Goonhub
11-10-2016, 10:20 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-10-2016, 10:20 AM by UrsulaMejor. Edited 1 time in total.)
Personally, I don't really see the issue as one consisting necessarily of actual hurt feelings or offense, or whether or not a joke is funny or not, or even whether it's even really offensive or not. My belief is that our goal should be value consistency.
In the past, we have defined bigoted elements as those which disparage certain groups in order to produce an effect at their expense, regardless of whether or not the usage was intended to be offensive, funny, or ironic. Ex: the aids virus, the gay virus, the HEE HEE HEE MADE A FART "retardation" effect, etc.
Those jokes were campy, dumb, and never meant to offend, and yet they were removed because we've expressed that we have the value of avoiding needlessly bigoted elements; that they were funny to a lot of people and very few people found them genuinely offensive was valued a lot less than our desire to not act in that way needlessly.
The goonstation/ss13 "meme" of using sperg as a pejorative is inconsistent with these values, independent of whether or not any particular person is taking offense or is feeling hurt by its use.
In summary,
We currently have the value of not wanting to perform in a needlessly discriminatory or harmful fashion.
If we want to be consistent in our values, we can't make special exceptions without merit.
The making fun of people on the autism spectrum is a needlessly discriminatory and harmful element without any merit that justifies its exception.
Therefore, to be consistent in our values we cannot make a special exception for these elements.
In the past, we have defined bigoted elements as those which disparage certain groups in order to produce an effect at their expense, regardless of whether or not the usage was intended to be offensive, funny, or ironic. Ex: the aids virus, the gay virus, the HEE HEE HEE MADE A FART "retardation" effect, etc.
Those jokes were campy, dumb, and never meant to offend, and yet they were removed because we've expressed that we have the value of avoiding needlessly bigoted elements; that they were funny to a lot of people and very few people found them genuinely offensive was valued a lot less than our desire to not act in that way needlessly.
The goonstation/ss13 "meme" of using sperg as a pejorative is inconsistent with these values, independent of whether or not any particular person is taking offense or is feeling hurt by its use.
In summary,
We currently have the value of not wanting to perform in a needlessly discriminatory or harmful fashion.
If we want to be consistent in our values, we can't make special exceptions without merit.
The making fun of people on the autism spectrum is a needlessly discriminatory and harmful element without any merit that justifies its exception.
Therefore, to be consistent in our values we cannot make a special exception for these elements.