[drdaeman]

I agree, but I believe the intent matters if we’re trying to identify why this happens.

Racism is just less legally dangerous. There would be people posting snuff or CSAM videos, would that “sell”. Make social networks tough on racism and it’ll be sexism next day. Or extremist politics. Or animal abuse. Or, really, anything, as long as people strongly react to it.

But, yeah, to avoid any misunderstanding - I didn’t mean to say racism isn’t an issue. It is racist, it’s bad, I don’t argue any otherwise. All I want to stress is that it’s not the real issue here, merely a particular manifestation.

[jrflowers]

>it’s not the real issue here

I like this reasoning. “Trolling” is when people post things to irritate or offend people, so if you see something that’s both racist and offensive then it’s not really racist. If you see somebody posting intentionally offensive racist stuff, and you have no other information about them, you should assume that the offensiveness of their post is an indicator of how not racist they are.

Really if you think about it, it’s like a graph where as offensiveness goes up the racism goes down becau

[drdaeman]

That’s not what I meant, though. When I wrote “not really racist” I meant “the primary cause for posting this is not racism[, but engagement solicitation]”, rather than “not racist”. And it’s not an implication, but only an observation paired with my (and article authors’) guess about the actual intent. I’m sorry for the confusion, I guess I worded that poorly.

But, yeah, as weird as it may sound, you don’t have to be racist (as in believing in racist ideas) to be a racist troll (propagate racist ideas). Publishing and agreeing with are different things, and they don’t always overlap (even if they frequently do). He who had not ever said or wrote some BS without believing a single iota of it but because they wanted to make some effect, throw the stone.

And not sure how sarcastic you were, but nothing I’ve said could possibly mean if something is offensive it’s what somehow makes it less racist.

[jrflowers]

> you don’t have to be racist (as in believing in racist ideas) to be a racist troll (propagate racist ideas)

Exactly. Racism has nothing to do with what people say or do, it’s a sort of vibe, so really there is no way of telling if anything or anyone is Real Racist versus fake racist. It is important to point this out b

[drdaeman]

I’m a bit confused, is that possible you think racism is binary? I recognize you jest, but not sure I get the idea, and I sincerely hope you don’t do it pointlessly.

If you refuse to distinguish between someone who genuinely believes in concept of a race, or postulates an inherent supremacy of some particular set of biological and/or sociocultural traits, and someone who merely talks edgy shit they heard somewhere and haven’t given it much thought - then I’m not entirely sure how can I persuade you to see the distinction I do.

But I believe this difference exists and is important because different causes require different approaches. Online trolls, engagement farmers, and bonehead racists are (somewhat overlapping but generally) different kind of people. And any of those can post racist content.

[jrflowers]

I showed the videos to my friend and he keeps saying stuff like “Seems like it’s racists making and sharing the racist videos” and “So if a person posts a bunch of racist garbage and then post ‘I’m not racist in my heart’ then the second post is obviously true?”

I keep trying to explain that no, it’s not real racism because if you can imagine that it’s not real, it must not be real but then he says “Who made you the arbiter of racism?” and “What purpose on God’s Green Earth does it serve anyone, in any context, to chime in unprompted that you choose to sort racism into real and fake piles? Like what do you get out of that?”

Anyway I explained that it’s fake racism because it’s just somebody that wants attention and he said “racists can want attention too” and “seems like you’re just doing gymnastics to invent excuses for people online that you don’t even know why are you doing that” so I don’t know what to tell him. I don’t think we’ll see eye to eye on this because he incorrectly defines racism as a “real phenomenon” that “affects real people” and is “perpetuated by people’s actions”, whereas I know that what he’s describing is fake racism, because real racism is a little thing people feel in their hearts.

Seems like anybody could plainly see that fake racism is when people say or do real racist things in the world and real racism is intangible, not really strictly “real”, but the guy’s a kook so ¯_(ツ)_/¯

[drdaeman]

Uhh, I see that really made a very poor word choice when I wrote “‘real’ racism”. My bad, words are hard.

Given that you’ve chose “fake” as the antonym, I think I can see where we differ, and that I misused the term “‘real’”. In my mind I would’ve picked something like “less intentionally”. I’m not even sure if I can imagine what a fake racism could possibly be like: racism is an idea, and I don’t really get what fakeness for ideas means.

I will try to remember and be more careful with the word “real” in the future. Appreciate your comments.

And, yes, that was real racism, of course - in the way you’ve used the expression. Or rather, there’s no such thing that “not real racism”, and “not ‘real’ racism” was a confusingly bad phrase.