Unpopular Opinions You Hold

[bovril]

1 hour ago, RumbleFox said:

Funny how both “sides” on here feel like the mods are against them. I’m pretty sure Mark leans to the right. I once got my posts deleted and banned from a thread because I pulled someone up on using the word “poof”. 

I have noticed a lot of people don't really read posts before they hit quote. They see a word or phrase and react to it before trying to understand what the person is arguing. I'm probably guilty of that too. 

[bovril]

2 minutes ago, RumbleFox said:

people posting shite in the wrong thread. 

Unpopular opinion but I like this.

 

Resist the tyranny of the thread police. Show me a phunny picture of what you are reading at the moment on a holiday you've booked.

[inckley fox]

11 hours ago, Muzzy_no7 said:

Did you see the Tottenham riots?

 

Did you see the violent disorder at Meridien in 2022?

 

Have you seen the extensive about of damage and disorder the Palestine protests have caused? 
 

Police vehicles are damaged almost daily in places like Bradford, Luton and around a lot of Traveller sites. 
 

I am by no means defending the ‘far right’ or ‘anti immigration protestors’ but they are absolutely not the only ones that have caused disorder like this and will certainly not be the last having seen what’s brewing in Birmingham this evening. 

If you're not defending or justifying their actions then we agree on the most important thing. I doubt we'd end up throttling one another about our thoughts on whether or not this is different to other occasions when people resort to destructive and violent behaviour. Not least because it's absolutely true that people with different political motives have caused plenty of destruction and violence, or in some cases had their protests hijacked by idiots. I don't think the motivation behind those protests tends to be as inherently unpleasant, but it does happen, and I gave the example of the Duggan riots a decade or so ago as something which was similarly vague in its objectives, and in many cases equally destructive.

 

Where I'd differ is your (and perhaps Otis's) definition of it being 'equal on both sides' in regard to these specific protests. I'm not sure how travellers are on the 'opposite' side to these protesters. I'm not really clear about who 'the other side' is at all in this case. It's certainly not just Muslims, because I've heard first hand from a black Christian, a white European immigrant and my Hindu ex-neighbours that they've had abuse in recent days. I'm not sure what any of these people have done to deserve being attacked or abused. It seems to me that the protests were triggered by a misunderstanding and then descended into a kind of generalised complaint about Britain not being British enough, undertaken by people who largely don't seem to be clear themselves about what being British means. And I do think they're exceptional in all sorts of ways.

 

5 hours ago, Otis said:

I'm not biting, In fear of getting banned from this topic also.

I'm not trying to wind you up, and for my part there's no problem at all with you saying what you think. Of course lots of people have totally valid concerns about immigration, and it's important to talk them through. And I'm not easily offended either.

 

I do, however, think I might get a ban though for helping to hijack this thread. So, in the spirit of its intended purpose, I'm going to try to think of something controversial to say just for the sake of it. Afua Hirsch and Owen Jones aren't at all annoying. How about that?

[Raj]

I love to see big sexy boys sometimes.

 

 

sh1t sorry wrong thread.

[bovril]

3 minutes ago, Raj said:

I love to see big sexy boys sometimes.

 

 

sh1t sorry wrong thread.

I would say this is the perfect thread for such a statement.

 

Unless of course you've got the wrong forum all together. 

[Izzy]

14 minutes ago, bovril said:

I have noticed a lot of people don't really read posts before they hit quote. They see a word or phrase and react to it before trying to understand what the person is arguing. I'm probably guilty of that too. 

I get frustrated when someone clearly posts a hypothetical scenario to spark a discussion and some people immediately assume its their actual opinion, idea or stance on the subject.

 

 

Edited 6 August by Izzy

[bovril]

1 minute ago, Izzy said:

I get frustrated when someone clearly posts a hypothetical scenario to spark a discussion and some people immediately assume its their actual opinion, idea or stance on the subject.

 

 

I've never done that and I think you need to show me evidence where I have. Twat. 

[bovril]

15 minutes ago, Izzy said:

I get frustrated when someone clearly posts a hypothetical scenario to spark a discussion and some people immediately assume its their actual opinion, idea or stance on the subject.

 

 

Seriously though you're right and it's very common in online discussions. I sometimes think I over hedge my language online but there's always someone ready to jump on what you've written...

[Stadt]

I think reading comprehension on FT is getting worse generally. I don't bother with political debates on FT but on the football side of things you have posters just not reading (or understanding) what you're saying. I don't think it's a lack of clarity on my part either.

[leicsmac]

21 minutes ago, Izzy said:

I get frustrated when someone clearly posts a hypothetical scenario to spark a discussion and some people immediately assume its their actual opinion, idea or stance on the subject.

 

 

 

4 minutes ago, bovril said:

Seriously though you're right and it's very common in online discussions. I sometimes think I over hedge my language online but there's always someone ready to jump on what you've written...

There's a lot of that goes on, yeah.

 

That being said, I (and no doubt other people) have seen, more often in recent times, obvious examples of people framing what is obviously their own viewpoint as a hypothetical because they know that viewpoint is abhorrent and so will get less justified pelters that way. Can't be having with dishonest people hiding behind a veneer of deniability and "that's not what I said" like that - if you really believe in your worldview, own it and the backlash it gets. Or change.

 

Of course, striking a balance is tricky though and it would be nice to think that the vast majority of people approach these things in good faith.

[Izzy]

39 minutes ago, Stadt said:

I think reading comprehension on FT is getting worse generally. I don't bother with political debates on FT but on the football side of things you have posters just not reading (or understanding) what you're saying. I don't think it's a lack of clarity on my part either.

Considering words alone are only 7% of how we communicate in the real world, it's amazing there's not more misunderstanding on here IMO

 

We can't see non verbal cues, notice body language or hear tonality, let alone sense what's sarcasm, wit, humour, or a throwaway comment.

 

Makes me wonder why we all bother posting at all really!

[Trav Le Bleu]

3 hours ago, RumbleFox said:

Funny how both “sides” on here feel like the mods are against them. I’m pretty sure Mark leans to the right. I once got my posts deleted and banned from a thread because I pulled someone up on using the word “poof”. 

And just like that... poof!... you were banned.

 

Crazy!

[Trav Le Bleu]

20 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Considering words alone are only 7% of how we communicate in the real world, it's amazing there's not more misunderstanding on here IMO

 

We can't see non verbal cues, notice body language or hear tonality, let alone sense what's sarcasm, wit, humour, or a throwaway comment.

 

Makes me wonder why we all bother posting at all really!

Certainly wondered why you bother posting in the jokes thread

Edited 6 August by Trav Le Bleu

[Benguin]

 

I think it is ridiculous that people are actually being arrested for saying offensive things online. (Not talking about incitement here, thats a different thing) 
 

The first problem with arresting someone for using words, is that someone has to decide what words are okay and which ones aren’t and I don’t see a viable objective way of doing that. The second problem is that criminal justice is costly and to achieve this you need to deprioritise other criminal justice pursuits due to having budget restraints. 
 

Deeply concerned with how our tax money is being spent here. Maybe lots if people agree so it isn’t unpopular 

[Guest]

55 minutes ago, Stadt said:

I think reading comprehension on FT is getting worse generally. I don't bother with political debates on FT but on the football side of things you have posters just not reading (or understanding) what you're saying. I don't think it's a lack of clarity on my part either.

You see in basically every thread someone posts something balanced and reasonable along the lines of "I think X" and then people jump on it with "so you're saying you think Y?! You're an idiot". Worrying the amount of posters who don't know how to hold two opposing ideas in their head at the same time or engage with arguments in a way that isn't completely binary, and it makes discussing things like the ownership even more pointless than it already is when you know people either haven't read what you've posted or are deliberately misrepresenting it

[Trav Le Bleu]

59 minutes ago, Stadt said:

I think reading comprehension on FT is getting worse generally. I don't bother with political debates on FT but on the football side of things you have posters just not reading (or understanding) what you're saying. I don't think it's a lack of clarity on my part either.

What do you mean I don't comprehend football?!?!

 

[Trav Le Bleu]

1 minute ago, Guest said:

You see in basically every thread someone posts something balanced and reasonable along the lines of "I think X" and then people jump on it with "so you're saying you think Y?! You're an idiot". Worrying the amount of posters who don't know how to hold two opposing ideas in their head at the same time or engage with arguments in a way that isn't completely binary, and it makes discussing things like the ownership even more pointless than it already is when you know people either haven't read what you've posted or are deliberately misrepresenting it

Or that sometimes opposing ideas can both have validity.

[Stadt]

19 minutes ago, Izzy said:

Considering words alone are only 7% of how we communicate in the real world, it's amazing there's not more misunderstanding on here IMO

 

We can't see non verbal cues, notice body language or hear tonality, let alone sense what's sarcasm, wit, humour, or a throwaway comment.

 

Makes me wonder why we all bother posting at all really!

The 7% figure came from a study in 1967 with around 130 college students, it's apocryphal 

https://davidrnovak.com/writing/article/2020/03/killing-the-myth-that-93-of-communication-is-nonverbal

[Trav Le Bleu]

2 minutes ago, Stadt said:

The 7% figure came from a study in 1967 with around 130 college students, it's apocryphal 

https://davidrnovak.com/writing/article/2020/03/killing-the-myth-that-93-of-communication-is-nonverbal

It's probably still a surprising small number (I would guess) and that number is certainly smaller when talking about written/read communication.

[leicsmac]

42 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Or that sometimes opposing ideas can both have validity.

In this digital era, it's becoming extremely difficult to reconcile this idea being valid in a lot of cases, and then the opposite (where a world where no one is invalidated but no one is right will inevitably eat itself) being valid in others, and being able to parse between the two.

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, Guest said:

You see in basically every thread someone posts something balanced and reasonable along the lines of "I think X" and then people jump on it with "so you're saying you think Y?! You're an idiot". Worrying the amount of posters who don't know how to hold two opposing ideas in their head at the same time or engage with arguments in a way that isn't completely binary, and it makes discussing things like the ownership even more pointless than it already is when you know people either haven't read what you've posted or are deliberately misrepresenting it

The dialectic is dead and we live in an increasingly polarised opinion driven world. 

 

That said, if for example someone posts that SARS-Cov-2 is no worse than a runny nose and the common cold then yes, they are indeed an idiot. 

[Tommy G]

1 minute ago, SpacedX said:

The dialectic is dead and we live in an increasingly polarised opinion driven world. 

 

That said, if for example someone posts that SARS-Cov-2 is no worse than a runny nose and the common cold then yes, they are indeed an idiot. 

Plenty of people were asymptomatic 

[SpacedX]

1 minute ago, Tommy G said:

Plenty of people were asymptomatic 

Doesn't mean that transmission of the virus wasn't potentially lethal for others.

[leicsmac]

10 minutes ago, SpacedX said:

The dialectic is dead and we live in an increasingly polarised opinion driven world. 

 

That said, if for example someone posts that SARS-Cov-2 is no worse than a runny nose and the common cold then yes, they are indeed an idiot. 

Or if the world is flat.

 

Or if the global average temperature isn't increasing commensurate with emissions of various gases including carbon dioxide directly attributable to human activity.

 

There certainly are situations where a dialectic circle jerk is both unnecessary and directly counterproductive to survival.

Edited 6 August by leicsmac

[Tommy G]

19 minutes ago, SpacedX said:

Doesn't mean that transmission of the virus wasn't potentially lethal for others.

Tongue in cheek, nevermind, whooosh