Also, "my undergraduate career".

How about we get #SendSociologyMajorsToTheCoalMines trending?

I'm trying so fucking hard to talk my girlfriend out of going back to school for a masters in Sociology. She thinks she wants to do it, and I don't want to be a dick telling her not to. But, fuck... you know?

She seems to only have a syntactic understanding of language. She can absorb, rearrange and then emit words in ways that seem to make sense, but she doesn't seem to have any understanding of how these words connect up to things in world.
Almost like a... Chinese Room? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

Also, her example of her activism was trending a hashtag on twitter. lol. #slacktivism #kony2012

I was wondering about that, too. I think the problem is, the question implies that activism is supposed to "achieve" something.

The way the question is worded precludes her most natural response: "I made #CancelColbert because I'm bored and I'm on Twitter".

careful now, I've seen some of these sort of people argue that the term "slacktivism" is "ableist" and so therefore check your privilege.

This is the first time I'm really noticing the term "ableist" so I googled it and the second result is a thought catalog piece on how people should stop using the words dumb, lame, and crazy (in any context). People can be hard to believe sometimes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FvCG29P85U

The whole "Tumblerisms" series is a good primer for the insanity of Tumblr.

I think I prefer to think of tumblr the way I always have, as a depository of NSFW gifs.

I mostly know Tumblr as the place where a photo of myself keeps recirculating via people I never knew. Usually edited to be black and white. Usually tagged #collarbones. Taken at a point in my life when I was surviving off of ramen and potatoes.

Internet social justice warriors are frustrated art students that have no real social life.

Now let's be fair, she does seem to have a career, as a professional whiner on Twitter, bringing up such topics like her fear of being "judged" just because she may want to cancel her appointments and lay around in bed all day

"Suey Park ‏@suey_park Mar 26
I should be able to cancel meetings, interviews, etc. without apologizing for my body, mind, and health. We live in an ableist world."

Not flaking out on appointments requires quite the... ability? I still don't get any of this.

Which is funny when you look at Stephen Colbert's tragic childhood. Somehow, somehow, he decided there were better things to do with his life than find things to take personally.

Nothing is worse than a college kid who first hears about something in an intro class and then goes trotting it around acting all worldly.

No, presenting a well reasoned counter-argument THEN calling you a twat is not ad hominem.

"cantelope"

Is that like a differently-abled antelope?

Ok I will give her that, white liberals are shitty.

you guys would be perfect together.

you could talk all day about how much you hate white people.

if that isn't love, than what is?

don't make fun of my spellinges

"Maybe being an effective activist means risking being an asshole some of the time"

Probably, but being an asshole doesn't make you an activist.

And then there's this whole circular firing squad that the Left loves to engage in, to the point where they can't get anything done. Back when the Occupy movement came to town, I used to drive down a couple times a week with supplies for them, so I had an opportunity to see them in action. And what I saw was, weeks into it, they were still trying to work out, as a group, how to accommodate both smokers and non-smokers. Now tell me that any REAL movement would waste any time on that -- people who understand the concept of "being in it together" would just cut the bullshit and solve the problem (most likely by individuals on both sides knowing to compromise for the common good), rather than keep butting heads and demanding their own way.

I like how her instinctive reaction to seeing something that offends her is to demand it be *cancelled*. Not disagree with the message, not engage in dialogue with the people putting it out there, but rather she'd jump straight to silencing the opposition and ruining careers. But when she gets called out on it, oh, she's not being serious guys, she actually "likes" the Colbert Show, and naturally, she'd never actually want to cancel something _she likes_! *That's* the narrative she chooses to go with for her apology, instead of, I don't know, admitting that the Colbert Show has a right to free speech, and that nobody should lose their careers merely because they happened to offend you this one time. And then of course she has the temerity to fall back on free speech rhetoric, pointing to the alleged "hypocrisy" of those morally bankrupt "white people" who are insufficiently committed to freedom of speech. AT NO TIME does it ever appear to dawn on her that maybe, just maybe, jumping straight to bullying and silencing people whom you have a social disagreement with, is the farthest thing from being a free speech SJW, and is completely intolerant and insane.

What I'm wondering now is... is that the point? She says she's got an undergrad degree from the University of Chicago, yes? Not to start any drama, but U of C's social and poli-sci departments have a habit of producing postmodern Stalinists with a genuine and well-argued disdain for liberalism. Perhaps Ms Suey really DOESN'T believe in decadent bourgeois values like tolerance and free speech, and is calling on them NOT as an attempt to get white liberals to recommit themselves to their values, but as a way of underlining the moral irrelevancy of liberalism and the (alleged) hypocrisy of the system. It's OK for HER to be a fascist, because everyone else is just as much of a fascist as she is!

Could you ask her, ever so politely, if she's a fascist, John?

Well, I did find this, which seems to support my theory:

http://i.imgur.com/LkHYmtS.png

I asked her, Homer. She says she's not a fascist.

A thing I have learned from observing a lifetime of politics is that generally action > inaction. Dumb action > thoughtful inaction, which is a big reason why Republicans usually control the agenda.

I was a full angry participant in the angry twitter discussion, and one thing I kept saying was that someone's career matters more than someone's hurt feelings. So now that it turns out it was all a troll, and I feel jerked around.

Colbert's career was never in danger, so now it comes down to my hurt feelings vs. her hurt feelings. Are her hurt feelings more important than mine? If she really goes through life feeling like a punch line, maybe just this once, they do. I don't think she could have gotten attention without being an asshole.. Maybe that matters more than whether she was an asshole, or whether she apologizes for being an asshole.

Still, I think she knows she overplayed her hand, and she let me know that when I told her that, she heard me. She doesn't need to publicly apologize if she learned how to have a little more finesse.

And today, when her friends started tweeting about a homeless woman in jail for leaving her kids in the car while looking for a job, I joined in by retweeting. (After I know more, I'll do my own tweeting) Because a woman in jail for seeking a job absolutely matters more than my hurt feelings.

If I hang onto my butt-hurt now, I'm just taking my place in the circular firing squad.

slow clap

Ah yes. Mainstream Asian Americans, or as we activists like to call them, House Chinamen. Those young, middle class, college educated know-it-all Asians who never had to face the sting of injustice that comes from building railroads, toiling in slavery on Southern rice plantations, or getting national news coverage over a stupid two-line tweet you wrote without even getting out of bed.

If you are still corresponding with her, please give Ms Park my regards, and tell her to stand strong against all those uppity High Yellow race traitors.

If you're still corresponding with her, tell her that I have an entire 64 gigabyte flash drive full of Asian girls cuter than her.