Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt
from the 2022-begins dept
This week, both our winners on the insightful side come in response to our post about Eric Clapton pretending to regret his lawsuit against a random woman in Germany who listed a bootleg CD on eBay. As it happens, the first place winner is a reply to the second place winner, so we’re going to present them in reverse order. So, in second place, it’s TFG with a response to someone who claimed this wasn’t about copyright, but about some cryptic other thing:
…No, no, this is entirely about copyright, and suing, etc.
Eric Clapton is a rich musician who came down like a ton of bricks on a random German woman because she listed a CD for sale to the tune of $12.
Copyright law makes this possible, and results in oppression of the general public by the copyright holders, especially those who decided to be assholes about it, like Eric Clapton and his legal team decided to be.
I haven’t the foggiest what the Greenpass oppression is, but in this particular case, Clapton decided to be the oppressor, and the oppressed is the German woman. Anything else is a red herring.
I was similarly unfamiliar with that term, but thankfully an anonymous commenter arrived to supply an explanation, and won first place for insightful:
FYI: “Greenpass repression” is code for anything that might make anti-vaxx morons face consequences for their dumbfuckery.
For editor’s choice on the insightful side, we start out with a comment from Thad about one particular line in Norton’s description of its new crypto-mining features:
“Currently, Norton Crypto is limited to users with devices that meet the required system requirements.”
Aside from everything else that’s wrong with this, that sentence is a crime against the English language, logic, and common sense. Never mind “required requirements”, what the fuck does it even mean? It’s only currently limited to users with devices that meet the system requirements? In the future, is it not going to be limited to users with devices that meet the system requirements? And wouldn’t that mean that, you know, they’re not actually requirements?
Next, it’s an anonymous comment about the attacks on SciHub by academic publishers, accusing the site of gaining unauthorized access to research:
The academic publishers do not wish to admit that many papers are sent to Sci-Hub by the academics that wrote them. Is that because while declaring war on the public will have almost no impact on their profits, while declaring war on the academics that create their value would just turn the drift to open access into a sprint.
Over on the funny side, our first place winner is That Anonymous Coward with a response to our post about a federal court telling Proud Boys defendants that raiding the Capitol building isn’t free speech:
They are proud boys…. not smart boys.
One also has to wonder what 1st Amendment lawyers are calling the idiot who filed this thinking it would work.
In second place, it’s K`Tetch with a comment about the condition invented by cops to justify their misbehavior:
Oh no, Excited Delirium IS a thing.
When cops see a ‘perp’, they get all excited then they get delirious about things like laws, and rights, and how to act. That’s what excited delirium is.
For editor’s choice on the funny side, we start out with an anonymous response to Thad’s earlier comment about Norton Crypto:
I think that sentence translates to “Required requirements are required”.
And finally, we head back to the post about Eric Clapton where Samuel Abram swooped in with the very first comment:
You either die a Hendrix?
?or live long enough to see yourself become a Clapton.
That’s all for this week, folks!
Comments on “Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt”
I win again!
It’s nice to see my contribution to the "You either die a hero…" meme has made it into the Techdirt funny pages.
As if I needed more joy after finding out one of the largest selling-franchises in the world entered the public domain…
Lostinlodos trembling at the lip because the Proud Boys got embarrassed. News at fucking 11…
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I miss taunting Proud Boys in real time.
Did we ever settle on whether the Proud Boys are white supremacists?
I remember one guy got very salty with me when I said they were.
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Well they do have that fig leaf that their "leader" isn’t as white as the driven snow, then on the other hand they tend to start scuffles with POC.
I think they are slightly beyond the white supremacist label, they are willing to accept anyone who espouses the same "ideals" no matter their skin tone. Its almost like they figured out after decades of screaming that whites were becoming the minority they actually are, so they will accept anyone who is willing to toe their ideological line.
They are a bunch of bullies hopped up on cereal & punching each other, who are violently acting out to try and intimidate others into letting them have their way.
As the resident immortal sociopath they remind me of those who pushed very hard to make people accept the lost cause narrative. It was "those" people who forced what they wanted on those poor southerners who were just making a living on the backs of those ungrateful negros who would have been much worse off if they had never been snatched & put to work here making whites rich.
But humans can’t admit they keep repeating history & instead focus on assigning blame completely before thinking about solutions.
I mean how many statues are still up praising/supporting men who lead a war against the nation?
How many people are terrified that CRT might make their kids feel bad, because they refuse to admit that we enslaved people & even after they were freed there were people who worked hard & murdered people to keep them in their place as lessor.
There is a meme out there showing a car in Yellowstone with Bears coming close to a car captioned, ‘Everyone was nicer in the 50’s even the bears" underneath is an image of a black man using a blacks only drinking fountain.
Google "Tumblr – Define "everyone"." land on know your meme.
The country has a past, its not the best past, but until we can all admit to the sins we can’t make any progress. To many people convinced their version is the only true version, and they’re all wrong.
And people wonder how humans made me a sociopath…
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"I think they are slightly beyond the white supremacist label, they are willing to accept anyone who espouses the same "ideals" no matter their skin tone"
That’s a stretch.
The more likely explanation is that while they’re generally not the sharpest tools in the shed, even they understand that you can’t be openly racist in today’s climate like you could in the 50s. So, they allow a few people within their ranks who would normally be the target of their hatred, so that when they get called out for more obvious activities they can pull out the "we can’t be racist, we have black/latino friends!" card. What they do privately when their token members’ backs are turned is probably somewhat different to their public facing statements.
There were jews within the Nazi party in Germany in the 1940s. Their presence didn’t mean that you couldn’t look at their other activities and still conclude that they were Nazis.
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Well the label White Supremacist conjurers up images of David Duke (pre-face lift) wearing his grand wizard robes.
Proud Boys are like the New Coke of White Supremacist.
They rebranded, and they’ve changed their tag lines to be more ‘acceptable’ to skirt under the radar of many people.
Their speeches aren’t fear mongering about skin color, more fear mongering about these "new" people coming in who don’t care about real american values and are just here to take your job, home, families, etc.
I’ve give you that they are racists, but I’m not sure the traditional ‘White Supremacist" label neatly fits. I think its part of their plan to keep some people on their side who feel that the left is just trying to cancel anyone who doesn’t toe the socialist party line & they aren’t REALLY White Supremacists like those KKK good ole boys, they are just called that by the evil left who wants to take away your light bulbs you like and make you buy those expensive bulbs that aren;t as good or put out negative ions that will kill you and your dog.
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What the Proud Boys are is fascists. Fascism goes hand-in-hand with "othering" – creating and out-group, and an in-group, which becomes a form of Racism.
The "non-White" members of the Proud boys are those members of people groups who are in the process of becoming "white" – like the Irish did all those many years ago.
Lest we forget, "white" is a construct – it’s a frabricated group, containing within a hodge-podge of multiple mixed ethnicities (gaelic, gothic, nordic, italian, greek, slavic, russian, etc.). The very fact that the Irish did not used to be considered "white" stands as a stark reminder that it is, in essence, a meaningless distinction by any rubric that is grounded in actual science or actual biology.
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Disclaimer The following discusses poltical movements using terms as understood by political scientists, not neccisarily the common usage (such as the US definition of ‘liberal’). The topic is discussed using more casual language and grammatical errors may result from the interaction of these two points.
This. Any group whose beliefs rely on a societal hierarchy expressly believes that some people deserve to be on the bottom. A small hierarchal group will avoid strict limits to membership, as more individual bodies represent more power at that scale. But once large enough, the leadership will need to start providing a "benefit" (a deliverable, if you want to use corpo speak) for the ‘dues paying’ (not necessarily financially, but also those whose labor benefits the group) members.
Facism is a right-wing reaction to the growth of social progressivism and left values in society and government. Within Facism, the deliverable comes in the form of a return to a previous social order, othering those who benefit from the progressive and leftist changes in order to restrict or remove the changes. This gives them political cover for consolidation of power to reinforce their chosen hierarchy.
It is not until Fascism has power that a smart fascist will begin purges.
All that said, the Proud Boys aren’t smart
While expressly violent, mysoginistic, and seeking a return to previous social orders, the proud boys have fractured, with the question of support for white supremicy being a key line of fracture. I think the lack of Leftist protests, the difficulty traveling, and a desire to keep under the radar (I think we are still looking for over a hundred participants of the jan 6 coup) have kept the Proud boys from answering the question of "Are we white supremicists" definitively. Its a part of their culture, and until they remove it, we should treat them like they are, no matter the answer.
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"Its a part of their culture, and until they remove it, we should treat them like they are, no matter the answer."
I very much agree, but with my long view of human history I always fear that humans will human, spending more time defining the contours of what the label should include rather than taking action.
The Government still hasn’t managed to modify the definition of terrorist to allow for them to be white & there is a demographic who don’t believe they are terrorists they are fighting for their rights against the forces of "evil" aka people who want all humans treated the same as all other humans.
Humans need/want/desire a scapegoat to blame & to be better than to find self worth.
The screaming about welfare queens (read black women) who are just making babies to get more money out of our pockets.
Then they arrest a whole buncha welfare cheats and gosh… they all were really really white.
But the narrative manages to keep hold that black women work the welfare system, ‘stealing’ money out of our pockets & people push to cut it back, make it harder to get, manage to hurt many more people then they realize… then pretend those people just don’t want to try, we have these programs (that we’ve made inaccessible to so many people who have fallen through the cracks.)
Before you dismiss the idea remember the leadership of Texas was threatening to leave the union… then they got 4 inches of snow & immediately were demanding federal money to help them. You’d think with all of the lifted trucks in Texas people would have been used to something white & 4 inches.
Its bad when other people need help, but don’t you DARE stand in the way of me getting my share. My need is real, your need can’t be real… you’re not like me.
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"Lest we forget, "white" is a construct – it’s a frabricated group, containing within a hodge-podge of multiple mixed ethnicities (gaelic, gothic, nordic, italian, greek, slavic, russian, etc.)."
I recall, very vividly, how quite a few years back here in Sweden some of the nationalist and supremacist parties actively invited certain immigrants to join them – everyone who was desperate to fit in – as long as they could be brought to hate the other outsiders.
It’s like that old joke;
Way back in the day a journalist travelled to the deep south to interview the chapter leader, blind since birth, of the then most notoriously intolerant branch of the Ku Klux Klan. He sat with the venerated old klan leader, a legend in the klan who despite his lack of sight had led the klan through campaigns of lynchings and cross-burnings, as that worthy expounded for hours on the unworthiness of black and mixed people, the danger of miscegeny, and on how the ungodly heathen ways of african immigrants threatened the living spaces of the white man.
As the right-hand man of the chapter leader led the journalist out of the compound he asked the question "Has no one ever told him?!"
Whereon the right-hand man responded "He cares so much…None of us have the heart to tell him he’s black."
And it’s not exactly new. Supremacist thought is nothing if not inconsistent. Hitler was so worried about his possible jewish ancestry he had two specific exemptions written into his bill about withdrawing the protections and privileges due citizens of jewish descent for two people – himself and Jesus Christ.
What really matters to these people is one thing only. That they are a tribe hostile to anyone outside of it. As long as you can align your beliefs with the superiority of that tribe and the hatred of the designated scapegoat they will meet you halfway. It’s the only compromise you can achieve with supremacists.
The Proud Boys don’t have the ideology to be racists. If anything they’re like Ernst Röhm’s old Sturmabteilung. Thugs looking for an excuse. Losers looking for acceptance. People willing to subscribe to any creed as long as it contains the opportunity to look down on others because being at the bottom of the totem pole isn’t fun and dragging other people down is easier than to climb your own way up.
And they are fascists simply because that is the natural state of being of people so frail in ego they need a Führer so they can feel like they’re finally part of something way bigger than they themselves.
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"Hitler was so worried about his possible jewish ancestry he had two specific exemptions written into his bill about withdrawing the protections and privileges due citizens of jewish descent for two people – himself and Jesus Christ."
This is one of the things that would be hilarious about the Nazis if they hadn’t achieved such evil – they were obsessed with the ideal of Aryan perfection, yet so few of their leaders were anything close to it.
"The Proud Boys don’t have the ideology to be racists"
It doesn’t take ideology to be racist, it takes anger and ignorance. All that’s happening here is that there’s enough collective brain cells still firing for them to realise that it’s a good thing to have a "beard" to deflect some types of criticism, so they can overcome some of their racist tendencies (in public at least) until that "beard" has outlived their usefulness. Then, they’ll get the same treatment that Röhm did.
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Isn’t that a Dave Chapelle skit?
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"Well the label White Supremacist conjurers up images of David Duke (pre-face lift) wearing his grand wizard robes."
Yes, and even they have realised it’s not a good look any longer. That’s why they started calling themselves "alt-right" and wearing Fred Perry shirts while carrying tiki torches. That doesn’t mean that the accurate descriptions of their behaviour are suddenly wrong.
"Their speeches aren’t fear mongering about skin color, more fear mongering about these "new" people coming in who don’t care about real american values and are just here to take your job, home, families, etc."
So, the exact same fucking speeches.
"I’ve give you that they are racists, but I’m not sure the traditional ‘White Supremacist" label neatly fits"
Don’t be fooled by their semantic games. The term has a meaning, and it still applies because it applies to their opinions of and actions against people of other races, not a fashion choice. Until they change the former, the term still applies.
I see what you’re saying about them claiming that the mean old left are doing them wrong by accurately calling them out, but there’s really no point playing their games when they try preaching to the choir. Just make the note that proud Boys are a bunch of insecure losers who blame their problems on the same easy targets their robe wearing ancestors did and move on with making the world one less likely to breed such ignorance and hatred.
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The problem is all of these people who have no problem supporting the Proud Boys because they aren’t the KKK.
If you call them racist, the dog whistle sounds and its just cancel culture against them & morons support them.
The Proud Boys were just trying to keep the election from being stolen!
The Proud Boys were just trying to stop them from injecting their 5G death virus into us!
Trump called for "REAL" Americans to stand up for us and the Proud Boys came!!!!!
Truth, facts, evidence no longer matter to a frightening segment of the population.
(See also the anti-abortion church going folks who cheered on clinic bombers & gave them aid and comfort to avoid the law. Killing "babies" was worse than killing people & we ignore that whole thou shalt no kill thing some more.)
I have no illusions that the Proud Boys are not the same racist pricks this country has always had since before reconstruction, the problem is the idiots supporting them and ignoring what they are because someone told them to. Then we have those who think some essential oils, sage, and chanting can change them.
They have every right to hold their stupid ideas & scream mean words at others (1st Amend goes both ways) but perhaps some of their members in cop uniforms should have been taken to task for not enforcing the law when they jumped other people or broke out the bear spray on people who’d ‘crime’ was to just call them out for being racist pricks.
We have out racists like the Proud Boys but there is underlying support of people who quietly cheer the Proud Boys on because they feel "others" are getting things instead of them.
It would be nice to see truth make a comeback in the nation.
Gay Marriage didn’t do anything to straight people’s marriages be it the 1st or 17th. The Truth is – they were scared of having to treat those they despise like actual people.
Abortion should be banned!! The Truth is – they demand to have control over other peoples lives to live up to a moral standard (they they often ignore for themselves) because without single moms to look down on in line at the grocery they might notice people looking down on them.
Safer Sex just encourages sex!! The Truth is – withholding aid money because someone might mention condoms to those in 3rd world nations where survival sex is happening is killing people.
The first truth they need to be taught is simple.
Rights are not pie.
If someone else gets some, it doesn’t mean you get less.
Second truth is, if we did to you what you are doing to others you’d scream bloody murder, so why is it okay for you to do it?
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"The problem is all of these people who have no problem supporting the Proud Boys because they aren’t the KKK."
The problem is racist, homophobic, etc. scum. You won’t do anything about them. by playing the rebranding games and pretending they’re not the same people because some of them decided to get better at branding and euphemisms. That’s an endless cycle which achieves nothing except allowing them to pretend that the real problem is the people spotting the racists through their new outfits.
Re: that Venn diagram is just a circle.
Not all racists are Proud boys…
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Note that their comrades, the Boogaloo boys, absolutely are.
Least insightful comment of the week goes to "Trying to overthrow the foundation of the US government with violence and fraud isn’t trying to overthrow the foundation of the US government with violence and fraud!"
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That’s because the "government" they tried to overthrow didn’t exist yet…so it didn’t count…
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Eric Clapton isn’t exactly a nice guy.
he got drugged up, left a window open. His small child fell to its death.
THEN Clapton said he was releasing a record to ‘honor his childs life’ and the money would go to charity.
Besides profiting from his childs death in a cold cynical way, ALL of the money went straight up Clapton’s nose.
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Clapton can be an almighty arsehole, but he wasn’t in the apartment, which was the one Conor’s mother shared with her partner. A janitor hadn’t finished working on the windows.
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Windows-related incident, Microsoft should pay.