The fact there there are people on this thread who don’t understand the distinction between racism and racism jokes, between murder and murder jokes, and between bigotry and bigotry jokes is more disturbing. Archie Bunker was a racist bigot – that doesn’t mean the All in the Family writers were.
Nice handle, BTW, but consider this quote from Children of Dune: “When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles.”
More assumptions and speculation on the intent of these 10 individuals. Comparing them to Matt Stone and Trey Parker (hard-edged modern day satire) is a bit of a stretch IMO.
There is a difference between skirting the line, crossing the line, and obliterating the line
There is a difference between saying something in a thoughtless moment and aiming for maximum offense.
There is a difference between going off-color in a chat with friends and creating a group for the purpose of being as offensive as possible among strangers.
There is a difference between going too far in the context of a comedy routine or magazine – in which your position will inevitably require a certain number of judgment calls about when pointed satire or productive irreverence turns into crass offense – and doing so because you choose to spend your first moments as a member of a community as part of what was in effect a “crassly offensive jokes meme.”
There’s a new(er) thread here on CC about an Oregon State baseball player who’s a registered sex offender. Read the details over there. Would anyone want post a satirical meme on the subject? It ain’t funny. And those 10 individuals should have realized the same thing.
That’s what I don’t get. The articles say that the Facebook group was an offshoot of, and 100% facilitated by, the group members having been invited to a Harvard accepted students Facebook group.
This was not random people finding out that they happen to be accepted to Harvard, Harvard hooked them up!
If someone took advantage of a college wanting to build a community of new students using students’ private information (email and admission status), heck, I’d be mad, whether I’m Podunk Community College or Harvard. They cheapen if not soil the whole process of trying to build a cohort.
(I also wonder - were all the students 18 or older - I was 17 when I went to college, so without knowing other users’ ages, such content could have a further issue of targeting minors)
^^ false equivalence @sushiritto There is a world of difference between an actual sexual assault on a real individual and posting stupid comic images (of no one in particular.)
I think you’re wrong. Not a false equivalent to me. That comic image came from someone’s pain and suffering. One of those 10 individuals posted a comic image of the sexual arousal from an abused child or children.
^^ That would be tragic if true @doschicos and you could be right. But the people here jumping to the conclusion that they are morally reprehensible in their real-world interactions and likely to commit campus crime (as some suggest) is quite a leap. Let’s all admit we don’t know.
Do you think if you were on your company’s Facebook page, and broke off into a private group, the company wouldn’t fire you if you started an R-rated group there?
This is not about private conversations on private Facebook accounts. The relationships were made by Harvard, and abused by certain students. The talk about free speech and comedy is not pertinent. Your boss does not have a sense of humor.
I still don’t follow your point. I didn’t see any photos of actual people who suffered. (that WOULD be reprehensible). I see hand drawn comics or stock photos overlaid with vile obnoxious words that are meant to shock.
There are some posters here who are jumping to conclusions on both sides.
Some have said the students’ intent was edgy humor. Some have said they’re bad people. The fact is, we don’t know who these kids are underneath. But they’re all a modern day version of Icarus. They just flew a little too close to the sun and the wax melted on their wings. It’s really very sad all the way around.
Draw it (a player up of any sport and a child) in a comic image. Does the comic image of the incident make it more palatable? The incident in a comic image still is real pain and suffering for someone out there who has gone through it. Seeing as a comic image doesn’t make it any better for me, that’s for sure.
@sushiritto You’re right about that. I’m just basing it off of my own experiences/my friends experiences. I have a dark sense of humor so I’m a part of a lot of private groups and group chats where they share similar content. A majority of these people aren’t bigots and a lot of the time we’re having a laugh at ourselves. I think it’d be pretty stupid to crucify any of these people like some of ya’ll are.
Granted we used a lot more discretion than these ppl and don’t let in anyone remotely sensitive into our circles Which is why I stress: don’t let normies anywhere near your spicy memes.
@LordBendtner Personally I don’t belong to any private group(s) where we pass around offensive jokes, memes or whatever. I don’t like it for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that I would never want my child to see me viewing the crap. IMO, that’s poor parenting, essentially tacit approval of the crap.
But we’re not “just” talking about bad Holocaust, Black or Mexican humor here are we? We’re talking about mocking the sexual arousal from child abuse too. Hitting a dead Mexican child like a piñata. Some people here are viewing this crap through the lens of their own eyes and forgetting that there are some viewers who have different lenses, different perspectives. What about them? Maybe someone who’s been a victim of child abuse, possibly? Or how about someone who had a parent that survived the Holocaust, the gas chambers, seeing piles of shoes that have been collected from dead bodies? Funny crap to some, not so funny crap to others.
As I said many times here, I’m not condemning the kids, because I don’t know anything about them. They just did something really stupid.
Yes they did. However, if you google “college student expelled for memes” or “college student expelled for swastika” or “college student expelled for black face” or “college student expelled for confederate flag” and look beyond recent articles posted about the 10 kids at Harvard, you’ll see there are quite a few students expelled from college and high school for such behavior. It’s not just Harvard’s stand on the issue; there is a zero tolerance policy at most academic institutions for this kind of stupidity. And student’s – if they didn’t know it already – need to understand this.