h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Why do you want me to define what "offended" means? I guess I take it to mean to hurt or upset someone's feelings.

If you can't think for yourself of any remarks whose offensiveness is not justified by their paltry level of humour then you lack imagination.

Re: the original post ...

There are all sorts of 'catch' words and phrases that people like. Cultural, fundamental, community, and several others that appear
in nearly every other post in recent times. These words appear to mean something specific to each individual that most dictionaries
would be pressed to agree with.

As to offending someone, anything that I might think or say is almost assured to offend someone. Because no two people (even on
this site) will have the same level of opinion or tolerance. What some consider mentally upsetting and anguishing one minute is exactly
the sort of thing that follows within a dozen postings. Personal experience just on h2g2, words and arrangements of mine that are
considered absolutely atrocious and intentionally horrid seem to be completely acceptable from a dozen or more other 'regulars'.

Too late, but in brief, offensive or upsetting are always in the eye of the beholder. (And the mood of the moment, perhaps)

I think there's an important distinction to be made based on whether you sought out the offense.

For instance: let's say I find the sight of fat people offensive. People being gratuitously and unapologetically morbidly obese makes me physically nauseous, and I want to complain about it.

So:

1. do I have a right to complain that I find the sight of people on the street offensive? I'd say yes. I don't have any choice about whether I walk down the street. There's not any realistic way of avoiding the sight of the disgustingly overweight if I'm to go about my business normally. On the other hand, complaining directly to them is likely to be offensive to them... so I shouldn't. That's just civilised behaviour.

2. do I have a right to complain about the sight of them in McDonalds? Hmm. Less so, I think. There's a reasonable expectation perhaps that going somewhere that sells calorie laden, fat dripping food is going to be somewhere where you're more likely to see huge fat munters.

3. if I get invited to watch a fashion show (yeah, right...) and it turns out, despite conventional advertising, to be some Bodawful feminist "statement" featuring "real women" who could be mistaken for barrage balloons, do I have a right to complain? I'd say certainly. I was *deliberately* misled into viewing sights I find offensive. This is, I think, by far the most justifiable type of offense.

4. if I'm channel surfing, and I see something on the listing with the title "Forty Stone And Proud Of It", and I watch it, do I have any right to complain about it? I'd say definitely not. If you seek out material to be offended by, in the full and certain knowledge or even with a reasonable expectaction of the content, then sorry, caveat emptor, you knew what you were getting into.

Run Fat Boy Run, strangely enough, did NOT feature any morbidly obese people. Neither, however, did it have a warning notice on the poster saying "Beware: this movie is utter crap and not funny". I had a reasonable expectation, based on the cast, that it would be at least passable, and possibly good. Those expectations were cruelly dashed. So yeah, I'm offended.

SoRB:

Anyone who believes that others are being deliberately obese in order to offend them is probably in need of a cranio-rectal extraction procedure.

Words intended to hurt are, however, intentional acts.

You see the difference, I hope? Only it doesn't seem so from your daft example.

There is also a middle ground, obviously, of a) words which deliberately offend for good reason and b) words which are not deliberately to offend said but which are nevertheless taken as offensive. The trick is to work out in which category words fall.

SoRB

>>Run Fat Boy Run, strangely enough, did NOT feature any morbidly obese people. Neither, however, did it have a warning notice on the poster saying "Beware: this movie is utter crap and not funny". I had a reasonable expectation, based on the cast, that it would be at least passable, and possibly good. Those expectations were cruelly dashed. So yeah, I'm offended.



No. That is not offense by any sane definition of the word. The comparison, while it obviously works for you, is facile.. All that happened is that you didn't like it. You can get over this by realising that the world occasionally fails to live up to your expectations. But it's not a plot against you.

You were not offended that you found Run Fat Boy Run unfunny, you were disappointed.

And I find your views on overweight people (speaking as someone who is overweight, and is entirely 'type neutral' when it comes to women, preferring to see beauty as an amalgam of many qualities rather than just looks) distasteful and, if I may say, a bit Daily Mail in their unthinking generalness. I actually wouldn't be surprised at this stage if you claimed that fat people cause cancer.

Yeah, but admit it, Mr D...you're only overweight to offend SoRB.

It's a fair cop. I was 8 stone soaking wet when I originally joined the site.

I'm not sure what it is in the concept that SoRB is finding so hard to get his head around. There are all sorts of harm where we agree that intentionality is important. Killing is an obvious one.

"let's say I find the sight of fat people offensive"

Tell you what, let's not then, eh?

Let's just say that there's four types of offence:
1. the type you can't avoid, but shouldn't comment on
2. the type you could reasonably predict, and therefore probably shouldn't comment on
3. the type where you're presented with the offensive material without warning, which you're absolutely entitled to complain about and
4. the type where you go looking for something to be offended by, for which you deserve all you get.

And yes, I WAS offended by RFBR - mere disappointment I've felt many times after films, but I went into that one specifically looking forward to it and regarding Pegg's presence as some sort of guarantee of quality. How horribly naive I seem to myself in retrospect. It's certainly not a mistake I'll make again. I've got over it now, mostly. I wouldn't want it banned, for instance, but I would back anyone who proposed putting a sticker on it saying "If you liked Spaced, Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.... you won't like this."

Well...I'd get over yourself, then. He may make crap films, but he probably doesn't make them just to hurt you.

Plus - don't put too much faith in your heroes. Consider this a Life Lesson. An opportunity for personal growth.

And while you're at it...you might want to learn not to use facile examples to further an agenda of 'Pah! People are just deliberately looking for offense.' That *might* me true...but your daft, solipsistic example in no way supports that

See, explaining your views on offensiveness without trying to offend people wasn't so hard, was it?

I watched RFBR and it was... okay... I probably won't watch it again.

And I'll continue to call the experience of something not living up to my expectations 'disappointment' and think that describing that experience as 'offensive' just makes you a silly sausage.

Very upsetting to see the McCanns so upset talking to the Media Ethics Inquiry to do with some of the coverage about Maddie.

**

When we go super multi cultural here...what are we going to do about some Muslims getting upset and offended by people talking about eating bacon sarnies?

Let them vent their spleens whilst gently reminding them that discussion of eating bacon sarnies isn't against the House Rules.

Why do you assume that 'The Muslims' will be offended? There are plenty of Muslims around, surely, who already know that their fellow citizens eat bacon.

Or is getting offended something that 'The Muslims' are particularly prone to?

Yes but when we've thousands of them here it might be. If they get to be volunteers and decide these things.

I had a perfectly okay post pulled last night on the grounds of it being offensive; that's what the email said.

It was a play on words in all the fine traditions of humour in England.

Have you watched old Monty Python episodes. Nearly all of that would be disappeared here now.

Culture *evolves*

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And so along with 'offended', we have 'upsetting'. As with anything in any form of media (film, telly, radio, h2g2) someone will be less receptive to contents. There is never going to be a way to draw a line and say "this is acceptable to everyone" and "this is unacceptable"

Especially since technologies have brought every aired or typed word to every person in the world that can find a computer and a connection

You are wilfully missing my point Ed. It's a new game. It offends me.

There was someone on (was it?) The Now Show (was it Henning Veen?) talking about the withdrawal of an ad for a phone shop featuring a cartoon Jesus.

And I would guess there are tacit limitations on what you could do with Remembrance poppies for comedic purposes, too. Or imagine the to-do if someone were to be photographed swinging from the cenotaph!

So think on - no double standards, eh? Matthew 7:3