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As long as it's 'selective evidence', right?

How about going and overreacting somewhere else. You are not beneficial to this topic at all other than being a perfect example of someone who lets anger get the best of them and looses the ability to comprehend what they read while making accusations they can't back up with evidence by simply hitting a quote button. I've already told you, If you want to claim that I said homosexuals are pedophiles, then do quote the entire post where I made such statements.

Now, If I did say such things, it would be very simple to prove, the problem is you can't fulfill that request because the event never took place, so to continue insisting it did, what does that say about you and what type of person you are?

It really irritates me that so many people can lash out without a justified reason. They assume their personal anger and the comments of other outraged people is justification for their idiotic behavior.

I'm not the only person here calling you out on your homophobic logic. You clearly don't understand what it means to actually be a pedophile, and the so-called "experts" that you get these statistics from are idiots.

Use some common sense!

But actually, there's no use in arguing with a delusional troll like yourself. No matter what anybody says to you, your reaction is always "Liberals are corrupt and stupid and are out to get me waaahhhh!! !!"

At least I'm not the only one here who can see through your crap.

You are a TROLL!

This one touches on outrage culture. It's really just the expansion of people who 'overreact' and act as if they are moral leaders. Really, though, people should be embarrassed about how they responded in this topic, my initial thought was to discuss this issue to hope maybe people could look down inside in try to understand why they try to twist every conversation into something to be outraged about. Only two people actually reasonable responses and one person who just had a neutral comedic response, everyone else had very ridiculous responses where they often completely made up information to be enraged about. It truly is a sad thing, as outrage culture spreads this issue is going to get a lot worse, and it is an issue because people can't even have simply conversations without stirring up the outrage mod with false accusations and ridiculous interpretations. If this is really how most people think, no wonder many people dislike Trump, they are too outraged to be able to listen and comprehend the actual meaning of conversations. As proved in this thread, there isn't much purpose in discussing the subject at hand because people seem to have limited control over themselves. Seriously, not one person could even quote one sentence which verified the accusations they made, yet many different people made the same accusation. I wonder how many of them actually read the whole original post and how many decided to just jump on the band wagon?? What does that say about you if you are one of these people??

Yes you are correct. many people made false claims with 0 evidence. They seemed to back off once they saw me demand evidence, wonder why that is? Like I care about your opinion, you are the king of making things up to be mad about. Why do you coward to the challenge of quoting me?? You want mention that because you made all of the crap up, if I were you I would feel a little embarrassed, rather you just double down as if you are delusional. Commen sense left your opinions a long time ago.

Here is another good one, I watched it months ago, it shows how these types of people like to stick to their delusions, in the Q and A at the end several people try to call them out and they just don't get it.

It makes me wonder you know, how many people actually understand exactly what I'm trying to talk about yet will not comment due to not wanting to bother with people making dickish comments and accusations? I bet they are out there, I don't care because I simply know I haven't done anything wrong, so people throwing false accusations just shows how ridiculous they are. And no, it's not funny, it's completely absurd!

And now the most persistently absurd person has sent me a very dickish comment and claims he is going to let the MODS handle it. Handle what exactly? Me trying to have a civil conversation while very disruptive people step in and act like fools?

It will be mighty funny if this conversation gets shut down because of people not knowing how to act like responsible adults.

Somewhat related article....actually, this article is point on, nearly describing what occurred within this topic. It's rather funny how it works. People are quick to be outraged and express it yet once they have been proven to be incorrect in their outrage they are likely to not admit such and just stop responding altogether. People will admit when they are wrong sometimes, but on average it's not likely they will.

IS OUTRAGE ADDICTION DERAILING OUR MOST IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS?

Last week, I posted an essay on my Facebook page that was originally published on Medium, written by a white rape survivor who was expressing her frustrations with the trans rights movement. The piece was shared thousands of times on social media. But because I posted it on my page, I was deemed a bigot and an accessory to the horrific murders of trans women who are killed by evil men.

If you believe the internet, that’s what happened.

What really happened was that I shared that article and deliberately withheld my opinion. I wanted to start a substantive discussion among my friends and followers, who share a wide range of opinions. I value dialogue and believe that we can move forward through critical engagement, even perspectives we might vehemently disagree with. I have found my Facebook community to be a space for critical discourse on any number of topics. But, in a culture where people are steeped in emotionalism and where folks don’t read and fully process information, there can be a negative side to the online discourse.

For the next six days, my social-media pages and inboxes were deluged with messages, in which I was called a homophobe, a transphobe, a TERF (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist), and other colorful names. I was even accused me of writing the piece by more than a few people. Still others argued that by sharing it, I was perpetuating violence against trans women and children, despite not being the author of the piece.

Deep sigh.

Many of us have witnessed these sorts of exchanges on social media, where a friend posts about a difficult topic or poses an uncomfortable question to spark a lively discussion. But before the conversation begins, the poster is attacked, criticized, and vilified and the dialogue is preemptively derailed by a virtual playground fight. New terms, which are concocted and hurled every time folks feel hurt, add more distractions and don’t result in real healing and empowerment.

Whether or not people personally know the targets for their rage, they still tend to project their assumptions onto them. And sadly, others who might want to engage in a constructive discussion about the topic shut down and don’t share for fear of being attacked for simply asking a question or revealing their opinion. People get hung up on semantic distinctions or in-house linquistic/concepts and are very public about every hang up and shout down folks who haven’t kept up. And others launch into protracted public campaigns against people (a.k.a. dragging). Why are we so quick to label and stigmatize others based on our assumptions of what they think, what they feel, or where they stand? This lack of tolerance is not constructive, even dangerous, especially for anyone who is from a marginalized group. In order for us to move forward, we need to reckon with ourselves and understand why we do this.

We are currently living under an outrageous regime that gets more outrageous by the minute. But have we become addicted to our own sense of outrage? Are we starting to alienate ourselves from one another because of our rage at the world?
As a journalist and an academic, I’m all about engaging in rigorous and difficult conversations. But between extreme right-wing lunacy and cannibalistic BS that’s happening on the left, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to have the kind of discourse that can help to affect progress and positive change.

Social media at once offers more opportunities for these conversations and makes it harder for them to be deep and nuanced. People swing from thread to thread, onto the next topic. It’s simply the nature of the medium.

And as a result, we lose sight of the fact that while technology evolves faster than we can comprehend, human nature takes time and many steps for true growth to take place and hold. Real growth and learning comes from missteps, and if public displays of missteps or vulnerability result in hateration and value judgment, then how can we evolve and move forward? Are we really listening to each other? Learning? It’s like expecting an infant to come into the world ready to walk and talk rather than allowing them the space to grow into those skill sets. Too many of us can’t be bothered to think critically beyond safe zones, which means that the ability to tolerate other viewpoints or even explore an idea from different sides gets lost in the process.

As one of my professor friends noted the other night, even in academic spaces we’re seeing folks who just declare an enemy without doing the research. People want a target for their rage. They aren’t engaging in a nuanced manner with the subject at hand, nor considering the complexity of the matter or the consequences of the extreme positions they may be taking. I witnessed a sampling of this in the past week: Of course it is easier in the short term to be dismissive and name-call than to pull up your sleeves and do a little research, to listen, to intellectually engage with issues, especially when these issues relate to major shifts in society that require time for us to digest and process if we are to truly grow.

I’m also seeing more people who can’t distinguish between a debate and a personal attack. Which likely explains why I’d been accused of contributing to the harm and murders of trans women for sharing a controversial article written by someone else—they came to the discussion fully armed with preconceived notions, believing that every exploration of tough topics demands a fight for their lives. Maybe your post triggers something, hits a little too close to home. What they are reading is magnified by the past hurts that have nothing to do with you or what you’ve written or shared. And when they strike out in those spaces, others hesitate to weigh in because the attacks coming from so many directions they fear getting caught in the crossfire, or being assigned a role in whatever has been designated the “enemy” camp.

One of my psychologist friends helped me understand how this hypersensitivity in the digital space is connected to trauma and brain damage in early childhood. People who have histories of neglect, abuse, abandonment or some other form of devaluation sometimes have an hyper-reactive amygdala—the part of the brain that helps regulate emotions. They are always on guard and see everything and everyone as a potential threat to their lives. They bring past hurts and untreated traumas into the digital space where they become outrage addicts.

These outrage addicts label you unredeemable and unworthy of engagement. They interpret whatever they’re seeing to confirm what they already believe and they respond from a stance that is so defensive it leaves little room for anything else.

When you’re hurting, when your entire sense of self and life narrative are built around being wounded and the resulting sense of outrage, it’s far easier to block someone or avoid engaging them than it is to have those difficult conversations, especially around triggering topics. It’s more comfortable to disparage someone than actually engage them or attempt to arrive at a bridge of understanding.

Attacking others is about finding sense of power in a society, in a moment, where powerlessness is real. So putting someone on blast or questioning their progressive credentials becomes a substitute for real power and for taking responsibility for one’s emotions and life. And this dynamic is epidemic in the clickbait, insta-outrage digital space, where people aren’t allowed to ask questions, to learn, to consider, or to grow. This digital fight club demands that people be READY without going through the work of an actual growth process; that everyone be “perfect” according to someone else’s definition and ideological agenda.

Some of the most visible and vocal outrage addicts are social justice activists who have built strong brands in the digital space. They are addicted to online drama along the lines of ratchet reality show melodrama because they haven’t dealt with the trauma behind their own activism. They displace all of that anger, angst and trauma, and act it out on others. It’s a subconscious process that can be translated as: “here I am going to all these meetings, confronting people, talking about the issues, yet why do I not feel better?” They miss the mark by externalizing everything and avoiding the much messier, more difficult and painful work of healing their internal wounds before venturing into the public warrior space.

A lot of this displaced rage is based in broken childhoods. These people show up on Facebook with their untreated traumas. They see a post or article and they react from this broken place. Psychologically these people feel erased by those who harmed them in their formative years. Thus, anyone who reminds them of that erasure, anyone who makes them feel that way, becomes a target for their unhealed rage and misdirected anger. Because they haven’t done the tough internal healing work, they strike out without understanding that they’re attacking you as a stand-in for their parents or whoever caused their initial trauma.

How can we tell what is healthy outrage for the genuinely horrible things going on in the world and what is transference? The outrage addicts often lead by attacking the person bringing up the topic rather than addressing the topic itself. Their responses are often at a much higher level of volume than makes sense for a discussion, even about the most controversial subjects. They’re completely closed to divergent points of view, and not willing to consider any position other than their own—and that position is deeply rooted in a place of perpetual suffering. They have only one channel on their response meter: code red-level outrage, with attacks at anyone who dares broach the triggering topic. And their outrage is never solution-oriented, but always points back to their role as the one who is harmed, or strongly identifying with the victims in whatever narrative is being considered.

This is the addictive part of this form of activism. The outrage addicts get a rush of temporary relief at striking out; a feeling of having “done something” about their pain—calling somebody a name, cussing at them, accusing them of contributing to death, accusing them of shaming them, etc. They act out until there is no choice but to disengage from them in your digital space. And then comes the publicly boast (in the form of a complaint) that you have unfriended, unfollowed, or blocked them. (Keep in mind that they have to make an effort to find that you’ve blocked them—they have to go looking for that information in order to know).

As part of this temporary fix, they get other people to validate that they are “right,” and then their neglected child feels seen. Validated. Temporarily vindicated. The addiction part is that it’s so much easier to engage in these faux battles online than to actually go out and do real external work (including on social media) that moves people towards levels of understanding that can lead to actual progress. And it’s easier to wave the digital weapons around than to do the internal healing work that can move one from perpetually wounded to more constructive warrior stances.

What we have here is a culture of victimhood, fed by online culture. There are lots of broken people united by trauma engaging in externalizing and projecting. They spend so much time eating their own instead of attacking the real problems—and it’s exactly what our enemies want us to do. They aren’t differentiating between content and process—they believe they’re doing the work when they’re really over-invested in and tricked by the content rather than the process of fighting for change.

What do I mean by content vs. process? Content is basically the story as opposed to the reality of what is actually being done. It’s an evasion of confronting one’s actions. Think of Frantz Fanon’s definition of cognitive dissonance as playing a role in the defense of content:



“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”



In this case, content would be the falsely held belief and the endless rationalizing to keep that belief intact. Process would be the actual evidence that one wants to avoid. In a more traditional sense, content is the lies we tell ourselves to keep rationalizing a behavior and denying the process, aka truth. These people have a lot of denial to defend, and that becomes their focus.

It’s easy to become outraged, especially in social-media spaces. The general culture of non-tolerance, name-calling, public shaming/blaming and attacks coming at us everywhere from our government to many aspects of popular culture feed this dynamic and work against the two kinds of work we all need to be doing: internal personal healing and focused, appropriate approaches to crating positive societal change and progress. No matter how progressive we think we’re being, if we’re attacking each other instead of focusing on the sources of our real problems, we’re opting to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Name-calling and optic posturing isn’t a substitute for the work that needs to take place in the trenches. Beware of never-ending outrage in your midst and take care not to fall into that trap yourself—it can be tempting and seductive to parade your victimhood for public acclaim, especially in a culture that rewards you for perpetuating that form of self-hating victimhood.

Those of us who are committed to real change don’t have the luxury of these no-win exchanges with time-and-energy-vampires. There are communities to build, lives to save and worlds to change. The digital age gives us great options and opportunities for powerful ways to build real bridges of communication and connections. Outrage without room for mistakes or complexity is one of many distractions thrown up to get us off track. The only cure is for each of us to confront our own inner demons and do the hard work of healing so that we’re not re-creating our wounds on a larger scale. Let’s never forget that we’re all in this together, and resist any attempts to turn us against each other, even when they come from people we might consider friends or allies.

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By the way, it took exceptional strength for me to not lash out in anger while a user directly and repeatedly lashed out at me with direct insults calling me a troll and a homophobe and it was rather strange that a MOD popped in and said nothing about it yet felt the need to mock me misspelling my screen name while trying to control my anger. I'm not a homophobe and certainly don't take kind to people accusing me of such.

I would say that's mighty poor work for a MOD.

You've made initial statements that gay people are phenomenally more likely to be pedophiles (40%, 20% ...).

Likely, this is propaganda you picked up on some gay hate site.

You don't see a problem with that?

What I have a problem with has been clearly stated, it's people who overreact, though I would say it's an issue much deeper than overreaction, bcause it actually goes so far as to completely fabricating information to overreact too. Now I could easily understand how someone would get upset if I claimed that all homosexuals are pedophiles, that's and obviously incorrect accusation that could easily be disproved, the fact of the matter is I never said anything remotely close to that yet people kept insisting I did. Whether or not you agree with the statistic, I cannot help that, I didn’t just come up with the figure in my mind, I did not go to ihategays.Com to come up with that figure. One of the people who gave the estimates was a "gay rights activist" which stated that aroind 80% of pedophilia cases involved straight people while 20% involved gay people. I saw another study where someone else pointed out a flaw in that study, the flaw being that around 20% of the men involved with pedophilia cases where married to women but had sex with underage boys, so the other study counted those individuals as gay. I acknowledged that a person whom has sex with both genders is neither straight nor gay but bisexual and decided both studies were false as clearly the category bisexual is a real sexual orientation, thus those extra 20% being tossed back and forth from gay to straight are a category of their own, bisexual. Thus 60% straight, 20% bisexual, 20% gay. I do not remember the specifics, and didn't really see it as important because that was not even the topic I wished to discuss here. To answer your question, no, I do not see it as wrong to quote statistics derived from studies, should I? No I shouldn't. I made all of this extremely clear in the OP, as well as the fact that the statistic was not even the topic of this conversation, it was a tool used as an example. It is truly mind boggling how people don't even know how to have a conversation, to be fair it wasn't everyone. Your comments were not that bad but you came in at the wrong time so I did overreact to your comment a little bit. I'm just tired of people being such babies that they see what they want to see when someone writes a paragraph, they fabricate ridiculous information to justify their childish behaviour. If you don't like the results of the statistics, rather than make guesses look it up yourself and present statistics that say otherwise, though as I already added, one of those studies was generated by a gay rights activist, so wouldn't you think it would be pretty absurd to insist it was a study carried out by a homophobic gay rights activist? I wasn't worried about saving the information to be able to present because I wasn't even interested in discussing those studies, I was interested in discussing how people get outraged, don't read or don't understand sentences if it includes a protected class. That was the whole purpose of this topic, not the example statement that the outrage mob chose to focus on. I couldn't had made it any more clear in my OP. And honestly, just like I said, the outrage spread like a virus, as you will notice by looking back, the first page and a good portion of the second page was a discussion about the actual topic at hand. While yes, I did previously state that with a whole lot of context where that was not even the focus of conversation, the conversation was about exposing children to sexuality, not actual pedophiles, though it does get rather frustrating when people start acting stupid and making wild false accusations. Even when I made that statement in another topic, within the same paragraph I included the fact that all pedophiles are not gay and all gays are not pedophiles yet people still had the stupid opinion that I said all gay people are pedophiles. Though that ridiculous event did occur also, it was other statements added to that that had nothing to do with homosexuals at all which inspired me to create this topic about how people fail to read whole sentences, or can't comprehend the sentence because they are triggered, or attach assumptions that were never expressed to a sentence making conversation pointless and impossible, just as the article I included spoke of.

What I would love to understand is, how am I wrong for someone else making up statements that I never said and being outraged about it? How am I in the wrong by reading a study which has conclusions someone doesn't agree with? How am I in the wrong for others not being able to control their feelings and discuss things like an adult?

Any reasonable person, if they actually wanted to have a conversation even about the example statement, would ask to see the study or present a study which says otherwise rather than make weird statements like "gay dosen't mean attracted to kids", in my mind I think, "no s**t! Who exactly said that's what being gay means?", why refute a claim that was never made? Why assume someone is saying something they haven't said? It turns into a sh***y world when you can't even present findings in a study or or give a statement which involves no hateful message yet be called a bigot by someone who can't even understand something as simple as racism or as the tittle of this thread states, to not be able to distinguish a non-hateful statement from a hateful statement. As you can see from the article supplied, I'm not the only one who sees how ridiculous this issue is becomming in the new age outrage culture. Though it existed before now, people like that are just growing in numbers and shutting more and more conversations down by people expressing ridiculous behaviour.

I clearly stated in my OP that that statement was being used as an example and was not the topic of this thread, so you as an individual, what lead you to focus on the example statement rather than the actual topic? Did you read the whole OP, or did you come in seeing others irrationally responding which in courage you to comment on the example statement rather than the topic of the conversation? Kraft and Antrax were the only two who actually focused on the topic though they still mentioned the statement. I don't understand the overreaction, it's much deeper than an overreaction when someone goes against the actual words written and fill in information that was never stated to react to. When Antrax replied I also replied stating that yes, context does matter, of course it would be odd to just make that one statement, though it still would not be hateful, more as Antrax stated, to present such statement on it's own would be pointless, I could agree to that.

I'm a pretty direct person, I don't fear having any conversation and I'm not hateful to any degree so it's rather frustrating to me when people start fabricating things and claiming I said them so they have an excuse to lash out at me, wouldn't you be rather frustrated if it happend to you? If not, you are stronger than I. But like I said, as the article said better than I can, people derail conversations with their absurd interpretations, assumptions and accusations when discussing certain topics generally involving protected classes but not in all casses. It's like talking to a religious person who starts getting made and making absurd statements when you question events in the bible or beliefs they hold. Just the same as all gay people aren't pedophiles, all religious people don't get mad when you try to make arguments that may disprove portions of the bible. It's much better to have rational calm conversations than fly off the rails with an absurd attitude. As you can see, those absurd reactions managed to shut this conversation down. I cannot help but to be irritated by it, I have dealt with it my whole life though it is a little worse here, but it's not necessarilya lot of people, though quite a few, it seems as if one person starts it, it consumes the entire conversation and derails it, which basically sets the tone for many discussions cannot be had because of the outrage people and their followers who step in to back them up. Anyway, I'm not always so great at getting out what I'm trying to say, read the article that is posted on the 4th page, that seems to describe the situation pretty well.

Work with me for a second as I just noticed something. I clearly stated that one of the studies came from a gay rights activist, so wouldn't you see it as kind of an absurd statement to say that I must have gotten the statistic from a gay hating site, so you are building the assumption that I visit gay hating sites?? That's the type of absurdity I'm talking about. I gave the details of where I obtained the information, did you even read that bit or did you just choose to ignore "study by gay rights activist"?

Knock it off.