Re: tone policing

[Dan Harkins <[e-mail]>]

On 9/3/19 9:09 AM, Adam Roach wrote:
> On 9/2/19 11:49 PM, Dan Harkins wrote:
>> Furthermore, your email
>> is a kind of "tone policing" that has been discussed here. You're 
>> stating that the
>> speaker should watch how he says what he says because it could be 
>> misinterpreted.
>
>
> This isn't about tone. It's explicitly about what was meant, not how 
> it was said. "I hope you die" is the kind of so-over-the-line ad 
> hominem that it gets used as an *example* of an ad hominem. I was 
> hoping Lloyd could clarify that's not what he meant. His silence is 
> concerning.
>
> I mean, I get it. It wasn't meant literally, and it was included 
> because Lloyd thought it sounded witty. But it's still an attack on 
> the volunteers who attempt to keep this list usable. Not what they've 
> done, and not the role they're serving, but their actual persons. And 
> that's the exact kind of thing we had people lining up at the 
> microphone in Montreal to say isn't okay any more.

   If you get it, if you know it wasn't meant literally, and if you know 
it was included because
he thought it sounded witty then this is about tone. You are objecting 
to _how_ he made what you
admit was, and was intended to be, a joke.

   You can't say you know it wasn't meant literally and then misquote it 
(he didn't say "I hope you
die") and say it was about actual persons. This was quite obviously 
about the role of SAA. It was
a crack about hoping that the SAA goes into a grave and not a specific 
person who happens to be a
SAA right now. He was obviously not hoping that someone else becomes 
SAA. At least that's not how
I took his joke. So it had to be about the role.

   And the fact that you're blowing this way out of proportion with this 
pearl clutching ("his
silence is concerning") illustrates the "tone police" problem that has 
been discussed on this list
for the last couple days. If a listener is the deciding factor of 
whether a statement violated
some vague rule on "harshness" or "toxicity" or whatever then we will 
begin downward spiral of
hyperbolic offense being taken as a way of claiming power over others. 
We will begin a kind of
Maoist cultural revolution in the IETF. Let's not go there.

   regards,

   Dan.