the time. LOL, want to hear really annoying; for a brief period in my teens I took to speaking in blank verse; chatspeak can hardly hold a candle to that.

*hugs* True that; only one person - a young, possibly not very intellectual person, who may know little of the world besides what she's seen on TV, and doesn't realize that saying "I don't care about race" is similar to saying "I don't care about poverty", or pollution, or cancer: that race is a huge problem that affects our entire species, whether or not one is being directly affected by it at the moment. Probably no one's ever explained it to her in those terms before.

Like I said, I thought you were doing all right up to the point where your frustration got the better of you. She wasn't terribly receptive to what you were saying (and why should she be, when you're just another stranger on the 'Net?) but she was sticking with the dialogue, and she was not getting personal or insulting, so there seemed a decent chance you were getting through to her a little.

But then you lost your temper, and thus not only lost your chance of getting through to her, but practically guaranteed that the next person who tries will have a much harder time. In essence you told her "I'm right because I'm black", and thus lost any claim to be speaking against racism.

I thought you were right, but not because you're black, and particularly not because being black gives you the psychic ability to know why someone who isn't thinks what she thinks. You were right just because you were right; because we all know the movie producers have to focus on 'box office', and many of them seem to be mentally stuck in the last century, so they figure white folk won't go to a movie with black protagonists.

Maybe that's true, maybe not; in any case, if that's what they want, there are plenty of stories written with all-white characters. Hopefully the scorn heaped upon Sci-Fi Channel's lousy Earthsea will have taught them the folly of taking a beloved story and characters and altering them out of recognition for the sake of 'box office'.

[conuly]

I'm, uh, not black. I'm at least 50% guaranteed white (that's the first/second generation immigrant half) and the other 50% is I strongly doubt I have any African-American ancestry at all, and would be surprised to hear otherwise (that's the DAR half).

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

My apologies; I am not up on the current usage and don't mean to mislabel or disrespect you; also I'm not recalling if I've seen an actual picture of you, or if I've only seen pics of your nieces and jumped to the wrong conclusion. Aren't they considered 'black'? They're certainly what was considered 'black' in Brooklyn the last time I was there, but that was pretty long ago. It occurs to me now that their Dad is black but not their Mom?

Anyway, sorry; so-clueless me.

[conuly]

They're biracial, yes, their dad is black and their mom is not.

I'd assume most people would view them as black, but I don't go around conducting polls on the subject. And of course I don't know how they'll view themselves when they're grown.

And it's not being rude or disrespectful or anything, but I don't want to misrepresent myself. I'd be actually astonished to find out I had any non-white ancestry, you know? It's possible, I guess (although I know that the work of tracking down my father's family tree has already been done, if I care to look it up), but it seems extremely unlikely, and even if I did find out "Wow, I do have one non-white great great great great great great great...." I certainly wouldn't change how I identify myself. That'd be a little weird.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

Kudos to you for clarity of thought and expression, as well.

(I had to go back and look at her icon to see what the problem was. If it's a reference/celebrity or something, I don't get it--all I see is an individual screaming aloud. Annoyingly, no doubt.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

I don't know who the celebrity in the icon is either, and if someone told me, it wouldn't help because I've probably never heard of her. But it's more than just 'an individual screaming aloud' - annoyingly, no doubt, because almost all screaming aloud is annoying - it's a white, bottle-blonde, trendily-overdressed female individual screaming aloud.

As such, I suppose she does make a pretty good poster-child for a Two-Minute Hate, but whatever reason one might hate her for, the fact remains that she is just an icon, not the real face of the writer. I have a bunch of deliberately annoying icons myself, but they tend to feature giant squids and such, so no one mistakes them for the face of Me.

LOL, at least I hope not.

[marveen.livejournal.com]

...her icon is white?

*checks again* Funny, I thought it was a bewigged or bottle-blonde light-skinned person of color.

But yeah, icon attacks are the ultimate ad hominem angle, and I tend not to notice them at all, just skipping straight to the text.

[queenlyzard.livejournal.com]

I really like this comment. It ties into a lot of stuff I've been thinking about.

[siderea]

c) genuinely doesn't care who's cast and whether it's appropriate for the character.

Let's be clear here: when somebody cares enough to volunteer that they don't care, especially when they insist upon it over and over, what they're saying is that they think you shouldn't care.

Connie, you're not arguing with this idiot over whether you're right, but whether you have a right -- to your opinion, to take the issue seriously.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"Connie, you're not arguing with this idiot over whether you're right, but whether you have a right -- to your opinion, to take the issue seriously."

Word. Precisely. And how silly is that, to be arguing with some random stranger online as to whether or not one has a right to your opinion? Is one's right to have an opinion going to be revoked by the Opinion Police if a certain percentage of Internet users disagree with it, or say one has no right to hold it? Obviously not.

Note that my opinion doesn't revoke anybody else's right to consider this a Very Serious Matter Indeed, a mortal insult and total discounting of one's basic personhood to be told that the issues one considers important are not necessarily considered important by everyone else on the planet. But, by the same token, the fact that other people consider an issue to be important does not revoke my right to hold the opinion that it isn't.

In any case, holding opinions counts for very little if one isn't going to do anything about them. Suppose it were possible to convince all these chatters and bloggers to agree with one's opinions; what would that accomplish? Arguing about issues online is a hobby, nothing more; people who are seriously trying to engender change address their communications to those with the power to make decisions, because those are the ones whose opinions actually matter.

In this particular example, only the opinions of those willing to write directly to the movie producers matter, because those are the only opinions that will have any bearing on what happens. Everybody else's opinion does not matter - whether they agree or disagree about white actors playing brown or black characters, if they aren't going to write, what they think will not count one way or the other.

Therefore, it's futile arguing with the unconvincable when convincing them would be of no use, and it's equally futile 'preaching to the choir' of already-convinced but unmotivated-to-act. People who really take an issue seriously don't argue about it; they act.