Comment by brenschluss
6 years ago
> Generally from those who have decided that their job is to find ways to be offended by everything.
You know, I never understood why people trot this idea out so often. It's so irrational.
If people were rational, they would say "hmm, X doesn't offend me, but many people say that X offend them; perhaps they have a point."
Instead, only those who are incapable of understanding their own confirmation bias say "All these people say that X offends them; how silly."
I think this is a highly irrational take.
The better take would be: "Some people seem to be offended by everything; other people are not. What are the principal factors of a person that go into predicting 'will this person be offended by X'?"
Keep in mind that a lot of the offense-taking you see happening publicly is done entirely on purpose. Think of it as adult/Internet equivalent of a child throwing a tantrum to see if they can manipulate their parents into getting what they want. In both cases, bowing down to the threats is not the right answer.
My take on these situations is that they are NP-complete in a way: looking at something (the assistant voice for example) with a clear and objective mind and trying to figure out a way it's offensive is much harder that verifying whether an offensive attitude is being portrayed by that thing.