Also, only really works if they are “attempting to gain a higher moral authority” (as OP says). As if that’s the only reason people would argue a point. I think it says something about OP that they take that as a given for arguments. I can immediately imagine scenarios that one can argue against a thing that they themselves participate in.

“Hey, smoking is bad, kid. Don’t do it.”

“But you smoke! And I look so cool with a cigarette!”

“Yeah, it’s a habit that’s very difficult to break and it makes your life worse in every way. I know from experience.”

“No you.”

But I agree with your main point,

But pointing out the hypocrisy is technically “off topic” if you’re arguing whether X is actually bad.

It’s considered a fallacy exactly for this reason. When you’re debating a thing, you’re way off the map if you think that’s your winning move if you’re arguing in good faith. An argument should be about showing your point is correct, not that you’re better than the other person. But Mr. Wang up there may only view arguments as a competition to be won morally.

don’t even know enough to care in the first place.

but ultimately it’s the user who decides to use the service, and how to use it.

So you admit they don’t have access to the knowledge needed to make better choices for their digital security. Then immediately blame them. I think your bias from the point of view of a one that is already more informed on this sort of thing. If they don’t know they need to know more, how can they be expected to do any research? There’s only so much time in a day so you can’t expect people to learn “enough” about literally everything.

I did not! I definitely intended to respond to you implying there’s nothing wrong with parents using their influence to help their child.

Fuck that nonsense. This is the same mindset as every poor person who thinks of themselves as a “temporarily embarrassed millionaire.” You say it with the assumption that you’re somewhere in that equation and don’t give a shit about any kind of equality. That’s selfish as shit. You phrase it like they should be stopped from helping to make sure their kids are still fed while off at college or some shit, but we’re talking about millionaires helping their millionaire children also maintain their millionaire lifestyle by leveraging their brand to possibly get a role someone without famous parents could use to fucking survive. I don’t care how able he is to do a good job, it’s bullshit to pretend he actually deserves it because his parents really feel like he should.

Yeah.

I’m not vying for a pure meritocracy, but the system we currently have to work and live in, as established, expects merit to be the thing that enables success and advancement in living conditions. As long as that’s the system were in, those that already exist with a certain level of privilege of already achieving acceptable, if not ample living conditions, shouldn’t be given an additional lead on those that don’t. This guy was never going to be poor or struggling to eat because he couldn’t find a job.

When speaking about privilege, I like to use the race analogy. Some people are given bikes while some are given cars, and others even just have to walk. This guy was born with a sports car already, then his parents started him a mile ahead from the starting line.

There is nothing wrong with parents using their influence to help their child.

I’m gonna disagree with you on that one, Hoss. It’s definitely a problem.

in Kate Manne’s “Down Girl,” about misogyny she wrote: “They put women in their place when they seem to have ‘ideas beyond their station.’”

“Misogynist hostility encompasses myriad ‘down girl’ moves . . . to generalize: adults are insultingly likened to children, people to animals or even to objects. As well as infantilizing and belittling, there’s ridiculing, humiliating, mocking, slurring, vilifying, demonizing sexualizing or, alternatively desexualizing… and other forms that are dismissive and disparaging in specific social contexts.”

Emphasis mine to point out the most relevant portions in this case. It’s a solid read on misogyny that I definitely recommend to anyone.

But it’s great to put on a list of reasons for gun control! Most seem to agree that him responding to a perceived threat violently was acceptable, but he shouldn’t have used a gun. But if he’s legally carrying, then it sounds like the biggest threat here was the access to firearms. Maybe access to a pocket sized kill button is harmful to society?

This guy felt threatened. If it’s any of the gun-owners in this thread and they have no context and feel threatened, I’m sure they’d hate having people call for their imprisonment because they thought they were doing the right thing to protect themselves and it turns out they made the wrong call.

I agree with you. This is responsible use of firearms. This is just what responsible gun ownership looks like. It’s a machine who’s only purpose is to kill. The best outcome is trying but failing to kill someone. The most likely outcome is someone is dead. That’s how guns work.

Even more fun! In-car record players were made upside-down so that the weight of the record held it against the needle. These are all of my record player facts.

Fun fact! Motorola started out as a company making record players specifically for cars. The big name in record players at the time was Victrola, and since they were making them for motorcars they called themselves MotoRola.

It sure is. In my life and job I go out of my way to be very exact in my language, but that was a skill I had to learn after years of interactions like this, where I’ve been on both sides of the misunderstanding. And I still struggle not sounding like a robot when I explain things clearly. English is an expansive language with a lot of utility, but the flipside is that meaning can often be ambiguous and require lots of words to be clear.

I’m looking at them buddy. No one is buying into your bait. They agree with your assertion that we should tax people as rich as Biden. I think you’re talking about the guy who was trying to show you that if you have a problem with Biden’s millions, you should be even more troubled by the billionaire it seems you’re defending.

People aren’t obsessed with Biden. Biden has done some good while in office - a lot more than people were expecting. The best thing he’s done by far is not being Donald Trump. We all know why we voted for him, and it’s not his progressive policies.

Ya know what? I misread this interaction. My bad. I didn’t realize we were arguing the same point. The last week has shown a lot of people on this site arguing fervently for the case of aliens visiting earth, and I made assumptions. I’m sorry buddy.

No, I’m pretty sure I fully understand you. I’m just pretty sure that people are either making it up or ascribing normal, terrestrial things that they don’t understand as fantastical things. There aren’t ghosts, spirits, dragons or aliens that have secretly visited earth but choses not to make actual contact. My point is that all of those things are equally unlikely. I assumed my over-the-top absurdity made that clear.

And I feel like you might be underestimating literally all of the world if you think these things are actually aliens. You’re implying that they would assume something they don’t understand is some mystical nonsense. That “almost everywhere that isn’t the US, even today” is superstitious and wouldn’t know what aliens are.

So it couldn’t be Americans mistaking ghosts for aliens? Or bigfoot, a creature that we haven’t been able to verify because their culture advanced past ours and is able to cloak themselves and occasionally go on joyrides in their more advanced technology and forget to turn on the cloaking device? We have just as much evidence for all of these things.

So… what were they mistaking the aliens for?

I mean, the actual verified “alien craft” in America is actually more of a “not sure what that is” grainy footage in an age where Donald Trump tweeted out classified satellite images that showed the cameras we use are actually far more advanced and show far more detail than any we knew existed. And that technology was over a decade old at the time!