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0 pointsnness10y ago0 comments

I added it as an edit, but I'll comment here too:

In context of recent events this is just a poorly and honestly unfunny joke. But the point isn't whether it was a joke though, the point is that universities have a long history of being the centre of vicious and deplorable acts of violence, mass violence. In the context of the university environment, I can see how jokes like this are unsettling and reminiscent of real social media posts that often precede real attacks that maim or kill real people. The authors insensitivity to this is what I find shortsighted.

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jacobolus10y ago

I think it’s a pretty funny joke, albeit an obvious one that has been made hundreds of times in the last week, so maybe a bit tired at this point.

It’s 100% obviously a joke, and not a bomb threat, and it obviously has nothing to do with mass violence. Anyone who is unsettled hasn’t been paying attention to the news the last week and/or isn’t thinking very hard.

The unsettling part is the 14-year-old kid getting arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, not some college students making jokes about it on the internet.

To state it more pointedly, the people who are “unsettled” by a joke like this enough to kick these guys out of their hackathon are the same kind of unthinking authoritarian assholes as the folks who had the high-school clockmaker arrested.

Confusion10y ago

Universities do not have such a history at all. Yes, horrible things also sometimes happen at universities. But 'at the centre' since 'long': no. It's just an excuse for using appeal to emotion.

There is a common expression that 'something is about as effective as stabbing someone with a butter knife'. Someone might overhear you using that expression and may unsettlingly remember once being threatened with a butter knife. That sucks and if they told you, you would try not to use that expression around them. That would be a nice thing to do, showing empathy. What would not be a nice or emphatic thing to do for them, is demanding your expulsion from an event for using that phrase. Demanding you not use that expression any more would similarly not be nice or called for.

They are still the one with the problem. If they tell us we should help them and should try to take it into account. But they cannot expect strangers to take it into account, nor can they expect others to always keep it into account. There are too many people with too many different problems for society to function that way.

So, if any mention of a 'bomb', like this one, is 'unsettling' to you, you need help. We have a responsibility to get you that help. We do not have a responsibility to prevent you from feeling 'unsettled'.

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