| HN Mirror

> No, I disagree, along with many others.

If I were trying to win any popularity contests, I wouldn't be discussing this topic on HN. It's risky business!

> Nothing is rude and offensive on its own, nor do you know what everyone else thinks.

I'm not purporting to know what everyone else thinks, only that given the context, the usage of this particular word in this particular situation is offensive.

It's a strange thing for you to insinuate that I feel that I "represent everyone else." Is it not enough for me to be speaking for myself? And what's wrong with users of this website speaking up to negotiate the standards of discourse we all follow here? As I've commented elsewhere, there is a standard of civility, respect and politeness that we all expect from interactions on HN. What that standard comprises should be discussed from time to time.

> As a member of a "minority group myself, there's no connection to "minority groups demanding respect" here..*

If you are going to quote me, then please quote me accurately. I didn't equate OP's "social media lynching" with "minority groups demanding respect". The language I used referred to specific (albeit hypothetical) individuals doing a specific thing. I wrote that "members of those same minority groups" were using "cultural power...to demand respect". It is you who are talking about monolithic groups here—I'm talking about individuals.

If you are a member of one of the minority groups in the US that were historically terrorized by lynch mobs, or were ridiculed in the popular press by the kinds of caricatures that are referenced by the article, then absolutely your opinions on this matter are salient.

It shouldn't require membership in any particular group to view the juxtaposition within OP's metaphor as offensive, however.

The "potential social media lynching" that OP accused eBay of kowtowing to must by its nature be perpetrated by individuals who don't want denigrating, racist caricatures to be promoted and popularized. This is a straw-man in OP's argument, so we don't know precisely who OP would be referring to, but it's not too big a stretch to interpret OP's comment as referring to individuals whose ethnicities are being ridiculed in these books, including African, Native American, Chinese and Arab ethnicities. In fact, a brief search of media reports regarding this controversy would reveal that many prominent commentators on the subject have been African-American and Hispanic educators. Most of this actual commentary has been well-reasoned and civilized, however, and is not at all mob-like.

In contrast, "lynching" in the United States primarily existed as a tool by which white mobs terrorized non-white communities into social, economic and political subservience, by murdering people. Take a look at some of the pictures, and read some of the history:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States

Lynching is not just some better-forgotten historical grievance. It was a tool for genocide and white supremacy—a tool used to rob Mexican and indigenous landowners of their property, and to keep black people subjugated and to deprive them of political power and economic independence. The last known lynching in the United States took place less than 40 years ago—within my own lifetime. The downstream effects of this violence persist today.

Lynching was also part of a continuum of white supremacist culture that included ethnic caricatures that were intended to ridicule subjugated people, and which had the effect of dehumanizing those people. Dehumanization is a necessary precursor to mob violence, and lynchings would not have been possible without the cruel, dehumanizing propaganda that promoted white-supremacy in the United States for more than 100 years after the civil war.

OP's metaphorical lynch mob would include individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by actual lynch mobs. To convert metaphor to simile, OP was saying that these individuals whose ancestors were terrorized by lynch mobs are themselves like a lynch mob when they complain about the on-going, present-day publication of imagery that was originally created to promote the persecution of those same ancestors.

Is this not offensive on its face? Even if you disagree with these people, how can you not see OP's metaphor as demeaning towards them? And even if you don't care about offending people in the wider world, what about those of us on this website who also fit the same description? Is it not rude to us?

Look, I don't want anyone to be shamed, punished, penalized or "canceled" here. That would be ridiculous. I wasn't even looking for any kind of apology. I'm just hoping that the standards of civility and respect followed by members of the HN community can incorporate an awareness of what this kind of language really means to some of us.

There are some things that no civilized person will say in polite society—that idea, I think, is not controversial. Let this particular use of the word "lynching" be one of those things.