Person B is rarely (if ever at all) saying something is “irredeemably horrible.” It’s almost always just Person A overreacting and assuming they are.
To be precise about this case, it was a series of snarky and dismissive jabs. But reading between the lines isn’t that difficult. Maybe you think I exaggerate with “irredeemably horrible,” but I think you can get the essence of my meaning.
It’s not just semantics, it’s people imagining things that aren’t really being said.
Maybe the discussion hasn’t gone on long enough, but I have faith you’ll get there.
I’m not wrong. Just calling someone a “dick” is pretty fucking far away from “irredeemably horrible.” It’s a gap that goes beyond hyperbole, and won’t be closed no matter how long the discussion goes on for.
This smells like semantics to me. Granted I enjoy the probably unintended irony of “a gap that goes beyond hyperbole” which attempts to chart the supposed outer limits of hyperbole. Answer: there are none.
I meant your specific hyperbole.
I’m giving myself a pat on the back for discovering hyperbole beyond the known universe of hyperbole.
In case you actually need me to clarify (which I somehow doubt), I meant your specific hyperbolic statement.
Sometimes the claim is that an opinion or phrase is racist or sexist, sometimes like here just jerkish. I was explicitly writing about a general pattern. What appears to be exaggeration (at least regarding the current discussion) isn’t the “heart” of my incisive commentary.
No, you’re right it’s a general pattern, and I think it’s exactly what I describe. Not just on this site but in general on the internet, when people say something is “racist,” “sexist,” or just “jerkish,” others take it to mean they’re condemning the transgressor to eternal damnation, or, at least as mfm said, claiming they’re a “giant pile of sub-human shit that no one would miss if he died tomorrow.”
People exaggerate the extent of the criticism and take it to a deeply personal place that is never ever intended. You can say something racist, sexist, or dickish and still be an okay person. I don’t know what’s so hard to understand about that. And I don’t know why people are more taken aback and upset by someone calling someone else out on being a dick more than that person’s dickish actions. Seems insane to me, but it’s a rampant mentality.
I easily understood mfm as finding something jerkish and funny. Is mfm a jerk for thinking it funny? Nope.
I don’t recall saying he was.
Yet that was repeatedly the suggestion and thus it escalated.
Was it?
It’s great when a scolding leads an opponent to overreact so one can pretend that overreaction was the initial problem even though it wasn’t.
Um, okay.