I don't think you need to be civil to puppy-smashers
By @edent
· google privacy · 5 comments · 400 words · read ~286 times.
My good friend Jess wrote this a little while ago:
The whole thread is worth reading. One thing she doesn't cover is how you should respond when someone proposes to implement a puppy-smashing machine.
If you don't agree with puppy-smashing (and there are two sides to every argument) then it's very important to be polite and civil while discussing the issue - because puppy-smashers are real people with valid feelings.
For example, you could say to them:
- I'm not so sure that's a great idea. Please would you reconsider?
- Hey, just so you know, not everyone is down for puppy smashing. Any thoughts on addressing that?
- Interesting. But have you read Smith et al's work on differential smashing of pets?
- You're the good guys! Is there any way you can exclude my puppy from being smashed? He's a service dog.
- Perhaps you could only smash puppies 10% of the time? No worries if not!!!
And so on. That way you get to have a calm and respectful decision about the the hard work people are doing. Even if someone is threatening to smash your puppy, you need to keep a cool head and make sure you don't raise your voice.
Right?
No.
The correct response is "What the actual juddering fuck is wrong with you? Don't be such an absolute thundercunt! I'm going to call the authorities right now, you literal scumbag!"
It was Robert Jones, Jr. who said: "We can disagree and still love each other. Unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression, your denial of my humanity, my right to exist."0
I don't think you need to be civil to those people who are deliberately trying to harm you. Sure, you might get a more positive reaction if you gently cajole them or politely help them see the error of their ways. But sometimes it is important to let people know vociferously just how much their plans will hurt you and your puppies.
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Often mis-attributed to James Baldwin ↩︎
@Edent Ok, I snort laughed.
Also, something along the lines of “I hear you’re in the puppy smashing business, now”
@Edent I was once tricked into working in the puppy-smashing business (pharmaceutical toxicology software.) It turned out that nobody wanted to smash puppies any more but the US government made them continue. Our software minimised the number of puppies smashed. The puppy smashers funded anti-puppy-smashing organisations. I suspect there may be US Senators who farm puppies for smashing.
Except almost no one sets out to design a puppy-smashing machine. Maybe they design the titanium-handled hammer that will save carpenters from repetitive stress injuries, but some psychopath discovers it also makes a superlative canine-whacking implement (an extremist cat person, perhaps). Shouting at the hammer maker for not including an AI-powered puppy recognition camera and airbag and thus complicit doesn’t strike me as reasonable.
I really like the approach of Patrick Ball, who in Making the Case showed how to use software to identify the rottenest of apples within dictatorships who are responsible for most of the abuses, and presenting that to the saner elements of the regime to have them sidelined.
@Edent so... The Paradox of Tolerance (puppy smashing edition) 😉
The dog grooming machine which accidentally smashes one in 20 puppies is a thought experiment.
How about a real life scenario?
A couple of weeks ago I was at an event in the local arts café, filming it — it was an all day event that started at 2 and finished at 10, and by about half way through I felt I was Penny Mordaunt carrying her sword with my camera rig (a 360 VR camera, a 360 VR audio recorder, and my phone, all in a frame, on a monopod, tethered to a pair of mofo batteries in a bag over my shoulder), so you can imagine how tired I was by the end of the night.
The end of the night comes, I go to one of the café tables to start dismantling the rig; opposite me is a young-ish couple. After a short time the woman appears to smile at me, and flaps her hand; I smile back, cos I’m, like, friendly like that. Moments later she appears to whisper something to her man, I carry on the process of arranging my stuff to dismantle the rig. The man shouts over ‘we do not consent!’. ‘Eh?’, I reply. ‘We do not consent to be filmed’, he shouts back, his tone becoming hostile. ‘I’m not filming you, I was only filming the performances’. ‘You are filming us, your camera is pointing at us; if you are not filming us why are the lights on? I demand you stop filming us immediately, we do not consent to you filming us’, he shouts back even more hostilely. ‘I’m not filming you, I’m dismantling the camera rig, the lights are on because I haven’t switched it off yet, and I would have finished dismantling it by now had you not interrupted me’. He grudgingly backed down at that point, perhaps realising he was making a tit of himself in front of other people.
The point is by all means blatant obvious puppy-smashers who you absolutely know are obviously in the puppy-smashing game deserve your hostility. But how well do you know everybody you suspect of being a puppy-smasher actually is a puppy-smasher? Have you considered the possibility you may be mistaken? If you’re publicly hostile to somebody you think is a puppy-smasher who it subsequently turns out not to be, what kind of light have you presented The Campaign To Abolish Puppy-Smashing in? Have you actually just turned some non-aligned witnesses to your public tittery against your cause rather than converting them to it?
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