Interesting Links for 24-08-2016

[andrewducker]

Britain’s Hardest Workers: the most gobsmacking reality TV show to date (tags: work tv poverty ) What kind of game is No Man's Sky, and what kind of game is it not? Framing is everything.
(tags: games space ) The Rio Games Were An Unjustifiable Human Disaster, And So Are The Olympics (tags: olympics sport corruption inequality OhForFucksSake )

Comments

[andrewducker]

I'll have a go at the cultural appropriation one.
Imagine that people went to parties wearing clothing that everyone knew was what people like you wore (even if it was actually a rubbish approximation of this), and that included clothing that was close to highly revered pieces of clothing that a person had to really earn (like medals for bravery). And because your kind of person was unusual there actually ended up being more people wearing, basically, satires of your clothing than there were people wearing the originals, so that in people's minds the satires were what they thought of whenever they thought of your kind of person. And along with this there usually went stereotypical behaviours, phrases, etc. that kept coming up to the point that when people thought about you they thought of those phrases.

After a while you'd probably feel bullied, and like people were deliberately mocking you, even if that's not what they meant (because a lot of the people doing this don't actually know that the phrases are stereotypes, or that these clothes are actually important to you, or that while the occcasional silliness might be fine, when it's all you get it's depressing).

Of course, people take it too far sometimes. And, personally, I think the kimono thing is an example of that. When people start saying, basically, that cultures should be kept separate, I think it's actively dangerous and wrong.

The important thing, to me, is to recognise that sometimes people are attached to the symbols of their people, and so if you use them in ways that aren't respectful then they might get upset about that. (Like, for instance, if someone made a costume which used the US flag for star-spangled underwear, they might think it just looked cool, but some Americans would be upset at the disrespect.)

The wikipedia article isn't bad too.

[80hz]

On the macro level, most cultures borrow from--and really, are changed by--other cultures. This cultural borrowing happens a lot, in all directions, all over the place. Think about the common foods people eat, clothes people wear, languages people speak, religions people follow, pets people keep, technologies people use, and so on. For any of these, it's easy to find something that came from somewhere else and was changed significantly along the way, lost its symbolism, gained totally different meanings and connotations, etc.

It's on the micro level--of a person seeing his cultural artifacts borrowed and distorted--where we start to hear complaints of cultural appropriation. So far, it's understandable: the person might think his cultural artifacts are being disrespected, and he feels disrespect reflected toward him as a result.

However, as I said above, most cultures are borrowing from each other. People who complain about cultural appropriation are typically themselves appropriators of other cultures!

At the root of what I don't get, I suppose, is the direct emotion-to-ideology connection, with no "Wait, does this make sense? Am I responding to anything malicious or even practically detrimental?" rationality module serving as an intermediary.

In spontaneous meatspace interactions I could understand this. But when, for example, you start a Facebook group in protest of something, you've had ample opportunities to stare at your ideas as words on a screen in front of you, and to hear them bounced off other people. You've had opportunities to think. To calm down. To reassess and edit. If all that has happened and you're still charging ahead with the hysterics, then it isn't about cultural appropriation at that point, it's about you wanting to throw a tantrum and make a scene and get a reaction.

Why does anybody still do any of this? What purpose does it serve? Whose culture is it protecting? Isn't there another way to protect what's important to you than by screaming and making a fuss about it?

[naath]

I think you overestimate people's ability to reflect before typing...

Also I think some people are much much more attached to their culture being *theirs* than others, they don't want blending and sharing, especially of sacred ritual objects. Also it's kinda annoying when a thing that you wanted to signify your in-group goes viral and now everyone does it - it can no longer signal in-group-ness.

But it is very very silly when people who are *not part of a culture* decide to police that culture's boundaries, without prompting from people who *are*.

[octopoid_horror]

A problem these days, as the article points out, is that some folk seem to have self-selected themselves as arbiters of what is cultural appropriation and what's not. And they're often not from the cultures -being- appropriated (because they're middle class white internet commenters/bloggers etc)

A bunch of white bloggers crying "cultural appropriation" about a culture that isn't theirs when it's seemingly appropriated by someone is just a meaningless shriek of an attempt at self-importance unless said outrage/discomfort/#problematic feeling is felt within the culture in question, in my opinion.

The issue this causes is that it's then hard to separate actual hurtful, disrespectful or otherwise tasteless cultural appropriation from being part of a globalised culture where fashions and symbols from one country spread to another as naturally happens.