zlacker

>>etc-ho+(OP)
The number of people trying to defend what is, at best, extremely childish behavior is fascinating to me. Would you really go up to your city counselor in real life and tell them you wish death on them and their family, and pretend it's OK because it's an obscure reference to 90s rap (mind you the rap song WAS an actual death threat)? Do you think you'd be met with laughter? Do you actually consider that socially acceptable behavior?

If you dislike their politics, so be it - donate to campaigns or personally run against them. Write a letter explaining how you'd like them to vote.. But the amount of absolute crass behavior people allow "because it's the internet" is mind boggling.

>>tw04+ka
> If you dislike their politics, so be it - donate to campaigns or personally run against them. Write a letter explaining how you'd like them to vote.. But the amount of absolute crass behavior people allow "because it's the internet" is mind boggling.

I don't even think it's "because it's the internet." "In Real Life" political discourse has been getting significantly more and more crass and more and more belligerent in the last 10-15 years. Go over to YouTube and bring up some Reagan-Mondale or Clinton-Bush debates and compare their tone and temperament to what we see today. People still felt strongly about the issues back then, but we weren't so constantly hurling threats and potty-mouth insults all over the place like today.

>>ryandr+Nh
We've had things like a sitting vice president kill a secretary of the treasury (and Founding Father) in a duel, over political insults. I make two points with this. The first is that obviously the past was far from some era of restrained gentleman, but the second is that I think words used to have a lot more meaning.

And that's because in modern times we've been rapidly diluting the meaning of basically everything by endlessly resorting to inappropriate hyperbole. This makes it difficult to express things and practically impossible to express an extreme feeling without resorting to the sort of hyperbole that makes hyperbole look restrained, which is what this thread is ultimately about.

It'd be nice if we returned to the era of words having meaning, but the era of the internet probably makes that impossible.

>>somena+Jo
Really amusing aside. This article, "Shitshow! Britain’s potty-mouthed parliament", was just published: https://www.politico.eu/article/britains-potty-mouthed-parli...

That stiff upper lip has, perhaps, become a bit more relaxed.