[prepend]

Is Ed Norton a goatfucker for American History X? Are we both goatfuckers for having “white power” in our comments?

I think the context and intent of a statement is really necessary for answering the question.

I don’t think the guy in the video was yelling white power to mean he supports white power. But perhaps you think differently.

[pvg]

Yes but you're trying to make the trivial context and intent complicated and it isn't. Ed Norton plays a goatfucker. We are talking about goatfuckery. Dude yelling 'white power' in public? Actual goatfucking. But no, you say, he was commenting on the absurdity of the goatfucker accusation by fucking some goats. This is precisely the sort of thing the Rule of Goats is about.

[prepend]

I don’t think that’s what the rule of goats is about, but I appreciate your continued commenting.

If your interpretation of the rule of goats is right, then it’s not very useful as it turns lots of people into goatfuckers. And when everyone is a goatfucker, fucking goats isn’t that bad any more.

[pvg]

The point of the 'rule' is that some things are so repugnant, there's no doing them 'ironically' or 'as commentary'. Hence the goats. If, when accused of goatfucking, you produce a goat and start fucking it, you are a goatfucker not a wry commentator on the baselessness of the accusation. If someone at a rally accuses you of racism (by, you know, association since you are rallying in support of someone with a long track record of racism) and you start shouting a virulently racist slogan, you're a racist. It's super-duper simple. Your interpretation is that yelling 'white power' is not actually racist because... some weird meta-thing. The entire purpose of the rule is to act as a terminating condition in otherwise unbounded meta-recursion.