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by tomp 3775 days ago
Came here to post this. The author of this post just made the biggest possible strawman:

> “Now the pool is stagnant, …frothy with scum.” Fry’s feelings aren’t feelings — they are a universal and objective standard of behavior, which everyone else is violating.

When he says "stagnant, frothy with scum" I don't interpret that as him complaining about his feelings, but rather that the discussion/communication (which, I guess, is the ultimate purpose of any communication medium) has become impossible, precisely because people keep being offended and complaining about their feelings.

2 comments

You missed what he was saying. He's saying that Fry has feelings. He has an urge to talk about the feelings he has, but simultaneously feels he can't mention they're his feelings. So he rationalizes it into objective facts (which also prevents people from answering usefully).

In short: He says Fry is trying to claim his subjective views as objective facts.

His whole blog post is him talking about his feelings. Those are his feelings.
Exactly. Fry is writing about his feelings. Yet almost all of it uses the vocabulary of someone describing immutable and unarguable facts about the state of twitter.
I don't get it, both you and the blogger seems to think that this is revealing some big gotcha, that haha! Fry is hiding his feelings! But it isn't, there is no gotcha, those are his feelings. To him, Twitter is a cesspool, those are his feelings about it. So, he stops using it and he feels better.

There are no objective facts to be had regarding the state of Twitter. This is not physics or mathematics. The state of twitter is entirely subjective. How is Fry ever denying this?

"uses the vocabulary of someone describing immutable and unarguable facts".. What does that even mean? It's using the vocabulary of Stephen Fry talking about this thing that annoyed him and how distancing himself from it made him feel better. It is entirely about his feelings.

> but rather that the discussion/communication

So you mean he's not offended --- rather, the other people violated some universal standard of behavior?

Next time, try a little honesty. There's a lot more to feelings than simply "offended". Fry's post read as disheartened, emotionally drained. Not offended.

That this post tries to frame Fry's post as some kind of veiled offense and then smugly points out the inconsistency in that, is quite insulting in my eyes. Even if it were accurate about Fry's message, it would still be immensely rude to me to belittle another person like that.

> disheartened, emotionally drained

So he wasn't offended, he just had his feelings hurt?

no