Full post here: https://www.tumblr.com/brightlotusmoon/727204642739617792
Posting this to make up for accidentally posting a dog whistle earlier. Oops
is the okay sign still a good whistle
This may be controversial, but I think the way to combat dog whistles like this is to overuse them and muddy the waters. Make it so the Nazi’s aren sure whether the “pattern noticer” they are interacting with are antisemitic or not.
ISIS went from being an Egyptian goddess and a great band to a poorly translated acronym for a terrorist organization because everyone let the terrorists win on that one. The swastika has been a neat and simple symbol used by a variety of cultures with a variety of meanings ranging from positive to neutral until it was taken by the Nazi’s. 88 is a really neat looking number that’s done nothing wrong.
Society keeps on ceding cultural ground to assholes and the rest of us have to tiptoe through every piece of communication in fear of being associated with them.
What’s next? How long until some fascists start to use the “cool s” that we all doodled in our notebooks in school? Are we going to have to stop using any numbers with less than 3 digits? Will Allah, Jupiter, and Thor join Isis as symbols of fear?
But, the whole point is to have the waters muddied. That’s why it’s called a dog whistle, because only the dogs (the intended audience) will hear the whistle (recognize the true intent behind the phrase).
I honestly interpreted this as a socially awkward way of trying to do small talk - for example talking about weather
The problem with the concept of a “dog whistle” is that it’s non-falsifiable. Anyone at any time can declare that word X actually refers, secretly, to concept Y. No evidence required, and if people buy the claim then it makes the concept of X un-conveyable.
The problem with that problem is you can say any kind of accusation of racist behavior is non-falsifiable in the same way (“You can’t prove I was shitty to them because they were black, maybe I was shitty to them because they’re just a jerk”), but everyone knows racist behavior and dog whistles still exist
if people buy the claim
This is a good demonstration of why the concept of dog whistles isn’t really a problem, because when it’s a totally absurd accusation people aren’t going to buy it.
because when it’s a totally absurd accusation people aren’t going to buy it.
👌 would like a word
I don’t know where you’re getting your people from, but around where I’m at, people will believe any and all sorts of absurd bullshit constantly, that’s kind of been one of the major problems surrounding our upcoming election.
wat
All is dog whistle. Especially patterns.
Patterns are a government psyop.
My mom has this belief that there is a high comedy in taking two unrelated things and putting them into the same sentence.
Shitty example: “She Ichabod my Crane until I jack-o’-lantern”
The humor of the sentence comes from the person who is listening to you attempting to connect the two parts, and you getting to watch them draw the line.
This happens because people notice patterns and in a conversation it is the listener’s job to understand what the speaker is saying.
And this is well and good for the most part but because we have that tendency it’s easy to make horrible mistakes that we have a very difficult time disbelieving because we came to the conclusions ourselves.
Best case you end up like the no soap radio joke. Worst case, you end up in some sort of like weird Armageddon apocalypse right-wing conspiracy nut group talking about your weird imaginations with other people who also do not have a reality filter on their own imaginations.