A Loss of Faith

Been hav­ing an insane argu­ment with a per­son on Flickr over a “racist” pic­ture of me and Bronwen.

Are peo­ple real­ly this asi­nine? I real­ly don’t want to believe it, but it’s kin­da hard when they repeat­ed­ly go beyond all sense of log­ic.

There goes my faith in human­i­ty.

Please, please, please, let this be a joke.

13 comments

  1. >Are peo­ple real­ly this asi­nine?
    not usu­al­ly in real life but with an anony­mous online con­ve­nient vent space, an odd indi­vid­ual by moments.

    I think this self-declared Asian lad is hav­ing a spout, look­ing for a bout, putting out bait. You’re right to call his over­gen­er­al­iza­tion of one instance to a polti­cal agen­da of cen­turies for all moments of life, for all peo­ple of each cat­e­gor­i­cal col­ors. It’s rot.

    Fighting his gut fire with logic…well, may not go so great but I do like yr rea­son­ing of by that log­ic of overex­ten­sion, to not be demon­stra­bly dat­ing a man, makes a guy homo­pho­bic.

  2. My ini­tial instinct was­n’t this that per­son was look­ing for a fight, but has some kind of supe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex, as he quick­ly want­ed to point out how he had dat­ed blacks and Latinas.

    A Taoist say­ing is “mod­esty that parades puri­ty isn’t gen­uine”, and it would appear that this per­son is try­ing to show off how “open-mind­ed” he is by this action.

  3. >Are peo­ple real­ly this asi­nine?

    Yes they are. I see it all the time, a lot of it over the Internet, but I see it in real life too.

    They are thank­ful­ly a minor­i­ty, the asi­nine folks that is. People are still total­ly worked up over intera­cial cou­ples. That guy is a los­er, and is tak­ing out his frus­tra­tions on you because he can’t get his own white girl :p j/k

  4. Hahahah…I like your jeal­ousy the­o­ry. I guess I hang out with open-mind­ed peo­ple so often (well…I try to at least), that it sur­pris­es me when big­otry rears it’s ugly head.

  5. Funny dude. It must be a joke. Maybe it’s some­one who knows you.

  6. That’s the down­side of liv­ing in Ottawa, I felt like I was so shel­tered liv­ing in a place where open-mind­ed­ness is com­mon and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism was pro­mot­ed. It made me think that the world was pro­gress­ing for­ward.

    Boy was I in for a sur­prise when I moved to California… California of ALL places!

  7. Pearl, that’s fun­ny, I thought of the same thing as I was read­ing the post, about homo­pho­bia being inferred from not dat­ing men.

    I took the bait and respond­ed. I can’t believe some­one would make such an asi­nine com­ment. There was a lot more I want­ed to write, but I know it could eas­i­ly turn into an all-out flame war.

  8. ah flame­wars…, takes me back to usenet days where the coun­try­side was lit­tered with trolls and Billy Goat Gruff was King. ;)

  9. @Causalien — I agree that this per­son­’s rea­son­ing is so poor that it must be a joke. But I don’t know any­one whose English is so poor.

    @Sophia — I guess you could say that the open-mind­ed­ness of Ottawa spoiled you! Admittedly, things like this take me by sur­prise too, because my friends (the cir­cle I rarely ven­ture out of) are so kind and gen­er­ous, I expect every­one to be like them. Then I’m let down when I dis­cov­er they’re the excep­tion. I still see it as a good thing though.

    @Jason — Yeah, I’ve decid­ed that it’s best not to respond any­more because I said as much as I could. Obviously, it’s not get­ting through to this guy. Totally awe­some rebut­tal you made though.

    @Pearl — Holy crap, I remem­ber read­ing that sto­ry when I was younger, and I did­n’t think of it until you men­tioned it. Trolling behav­iour would excuse this guy’s log­ic.

  10. What is up with those Asians who are prej­u­diced against their own? That per­son was real­ly igno­rant.

    When I was grow­ing up in CA, I nev­er encoun­tered such stu­pid­i­ty.

    I’m sor­ry you had to deal with him.

    But I, how­ev­er, over the last few weeks am prob­a­bly one of the peo­ple that would make you lose faith in mankind. See my most recent post. I need some seri­ous emotional/mental spank­ing into shape.

    Step 1. Write him an apol­o­gy note.

  11. I thought your com­plete analy­sis and rebut­tal is a waste of your time. However, I do under­stand why because of the same com­plete non­sense that was post­ed on my own blog. I am guilty too.

    Maybe one day, I can be kind enough to for­give and try to help the per­son instead.

  12. My analy­sis and rebut­tal was an attempt to help the per­son (see the sec­ond last para­graph of my long com­ment). I don’t think that try­ing to enlight­en some­one, regard­less of how lit­tle chance you have of chang­ing them, is a waste of time.

    At the very least, I can say that I tried to give some­one a bet­ter, health­i­er way of see­ing the world.

    And I don’t need to for­give him cause there’s noth­ing to for­give. The guy did­n’t do any­thing wrong. He sim­ply has a dif­fer­ent (albeit rather stu­pid) opin­ion.

  13. Ah, I stopped read­ing after a few para­graphs so I get the impres­sion that you were pissed.

    Actually on lat­er thought, I think i have the belief that log­i­cal rebut­tals nev­er work. Maybe the deed has to be done through the emo­tion­al side. Which leads to a new ques­tion. How best to enlight­en peo­ple.

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