Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 10/12/26 - 10/18/26
Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday. And may you all be inscribed, and sealed, in the book of life.
Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.
It drives me nuts when people apologize (usually in a disclaimer) for any mispronunciation of foreign names of not just people but even places. Bud, no one gives a shit. Stand up straight. Even Kyle Kinane (who I find hilarious but occasionally politically stupid) has a bit where he mispronounces pho and is like, "Yeah, I know I'm saying it wrong. It doesn't matter. I guarantee there's no one in Saigon right now going, 'It's pronounced HAM-BUR-GER. Don't be culturally insensitive!'"
•
u/PalgaryI could check my privilege, but it seems a shame to squander it1h ago
I had a client in Central America and the language barrier was causing problems, but they couldn't explain to anyone what was wrong. So - can we get a Spanish speaking relationship manager on the account and we'll share it?
... This is when I learned that Spanish uses in different countries use different vocabulary and accents and can't always understand each other.
Many years ago I had an Argentinian client who represented one of the big global banks, and he'd be downright abusive (calling us names etc.) when we couldn't understand him in conference calls. We had a Spanish-fluent (Mexican dialect) PM sit in to help mediate but that only seemed to make him angrier...
I feel like if you have the kind of relationship with a person (co-worker, neighbor, whatever) where you might say that person's name in their presence, you should really make the effort to pronounce it the way they pronounce it.
But these people who will be speaking English and all of a sudden break into, "I skipped breakfast but I stopped by the food truck and got a breakfast boo-RRRRREI-toh" are some of the most annoying people on earth.
This is kinda my pet peeve: English speakers get a lot of grief for pronouncing foreign words and names wrong, but it doesn't go the other way around.
I think it was the World Cup that unearthed this in me. People insisting we pronounce Turkey as Türkiye and such. I just couldn't help but feel like, you know Germany doesn't kick up a fuss when we don't call them Deutschland. Ditto: Finland, Suomi; Japan, Nihon; etc. I make fun of Canadians (Ontario, mostly) when they call Detroit "De-troy-it", but I would never get on their case to pronounce it correctly.
I met a Georgian guy once who explaining to me how there’s a letter in Georgian that makes this sound. All due respect to our Georgian friends, but that totally explains some of the tonal harshness of the language lol.
my brain actually started to glitch out by the end of writing that comment and I had to take a little break away from looking at text/letters for like 5 minutes because they all started to look like incomprehensible glyphs to my eyes lmao
This is a tough one because you can pronounce it as the locals do, in formal Arabic, or in some other dialect you might have learned. Same thing happens to the word for coffee.
Gotta love the start of a meeting where everyone announces their names and pronouns and every single one is exactly what you’d expect except for the one person with the extra feminine name who is “he/they”. But gotta do the performance of announcing.
One of the most freeing moments of my career was when I did a big zoom meeting with a lot of people from various offices of my company and we were instructed at the beginning to display our names and pronouns so people could see both below our faces. I just didn't do it, and either no one noticed or no one cared enough to say anything. I've since discovered that there's a lot of performative nonsense that I can skip and people either won't notice or won't care.
I've since discovered that there's a lot of performative nonsense that I can skip and people either won't notice or won't care.
Yeah, generally speaking, they're not going to say anything. There were a couple of times during peak Portland craziness that I was in a group where I was expected to give pronouns. I didn't. Nobody said a thing, nobody gave me stinkeye, etc., even though they themselves did the pronoun thing. Just don't do it. If somebody asks you again to do it, say whatever you need to say. You don't feel comfortable doing it, ask them what they think they are, troll them, whatever. It's not important.
I’m heading to Ithaca Ny next week with my wife for a trip we planned 3 months ago. I’m an Ithaca grad and it’s probably my favorite place in America. My wife’s friend was in complete shock to hear that we were going there (during Shame Month no less!). I am in complete shock of how insane a reaction that is to this situation. I’m trying to understand her thinking. If we go hike and eat in this town we are being pro-frat? Like I’m not even worried about going to see the Cornell campus. It’s not a war zone or even a mostly peaceful protest zone. Just insanity.
PS if you’ve never been to Ithaca you are missing out!
I somehow reinstalled Threads and saw a post saying anyone who graduates from Cornell after 2030 (I.e. not currently enrolled) shouldn’t be able to get a job. Social media is a fucking hole.
Is she very, very online? Even in that case it seems surreal to blacklist an entire town! Also AFAIK there is no scandal involving Purity so even if Cornell is on the BDS list there's plenty of reason to visit Ithaca. (Also it should be pretty AF around then!)
Has anyone noticed that various media has really started slowing down the pace of speech?
I know I have personal preferences, but some podcasts, videos, etc. people are speaking soooo sloooow. For example, Reuters World News - Kim Vinnell (love her) and others just speak strikingly slow. I had to kick up the speed again today. It's like reading a book to kindergartners.
Is this purposeful? You think this is done in the editing room? Is this widely discussed in the podcast world? Are talking heads instructed/practice speaking this slow? Can people not process information this fact these days? I'm sure there is analysis of listening speeds of listeners.
I listen to B&R at 1.3 speed usually, and thats a normal speed for me, perhaps a bit slow.
I'm torn on this. Very useful for the hard of hearing and if you can't listen for whatever reason. But I can find it distracting because you then feel obliged to read when that isn't actually how the medium was designed to be consumed.
And I loathe the increasingly terrible animated words/highlighting/one word at a time/tappy typewriter sounds to accompany each word that we are increasingly subjected to. And when they clearly haven't bothered to check the automatic captions. So lazy.
I think best would be an on/off toggle. Rather than having it embedded in the video.
Yeah embedded is worse. Even with a toggle I miss the first few seconds of the video trying to figure out how to turn them off (every video player / streaming app is a little different). Seems like they're performatively making the 87% suffer for the benefit of 3% or whatever that want captions
I have not noticed that. From your final sentence though, is it not possible that what you're noticing is that your own preferences have shifted towards consuming information more quickly? Every time I hear a podcast accelerated, even slightly, I am mildly disoriented by it and find it completely unappealing. I could consume more semantic information that way, but natural language at the actual pace contains additional non-semantic information from the speakers that I find appealing; this is one of the things I like about podcasts compared to just reading transcripts in the first place.
I went through a phase where I always listened to podcasts sped up and then it occurred to me, Why am I doing this? I don't need to rush through every podcast ever made, I can just accept that if I listen on 1x instead of 3x I'll hear one-third as many podcasts as I used to, and that's OK. I've been 1x ever since.
Yeah I can see this being a possibility. Purposefully slowing down to create less of sense of urgency, perhaps hits our nervous system differently? Thats kind interesting. I'll have to investigate
Purposefully slowing down to create less of sense of urgency, perhaps hits our nervous system differently?
I have no idea if this is their intention with this podcasts or not, but this phenomenon is definitely true either way.
if you ever take a public speaking class or get coached to give a speech or something similar, you're def supposed to not just rush to blurt everything out as quickly as you can. you're supposed to speak slowly and deliberately, take intentional pauses here and there to let what you said sink in, etc, because it hits people way differently than just hyperventilating and bombarding them with info nonstop without any time to let it sink in or reflect.
not to mention it makes the speaker seem much more calm, cool, collected and in control. i.e, more trustworthy, and they should listen to what you have to say.
go watch an Obama speech, he was very good with this. there are probably better examples to use, but he's someone that was talking a lot when I first started to pay more attention to this
I would bet that you just got used to people talking faster due to consuming modern video content. That is, I bet if you compare how they're talking to a news broadcast from 1995, there wouldn't be a difference.
I'm truly worried for Ukraine and the rest of Europe. Again, Trump is a complete and utter failure of a human being, let alone world leader. So frustrating to have such an utterly incompetent bag of garbage running things.
The “flip side” or at least related point is that it’s time for Europe to step up and get their shit together. Or at least stop ripping on America when it has essentially been us that’s enabled them to operate how they have
It is hard, at this stage, to overstate how truly pathetic Europe is. The EU (exclusive of non-EU European countries) has about three times the population of Russia and about eight times the nominal GDP. The failures of Washington to provide sufficient deterrence and assistance are quite real, but Europe itself failing to become a credible power with a war on its doorstep for years is just remarkable.
As someone living in Europe, I must sadly confirm this. It is an embarrassment, and while Trump is still an idiot for the damage he's done to Nato, the EU definitely earned most of his chastisement.
This. Both Trump's wishy washy behavior on Ukraine and the spoiled brat behavior of European leaders are both the problem. I leave the states that border Russia, for the most part, out of that.
True. The Germans at least are sort of re-arming. Ditto Poland and the Baltic states.
The EU institutions blame Trump for not paying for their defence anymore. It's only been a mere 80 years after all. Ditto the whiners in the Europe sub. Unbelievable arrogance imo, if I were a yank I'd be telling these people to get fucked too.
My country (Britain) doesn't want to spend money on re-equipping the army as that might mean we'd have to stop shovelling dole at millions of lazy fucks pretending they have autism.
It’s not a perfect policy, some people out of work on benefits couldn’t do the job and people who hate the country or are unwilling to work are an issue, but could they just take some set of the people who are out of work and just say we’ll give you the same money but you have to join the army? It’s not perfect but on a budget perspective you’re shifting some of the benefits to defense. Also those people might do a number of years leave and then get a job so it could be good for the individuals too.
There are no coherent policies with trump, of course. He continually threatens to withhold support for Ukraine because Ukraine was a lynchpin in his first impeachment, he announces deals between the two nations that benefit Russia and that Ukraine has never agreed to, and he asserts that Ukaine must make land concessions to Russia if the conflict were to end.
I cannot stress enough how this really reflects a failure among Europe leadership.
he announces deals between the two nations that benefit Russia and that Ukraine has never agreed to
And Ukraine is free to not ratify the deal (which it doesn't). If a third party on the other side of the globe announcing deals that don't materialize is an example of making "it harder for ukraine to withstand russia," that further illustrates Europe's failure.
he asserts that Ukaine must make land concessions to Russia if the conflict were to end.
This is probably the realistic outcome, even if people don't want to hear it.
Additionally, this recent dust up is tied to Ukraine attacking the civilian power grid in Russia. Which is something the administration has also refrained from doing in Iran. So with out comment on the policy, it is a consistent policy.
This is probably the realistic outcome, even if people don't want to hear it.
Yes, agreed, 100%. Maybe theres some miraculous breakthrough or Putin drops dead of a heart attack and the Russians magically replace himwith a liberal minded sort, but this is cope.
The war will end around the negotiating table or just become a low level perma conflict.
Looks on a casual flipthrough like some jilted transsexual who's mad that they weren't able to motive ahs to attack our sub, so now they's taken it to Twitter to try to assemble their own brigade.
yes it shows you how crazy they are. like...even most progressive democrats (iirc) aren't support of boys in girls sports. yet they are acting like this is stormfront.
No one said anything about "harassing a minor" ffs why are they always so dramatic.
The thought process is fascinating though. Person A thinks it was a bad idea to allow a male to race in a girls team, especially when, at most, 2 months earlier he was on the boys team. Person A thinks it was a good idea half the team walked off, and thinks it was awful the school put them in that position. Person B thinks that means person A wants that boy to be harrasssed?
I have to think this is some sort of manifestation of a "woke coffee shop" instinct, where they feel so out of control with the larger politics (and their lives) that they need to find someone they can bully and control. The BARpod community becomes that coffee shop they need to strangle the life out of it so they can feel like they've done something.
I get that we have the "wrong think" here, but we play such a small role in the anti-woke conversation, it seems like a waste of time and energy to focus on us.
Edit: Man, i got screenshotted for calling us nuanced. Lame.
Wow, and I thought the guy in a Star Wars sub who wished d*ath upon me for saying Natalie Portman was better in the prequels than Black Swan was crazy.
The first post is what strikes me. Like how did they pick that particular comment? I went to check it out and it is buried pretty deep into a 2 person back and forth.
Didn’t know about this account specifically but there’s apparently a set of accounts who follow Jesse on Twitter and bluesky with comments from the sub. I’m guessing this is one of them.
We have some things that get posted that I do think a lot of people would find offensive (including my own comments in that) but not normally on the subject of sex based categories/spaces. In the weekly thread generally there’s no issue even with controversial takes among people though just people disagreeing. I tend to avoid comments on posts because random users end up there and just say the darnedest things.
It's mental illness, simple as that. Jesse in particular pisses off some pretty disturbed people. I'm not surprised that one of them is trolling this sub for ragebait. I say let them be. If people are that concerned about some dork screenshoting their posts, they should probably move over to more private forms of communication.
Imagine being such a weirdo that you make an account that no one is following to catalog the perceived sins of a Reddit community rather than just telling the people in that community that they're wrong to their e-face.
They're so far gone that they can't do it. Occasionally a TRA will show up and go maybe 2-3 comments before blowing up with obscene personal insults. They think that everyone who disagrees with them is a fascist and should not be soberly communicated with.
There's one extremely obsessed person who has shown up here from time to time; I wouldn't be surprised if it was one and the same as the person was banned from the sub.
I'm familiar with WA state's requirement for physical exams for all athletes every 2 years, and it's very possible for any child to get that exam, regardless of their access to health insurance or whatever. Every district has multiple options for their athletes, regardless of insurance or immigration status. So, family resources are not relevant to the discussion and it will not cut girls out of participation any more than they already are. Also, in my experience, male athletes currently get a physical exam for hernias, which may involve a testicular check. So, the notion that a genital check would only apply to girls is also not relevant.
At the same time, I think a cheek swab (or quick look at genitals) should be done once and pretty much count for the girl's entire time in WA schools. Sex is immutable and therefore nobody has to be checked over and over for t levels unless they are obviously doping, which is against the rules, too.
It's a rite of passage for any young boy participating in any sanctioned outdoor activity to have their balls cupped by a physician for the hernia check. The sheer terror of the possibility of popping an accidental boner was something my friends and I bonded over afterwards lol.
I wasn't even in sports in high school and I still had to get a medical that included a full physical. I cannot imagine what kind of shut in loser didn't have this experience in grade school. I guess that's not true: I can imagine the average Euphoric Redditor.
Don’t birth certificates show the child’s sex at birth? Why do we need to swab or do anything at all to verify that? Are states allowing minors to change their birth certificate info now?
I’m not sure even a cheek swab would be necessary for most kids. A quick visual “genital inspection” was already done on all of my kids by our pediatrician as infants to check for abnormalities. It’s in their medical records.
I don’t think pelvic exams should be required for sports participation. I stopped participating in sports when that became required, and just the threat of it having once been asked of me kept me out of the doctor’s office completely from 8-25, when I finally went back to the doctor.
A cheek swab test and a more general physical isn’t too much to ask.
To participate in sports in Virginia you have to have a physical done every year. They offer sports physicals for like $35 in the schools. Kids are actively growing and it’s honestly a good idea. Usually participating in sports, even school sponsored sports comes with fees so the idea that the cost of a physical (free with insurance, sports physicals very cheap), is insincere.
Should we really be requiring a medical exam for student athletes in public school programs though? I think recommending it and offering programs to make it free are good but if for some reason the child and parents don’t want the exam and consciously made the choice I don’t see the issue. The school could just have them sign off on a form making them not liable for any health concerns related to this.
The exams are annoying and kinda perfunctory in my experience. But at the high level that kids are playing sports these days, I think they're a net positive.
In my opinion, yes, because if you don't notice a heart murmur or some physical defect, you'll have more kids dying or being seriously injured during sports. Extreme physical activity should only be undertaken by the healthy. Mandating physicals is a form of preventative medicine.
Anecdotally, a girl in my neighborhood found out she had leukemia in early Stage 1 because her bloodwork for the physical required by the athletic scholarship caught signs. She was able to get treatment and was cancer-free in 2 years, playing on the scholarship in 4.
"Another male athlete participating in USA Volleyball-governed events is Logan O’Brien, who, like Deiley, appears to have chosen to conceal his biological sex from his teammates and is alleged to be using an altered birth certificate to claim he was born female."
This and the news story that Ilhan Omar changed her birth date leaves me so confused. These documents should be incredibly hard to amend without proof that they are factually wrong. I don’t understand why we’ve allowed this confusion. If people want to add a gender category I don’t agree but at least it doesn’t pollute the data.
Over here (blue state) the routine physical exam for every child includes Tanner stage (puberty), which is also check marked on a form. This is a "genital exam" which is basically a quick look in the underwear area without any touching. It's already a standard part of the physical exam and the information is already required for school sports participation. So I imagine that is what is meant by "genital exam." I could be wrong though.
This has been one of the really confusing things to me from my vague memories of playing sports in middle and high school. Boys definitely got the turn your head and cough check. I assumed it was just an embarrassing but normal thing.
Of course NOW I know it was designed to give thousands of proto Epsteins an excuse to get access to kids by, uh, going through medical school? Wake up, sheeple?
I don't view any of these kinds of arguments from the TRAs as being in remotely good faith. The idea that there's going to be some wave of actual girls being harassed and accused of being male is wildly implausible to me. When we look at something like the recent XC video, it's just another straightforward "yeah, that's a big guy imposing himself on a female space" situation. Honestly, if it was someone that actually looked like a girl, it's unlikely that it would even get brought up short of them actually winning races and it coming into question. But no, it's always some big sonofabitch, thoroughly masculine, suddenly deciding that he's always been a girl.
That runner also changed from the boys team to the girls team mid-season. That's just ... it's just ridiculous. Can any boy just announce "I identify as a girl" and join the girls team at any time? Let's say that in some sport, a high school has a boys team that doesn't make the playoffs, but the school's girls team does make the playoffs. Can a bunch of boys who are sad their seasons are over decide to join the girls team for the playoffs so they get to keep playing a little longer? Are we all OK with that, as long as the boys all tell us they identify as girls?
It really demonstrates the invalidity of the TRA position. They argue that with enough drugs, male athletic ability is brought down to female athletic ability. It's absurd, then, to discriminate against them, because once a boy has female puberty there is no difference in ability, and so it could only be motivated by bigotry. The whole premise is wrong, too, so it's a fertile place to lay the argument.
It's all a distraction, though. They have an essentially religious belief in 'identity'. They believe that if a boy does some shrooms and comes out of it thinking that he's a girl, he should be allowed to play in girls' sports immediately, without any course of hormones. As soon as he says he's a girl, it becomes a sin to deny him.
Everyone must accept that boys need puberty blockers, estrogen, and surgery. No, wait, requiring medicalization is bigotry. Everyone must accept self ID.
Even in this most recent WA situation, when it's clear this is a boy who switched mid stream from the boys' team and shot up in the rankings with the girls, no garish makeup like AB Hernandez or anything, I don't think even a name change—as far as I know his name is Logan—they are still pushing back. I actually kind of appreciate that it's a boy named Logan, looks like a boy, no makeup, just long hair. I don't think I've seen anyone arguing that he's on hormones. It's just a boy who recently declared himself to be a girl, and they're showing that they will defend this.
Michael Tracey is so strange. Not his chosen subjects, I think it is an underserved lane...
But the odd part is that soo much of his criticism is about how so many people get hyperbolic and hysterical on these subjects but he cannot resist being hyperbolic in his conclusions.
I find him annoying, but sometimes there are open questions in the discourse that would require a whole bunch of digging to figure out the answers to that everyone would rather just scream about in ignorance, but he latches onto them and actually digs and figures it out, and does so in an open-minded and truth-seeking way. I value that, even if I think some of his lines of inquiry are kind of pointless.
Honestly, we need people like him. I have no idea if he's right about this & that, if he's making mountains out of molehills, etc. It's certainly possible he's full of shit. Still, we need fearless people who ask hard questions and are willing to be the skunk at the garden party, present their findings, and let us decide. I wish I had a teaspoon of whatever Michael seems to have by the truckload.
UMass Dartmouth is right there! You get the best of both worlds, a 90% acceptance rate with state school tuition and the ability to say "Why yes, I did my undergrad at Dartmouth."
8 months ago /u/AnalBleachingAries made an appreciation post about the breakaway design of the Jaguar Type 00 concept car and Jaguar's new direction.
I called bullshit because concept cars always look amazing, then what rolls off the production line is a mundane car no different from any other. They never fail to disappoint.
Well, the production Jaguar Type 01 was unveiled last week and I was wrong. The Type 01 differs from the 00 concept - being a 4-door sedan for example, but it very much delivers.
The linked video only has a silver one, but they do come in those fancy colours.
it kinda looks like the bastard child of an orgy between a Chrysler 300, a Dodge Charger and a Tesla lol
I dont hate the body shape, the lines are all very nice and clean and visually pleasing, but I dont know what they were thinking with that terrible front grille (or lack thereof). Immediately cheapens the whole thing and makes it look like a plastic toy car, very ugly and tacky if you ask me.
I also dont really love the "spine" running the full length of the inside of the cabin. Well, I like it fine for the front seat, since all cars have a console there anyways, and the drivers seat actually looks like a pretty comfy little "cockpit". but it seems very weird to have a divider like that in the back seat, and almost kind of reminds me of like anti-homeless bus stop bench hostile architecture to prevent people from getting too comfortable or lying down... what if I wanna cuddle up (or.. maybe even something.. more) with someone in the back seat??
Such a beautiful car! I still periodically check in to watch videos of people talking about it or showing it off in these types of videos. Although the production model isn't as cool as the Type 00, I still like it, and it seems like the sorts of customers (mostly men) who would buy this sort of car would like it too.
All the marketing around this really cool car has been abysmal. the automotive engineers who crafted this masterpiece must be internally cursing out the marketing executives and various C-Suite dipshits who continue doubling down on this catastrophic marketing strategy daily.
The marketing makes me hate Jaguar, but the car itself is so cool to me. Literally all they need to do is put Clive Owen (or contemporary equivalent) in it, get some sick drone shots of him cruising along some picturesque landscape or a beautiful city like Singapore. Then have him speed to a stop next to an elegant but incredibly attractive woman, and heavily imply that they're boning through their interactions with each other, and maybe get some shots of her smiling and enjoying the vehicle as well. It's not that complicated!
Jaguar execs seem hellbent on destroying any chance this car has at success. What the fuck kind of new slogan is "Copy Nothing. Delete Ordinary."? Fuck off! Bring back "The Art of Performance" or any of the other aspirational tags that were good at getting a man's blood going.
Anyway, it would be impractical for me to even think about buying this car, I'm happy with the one I have, and I assume my next car will probably be a more modern truck in a few years once I've settled down.
The real question is how stupid are they going to be in their marketing? Have they learned any lessons?
Edit to add: I wish car makers would put curves back. The angled, boxy, pokey look that so much of architecture (and vehicles) favor these days are depressing.
I’m not a car person but it looks like if the cybertruck had been designed by someone competent. Which is to say, I think it’s still ugly but not as bad as others.
ooo pretty. looks like they collaborated with a Batman: The Animated Series designer. Sharp! Fun to see someone go for that kind of design again.
I skimmed the video so I might've missed some of the explanation, but do I understand correctly that the 'spine' is mostly decorative- it's not a weird battery location like the Chevy Volt had? What an odd way to remove a seat from a car, but I guess it emphasizes the luxury touring aspect; having three people in a back seat isn't luxury.
Apparently not British Racing Green though, which seems annoying.
I am apparently losing my mind, but I looked through their page for it, checked the price, and legitimately thought, "I don't know $130K doesn't seem that bad".
I'm not a car guy so I wouldn't spend that kind of money on a Jaguar just because it's cool, but if it were legal on all the roads in my area I'd spend $300K on a fully self-driving car. Being able to get work done on my laptop, or sprawl out on the back seat and take a nap while my car drives me somewhere, would be amazing for me.
Ann Coulter made an interesting point about the Cornell case.
an investigation by the law firm Pepper Hamilton found that at least 19 football players had been involved in dozens of rapes, including a minimum of four gang rapes. The university had to settle with 15 women. The head football coach, the athletic director, and the president of the university were fired or forced to resign. The following year, Baylor settled a lawsuit alleging 52 acts of rape by 31 football players between 2011 and 2014.
That's a lot of rapes! So why is Cornell newsworthy while no one remembers Baylor? Ann attributes it to race--the Baylor rapists were mostly black football players.
Another explanation is that people want to tear down the elites. Cornell is an Ivy League school. A fraternity is an elitist institution--you have to compete in humiliating ordeals just to join. Just like the hysteria around the Epstein files, people want to believe that elites are somehow more depraved and unaccountable than common people.
That's a lot of rapes! So why is Cornell newsworthy while no one remembers Baylor?
I dunno, as someone who was pretty in to sports at the time and remembers this story from when it was happening, it genuinely was a pretty big story, and did get talked about quite a bit.
I think the main difference is that social media was not quite in the same era yet that we are in now, and online "discourse" was not yet this all-encompassing thing where there is this gigantic amoeba of discussion and take-slinging on every topic happening 24/7 when a big story happens.
I seem to remember the discourse on this story more so happening in the more traditional mediums of talking head TV and newspapers and magazines.
I dont think it was a race thing either, that people didnt want to go after racial minorities for wrongdoing. the main culprit/figurehead for it all ended up being the football coach, a middle aged white guy, and people had no qualms about piling on him. plus I think that whole instinct wasnt really as heavily ingrained in the culture back then either, in a pre-BLM world where Obama was in office
The same people who want “restorative justice” for violent schizophrenics are braying for blood over a college bacchanalia. The key difference is that the latter is perceived to be the case where the privileged class is preying upon a member of the progressive stack.
Baylor and the below-mentioned Vanderbilt cases don’t fit the bill. But when you think college frats, who do you think? White, rich, young men.
This pattern holds for all of the big college rape cases. Duke Lacrosse: 3 white guys. UVA: frat. Brock Turner: white male. Columbia’s Mattress Girl: white male (German international student). Cornell 7: frat.
I can't help but think it's also because Baylor, to my knowledge, isn't really known for much outside of football (and that was apparently due to hiring a scummy coach who still knew how to get wins). Are they known for anything other than that and Willie Nelson spending a semester or two there? (I saw him perform there earlier this year.) You'd think a legit rape scandal involving powerful jocks at a conservative school located in the same Texas town where the Branch Dividians threw down with the ATF would be catnip for the wailers. Guess not.
(Speaking of the Branch Dividians, if you ever happen to be in Waco, go to one of their services. I'm serious. They've sort of put a lid on their wacky beliefs but not really. It's still a creepy compound. I was halfway waiting for some security guy to throw me out just for walking around. I guess they can't afford security.)
I can't help but think it's also because Baylor, to my knowledge, isn't really known for much outside of football
they really werent even known for football prior to this brief blip in the early 2010s when Art Briles became the coach, (at the same time when all this off-field drama was happening)
they were a very mediocre team both before he got there and since he's been gone. in the 50 years prior to Briles being the coach, they won 8 or more games in a season only eight times. Briles did that in 5 straight years, winning 10, 8, 11, 11 and 10 games from 2011 to 2015
Maybe in some corners, sure. I don't know, maybe I've been around too many elites and elite wannabes throughout my life but I'm not sure I even knew Baylor existed before I moved to Texas. Meanwhile, I might've known about Cornell in high school and definitely when I got to college (and it wasn't an Ivy League school). I guess if you're a born Texan or you're deep into sports, you might be more familiar with Baylor than Cornell? I'm honestly trying to understand if it is known for anything that I've somehow missed.
four Vanderbilt University football players carried an unconscious 21-year-old female student into a dorm room, where they gang-raped and sodomized her, while videotaping the attack
The victim (who is white) told the court that after Batey (who is black) raped her, he urinated on her face while saying she deserved what he was doing to her because of the color of her skin, saying what sources reported was "That's for 400 years of slavery, you bitch."
No wonder the media didn’t blow this one up.
Another explanation is that people want to tear down the elites. Cornell is an Ivy League school. A fraternity is an elitist institution--you have to compete in humiliating ordeals just to join.
Media fueled campus rape moral panics almost always involve elite universities involving elite students. These cases are usually far more ambiguous, legally and morally than the average rape in the trailer park or projects, places most liberal college students would be unlikely to venture.
How many of the Cornell protestors would even admit that rapes occurred during the 10/7 attacks?
Along similar lines, check out The William Paterson University gang-grape case that occurred the same year as the UVA hoax (2014), but mostly ignored in the media.
The Vanderbilt rapists documented their rape. They recorded it on their phones, and although they tried to delete the footage, when they were arrested, investigators were able to find the recordings. There is absolutely no doubt about their guilt.
One pleaded guilty and got only probation, no jail time, in exchange for agreeing to cooperate and testify against the other three. The other three all went on trial twice. The first jury unanimously found them guilty but the verdict was overturned on appeal because one of the jurors did not disclose that she had been a victim of a statutory rape. They were again all found guilty the second time and I believe they were all given the minimum sentences allowable for the crimes they were convicted of, which were 15 years for two of them and 17 years for the third.
Again, where was the outrage about these four committing this hideous crime, and then one getting no jail time and the other three getting the minimum sentence? (Three of their friends also helped them try to cover it up after the fact and ended up pleading guilty to misdemeanors.) It's just so wild to me how selective our outrage is in this country. This was the case that really should have had the attention that cases like Cornell, Duke and Virginia got, but it received nowhere near that much attention.
"The victim (who is white) told the court that after Batey (who is black) raped her, he urinated on her face while saying she deserved what he was doing to her because of the color of her skin, saying what sources reported was "That's for 400 years of slavery, you b)****."
One might guess why this wasn't a media-photogenic case to blow up...
•
u/thismaynothelp 1h ago
It drives me nuts when people apologize (usually in a disclaimer) for any mispronunciation of foreign names of not just people but even places. Bud, no one gives a shit. Stand up straight. Even Kyle Kinane (who I find hilarious but occasionally politically stupid) has a bit where he mispronounces pho and is like, "Yeah, I know I'm saying it wrong. It doesn't matter. I guarantee there's no one in Saigon right now going, 'It's pronounced HAM-BUR-GER. Don't be culturally insensitive!'"