Speaking of, all the Americans here should call their senators and tell them to vote that dumpster fire down, asap, and encourage your friends to do so as well. And if you’re not American, you should have American friends do so as well.
There is a lot of fatalism going around right now due to all the legitimately scary shit that has been happening. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stop trying.
Also – this goes double if your senator(s) are GOP. You gotta flip three. And as for Dems, if you call to encourage them or thank them for fighting it, you legitimize that position.
In my state, I called and emailed both my senators. Got canned “lolno, this is a good thing, obamacare is bad!” response, even though I told them that this would price me out of healthcare and cause tens of thousands of people to die every year. FUCK the GOP.
I’ve been hearing a lot of similar reports. Haven’t directly seen that myself, but still….
Actually I kinda wish I had gotten something like that, because I’d have liked to have told them that as much of a cluster fuck as the Affordable Care Act is, it’s myriad times better then the dumpster fire they wish to replace it with.
Call your senator, protest in the streets, do everything you can…but most importantly, get a passport and make an escape plan because there’s a very real possibility the USA isn’t going to be a place we’re going to want to live in very soon.
I live in Argentina and my sister lives in Florida.
I just got diagnosed with lymphoma and I’m so thankful that it was me and not her, as here our system guarantees treatment for all without going broke. I’m actually not paying a cent.
The scary thing is, handled just right, this might actually work. Put out a few sensible ideas, and you might start to pick up some support. As for the hard-core Trump cultists, they’ll support anything (they think) he says. Throw in a little pork for the less frothing-at-the-mouth Dems, and you could probably peel off just enough votes to start getting things done.
That first part, about getting his people to accidentally do something that makes sense, that could be useful.
And it’s not like he’d know the difference.
Robin is alive because Willis said no deaths but I suspect that’s only because Becky brings her bottled waters from Galassos. She’s still in front of her campaign headquarters, in all likelihood.
Because while Becky had the phone she changed the password & set up 2-factor authentication, most likely assigned to an email address & phone number she had access to (and not Robin’s or anyone associated to Robin). Robin can’t change the password, even if she is logged in on her phone (the 2-factor would need authorization from one of the listed contacts, but if it’s not her number or email, she can’t verify any changes, so things stay as they are (Becky in control)). Basically they’d need to wholely abandon the account & make a new one, but that’s logical & not the sort of thing Robin would do.
This is twitter we’re talking about. Have you seen some of the crap that gets through there, gets reported, and just gets ignored? It’s funny, someone puts a literal death threat, along with a where & how up, and it’s “not harassment”, but if someone uses a swear on an actual nazi’s timeline, they get a 24 limitation put on their account (the person who said damn, not the actual nazi promoting genocide)
Twitter, while a source of entertainment & communication between folks, is absolute garbage as far as privacy/giving two shits about it’s users goes.
Idk if Robin has even realized she’s been hijacked yet, and even if she changed her password, Becky and her are two peas in a pod, Becky might just guess what Robin would change it to anyway XD
Dorothy shows up in a week and Amber got a character model in late April and showed up in on Willis’ twitter in late July/early August (and her mom got a new model on Mother’s Day).
Standard response to systems that force you to change it regularly. It’s a pretty basic security paradox. Attempts to mandate “better” password practices lead to users circumventing them because they actually need to get work done. People don’t work well with long random constantly changing passwords – so they circumvent the intention – write everything down, change based on patterns, etc.
One time I substitute taught a high school English class that was reading that. They had actually finished and were watching the movie the day I was there, and the movie is pretty straight-washed, but even then I was like, “Shit, this is gay.”
Kind of wish I got assigned reading like that in high school.
I’m pretty miffed at the straight-washing of the movie – I had to literally squint to catch the signs. Heck I don’t even think my dad caught on to hints of their romance.
The Color Purple did the same thing– or so I’ve heard; I’ve only read the book of that one.
That one I actually did read in high school, but it wasn’t explicitly assigned. Rather, we had a list of books we could choose from and were to read one novel to then write an essay on. I honestly just picked The Color Purple because purple’s my favorite color.
Then I was reading one night, got to a certain part, sat up in bed, and said aloud to myself, “Why did no one tell me there were lesbians in this?!”
It’s not, like, SUPER gay. But there are three characters that aren’t depicted as total assholes at some point in the novel and two of them are in an f/f relationship.
There’s some other fairly well-known book with a straight-washed movie I was also thinking of, but I can’t for the life of me think of it now. If anyone has any suggestions as to what it might be…
ehhh. depends on how much you pay tribute to “the author is dead” and the power of reader response/interpretation
like devoid of context, frodo and sam are pretty intimate; in context, frodo and sam are really super intimate. at that point in time, they are quite possibly the most important people in each other’s lives, and continue to be for as long as frodo stays in middle earth (and even afterwards, when sam follows him to valinor).
you can make the argument that they’re gay inasmuch any relationship between two men has the potential of gayness; you can make the argument that they are most gay when approached through the lens of a society that views any emotional intimacy as sexual; you can also make the argument that it doesn’t really matter what tolkien intended when what you are looking for is validation of non-heterosexual romantic relationships and the possibility of happiness and powerful emotional content within them. and in interpreting them as such, the reader is acting in creative fusion of interpretation and text, bringing new depths to the text that wouldn’t be illuminated without the interpretation and could not exist without the reader’s presence.
basically what i’m saying is all frodo/sam fanfiction is valid, just as legolas/gimli fanfiction is valid, and if tolkien didn’t want gay ships in his fandom he should have included more women from the getgo
I always interpreted the close relationship between the two to be due to the stress they were under. To me, it was the same as the bonds that develop between men who were in combat together, when you have to depend on each other to stay alive, you tend to become pretty close. That was the situation they were in, they spent a lot of time alone, surrounded by enemies, trying to keep from getting killed, and saved each other’s lives, repeatedly.
I had seen the film first and, yeah, very straightwashed. Only the scene with the food-fight had any erotic potential left. Read the book much later, it was more direct but you could also ignore the lesbian aspect if you tried.
@yumi: never read the book on Thelma and Luise, but maybe you’re thinking of that?
There are several movies which play down gay or lesbian aspects and mangle the motivation of the protagonist beyond recognition.
(On the other hand I still wonder which kind of pointers in Little Darlings made me read this obviously straight coming of age story as a love story between Kristy McNickol and Tatum O’Neill – can’t have been Kristy’s outfit, or can it?)
True. It was not until further reflection and reading additional comments that I realised her smile was most likely forced (people reading, thy name is not me). Upon closer inspection of the strip, I can see an indication of tightness around one eye.
(Despite my original supposition being in error, I find I still hold some fondness for that potential headcanon)
We’ve had six new female characters on Tumblr, plus new pictures of Malaya and Lucy, and a shot of Billie outside with a suitcase. Is Billie moving to Malaya’s dorm and floor? Does that dorm have kitchens, so it would make sense for Anna and Mindy to live there but also buy deli items?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Well, if it’s a choice between protecting the rights of millions and letting someone get their meat–I can’t say which is more important but is it too much to ask for both?
Well, I know when someone is just ignoring the line at the deli, I trap them in a Pokeball and make them fight for me until they’re killed by my fellow Pokemasters.
Do you mean the competitions where people make animals fight each other? Because I never thought of that and ouch, yeah, they seem quite similar. This might ruin pokemon fights for me a little bit now. I mean at least they’re fictional but yeah.
Gladiator fights?
When you make pokemon sentient it just makes the issue slavery instead. That and you’re forcing your slave to fight. At least they have limits for how much you’re supposed to let your pokemon get hurt, and they have way better medical care in that universe.
I’m not sure you have actually watched the shows, they don’t force them. It’s all about being friends and working together to grow stronger and overcome challenges. There’s a symbiotic relationship between trainer and his Pokémon. The trainer needs the powers that his Pokémon have but humans don’t, while the Pokémon need human training to reach their full power and potential. One of the most repeated themes is that the strength of the relationship between human and Pokémon has a direct impact on their power.
we (or at least I) have watched the show. the show is like Robin: in a cartoony setting it works, but in the real world it would be horrific. As much as I enjoyed watching it, it grooms people to believe that situations that look like that are fine. So it’s important to me to point out that in our world it is NOT fine, it causes real harm and is a huge consent and boundary fail in so many ways.
Feminism and the history of slavery have plenty of examples of why owning sentient beings is fucked up. As for animals, we have laws against making them fight too, although I don’t know where you’d find a good explanation of why it’s cruel.
Every year at IU is like this. Every dorm has as much going as the one our protagonists live in. We just focus on their lives and ignore the rest of the drama.
Slightly extreme perhaps. Superheroes are rare. Actual kidnappings at gunpoint, even of family, probably don’t reach 1 per dorm per year. Stabbings, likewise. But yeah, hell of a lot of drama.
I only recall one actual police involvement in my immediate circle in my college days – outside of routine traffic or breaking up the party stuff.
There is still debate amongst historians regarding exactly who was controlling Robin DeSanto’s phone. The claims by her sister Roz that it was her have largely been discounted. Some believe it was Russian hackers trying to further disrupt US politics, but the files released after the disappearance of Vladimir Putin’s aircraft contain no evidence this is the case. Some of the Twitter posts ended with the letters BM, but as yet no one has determined if this is significant or not.
1: GOD DAMN IT WILLIS IS IT GOING TO BE AUGUST BY THE TIME WE FINALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED GAAAAAAAAAAAH!
*cough*
2: Damn it Becky noooooo.
Look, I get the motive here, it’s not a bad one in concept. “I’ll use a congresswoman’s social media feed to try to tilt things in the right way” is… well, there’s a lot of people who’d kill for the chance to hack Trump’s twitter feed for the greater good…
…but this practically seems doomed to backfire. There’s plenty of ways to prove that it’s not Robin making these tweets, and even if you didn’t care about the morality of hacking a politician with ugly stances on LGBTQ rights, you probably should care that this could give asshole!Robin a way out of her predicament: I was hacked, I was set up, see here’s the proof, like me again…
…and lets face it: There’s a lot of people that would buy all of it based on a few pieces of evidence. I get the why, Becky, but don’t do this…
Scrolling through the DoA Tumblr is cheating. I did it anyway, but still.
Mindy and Anna. Mindy Anna. Mindyanna. Mindiana. Indiana. Am I reading too much into things? It only occurred to me because I saw one of them in an Indiana shirt.
Well, there’s also the fact that Willis tweeted about pun names a bit over an hour before the strip went up, maybe that sent me actively looking for something.
Hahahaha. Oh. Oh. The bait and switch from yesterday! Oh man that was good one! Hahahaha! You got us all worried, and now we’re back at the grocery store. Hahahaha! I’m sorry my sides. My sides are hurting now. I’ve been laughing too much.
I honestly want to smack that phone out of Becky’s hand. I don’t give a goddamn about her motives, I don’t give a damn that Robin is considered an “acceptable target”, that sort of an invasion of privacy is wrong.
Shrugs! It’s a comic. A homophobic politician is getting some comeuppance, and maybe even a little bit of good is being done by way of Robin not being able to tell her own whim-driven tweets from Becky’s additions. I can’t be that mad.
It’s a comic that deals with real world issues that affect millions of lives. Are we only supposed to shrug about things when they happen to people we don’t like? Are people we disagree with less worthy of protections and respect than the people we agree with? In that case, how the FUCK are we any different from them? Just because we say so? Just because we’ve decided we inherently hold the high ground?
I find that the level of seriousness with which I regard DoA events is directly correlated to how likely they are to happen in real life. A sheltered girl being assaulted at her first college party, that’s likely to happen in real life, I take that seriously. Trump’s twitter getting hacked by a college kid with her first phone, and said college kid proceeding to subtly change the tone of national policy? Highly unlikely, which is why I’m not taking this storyline 100% deadly serious.
…that said, if some college kid really DID manage it, I would happily pay their bail, as people like Trump and Robin fuckin’ negatively affect real people’s lives. People die as a result of political machinations from people like them. If faking Trump tweets could convince him that he actually wrote them and actually thinks like that, great! Maybe some people won’t die painfully and horribly for lack of health care.
Then you’d be an idiot, because they wouldn’t do it to fix things, they’d do it to be an Asshole, and the idea as holding them up as some sort of martyr that fixed everything through their actions would be inherently moronic, because THE WORLD ISN’T FUCKING MAGIC.
Sure. If it hypothetically happened as drawn/written, I’d be all for it. But as you so bluntly pointed out, that’s not how real life works. So, we’re back to my first paragraph.
As drawn, the only thing that’s happened is a kid decided to hijack someone’s twitter feed. So once again, we’re back to you saying you’re okay with it.
You’re missing several key points in Shiro’s post. She (?) laid out a situation where someone would be doing this to better the world and succeeded at bettering the world, as a complete hypothetical.
Then you said that actually, you knew the motives of this, again, hypothetical person better than Shiro and made your argument based on that, insulting her in the process.
@Smiling Cat: If someone like Becky was behind it. Obviously if we don’t know anything about the hacker, it’s a different story. But this is a comic and we know what Becky’s intentions are… namely, to get Robin’s base to consider QUILTBAG individuals as people instead of freaks who need to be “re-educated.” So that’s very different from some random person gaining access to Trump’s twitter and using it to be an asshole. The unstated implication was that this college kid is not just a troll.
I can’t seem to reply in quite the right place but would like to say that both intent and consequences do have weight – that’s why if you kill somebody intentionally, it’s murder, but manslaughter is still a serious thing. Whichever the courts decide, you also still need to live with the weight of having killed somebody, the impact on their friends and family, etc. And that’s why there are also things like corporate manslaughter, because if people die as a result of business negligence – yeah, you didn’t kill them directly, but they are still dead as a pretty direct result of your action/inaction.
I would also like to point out that given the current POTUS seems to think that tweeting directly affects legislation – Becky believing it could have an impact seems a bit less silly than it would do otherwise.
I don’t think Becky has fully considered the ethical aspects or the likely consequences of her actions. She is barely an adult, has led a very sheltered life, etc., and it takes time and experience to develop a full, nuanced understanding of how cause and effect work, and why we shouldn’t act on whatever impulse is at the forefront of our mind because there will be consequences and some of them will be a million miles from worth it. That doesn’t make it OK, but it may perhaps explain why, on being handed a phone and told to play with it, and discovering it’s connected to a politician’s Twitter account, that she’s used it to tweet harmful messages and stances in the past – and that Robin has power and influence and other people read this thing and use it to inform their opinions – she impulsively thought ‘I can make things better!’ and started to tweet a different message. Especially if people like her father would hold up all communiques from the GOP as semi-holy reference texts. Hijacking the account so she can continue to do this from her own phone seems like quite a big step – she’s no longer just impulsively taking advantage of an opportunity handed to her, she has done something underhanded to maintain that opportunity.
We don’t know if Becky is thinking ‘if this makes one person like my dad reconsider their stance and makes life safer for one kid as a result it’s worth it’ or ‘ this will have a real, meaningful and measurable effect on legistlation being passed, and make the world (or at least State) better for all LGBTQ folk in it’, either – and it might make one person reconsider.
Unfortunately it’s more likely to make a gun nut reconsider that Robin, rather than being somebody to vote for, has been infected by Teh Gay and needs to be eliminated (blam) than it is to make the same extremist with violent and controlling tendencies step back and embrace tolerance before say hunting his daughter and her girlfriend with a gun…
But bear in mind that her father hunted her and her girlfriend with a gun. Because he believed an extreme verdion of the message Robin was spreading before. ANYTHING seeming better than that message may well seem like a reasonable stance to her. She seems to be coping OK with the aftermath – but look how she’s adopted Leslie as a cross between guru, mother, project and world-gatekeeper. She is a lost child hiding behind her perky personality and wise-cracks. She has been teaumatised, recently, and is still coming to terms with all that as well as trying to build a good life for herself. And in a lot of ways she is doing great – she’s educating herself, has got a job, has found somewhere safe she can live (and legally, rather than crashing with friends indefinitely), and has a great group of friends around her, plus the sweetest girlfriend (who is a secret badass – how many people would jump out at a crazed gunman and try to chomp his head?! He probably weighed twice what she does…). If we want to analyse this as if it were real world and not a comic – mitigating circumstances. Probation and therapy/Robin dropping the charges because the bad publicity (and aftertaste) associated with prosecuting (after the papers have posted the allegations and that Becky’s in custody so her party considers her cleared, and that she’s the girl whose dad hunted with a gun coz she’s gay) wouldn’t be worth it for her, would be the most likely outcomes.
So yeah, to answer your question, my side does hold the high ground at the moment, because my side’s not claiming poor people are inherently less human than rich people.
Every asshole in the world who decides to destroy someone does it thinking they have the High Ground, from the guy who shot up a senate baseball practice to the idiots who blow themselves and everyone around them up for the islamic state to the monsters who send their gay children to a camp to be tortured in the name of “fixing” them . Your “I have the high ground because *repeated buzzwords*” is absolutely fucking meaningless. It’s our ACTIONS that define the rightness of our cause, not the nonsense we spew out on command.
Yeah, those are some real fuckin’ pretty platitudes, but over here in real life, real actual human people have died and are going to continue dying due to the actions of the Republican party (whom Robin is representing here), sooooooooooo
There’s absolutely nothing pretty about it. And once again, all you have are buzzwords as an excuse to justify an asshole doing asshole things that accomplish nothing but succeeding at being an asshole.
…I mean, my dude, if you consider “people are dying” buzzwords then I’m pretty much at a loss, like, that utter lack of empathy is something I just can’t wrap my head around.
Buzzwords are words used to justify without having to actually justify an action. “People are Dying” in this case serves absolutely no purpose but to inflame your words and attach some dignity to the act of hijacking someone’s feed, even though the act of doing so will have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the problem you’re citing as justification.
@Smiling Cat: That’s a whole lot of assumptions you’re packing there. I’ll treat them with precisely the same amount of rhetorical good faith you’ve shown everyone you’ve addressed in this thread.
By all means, demonstrate how hijacking Trumps feed will fix everything. Demonstrate how this will stop the people who are dying in your messages from dying. Demonstrate how this will change anything at all. Demonstrate how this somehow could amount to anything more than a vindictive invasion of privacy on someone deemed an “acceptable target.”
@Smiling Cat: The important thing is what they’re trying to do, not whether it works. Becky is trying to stop deSanto’s oppression of the queer population. Because of this oppression from people like deSanto, people are dying. Thus, Becky is trying to do something that could, if it worked, save lives. It’s not irrelevant.
That being said, I don’t know whether she’s consciously of the “saving lives” part (she very well could be, after her experience with ToeDad), but even still, she’s trying to mitigate the intolerance that has made queers into pariahs on the level of the Untouchables in India.
So yeah. Some queer people are dying. Other queer people are in shitty circumstances. This is entirely related to Becky’s actions.
@Smiling Cat: No, because clearly you’re not here for a measured and respectful discourse, you’re here to be a snarky little shit with selective hearing.
For some damn reason, people listen to Trump. When he spews hate or conspiracy theories, it has an effect. Someone impersonating him but actually urging civility and compassion could at least temporarily do good.
At the very least, they’d be doing less harm than Trump himself
The morality of hacking into someone’s Twitter account to do it may be questionable, but it’s an “ends justify the means” sort of thing. From a Utilitarian standpoint, she is serving the needs of the many (the queer population) which far outweighs the needs of the few (the need for Robin’s privacy). This moral portion really DOES depend on your personal philosophy, but even if you believe her actions are misguided, I think it should be pretty clear her intentions are good.
The intention, of course, is to get Robin’s Twitter followers to look at her recent posts and just maybe take the time to think, wait, could it be that lesbians are people too? Are we actually treating PEOPLE like shit?
@Smiling Cat: That kind of bait is precisely why I’m not wasting any more genuine intellectual energy on you, friendo. Come back when you have your big kid rhetorical pants on.
This is not a personal thing where Becky is trying to ruin Robin’s reputation out of spite. Becky actually liked Robin when they met.
This is purely out of an altruistic desire to spare other queer people from being persecuted.
AND AGAIN if you don’t think it matters what the intentions are, just the actions, that’s fine. You have a different understanding of ethics than I do, and that’s something we’ll have to agree to disagree on. But you have to understand that the POINT here is that Becky is at least TRYING to do a good thing, even if you think she failed and consider her actions immoral because they won’t be effective.
Snow Mouse: Ends justify the means requires the end to justify the means. That justification requires that the outcome be good enough to justify the actions. That’s actually worse, because it demands that the magic outcome actually happen, or otherwise, the means used were unjustified. Based on your other text, I assume you’re actually arguing that the intent is the defining element of the morality of the act, and on that note, I can’t agree. There has to be a line. There has to be something that defines one side from the other, other than “I’m pretty sure I have the high ground”.
“The end justifies the means” is a tenet of Consequentialism. One branch of Consequentialism is Utilitarianism. So no, these “ends” do not have to be achieved goals, just attempted goals.
Regardless, if you don’t think intentions matter, it seems very clear to me that THAT’S what this argument is about. Everyone else is arguing from the standpoint that intentions are what matter. You’re never going to convince them otherwise, and they won’t convince you. So really you might as well just admit that, within their system of ethics, their logic makes sense. There’s no point in making this argument drag out any longer.
Actually, if you want to talk about what it will actually achieve, realistically it’d be held up by the Right as an example of the dastardly lengths the Left will go to push their agenda, resorting to illegal actions as part of a vast conspiracy. The news media will be dominated for months with trying to figure out whether the kid was coached, whether the person she’s now staying with was somehow involved… hell, it’s still election season, I bet they’d ask if there’s evidence of a deeper conspiracy in the Clinton emails.
People pointing out how their health care bill will cause deaths is held up as a lack of civility. Peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters all get labeled as violent when even one of them loses their temper. Hillary gets blasted as “still talking about the election” when Trump carries copies of the electoral map like some kind of talisman.
Ever when the GOP controls the White House and Congress, dems are blamed for being “obstructionists”. Even though they refused to give Garland a hearing, they “were left no choice” but to end the filibuster to get there guy in.
Literally every action taken against them will be held up as an example of how liberals are awful and mean and corrupt.
@Smiling Cat: I’m pretty sure the only one here who’s concerned with what this “will achieve” is you. See my other replies.
Put yourself in Becky’s shoes and think about what she’s TRYING to do, not the most likely RESULT. Then, most likely you’ll be able to understand the morality in her actions.
And if you don’t think it matters what she’s TRYING to do, then this argument isn’t going to get anywhere anyway. You can view it from the lens that it’s a doomed plan, which it probably is, and that’s fine. But if you refuse to view it from the lens of her MOTIVATIONS, well, nobody will convince anybody.
So you can either look at it from another perspective, or you can refuse to do that… but either way, I’m done with this argument. Good night.
Fine. If you think being immoral is different from being malicious, I respect your opinion. My opinion is that the two are the same, regardless of unintended consequences. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t consider the consequences… just that you can’t anticipate ALL the consequences, and that foreseeing the consequences is, IMO, an aspect of wisdom/good judgement — NOT morality. However, you see it differently, and I will agree to disagree.
This is not a personal thing where Becky is trying to ruin Robin’s reputation out of spite. Becky actually liked Robin when they met.
This is purely out of an altruistic desire to spare other queer people from being persecuted.
Also I’m going to bed for real now. Thank you for listening and having a reasonable discussion with me. I really think this is all a debate about ethics, so the only way you’ll ever agree is to say “if you think intentions are all that matters, then you have a point” and step away from the argument. You can agree with the soundness of their reasoning, even if you don’t think it’s valid because consequences should matter. That’s my suggestion. Sorry if it’s a bit heavy handed, I’m just hoping this conflict can end peacefully and shortly.
(believe me, I was ready to severely chastise you for starting this argument before I luckily came to my senses and realized how hypocritical it is to just yell at you before I received your responses to my comments)
I made no claim that they are the same magnitude, only the same flavor. As further evidence I would point to the way you responded. You deemed it important enough to mention that it was a Bigot’s twitter that was targeted. It’s… actually been repeated a lot. Not just in this thread, but for the last few years. Things we would never approve of are suddenly passable as long as they’re aimed at an “Acceptable target.” That’s a slippery slope to go down if there ever was one, and its the same one that the people from my examples went down. We start telling ourself unacceptable conduct is acceptable in this specific case, then what do we give ourselves a pass on next time? At some point, there needs to be a line we don’t cross, and personally I’d prefer it was well before anybody actually started shooting.
These last few years have been a nightmarish carnival of people and groups casting away their principles for the sake of beating the other side. I know I was out of line in how I presented my point, but I stand by it.
My initial reaction was probably over the top for reasons (not important). I mean, it’s wrong, but it’s not like she’s evil or malicious. A person’s identity is a sacred thing for me, no matter who they are.
And, well, sure, good intentions and such, but consequences have to matter too.
Okay, and what are the worst case scenario consequences for Robin, based on what Becky is doing? People believe she’s pro-LGBT+? She doesn’t get elected, which at this point she probably wouldn’t be anyways? Robin gets some twitter blowback for changing her policies?
The likely potential consequences are far more severe for Becky if this gets out than the ones for Robin. Sure, if she were stealing information or money was involved, this would be very very ugly, but there isn’t, so I’m not overly concerned. Yes, it’s a dick move and yeah, it is wrong, but considering what Becky’s actually doing, and how little consequences Robin received until Becky helped get her party endorsement dropped? I can’t bring myself to muster much sympathy for Robin personally.
This isn’t an invasion of privacy, this is undermining a bigoted politician and using her voice as it should have been used, to help people instead of hurt them.
Frankly, in the end it will benefit Robin herself far more than Robin’s own words would have. Though if Becky were just gonna burn Robin’s remaining public image to the ground, I wouldn’t blame her
You’d prefer I’d term it tampering with her identity? Honestly they’re about equal sins to me.
Though I’ll offer this quote from Jurist Charles Fried: “Privacy is not simply an absence of information about us in the minds of others; rather it is the control we have over information about ourselves.”
I’d argue hijacking the twitter feed of an individual to post false information qualifies. It attacks a person’s control of how they present themselves.
Shiro, all you’ve said is “republican healthcare kills people. LGBTQ are suffering” You still haven’t shown how hijacking a twitter account is supposed to make any positive effort against the problems you cite. The only substance of your argument has been “It’s okay, because republicans are BAD!” That is quintessentially “Hooray for our side”. When asked for substance, you call me vitriolic and walk off.
And yet you act precisely the same with the people in this thread who’ve been much more tolerant of your loud trolly bullshit than I’ve been, so why should I bother? Like I said before, you’ve shown very clearly that you’re not here for any kind of good-faith discussion, so I’m not going to waste perfectly good brainpower engaging with you.
Smiling Cat, there’s not much point arguing with you if you’re simply going to dismiss any point made without actually addressing it on any level more meaningful than screaming “NOOO NOOOO IT’S WROOONG”
I agree. For example just because I’m a black male doesn’t mean I can just take control of a white nationalist twitter account and post stuff. The ends never justify the means.
Once again, for the ends to justify the means, you actually have to achieve something. I have yet to see anybody explain how hijacking an opponent’s twitter account is going to result in measurable change. (that is positive change. The only real change I would expect would be a negative change as you give your opponent ammunition for his bullshit victim claims).
Also, what does your race than the abhorrence of your target have to do with it?
From my understanding Federal Policy in the USA is pretty useless considering the fact the States have so much power. I mean, marijuana is “technically legal” in a few States, but because it isn’t legal in on a Federal level it doesn’t really matter.
Side note: Canada’s policy is thus: Federal level means Provinces and Territories must adhere to the Federal government within a certain period of time, regardless of ruling party in said province or territory. This, at least in my opinion, allows for a much better functioning system.
Federal and provincial levels have a division of powers, so it’s laid out in the constitution who controls what, but everything NOT explicitly listed (or added to the constitution) is controlled by the federal government. For instance, the federal government controls criminal law so that one thing isn’t illegal in one province but legal in another (and seriously, what the FUCK kind of country has different state law codes?) and the provinces control healthcare, as that tends to be more based on locality and convenience.
In the US, powers not explicitly reserved to the federal government are controlled by the states.
And what the fuck kind of country has things set up this way? The kind of country that started out as a shaky pack of rebel colonies forced into an alliance by a superpower but seeing themselves as separate nation-states, who ended up with a union that was initially more than a mere alliance but less than a true single polity, who barely made it hold together initially through bizarre (and sometimes unconscionable) compromises and checks and balances on the federal government, and who were having to make up the practice of liberal democracy as they went out of little more than contradictory philosophical works and bits and pieces that had been tried, separately, in other times and places. Then iterate through two-and-a-third centuries more of compromises meant to paper over the most immediate cracks by people who were themselves still trying to figure liberal democracy out. OF COURSE the entire thing is one huge kluge.
Yeah, I remember hearing about that, but I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of deciding split criminal codes are a good idea once they decided on a union. In that case, I’d think the better thing to do would be make 13 separate countries, but what do I know?
Actually, we did that. States were sovereign for about a decade after gaining independence, and several of them were *really* paranoid about ceding power to a stronger federation. Our entire Bill of Rights, which includes the powers-not-reserved clause (alongside the better-known rights to free speech and arms), was basically a bunch of arbitrary compromises designed to get everyone on board with another new government.
I was scrolling through the tumblr, and spotted this preview panel for July 6, 2017, posted back in April. It probably didn’t stand out at the time, but given that it has Dorothy (with Walky), and we now know that Dorothy was a witness to the events of the cliffhanger, it might be that we’ll get some payoff for that event. In a couple of weeks. Maybe.
It might be “for the right cause” but impersonation, especially when it comes to federal levels, is a very serious crime. Knowing the political leaning of this comic she probably won’t face any real consequences, but IRL this would be disastrous.
…wow, would it kill you to politely go “excuse me” and ask if she was waiting? There was absolutely no reason to be rude.
I understand getting frustrated with people on their phones, but there’s a nicer way to do that. Going “excuse me, ma’am, you’re up next” when you’re behind in a line is NOT hard.
I can only hypothesize and I am limited to my own perspective, but I think most people is afraid of getting tricked and this translates to some quick assumptions. A dollar lost weighs more on us than a dollar gained.
And Becky was causing this person a loss by wasting her time.
Personally, I can quickly get irritated if anyone is in this way inconveniencing me or others, or not following the rules. Reflecting on this, my initial assumption would usually go something like “this person is deliberately doing this and doesn’t care about me/others and the impact (however minor) it has on me/others”, so they should be taught a lesson for the sake of everyone.
It is almost never the case that they didn’t care, as in Becky’s case, and were just oblivious. However, if you feel surrounded by people you suspect not to care about you as a person, then one makes assumptions and direct confrontation becomes ever more likely.
Thus the lesson.
The harsh reaction would be trying to drive home a lesson of being mindful, which is sorta ironic. To make sure it is remembered, one would make it as ‘traumatizing’ an experience as possible, for lack of a better word. Being rude, causing fear, using threats, and backing up threats with violence seems only a natural escalation of making the “lesson” memorable.
So that’s my view of why someone would be motivated to be rude over something so trivial, while maintaining a sense of doing right.
Might only be me though. I don’t do this in full, as in I do not go beyond being rude and only when I am sure the person is actually aware, under normal circumstances. I do need to reflect on it further.
I can see your perspective regarding this and fully respect people who look out for others in this manner to do the right thing, but like you said, the context needs to be under fully aware circumstances.
In terms of the comic, this is the only context we currently have with the update, and thus, the lady is coming off as extremely rude and acting kind of like a douche (not sure which character is which otherwise I would say). I don’t know if she’s been standing there trying to get Becky’s attention through her fog of ADHD and preoccupiedness, because she might have been, but this is the first encounter, thus the only context we have here. I’m not sure how important it will be later on and really, it’s just my opinion on the internet, but I felt the need to voice it either way, since I simply cannot stand this sort of thing. It’s easier for others to be rude or hateful to others, whereas if they presented themselves with kindness, they’ll be remembered for such things.
But that may be just me.
The Deli counter woman’s “dear god help me” smile is something that I’ve personally done, being a retail slave, and can see it as a reaction to either side, really – either Becky being rude for being on her phone and not paying attention, or nameless girl being rude to another customer in front of her and she has no idea how to react to it other than hope to god it resolves itself so she can do her job. I hope her day gets better too, as that career is so full of abuse it’s sickening.
For the record, I totally agree that lady yelling at Becky was in the wrong.
And I can also agree on the retail “please be adults and do not necessitate my intervention”-attitude with a dash of “remember to smile”. I’ve worked a cash register.
and that traumatizing “lesson” does the opposite of mindfulness; it causes trauma! (duhh)
flight/fight/freeze responses don’t work so well in today’s world.
what bothers me isn’t so much that she was rude to becky, it’s the *way* in which she was rude. it just… sounds so much like the start of a Narcissist rant. 🙁 When someone talks that way to me, I go into panic mode. suddenly I’m drowning in emotions, the real world is both far away and incredibly painful, and normal human interaction is not a thing my brain does in that mode. I’d be a mess for the rest of the day at the very least. 🙁 I’m all shaky just from remembering it.
I react like that pretty much too (though it depends on the context and if my brain can regain logical thinking).
Met someone like that a few years back with friends in a part of a bookstore that was specifically designed for people to be able to sit down and browse the books (not actually read them thoroughly), with comfy chairs, to decide on whether they’d really want to buy them or not. But not a library and it didn’t ask anywhere to be quiet. So of course we chatted a bit, because one of us looked for a book with very specific information for a paper, so we exchanged info on whether or not the book we looked at might be promising for that or not.
A middle-aged man sitting opposed to us, who could’ve just asked us politely to be a bit quieter and we would’ve obliged gladly, told us to ‘Stop our tattling and gaggling, because he’s concentrating, and is disturbed by us typical female young girls” which basically became a rant with the ultimate theme “you’re younger than me, so you should respect me”, with him even going as far as, as my friend asked him what he thinks we old we are, to address us familiarly with a personal “you” (as “du” in German, as opposed to a politer form “Sie”, which you usually use for ppl you don’t know (unless they’re kids), which also translates into English “you”).
I froze up, but my friend, growing up with two older brothers, started discussing with him, deconstructing his rant, and basically telling HIM off in a still polite way. He was basically a real-life troll.
TIL talking about triggers can be triggering. (gee what a surprise! /s) I actually went nonverbal for a couple of hours. wow. I’m handling it ok, just… at that point where I’m tired of sitting with it and want a distraction, but still a bit too edgy to find anything interesting. I have so much more respect for Cerberus’ Comic Reactions now, that shit’s fucking exhausting!
also kinda feeling like “how do I be me again?” – like I’ve just forgotten how to .. something. I want to have good feelings but I dunno where I put them. 😛
Hey, thanks for the link. I’m not sure I really understood it, but I’ll give it another read later.
I get that the entire thing seems really counter-intuitive like fighting fire with fire, which is why I ended up finding it very ironic, but I can’t rationalize it any other way.
In the end, entirely disengaging from the process seems like the most productive endeavor.
I might have misinterpreted something too – the link was because I worried you might feel bad for being able to think that way, although it wasn’t clear how much was hypothetical, how much was actual experience or how much was observation.
ideally, building healthy boundaries improves both sides of this issue (becky’s role or whatsername’s) but we’re all only human and it’s not easy.
i think, probably, becky was standing there for a really, really long time. maybe ten minutes? because not only anna but also the deli person were upset with her.
at least that’s what i think was meant to be implied, because if anna was just blowing up at her the deli person wouldn’t be anxiously smiling
“I’m sorry; you see I inadvertently subverted the elected government of the United States of America as part of a juvenile prank and now I have no idea what to do with this fact.”
I don’t understand how that deli is standing there without also showing up in the wider-view-background, but ehh, whatever, David Willis! Cartoon logic, like whatever!
Becky is the new Representative DeSanto; she’s even dressed up and everything!
Also that counter lady totally has the same grin as Becky. Complete with teeth dots that sorta look like braces.
People glued to their phones at restaurants and other places ARE really annoying. Especially when they hold up lines and block foot traffic egress in narrow areas. I’d give Becky a scowl too.
It’s happened too many times for me to maintain the meek attitude anymore where I quietly say “Excuse me, please. Hello? Excuse me?” When all they do is ignore my presence until I finally raise my voice. These days I just skip to the end. I feel like it’s the only way to circumvent people shaped obstacles short of shoving my way past and I’m not prepared to be quite that mean. Anger gets peoples attention. Rudeness begets rudeness, I guess.
For once my suspension of disbelief is broken, I don’t buy that a young woman with that haircut would have a “these kids and their damn phones” attitude!
I think she could be pissed off at someone being super rude to the server and people waiting, not so much the phone use in itself. To me Becky’s body language makes it really clear she’s just standing in an obnoxious spot, but as someone who can’t stand the whining about phones, I hate people ignoring staff and screwing them around. (I would NOT yell at them, but that is the motivation I read into it.)
And of course she goes the “what’s so important” route with it, as if that’s even relevant. Like the act of using a phone is somehow “important”, with no regard to how it’s being used. But nope. Using phone, therefore phone vital, therefore worth shitting on someone’s day.
I have a very similar haircut and roadrage yell “GET OFF YOUR PHONE” at people I see on their phones while driving. 😐
But yeah. In a deli? If she’s not paying attention, just walk around her. It’s not the end of the world. She’s not going to kill anyone by standing in a deli line on her phone.
Are you suggesting that being young, female, and having a certain kind of haircut means they can’t be annoyed by someone holding up a line? I think that could universally annoy anyone.
Does anyone else encounter this problem? I’m using the Chrome browser.
The page will continually reload an ad and fail. This loop slows down my client immensely. I am convinced it is an ad, because it does not always happen on each load of the page and enabling my ad-blocker eliminates it. As such, region and whatever ads is in rotation at the moment likely plays a part as well.
It’s also slowly leaking memory from what I could test, which explains why the site gets ever slower for me over time. Initially, I thought it was related to the ads using flash as it is not as well supported as it once was, but installing and enabling flash did nothing.
On this side, I can only enable ad-blocker to fix it.
Server-side, I’d recommend finding this bit of code that fails to load these ad-plugins and removing it or fixing it.
I’ve been having similar problems for some time now, in Mozilla on Linux PCs and Silk on a Kindle Fire. I think it’s related to video ads that sometimes appear in the right sidebar between the Patreon and convention boxes. (And which don’t work in my browser anyway.) At least one of them makes it impossible for me to post comments on my Kindle, because it reloads on a sub-second cycle, and every time it reloads, it forces the virtual keyboard closed.
I don’t have an ad blocker installed, because I don’t normally block the ads that my favorite creators’ livelihood depends on. But this had gotten to the point that the browser became unresponsive and I had to kill -1 it – sometimes from a remote terminal, because X was unusable too – and restart it every time I visited the site, so I’ve started blocking specific ads’ hosts at my firewall, which has helped some but not completely solved the problem.
Everything actually seems to be working fine right now, but I’m not confident that’s not an anomaly. The ad I’m seeing in that slot currently is a text ad, not one of the video ones.
I use firefox with Adblock Plus and a whitelist. On windows and linux, I haven’t noticed problems, but on android, firefox gets so slow that what I’ve typed doesn’t show up until 5-10 seconds later (which makes editing excruciating). It has flat-out crashed the browser at least once. I’ve taken to just flagging the comments I want to respond to and then responding later on my computer.
For my issue, if you open the developer tools (usually F12 on Windows) you can see a loop of errors in the console log.
Subscribing to ad plugins followed by tons of failures to load resources.
I experience the same 5-10 seconds lag on comment text. Especially if the browser has been left open for a while.
In Firefox (running on *buntu) I get the “Unresponsive Script” warning all the time on here, but if I block ads I don’t. Hence I’ll block for the specific page and reload if I’m spending a lot of time in the comments so it’s not throwing that warning every few minutes. Android Firefox just crashes after a while spent on any Hiveworks hosted page for me, not sure why. I only use Chrome to watch stuff on Netflix, which seems to run slower than pitch in Firefox (to the point of occasionally also throwing the “Unresponsive Script” warning), so I can’t really figure out whether the ads here are similarly affecting it compared to Firefox.
I have trouble with the site reloading sometimes and lately sometimes an aggressive add starts to redirect to a different page. (That one I get more in hiveworks comics thought) its really annoying and I hope there is some sort of script-blocker for iOS soon.
Most modern browsers have some sort of manner to prevent redirects at the least. I know very little about iOS, so I can’t really suggest any specific manner to fix either problem though.
Aw, there’s an “um” with no speech bubble floating near Becky’s shoulder. I feel bad for the poor little word, floating cold and alone without a nice safe bubble to live in, and no friends to keep it company…
Part of me is screaming to Becky that she could get in big trouble for hacking a politician’s Twitter account. Another part of me finds this very amusing. Still another part of me just finished a delicious feta cheese omelet and is sipping tea.
Lots of discussion upthread about whether the ends justify the means. Very few things are always; most things are sometimes. (Zooms out to include Just War Theory and self-defense, for two examples) What Becky is doing could be framed as self-defense… from a certain point of view (/Ben Kenobi voice)
Also, I love how crafty Becky is with new skillsets. Like, she’s voracious for learning and has some excellent teachers, and she’s got enough street smarts surviving her dad that she can pull out the sly subtle when she needs to, while hiding behind her loud mask.
And it’s sad in a way. If Becky hadn’t figured out she was gay, if she hadn’t been able to escape her father or was more easily cowed, this brain of hers would be wasted in a cloying patriarchal prison, only used to educate her kids.
And no one would have seen how clever she was. Or at least none who would recognize it as valid and worthy.
And I can’t help but think of Bonnie, of how she got erased to a cipher. A dutiful wife, a loving mother, clearly miserable and suffering without help.
I wonder what she would have been if she had managed to escape that prison.
Which I suppose is the tragedy of these controlling hierarchal systems. We waste so much brilliance and worth that comes from sources we don’t culturally value. And so the brilliant black homeless trans women have to devote all their intelligence and craft into survival instead of where they could truly shine if only given half a chance.
One semi-common thing for players of Crusader Kings II – a strategy game by Paradox, aka the “Medieval Murder Simulator” – who don’t have some other specific goal is to arrange for their ruler to convert to one of the heresies that allow(ed) women to hold positions of power, so as to make best use of any ladies with awesome stats (particularly in areas that do not directly apply to baby-making).
THIS. The waste of it all just … I don’t even have words for the feeling it creates. Something like enraged puddles of tears with a desire to just scoop up all the unknown geniuses, hug them and place them somewhere they can heal and then create with abandon.
I would absolutely follow a sub-comic of Becky catfishing federal policy with tweets religiously.
Like just a section of a twitter convo everyday, talking as Robin to her confused constituents and colleagues.
Also, wild speculation: the comic will end with Becky accidentally subverting the system further and becoming the all-powerful God-Queen of the United States. We then lead into a spin-off with God-Queen Becky, genetically-modified First-Dinosaur-Consort Dina and long-suffering Vice-Queen Dorothy fighting aliens and religious intolerance.
Hmm interesting, I don’t much for Becky at all and I get really annoyed with people on their phones zoning out and all but really Annas a bit over the top here in her reaction
to Smiling Cat (and others)
Motivation is a Big Thing in Buddhism.
In one of the Jataka Tales, a ferry boat captain is about to sink his boat, drowning the 500 people on board.
To prevent this, the proto-Buddha kills him.
1) Saving 500 people … well, yeah.
2) But mostly… Saving the captain from the karma of having killed 500 people.
3) And taking on the karma (with aforethought) of murdering the captain.
…
…
I will now assume the karma of inflicting AdBlock Plus on DoA.
As someone who works in a deli, this strip is clearly a farce!!
…No one stands in line at the deli, they just gather at the counter and hope you didn’t notice who got their first (surprise mother sucker, I did).
If someone is on their phone I will ask to help the next customer, to give them a chance to put it away. After that I will address the person who came after them directly.
And this is just a rando tip unrelated to the strip – If you need time to look, by all means take your time! We have loads of other things to do while you make your decision. But please acknowledge your clerk when they ask how they can help you. You’d think this is a no brainer, but people would rather pretend they didn’t hear you instead of saying “Hi, yes, I just need some time to figure out what I’d like :)” or even “Hello, I’m not ready yet.”
That’s kind of why I like it why the deli counter in most of the supermarkets in town have a ticket system going. At least that way you can be sure that nobody’s trying to sneak in ahead.
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shit, is THAT all it takes?
to the Trump feed!
GOP healthcare plan is a disaster! SAD!
Speaking of, all the Americans here should call their senators and tell them to vote that dumpster fire down, asap, and encourage your friends to do so as well. And if you’re not American, you should have American friends do so as well.
Seriously. DO THIS
There is a lot of fatalism going around right now due to all the legitimately scary shit that has been happening. But that doesn’t mean we can’t stop trying.
Also – this goes double if your senator(s) are GOP. You gotta flip three. And as for Dems, if you call to encourage them or thank them for fighting it, you legitimize that position.
In my state, I called and emailed both my senators. Got canned “lolno, this is a good thing, obamacare is bad!” response, even though I told them that this would price me out of healthcare and cause tens of thousands of people to die every year. FUCK the GOP.
I’ve been hearing a lot of similar reports. Haven’t directly seen that myself, but still….
Actually I kinda wish I had gotten something like that, because I’d have liked to have told them that as much of a cluster fuck as the Affordable Care Act is, it’s myriad times better then the dumpster fire they wish to replace it with.
Call them again anyways.
Call your senator, protest in the streets, do everything you can…but most importantly, get a passport and make an escape plan because there’s a very real possibility the USA isn’t going to be a place we’re going to want to live in very soon.
You will need your own celebrity, and that celebrity will have to be even more popular with the lowest common denominator than this one.
Wait, people outside of America have American friends? I feel bad for them. Well, I guess we’re not all bad…
I live in Argentina and my sister lives in Florida.
I just got diagnosed with lymphoma and I’m so thankful that it was me and not her, as here our system guarantees treatment for all without going broke. I’m actually not paying a cent.
Think about that.
I want to do something about it, but my state’s senators are Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, so I don’t stand a chance.
Rand Paul currently opposes the Senate bill.
Granted that’s because it isn’t evil enough, but it’s opposition nonetheless.
Paul has actually indicated that he might not vote for it. For garbage reasons-he thinks it’s too liberal-but whatever.
Call them anyways.
Actually, I’ll think you’ll find that is how HE did it and he didn’t even have to hack anyone’s Twitter accounts, just use his own!
The scary thing is, handled just right, this might actually work. Put out a few sensible ideas, and you might start to pick up some support. As for the hard-core Trump cultists, they’ll support anything (they think) he says. Throw in a little pork for the less frothing-at-the-mouth Dems, and you could probably peel off just enough votes to start getting things done.
Getting people to support him is bad, though.
That first part, about getting his people to accidentally do something that makes sense, that could be useful.
And it’s not like he’d know the difference.
… Robin’s security is shit.
well she did fire her entire staff if i remember right. or all the ones immediately helping her.
Well, her password is “skittles”, all lower case.
Aw, Willis hasn’t updated the DeSanto twitter. 🙁
https://twitter.com/repdesanto?lang=en
I like this type of tie-in.
But you can!
…..You don’t think Becky’s tweeting could turn Robin’s campaign around do you? Maybe new job as Politician’s new PR staff?
GET IT, BECKY
seriously how has nobody changed the password yet
That’s what Aide(n)s are for. They’re kind of like slaves except you don’t even pay for their upkeep – probable Robin saying.
She fired her campaign staff and Robin doesn’t think of these things.
The crazy thing is Robin probably thinks she’s sent them. Becky is slowly reprogramming her brain.
Yay for confabulation! Making up reasons that sound reasonable to us for the completely irrational things we do is awesome.
She might just like the Becky tweets more than she likes the ones she brave enough to tweet herself. She wants to believe.
Robin is the kind of person who stands in a parking lot all day without pants. Does that sound like a person who’d change their passwords?
Robin is alive because Willis said no deaths but I suspect that’s only because Becky brings her bottled waters from Galassos. She’s still in front of her campaign headquarters, in all likelihood.
Because while Becky had the phone she changed the password & set up 2-factor authentication, most likely assigned to an email address & phone number she had access to (and not Robin’s or anyone associated to Robin). Robin can’t change the password, even if she is logged in on her phone (the 2-factor would need authorization from one of the listed contacts, but if it’s not her number or email, she can’t verify any changes, so things stay as they are (Becky in control)). Basically they’d need to wholely abandon the account & make a new one, but that’s logical & not the sort of thing Robin would do.
She could probably also report it. But that’d take time.
This is twitter we’re talking about. Have you seen some of the crap that gets through there, gets reported, and just gets ignored? It’s funny, someone puts a literal death threat, along with a where & how up, and it’s “not harassment”, but if someone uses a swear on an actual nazi’s timeline, they get a 24 limitation put on their account (the person who said damn, not the actual nazi promoting genocide)
Twitter, while a source of entertainment & communication between folks, is absolute garbage as far as privacy/giving two shits about it’s users goes.
She did. That’s the problem.
I really wish Becky was the woman behind the curtain. The world would be a better place.
she still hasn’t changed her password? ugh.
Idk if Robin has even realized she’s been hijacked yet, and even if she changed her password, Becky and her are two peas in a pod, Becky might just guess what Robin would change it to anyway XD
Robin probably hasn’t even realised she’s not making these posts.
Dorothy shows up in a week and Amber got a character model in late April and showed up in on Willis’ twitter in late July/early August (and her mom got a new model on Mother’s Day).
So they’re showing up.
Goddammit this was meant for your other post.
http://www.dumbingofage.com/2017/comic/book-7/03-the-thing-i-was-before/newleaf/
We see here how Robin reacted to Becky’s tweets. “They’re fine too”.
Anna’s the one talking, right? Since it seems like she’ll show up a bit more at least, I’m hoping she’s just in a bad mood in this strip.
i assumed she was anna because her shirt was indi-ana
Yep, she showed up on the DoA Tumblr a while ago
https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/159284136337/anna
Thanks, I was too lazy to go looking myself.
I cannot
Believe
this is still happening
WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED WILLIS?! where’s amber, is Ryan alive? Is Ethen okay
Watch him not answer for the entire book.
“Somewhere”, “no”, and “ehh”
Is Ethan ever really okay
There are four questions. I choose to read these as answers to the first three.
Calm down and have a cookie.
darn kids and their dang phones
Anna doesn’t seem the right generation to complain about phone use.
I was kinda mimicking the older generations’ complaints about phone use to insult the rude girl, lol.
Adult 1: What are these kids even goshdang doing on their phones anyway. Being on the phone for hours. Don’t they got homework and stuff to do???
Other adults of close age: *on phone during every break they get*
Adult 1: Graggghhhh phones!!! *also picks up phone and doing stuff on it*
Oh, I thought all this was a text chain til the last line. Nothing like complaining about other folks using their phone by using your phone.
Robin Tweet: Yo, Goven’r, u should really pardon Amazi-Girl of murdering that rapist.
Goven’r: K. YOLO.
Not murder, tho
“I killed him before he killed me” defense might not go too far, depending as to the liberal/conservative level of the courts there…
yeah but amber’s white
i mean, she’s up against a white dude, but her whiteness does give her a certain degree of protection
But Ryan’s family has been suggest to be rich. Rich white dude > poor white girl.
also “poor white girl with a history of violence”, okay, fair
Hijack her Apple pay as well, get some cold cuts.
Robin’s idea of changing passwords is to use her old password, but add a number to the end.
But it’s the same number every time.
rulindesanto111111111
Standard response to systems that force you to change it regularly. It’s a pretty basic security paradox. Attempts to mandate “better” password practices lead to users circumventing them because they actually need to get work done. People don’t work well with long random constantly changing passwords – so they circumvent the intention – write everything down, change based on patterns, etc.
There’s an xkcd on that.
https://xkcd.com/936/
Isn’t there on everything?
Much like the Simpsons, yes.
CLIIIFFFHANGER, HANGING FROM A CLIIIIIIFFFFFFF!!!!!
AND THAT’S WHY THEY CALL HIM CLIFFHANGER!
Alt text: CURSE YOU WILLIS!!!!!!!
thank you for that
Can’t. Hold. On. Much. Longer!
(It’s been replaying in my head since yesterday, too.)
So, what’s the probability the Deli is actually where they disposed of Ryan’s body?
*pause*
Okay, that got dark fast but FRIED GREEN TOMATOES! It’s a lesbian romance murder mystery!
One time I substitute taught a high school English class that was reading that. They had actually finished and were watching the movie the day I was there, and the movie is pretty straight-washed, but even then I was like, “Shit, this is gay.”
Kind of wish I got assigned reading like that in high school.
I’m pretty miffed at the straight-washing of the movie – I had to literally squint to catch the signs. Heck I don’t even think my dad caught on to hints of their romance.
The Color Purple did the same thing– or so I’ve heard; I’ve only read the book of that one.
That one I actually did read in high school, but it wasn’t explicitly assigned. Rather, we had a list of books we could choose from and were to read one novel to then write an essay on. I honestly just picked The Color Purple because purple’s my favorite color.
Then I was reading one night, got to a certain part, sat up in bed, and said aloud to myself, “Why did no one tell me there were lesbians in this?!”
Zoomed through the rest of the book.
That was sort of my reaction to The Count of Monte Cristo.
Wait what
Is that gay
It’s not, like, SUPER gay. But there are three characters that aren’t depicted as total assholes at some point in the novel and two of them are in an f/f relationship.
There’s some other fairly well-known book with a straight-washed movie I was also thinking of, but I can’t for the life of me think of it now. If anyone has any suggestions as to what it might be…
Lord of the Rings with Sam and Frodo?
And then there’s the books with flat out no intention of gay relationships, that people persist in reading them into.
Like that one.
ehhh. depends on how much you pay tribute to “the author is dead” and the power of reader response/interpretation
like devoid of context, frodo and sam are pretty intimate; in context, frodo and sam are really super intimate. at that point in time, they are quite possibly the most important people in each other’s lives, and continue to be for as long as frodo stays in middle earth (and even afterwards, when sam follows him to valinor).
you can make the argument that they’re gay inasmuch any relationship between two men has the potential of gayness; you can make the argument that they are most gay when approached through the lens of a society that views any emotional intimacy as sexual; you can also make the argument that it doesn’t really matter what tolkien intended when what you are looking for is validation of non-heterosexual romantic relationships and the possibility of happiness and powerful emotional content within them. and in interpreting them as such, the reader is acting in creative fusion of interpretation and text, bringing new depths to the text that wouldn’t be illuminated without the interpretation and could not exist without the reader’s presence.
basically what i’m saying is all frodo/sam fanfiction is valid, just as legolas/gimli fanfiction is valid, and if tolkien didn’t want gay ships in his fandom he should have included more women from the getgo
That wouldn’t have stopped shippers. Nothing stops shippers. Bitter enemies each with canon heterosexual relationships get shipped.
Ship what you want, but don’t claim it’s canon, even as subtext, when it just isn’t there. Or that a movie straight-washed it.
That certainly happens in cases where it was there, but the opposite flaw of reading things that aren’t there into fiction happens too.
I always interpreted the close relationship between the two to be due to the stress they were under. To me, it was the same as the bonds that develop between men who were in combat together, when you have to depend on each other to stay alive, you tend to become pretty close. That was the situation they were in, they spent a lot of time alone, surrounded by enemies, trying to keep from getting killed, and saved each other’s lives, repeatedly.
Yeah, that’s a flaw a lot of fiction has.
But we can fix it!
(Although there was a lot of naked “frolicking” in that.)
I have never seen that word before, I like it, thanks for the addition to my vocabulary.
It seemed like the thing a best friend would do for their best friend when I first watched it. Now I feel dumb.
I had seen the film first and, yeah, very straightwashed. Only the scene with the food-fight had any erotic potential left. Read the book much later, it was more direct but you could also ignore the lesbian aspect if you tried.
@yumi: never read the book on Thelma and Luise, but maybe you’re thinking of that?
There are several movies which play down gay or lesbian aspects and mangle the motivation of the protagonist beyond recognition.
(On the other hand I still wonder which kind of pointers in Little Darlings made me read this obviously straight coming of age story as a love story between Kristy McNickol and Tatum O’Neill – can’t have been Kristy’s outfit, or can it?)
That deli has the BEST meat pies you’ve ever had!
Shit, did I just Explain The Joke again? I’m sorry. Perhaps I can make up for that by suggesting that the deli’s name is Lothar’s?
Take the buttons out first!
or “Sweeny’s”.
I’ll take a pound of Soylent Green.
Pffft. Go, Becky!
Huh. Becky is dressed professionally and managing Robin’s twitter… Who wants to bet she’ll be her campaign manager? XD
It’s a big upgrade from pizza server.
Is it? Is it really?
Thinking back to Frieda and the unpaid interns, I suppose not.
For a few weeks, then Robin doesn’t need a campaign manager for two more years. (Assuming the magic “R” saves her political career in a red state.)
Normally it doesn’t matter what those do, but they think she *shudder* has morals now. That’s a pretty big no-no!
I would advise against that Becky, as I’m sure that’s technically confessing to a crime of some nature. Misdemeanor charge at the very least!
I doubt this would happen because it is Robin. But “hacking” a politician’s social or email account can have serious serious consequences.
So the mean girl gets a name, but the patient and smiling deli worker (the worst job in a grocery store) is a nonentity?
🙁
The deli worker’s smile makes me headcanon her as related to Lucy (who I remember as similarly smiley).
Lucy doesn’t have the dead thousand-yard stare of a retail veteran, though.
True. It was not until further reflection and reading additional comments that I realised her smile was most likely forced (people reading, thy name is not me). Upon closer inspection of the strip, I can see an indication of tightness around one eye.
(Despite my original supposition being in error, I find I still hold some fondness for that potential headcanon)
“deli worker is a nonentity”
It’s company policy.
Also Anna and Mindy. I remember they were posted on Tumblr some time ago, I believe they are non-walkyverse characters.
Unless something changes, Billie moving into a new Dorm is eventually going to happen. I wonder if they will be part of that new Dorm.
It would make for an interesting perspective shift. Seeing one new dorm through a former Read Hall resident’s eyes and limited to Billie’s alone.
Which is the unhappy one, Anna, or Mindy ?
Anna
So is Mindy the awkwardly smiling delicatessen, or the person barely in the last panel?
Person in the last panel, see hovertext.
We’ve had six new female characters on Tumblr, plus new pictures of Malaya and Lucy, and a shot of Billie outside with a suitcase. Is Billie moving to Malaya’s dorm and floor? Does that dorm have kitchens, so it would make sense for Anna and Mindy to live there but also buy deli items?
Inquiring minds want to know.
Deli items includes stuff you don’t have to cook.
Wow, SOMEone woke up on, like, six different wrong sides of the bed this morning.
Well played, Becky, well played. I wonder what she’s subtly (or not so subtly) pushed through?
Well, if it’s a choice between protecting the rights of millions and letting someone get their meat–I can’t say which is more important but is it too much to ask for both?
If you don’t eat your meat, how can you have any pudding?
By making one yourself!
In case this is taken somewhat taken as being said with a mean voice, I’ll add: ;D
She hasn’t posted anything yet.
Don’t you just love pushy, overactive strangers judging you for something most people do all the time? I know I love when it happens to me 😀
Well, I know when someone is just ignoring the line at the deli, I trap them in a Pokeball and make them fight for me until they’re killed by my fellow Pokemasters.
Also, I could never get into Pokemon because it reminded me too much of animal fighting.
Do you mean the competitions where people make animals fight each other? Because I never thought of that and ouch, yeah, they seem quite similar. This might ruin pokemon fights for me a little bit now. I mean at least they’re fictional but yeah.
But Pokémon aren’t animals, they’re intelligent and actively work with their trainers.
It’s something closer to the relationship between a boxer and his manager I think.
if the boxer goes with the first manager to have other guys beat him up, then the manager keeps his boxers in tiny cages on his belt
But boxers aren’t *owned* by their managers. That’s a very, very important distinction.
Gladiator fights?
When you make pokemon sentient it just makes the issue slavery instead. That and you’re forcing your slave to fight. At least they have limits for how much you’re supposed to let your pokemon get hurt, and they have way better medical care in that universe.
I’m not sure you have actually watched the shows, they don’t force them. It’s all about being friends and working together to grow stronger and overcome challenges. There’s a symbiotic relationship between trainer and his Pokémon. The trainer needs the powers that his Pokémon have but humans don’t, while the Pokémon need human training to reach their full power and potential. One of the most repeated themes is that the strength of the relationship between human and Pokémon has a direct impact on their power.
we (or at least I) have watched the show. the show is like Robin: in a cartoony setting it works, but in the real world it would be horrific. As much as I enjoyed watching it, it grooms people to believe that situations that look like that are fine. So it’s important to me to point out that in our world it is NOT fine, it causes real harm and is a huge consent and boundary fail in so many ways.
Feminism and the history of slavery have plenty of examples of why owning sentient beings is fucked up. As for animals, we have laws against making them fight too, although I don’t know where you’d find a good explanation of why it’s cruel.
*raises glass to Becky* Good job, kid.
I’d like to see Becky win Robin’s reelection.
“Oops.”
It was Robin’s words that her campaign could be fought from her phone, IIRC.
Do you think the older IU students ever think “boy, lot of drama on and off campus this year. I wonder why”?
Nah, it’s just a normal year.
Every year at IU is like this. Every dorm has as much going as the one our protagonists live in. We just focus on their lives and ignore the rest of the drama.
I think that’s the case. People don’t realize how much drama is going on under the surface with folks, especially with kids.
Like, if I was to chart the comings and goings of my students’ lives in the last month, it’d fill a similarly sized series of books.
Slightly extreme perhaps. Superheroes are rare. Actual kidnappings at gunpoint, even of family, probably don’t reach 1 per dorm per year. Stabbings, likewise. But yeah, hell of a lot of drama.
I only recall one actual police involvement in my immediate circle in my college days – outside of routine traffic or breaking up the party stuff.
So when are you optioning the movie rights?
…not entirely facetious…
…When I Saw Her Standin’ There
As for the counter lady, I put forth the name Lynn Dixie.
A. P. Kroger
Rachel Weis
You’re flirting with a Crisis Of Infinite Rachels.
At least nobody has suggested Peggy Wrigley.
what about latacha
idk it’s just a name i like, there’s no particular theme
I was thinking of throwing “Margaret Baskett” out there, but I was afraid it would be too obscure…
Is that Janet’s sister?
I work in food service. Next time someone is at the phone at the counter, I will think of this and laugh. Thank you so much Willis!
*salutes inattentive costumer at counter* You’re doing God’s work, kid.
Customer: Uh, what?
There is still debate amongst historians regarding exactly who was controlling Robin DeSanto’s phone. The claims by her sister Roz that it was her have largely been discounted. Some believe it was Russian hackers trying to further disrupt US politics, but the files released after the disappearance of Vladimir Putin’s aircraft contain no evidence this is the case. Some of the Twitter posts ended with the letters BM, but as yet no one has determined if this is significant or not.
… Bowel movement?
Bad Manners? (In all seriousness, its Becky McIntyre (unsure of spelling, sorry (woo, nested parenthetical comments!)).)
And you put the period in the right place! Are you a software engineer?
Hey new girls!
At the risk of asking a basic question but did Becky just get behind the person in the line? Why not move to the side or away from the Deli?
In my experience, when people are texting on their phones, they tend to walk around without paying attention to their surroundings.
1: GOD DAMN IT WILLIS IS IT GOING TO BE AUGUST BY THE TIME WE FINALLY FIGURE OUT WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED GAAAAAAAAAAAH!
*cough*
2: Damn it Becky noooooo.
Look, I get the motive here, it’s not a bad one in concept. “I’ll use a congresswoman’s social media feed to try to tilt things in the right way” is… well, there’s a lot of people who’d kill for the chance to hack Trump’s twitter feed for the greater good…
…but this practically seems doomed to backfire. There’s plenty of ways to prove that it’s not Robin making these tweets, and even if you didn’t care about the morality of hacking a politician with ugly stances on LGBTQ rights, you probably should care that this could give asshole!Robin a way out of her predicament: I was hacked, I was set up, see here’s the proof, like me again…
…and lets face it: There’s a lot of people that would buy all of it based on a few pieces of evidence. I get the why, Becky, but don’t do this…
That would imply Robin is sane enough to understand she’s not writing them.
True.
I’d rather prefer it if plans for the good guys didn’t rely on the opposition having a mental breakdown, though.
I love our heroes but the only reason they’re successful is because the enemy is every bit as stupid as they.
🙂
As long as it’s August of this year…
Anna and Mindy? Which is which? The tags will help!
*each tag links only to this strip*
I guess we’ll never know.
Mindy is the blonde.
Scrolling through the DoA Tumblr is cheating. I did it anyway, but still.
Mindy and Anna. Mindy Anna. Mindyanna. Mindiana. Indiana. Am I reading too much into things? It only occurred to me because I saw one of them in an Indiana shirt.
*shrugs* I look at the models as they come out because they’re pretty.
Seems like it could be purposeful. I’ll guess that Willis intended this pun!
Well, there’s also the fact that Willis tweeted about pun names a bit over an hour before the strip went up, maybe that sent me actively looking for something.
Oh, did he? Definitely purposeful, then.
I thought the “Indiana” shirt seemed a bit conspicuous…
Ship launched!
Ooh, new characters! And I think the deli counter lady deserves a name as well.
Delila Dy
/Delila Dycounter
Delilah Katessa.
Hm, but then the “lah” just interrupts the pun.
(which is basically why I spelled it without the “h” in the first place)
Hahahaha. Oh. Oh. The bait and switch from yesterday! Oh man that was good one! Hahahaha! You got us all worried, and now we’re back at the grocery store. Hahahaha! I’m sorry my sides. My sides are hurting now. I’ve been laughing too much.
Is this the new code for … damn you willis … ?
BECKY FOR CONGRESS!!!
I honestly want to smack that phone out of Becky’s hand. I don’t give a goddamn about her motives, I don’t give a damn that Robin is considered an “acceptable target”, that sort of an invasion of privacy is wrong.
it’s more identity theft than invasion of privacy reeely. That makes it OK!
Actually, identity theft would make it worse in my eyes.
If you hear a whistling noise, Cat, do not be alarmed. That’s just the sound of Carms’ sarcasm going over your head.
No, I got it. That’s why there’s no forceful language in my response.
Shrugs! It’s a comic. A homophobic politician is getting some comeuppance, and maybe even a little bit of good is being done by way of Robin not being able to tell her own whim-driven tweets from Becky’s additions. I can’t be that mad.
It’s a comic that deals with real world issues that affect millions of lives. Are we only supposed to shrug about things when they happen to people we don’t like? Are people we disagree with less worthy of protections and respect than the people we agree with? In that case, how the FUCK are we any different from them? Just because we say so? Just because we’ve decided we inherently hold the high ground?
I find that the level of seriousness with which I regard DoA events is directly correlated to how likely they are to happen in real life. A sheltered girl being assaulted at her first college party, that’s likely to happen in real life, I take that seriously. Trump’s twitter getting hacked by a college kid with her first phone, and said college kid proceeding to subtly change the tone of national policy? Highly unlikely, which is why I’m not taking this storyline 100% deadly serious.
…that said, if some college kid really DID manage it, I would happily pay their bail, as people like Trump and Robin fuckin’ negatively affect real people’s lives. People die as a result of political machinations from people like them. If faking Trump tweets could convince him that he actually wrote them and actually thinks like that, great! Maybe some people won’t die painfully and horribly for lack of health care.
Then you’d be an idiot, because they wouldn’t do it to fix things, they’d do it to be an Asshole, and the idea as holding them up as some sort of martyr that fixed everything through their actions would be inherently moronic, because THE WORLD ISN’T FUCKING MAGIC.
And thus we arrive back at “it’s a comic and does not reflect real life”
You’re the one who said if it actually happened you’d be all in favor of it.
Sure. If it hypothetically happened as drawn/written, I’d be all for it. But as you so bluntly pointed out, that’s not how real life works. So, we’re back to my first paragraph.
As drawn, the only thing that’s happened is a kid decided to hijack someone’s twitter feed. So once again, we’re back to you saying you’re okay with it.
You’re missing several key points in Shiro’s post. She (?) laid out a situation where someone would be doing this to better the world and succeeded at bettering the world, as a complete hypothetical.
Then you said that actually, you knew the motives of this, again, hypothetical person better than Shiro and made your argument based on that, insulting her in the process.
Because of a comic.
Don’t be fucking disingenuous.
@Smiling Cat: If someone like Becky was behind it. Obviously if we don’t know anything about the hacker, it’s a different story. But this is a comic and we know what Becky’s intentions are… namely, to get Robin’s base to consider QUILTBAG individuals as people instead of freaks who need to be “re-educated.” So that’s very different from some random person gaining access to Trump’s twitter and using it to be an asshole. The unstated implication was that this college kid is not just a troll.
(My previous response @Smiling Cat, not Yumi, naturally)
also sorry for interrupting Shiro
@a snow ʍousɐ: No worries! 🙂 It always gets a bit messy when the reply button disappears.
Yumi, no I didn’t. I applied the information we’ve been given: Becky hijacked Robin’s twitter feed, and applied it to the real world.
A Snow Mouse. By default, she is a troll, and she’s still invading someone else’s privacy and stealing her identity.
So…shades of grey?
(anybody notice that I started from the bottom and worked my way up?)
Anyway, my reaction was out of line, and for that I offer apologies.
I can’t seem to reply in quite the right place but would like to say that both intent and consequences do have weight – that’s why if you kill somebody intentionally, it’s murder, but manslaughter is still a serious thing. Whichever the courts decide, you also still need to live with the weight of having killed somebody, the impact on their friends and family, etc. And that’s why there are also things like corporate manslaughter, because if people die as a result of business negligence – yeah, you didn’t kill them directly, but they are still dead as a pretty direct result of your action/inaction.
I would also like to point out that given the current POTUS seems to think that tweeting directly affects legislation – Becky believing it could have an impact seems a bit less silly than it would do otherwise.
I don’t think Becky has fully considered the ethical aspects or the likely consequences of her actions. She is barely an adult, has led a very sheltered life, etc., and it takes time and experience to develop a full, nuanced understanding of how cause and effect work, and why we shouldn’t act on whatever impulse is at the forefront of our mind because there will be consequences and some of them will be a million miles from worth it. That doesn’t make it OK, but it may perhaps explain why, on being handed a phone and told to play with it, and discovering it’s connected to a politician’s Twitter account, that she’s used it to tweet harmful messages and stances in the past – and that Robin has power and influence and other people read this thing and use it to inform their opinions – she impulsively thought ‘I can make things better!’ and started to tweet a different message. Especially if people like her father would hold up all communiques from the GOP as semi-holy reference texts. Hijacking the account so she can continue to do this from her own phone seems like quite a big step – she’s no longer just impulsively taking advantage of an opportunity handed to her, she has done something underhanded to maintain that opportunity.
We don’t know if Becky is thinking ‘if this makes one person like my dad reconsider their stance and makes life safer for one kid as a result it’s worth it’ or ‘ this will have a real, meaningful and measurable effect on legistlation being passed, and make the world (or at least State) better for all LGBTQ folk in it’, either – and it might make one person reconsider.
Unfortunately it’s more likely to make a gun nut reconsider that Robin, rather than being somebody to vote for, has been infected by Teh Gay and needs to be eliminated (blam) than it is to make the same extremist with violent and controlling tendencies step back and embrace tolerance before say hunting his daughter and her girlfriend with a gun…
But bear in mind that her father hunted her and her girlfriend with a gun. Because he believed an extreme verdion of the message Robin was spreading before. ANYTHING seeming better than that message may well seem like a reasonable stance to her. She seems to be coping OK with the aftermath – but look how she’s adopted Leslie as a cross between guru, mother, project and world-gatekeeper. She is a lost child hiding behind her perky personality and wise-cracks. She has been teaumatised, recently, and is still coming to terms with all that as well as trying to build a good life for herself. And in a lot of ways she is doing great – she’s educating herself, has got a job, has found somewhere safe she can live (and legally, rather than crashing with friends indefinitely), and has a great group of friends around her, plus the sweetest girlfriend (who is a secret badass – how many people would jump out at a crazed gunman and try to chomp his head?! He probably weighed twice what she does…). If we want to analyse this as if it were real world and not a comic – mitigating circumstances. Probation and therapy/Robin dropping the charges because the bad publicity (and aftertaste) associated with prosecuting (after the papers have posted the allegations and that Becky’s in custody so her party considers her cleared, and that she’s the girl whose dad hunted with a gun coz she’s gay) wouldn’t be worth it for her, would be the most likely outcomes.
Go you!
This is why I am proud to have a Becky grav!
So yeah, to answer your question, my side does hold the high ground at the moment, because my side’s not claiming poor people are inherently less human than rich people.
Every asshole in the world who decides to destroy someone does it thinking they have the High Ground, from the guy who shot up a senate baseball practice to the idiots who blow themselves and everyone around them up for the islamic state to the monsters who send their gay children to a camp to be tortured in the name of “fixing” them . Your “I have the high ground because *repeated buzzwords*” is absolutely fucking meaningless. It’s our ACTIONS that define the rightness of our cause, not the nonsense we spew out on command.
Yeah, those are some real fuckin’ pretty platitudes, but over here in real life, real actual human people have died and are going to continue dying due to the actions of the Republican party (whom Robin is representing here), sooooooooooo
There’s absolutely nothing pretty about it. And once again, all you have are buzzwords as an excuse to justify an asshole doing asshole things that accomplish nothing but succeeding at being an asshole.
…I mean, my dude, if you consider “people are dying” buzzwords then I’m pretty much at a loss, like, that utter lack of empathy is something I just can’t wrap my head around.
Buzzwords are words used to justify without having to actually justify an action. “People are Dying” in this case serves absolutely no purpose but to inflame your words and attach some dignity to the act of hijacking someone’s feed, even though the act of doing so will have ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the problem you’re citing as justification.
@Smiling Cat: That’s a whole lot of assumptions you’re packing there. I’ll treat them with precisely the same amount of rhetorical good faith you’ve shown everyone you’ve addressed in this thread.
@Smiling cat: that’s not what “buzzwords” means either.
She’s posting LGBT positive content on the account of a bigot who supported anti-LGBT legislation. The impact is pretty direct, actually.
By all means, demonstrate how hijacking Trumps feed will fix everything. Demonstrate how this will stop the people who are dying in your messages from dying. Demonstrate how this will change anything at all. Demonstrate how this somehow could amount to anything more than a vindictive invasion of privacy on someone deemed an “acceptable target.”
@Smiling Cat: The important thing is what they’re trying to do, not whether it works. Becky is trying to stop deSanto’s oppression of the queer population. Because of this oppression from people like deSanto, people are dying. Thus, Becky is trying to do something that could, if it worked, save lives. It’s not irrelevant.
That being said, I don’t know whether she’s consciously of the “saving lives” part (she very well could be, after her experience with ToeDad), but even still, she’s trying to mitigate the intolerance that has made queers into pariahs on the level of the Untouchables in India.
So yeah. Some queer people are dying. Other queer people are in shitty circumstances. This is entirely related to Becky’s actions.
@Smiling Cat: No, because clearly you’re not here for a measured and respectful discourse, you’re here to be a snarky little shit with selective hearing.
@Smiling Cat:
For some damn reason, people listen to Trump. When he spews hate or conspiracy theories, it has an effect. Someone impersonating him but actually urging civility and compassion could at least temporarily do good.
At the very least, they’d be doing less harm than Trump himself
Shiro, so you begin and end with being able to offer no reason why this was a good thing beyond vaguely hurting the acceptable target?
The morality of hacking into someone’s Twitter account to do it may be questionable, but it’s an “ends justify the means” sort of thing. From a Utilitarian standpoint, she is serving the needs of the many (the queer population) which far outweighs the needs of the few (the need for Robin’s privacy). This moral portion really DOES depend on your personal philosophy, but even if you believe her actions are misguided, I think it should be pretty clear her intentions are good.
The intention, of course, is to get Robin’s Twitter followers to look at her recent posts and just maybe take the time to think, wait, could it be that lesbians are people too? Are we actually treating PEOPLE like shit?
@Smiling Cat: That kind of bait is precisely why I’m not wasting any more genuine intellectual energy on you, friendo. Come back when you have your big kid rhetorical pants on.
This is not a personal thing where Becky is trying to ruin Robin’s reputation out of spite. Becky actually liked Robin when they met.
This is purely out of an altruistic desire to spare other queer people from being persecuted.
AND AGAIN if you don’t think it matters what the intentions are, just the actions, that’s fine. You have a different understanding of ethics than I do, and that’s something we’ll have to agree to disagree on. But you have to understand that the POINT here is that Becky is at least TRYING to do a good thing, even if you think she failed and consider her actions immoral because they won’t be effective.
Snow Mouse: Ends justify the means requires the end to justify the means. That justification requires that the outcome be good enough to justify the actions. That’s actually worse, because it demands that the magic outcome actually happen, or otherwise, the means used were unjustified. Based on your other text, I assume you’re actually arguing that the intent is the defining element of the morality of the act, and on that note, I can’t agree. There has to be a line. There has to be something that defines one side from the other, other than “I’m pretty sure I have the high ground”.
“The end justifies the means” is a tenet of Consequentialism. One branch of Consequentialism is Utilitarianism. So no, these “ends” do not have to be achieved goals, just attempted goals.
Regardless, if you don’t think intentions matter, it seems very clear to me that THAT’S what this argument is about. Everyone else is arguing from the standpoint that intentions are what matter. You’re never going to convince them otherwise, and they won’t convince you. So really you might as well just admit that, within their system of ethics, their logic makes sense. There’s no point in making this argument drag out any longer.
Actually, if you want to talk about what it will actually achieve, realistically it’d be held up by the Right as an example of the dastardly lengths the Left will go to push their agenda, resorting to illegal actions as part of a vast conspiracy. The news media will be dominated for months with trying to figure out whether the kid was coached, whether the person she’s now staying with was somehow involved… hell, it’s still election season, I bet they’d ask if there’s evidence of a deeper conspiracy in the Clinton emails.
The right will do that anyway.
People pointing out how their health care bill will cause deaths is held up as a lack of civility. Peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters all get labeled as violent when even one of them loses their temper. Hillary gets blasted as “still talking about the election” when Trump carries copies of the electoral map like some kind of talisman.
Ever when the GOP controls the White House and Congress, dems are blamed for being “obstructionists”. Even though they refused to give Garland a hearing, they “were left no choice” but to end the filibuster to get there guy in.
Literally every action taken against them will be held up as an example of how liberals are awful and mean and corrupt.
So why add fuel to the fire by actually doing things that are awful, mean, and corrupt?
@Smiling Cat: I’m pretty sure the only one here who’s concerned with what this “will achieve” is you. See my other replies.
Put yourself in Becky’s shoes and think about what she’s TRYING to do, not the most likely RESULT. Then, most likely you’ll be able to understand the morality in her actions.
And if you don’t think it matters what she’s TRYING to do, then this argument isn’t going to get anywhere anyway. You can view it from the lens that it’s a doomed plan, which it probably is, and that’s fine. But if you refuse to view it from the lens of her MOTIVATIONS, well, nobody will convince anybody.
So you can either look at it from another perspective, or you can refuse to do that… but either way, I’m done with this argument. Good night.
That’s what bothers me about this. Good intentions shouldn’t be enough, our actions have consequences.
Fine. If you think being immoral is different from being malicious, I respect your opinion. My opinion is that the two are the same, regardless of unintended consequences. That isn’t to say that you shouldn’t consider the consequences… just that you can’t anticipate ALL the consequences, and that foreseeing the consequences is, IMO, an aspect of wisdom/good judgement — NOT morality. However, you see it differently, and I will agree to disagree.
This is not a personal thing where Becky is trying to ruin Robin’s reputation out of spite. Becky actually liked Robin when they met.
This is purely out of an altruistic desire to spare other queer people from being persecuted.
(oops reply fail)
I’m willing to agree that it isn’t malicious, but it’s still wrong.
(see reply to your “actions have consequences” comment slightly above)
My reactions went over the top, pretty much from the get go. I offer apologies (in multiple places just to make sure)
Also I’m going to bed for real now. Thank you for listening and having a reasonable discussion with me. I really think this is all a debate about ethics, so the only way you’ll ever agree is to say “if you think intentions are all that matters, then you have a point” and step away from the argument. You can agree with the soundness of their reasoning, even if you don’t think it’s valid because consequences should matter. That’s my suggestion. Sorry if it’s a bit heavy handed, I’m just hoping this conflict can end peacefully and shortly.
And no problem. It’s the internet, things can get heated.
(believe me, I was ready to severely chastise you for starting this argument before I luckily came to my senses and realized how hypocritical it is to just yell at you before I received your responses to my comments)
(so we both have hot tempers on the internet, we can be rage buddies :p )
Woohoo! RAAAGE buddies!
And this is why I’m glad lightsabers aren’t a thing.
“Hijacking a bigots twitter is the same as literal terrorism and I have zero perspective about anything”
(I assure you I am using my calm voice now)
I made no claim that they are the same magnitude, only the same flavor. As further evidence I would point to the way you responded. You deemed it important enough to mention that it was a Bigot’s twitter that was targeted. It’s… actually been repeated a lot. Not just in this thread, but for the last few years. Things we would never approve of are suddenly passable as long as they’re aimed at an “Acceptable target.” That’s a slippery slope to go down if there ever was one, and its the same one that the people from my examples went down. We start telling ourself unacceptable conduct is acceptable in this specific case, then what do we give ourselves a pass on next time? At some point, there needs to be a line we don’t cross, and personally I’d prefer it was well before anybody actually started shooting.
These last few years have been a nightmarish carnival of people and groups casting away their principles for the sake of beating the other side. I know I was out of line in how I presented my point, but I stand by it.
Then maybe Robin shouldn’t have given her the phone with the twitter feed open.
How dare the victim not consider the possibility that they might be victimized. She was totally asking for it, right?
Yeah, fair, that was an ass-y thing to say. Knew it as soon as I said it too.
That said, considering Becky isn’t using the account nefariously and is posting about LGBT+ positivity, I’m less concerned.
My initial reaction was probably over the top for reasons (not important). I mean, it’s wrong, but it’s not like she’s evil or malicious. A person’s identity is a sacred thing for me, no matter who they are.
And, well, sure, good intentions and such, but consequences have to matter too.
Okay, and what are the worst case scenario consequences for Robin, based on what Becky is doing? People believe she’s pro-LGBT+? She doesn’t get elected, which at this point she probably wouldn’t be anyways? Robin gets some twitter blowback for changing her policies?
The likely potential consequences are far more severe for Becky if this gets out than the ones for Robin. Sure, if she were stealing information or money was involved, this would be very very ugly, but there isn’t, so I’m not overly concerned. Yes, it’s a dick move and yeah, it is wrong, but considering what Becky’s actually doing, and how little consequences Robin received until Becky helped get her party endorsement dropped? I can’t bring myself to muster much sympathy for Robin personally.
This isn’t an invasion of privacy, this is undermining a bigoted politician and using her voice as it should have been used, to help people instead of hurt them.
Frankly, in the end it will benefit Robin herself far more than Robin’s own words would have. Though if Becky were just gonna burn Robin’s remaining public image to the ground, I wouldn’t blame her
No, it’s an invasion of privacy.
How? It’s Twitter. Everything there was already public. She’s just posting under her name. Nothing private is being exposed
Because it’s ROBIN’s NAME. Not Becky’s. The account doesn’t belong to Becky, she has no right to it.
THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PRIVACY
WORDS MEAN THINGS
I’m sorry, Fart Captor, but it’s 2017. Words no longer mean things. I hope you can covfefe anyway.
You’d prefer I’d term it tampering with her identity? Honestly they’re about equal sins to me.
Though I’ll offer this quote from Jurist Charles Fried: “Privacy is not simply an absence of information about us in the minds of others; rather it is the control we have over information about ourselves.”
I’d argue hijacking the twitter feed of an individual to post false information qualifies. It attacks a person’s control of how they present themselves.
And I’d argue argue that this level of outrage about it is absurd, and you seem to demand that it be judged in an utter vacuum devoid of context
I simply want a wider context than “Horray for our side”.
@Smiling Cat: …except you’ve repeatedly and vitriolically refused to acknowledge that wider context so what is the truth, really?
Shiro, all you’ve said is “republican healthcare kills people. LGBTQ are suffering” You still haven’t shown how hijacking a twitter account is supposed to make any positive effort against the problems you cite. The only substance of your argument has been “It’s okay, because republicans are BAD!” That is quintessentially “Hooray for our side”. When asked for substance, you call me vitriolic and walk off.
And yet you act precisely the same with the people in this thread who’ve been much more tolerant of your loud trolly bullshit than I’ve been, so why should I bother? Like I said before, you’ve shown very clearly that you’re not here for any kind of good-faith discussion, so I’m not going to waste perfectly good brainpower engaging with you.
Smiling Cat, there’s not much point arguing with you if you’re simply going to dismiss any point made without actually addressing it on any level more meaningful than screaming “NOOO NOOOO IT’S WROOONG”
My reaction was over the top. Many apologies
👍
I agree. For example just because I’m a black male doesn’t mean I can just take control of a white nationalist twitter account and post stuff. The ends never justify the means.
Well, not with that attitude anyway.
Once again, for the ends to justify the means, you actually have to achieve something. I have yet to see anybody explain how hijacking an opponent’s twitter account is going to result in measurable change. (that is positive change. The only real change I would expect would be a negative change as you give your opponent ammunition for his bullshit victim claims).
Also, what does your race than the abhorrence of your target have to do with it?
I am actually agreeing with you
Man, I can’t even tell anymore! 🙂
Wow
I got hacked! Actually I got into a zone of argument and everything looked like either opposition or sarcasm. My apologies.
Is this a bad place for a covfefe joke?
I think it’d be appropriate. If I couldn’t laugh about my screwups I’d need more antidepressants. 😛
Oh my god your refusal to actually listen is uncanny.
You can tell by clerk’s smile that she’s not getting paid enough for this.
You can tell by the fact that the clerk is working in a deli in a grocery store in the USA that she’s not getting paid enough for this.
Dang that grump is really playing her drums today
Mindy was it ? Okay here I got a little something for you 🖕
It was not.
Why you gotta be mean to Mindy, she’s just smiling and waiting her turn in line.
Anna’s the angry girl with the under cut. Mindy is the blondelady in the last panel.
I have earmarked her for Leslie smooching so I’ll not have you disparaging her!
Oops mix up
Mindy’s just happy as a clam, despite the public alteration in front of her. Yey happiness.
Mindy: what altercation? 🙂 I’m just in line to get some cold cuts 🙂
(“Cold cut” sounds like an evil thing)
Turns out Mindy’s a bloodthirsty psychopath.
I’ve never been to Lucky’s. I hear good things. I work at Kroger near IU, and in the deli. Woo! -_-
“Excuse me miss, it’s your turn to to order”
From my understanding Federal Policy in the USA is pretty useless considering the fact the States have so much power. I mean, marijuana is “technically legal” in a few States, but because it isn’t legal in on a Federal level it doesn’t really matter.
Side note: Canada’s policy is thus: Federal level means Provinces and Territories must adhere to the Federal government within a certain period of time, regardless of ruling party in said province or territory. This, at least in my opinion, allows for a much better functioning system.
That really seems pretty similar to the US for me.
Federal and provincial levels have a division of powers, so it’s laid out in the constitution who controls what, but everything NOT explicitly listed (or added to the constitution) is controlled by the federal government. For instance, the federal government controls criminal law so that one thing isn’t illegal in one province but legal in another (and seriously, what the FUCK kind of country has different state law codes?) and the provinces control healthcare, as that tends to be more based on locality and convenience.
Okay, so there is a bit of an inverse there. (Like the reverse of the tenth amendment to the US constitution.)
In the US, powers not explicitly reserved to the federal government are controlled by the states.
And what the fuck kind of country has things set up this way? The kind of country that started out as a shaky pack of rebel colonies forced into an alliance by a superpower but seeing themselves as separate nation-states, who ended up with a union that was initially more than a mere alliance but less than a true single polity, who barely made it hold together initially through bizarre (and sometimes unconscionable) compromises and checks and balances on the federal government, and who were having to make up the practice of liberal democracy as they went out of little more than contradictory philosophical works and bits and pieces that had been tried, separately, in other times and places. Then iterate through two-and-a-third centuries more of compromises meant to paper over the most immediate cracks by people who were themselves still trying to figure liberal democracy out. OF COURSE the entire thing is one huge kluge.
Yeah, I remember hearing about that, but I still can’t wrap my head around the idea of deciding split criminal codes are a good idea once they decided on a union. In that case, I’d think the better thing to do would be make 13 separate countries, but what do I know?
Actually, we did that. States were sovereign for about a decade after gaining independence, and several of them were *really* paranoid about ceding power to a stronger federation. Our entire Bill of Rights, which includes the powers-not-reserved clause (alongside the better-known rights to free speech and arms), was basically a bunch of arbitrary compromises designed to get everyone on board with another new government.
Ah, go figure. Fun times.
federal power is the best option…as long as they are on my side.
I was scrolling through the tumblr, and spotted this preview panel for July 6, 2017, posted back in April. It probably didn’t stand out at the time, but given that it has Dorothy (with Walky), and we now know that Dorothy was a witness to the events of the cliffhanger, it might be that we’ll get some payoff for that event. In a couple of weeks. Maybe.
https://dumbingofage.tumblr.com/post/159723201407/july-6-2017
Or maybe she’ll be talking about her grades, or arguing about Dexter and Monkey Master. With this comic, who can say?
Oh my god, my first thought was that that was actually Ryan wearing Dorothy’s face as a mask, I need to go to bed.
It might be “for the right cause” but impersonation, especially when it comes to federal levels, is a very serious crime. Knowing the political leaning of this comic she probably won’t face any real consequences, but IRL this would be disastrous.
Or she could just get controversially elected President. IRL history has examples of both outcomes.
who was it who called becky hacking robin’s twitter, posting as her, and then proceeding to tweet as her???
because you deserve all the awards, holy observant precognition
…wow, would it kill you to politely go “excuse me” and ask if she was waiting? There was absolutely no reason to be rude.
I understand getting frustrated with people on their phones, but there’s a nicer way to do that. Going “excuse me, ma’am, you’re up next” when you’re behind in a line is NOT hard.
I can only hypothesize and I am limited to my own perspective, but I think most people is afraid of getting tricked and this translates to some quick assumptions. A dollar lost weighs more on us than a dollar gained.
And Becky was causing this person a loss by wasting her time.
Personally, I can quickly get irritated if anyone is in this way inconveniencing me or others, or not following the rules. Reflecting on this, my initial assumption would usually go something like “this person is deliberately doing this and doesn’t care about me/others and the impact (however minor) it has on me/others”, so they should be taught a lesson for the sake of everyone.
It is almost never the case that they didn’t care, as in Becky’s case, and were just oblivious. However, if you feel surrounded by people you suspect not to care about you as a person, then one makes assumptions and direct confrontation becomes ever more likely.
Thus the lesson.
The harsh reaction would be trying to drive home a lesson of being mindful, which is sorta ironic. To make sure it is remembered, one would make it as ‘traumatizing’ an experience as possible, for lack of a better word. Being rude, causing fear, using threats, and backing up threats with violence seems only a natural escalation of making the “lesson” memorable.
So that’s my view of why someone would be motivated to be rude over something so trivial, while maintaining a sense of doing right.
Might only be me though. I don’t do this in full, as in I do not go beyond being rude and only when I am sure the person is actually aware, under normal circumstances. I do need to reflect on it further.
I can see your perspective regarding this and fully respect people who look out for others in this manner to do the right thing, but like you said, the context needs to be under fully aware circumstances.
In terms of the comic, this is the only context we currently have with the update, and thus, the lady is coming off as extremely rude and acting kind of like a douche (not sure which character is which otherwise I would say). I don’t know if she’s been standing there trying to get Becky’s attention through her fog of ADHD and preoccupiedness, because she might have been, but this is the first encounter, thus the only context we have here. I’m not sure how important it will be later on and really, it’s just my opinion on the internet, but I felt the need to voice it either way, since I simply cannot stand this sort of thing. It’s easier for others to be rude or hateful to others, whereas if they presented themselves with kindness, they’ll be remembered for such things.
But that may be just me.
The Deli counter woman’s “dear god help me” smile is something that I’ve personally done, being a retail slave, and can see it as a reaction to either side, really – either Becky being rude for being on her phone and not paying attention, or nameless girl being rude to another customer in front of her and she has no idea how to react to it other than hope to god it resolves itself so she can do her job. I hope her day gets better too, as that career is so full of abuse it’s sickening.
For the record, I totally agree that lady yelling at Becky was in the wrong.
And I can also agree on the retail “please be adults and do not necessitate my intervention”-attitude with a dash of “remember to smile”. I’ve worked a cash register.
That…sounds really unpleasant. I would be kind of scared to be around someone like that.
Yeah, I really hope “most people” don’t actually think this way…
Well, it probably sounds worse than it is. I like to think I’m a nice and empathic person.
and that traumatizing “lesson” does the opposite of mindfulness; it causes trauma! (duhh)
flight/fight/freeze responses don’t work so well in today’s world.
what bothers me isn’t so much that she was rude to becky, it’s the *way* in which she was rude. it just… sounds so much like the start of a Narcissist rant. 🙁 When someone talks that way to me, I go into panic mode. suddenly I’m drowning in emotions, the real world is both far away and incredibly painful, and normal human interaction is not a thing my brain does in that mode. I’d be a mess for the rest of the day at the very least. 🙁 I’m all shaky just from remembering it.
Flakky, your description of the thought process is very accurate. :/
this might be a useful read: http://outofthefog.website/what-not-to-do-1/2015/12/3/fleas
I react like that pretty much too (though it depends on the context and if my brain can regain logical thinking).
Met someone like that a few years back with friends in a part of a bookstore that was specifically designed for people to be able to sit down and browse the books (not actually read them thoroughly), with comfy chairs, to decide on whether they’d really want to buy them or not. But not a library and it didn’t ask anywhere to be quiet. So of course we chatted a bit, because one of us looked for a book with very specific information for a paper, so we exchanged info on whether or not the book we looked at might be promising for that or not.
A middle-aged man sitting opposed to us, who could’ve just asked us politely to be a bit quieter and we would’ve obliged gladly, told us to ‘Stop our tattling and gaggling, because he’s concentrating, and is disturbed by us typical female young girls” which basically became a rant with the ultimate theme “you’re younger than me, so you should respect me”, with him even going as far as, as my friend asked him what he thinks we old we are, to address us familiarly with a personal “you” (as “du” in German, as opposed to a politer form “Sie”, which you usually use for ppl you don’t know (unless they’re kids), which also translates into English “you”).
I froze up, but my friend, growing up with two older brothers, started discussing with him, deconstructing his rant, and basically telling HIM off in a still polite way. He was basically a real-life troll.
TIL talking about triggers can be triggering. (gee what a surprise! /s) I actually went nonverbal for a couple of hours. wow. I’m handling it ok, just… at that point where I’m tired of sitting with it and want a distraction, but still a bit too edgy to find anything interesting. I have so much more respect for Cerberus’ Comic Reactions now, that shit’s fucking exhausting!
also kinda feeling like “how do I be me again?” – like I’ve just forgotten how to .. something. I want to have good feelings but I dunno where I put them. 😛
Hey, thanks for the link. I’m not sure I really understood it, but I’ll give it another read later.
I get that the entire thing seems really counter-intuitive like fighting fire with fire, which is why I ended up finding it very ironic, but I can’t rationalize it any other way.
In the end, entirely disengaging from the process seems like the most productive endeavor.
humans are counterintuitive. 🙂
I might have misinterpreted something too – the link was because I worried you might feel bad for being able to think that way, although it wasn’t clear how much was hypothetical, how much was actual experience or how much was observation.
ideally, building healthy boundaries improves both sides of this issue (becky’s role or whatsername’s) but we’re all only human and it’s not easy.
Thanks, I definitely don’t feel bad now
i think, probably, becky was standing there for a really, really long time. maybe ten minutes? because not only anna but also the deli person were upset with her.
at least that’s what i think was meant to be implied, because if anna was just blowing up at her the deli person wouldn’t be anxiously smiling
Now I understand why Becky for that Suit-look. She is turning into a Bond Villain.
“I’m sorry; you see I inadvertently subverted the elected government of the United States of America as part of a juvenile prank and now I have no idea what to do with this fact.”
Future girlfriend?
Becky is now an
8 0 ‘ S
H A C K E R
i nominate stephanie for deli lady’s name!
You can’t use democracy to give her a name. The poor woman will end up with “Delly McCounterface”.
I support Delly McCounterface. It has my vote!
LOL I was just thinking, “Delly is a cute name. And IDGAF about surnames, so I’m good with McCounterface.” XD Count me in as a yea vote.
nominations like yours suck!!
I don’t understand how that deli is standing there without also showing up in the wider-view-background, but ehh, whatever, David Willis! Cartoon logic, like whatever!
Becky is the new Representative DeSanto; she’s even dressed up and everything!
Also that counter lady totally has the same grin as Becky. Complete with teeth dots that sorta look like braces.
Well what’s so important about deli, inordinately angry lady?
Seriously
She’s hungry and wants to get her sandwich now rather than after Becky unwittingly introduces a bill to repeal the Second Amendment in Robin’s name.
Apparently this supermarket doesn’t use the take-a-number system.
People glued to their phones at restaurants and other places ARE really annoying. Especially when they hold up lines and block foot traffic egress in narrow areas. I’d give Becky a scowl too.
It’s happened too many times for me to maintain the meek attitude anymore where I quietly say “Excuse me, please. Hello? Excuse me?” When all they do is ignore my presence until I finally raise my voice. These days I just skip to the end. I feel like it’s the only way to circumvent people shaped obstacles short of shoving my way past and I’m not prepared to be quite that mean. Anger gets peoples attention. Rudeness begets rudeness, I guess.
For once my suspension of disbelief is broken, I don’t buy that a young woman with that haircut would have a “these kids and their damn phones” attitude!
I think she could be pissed off at someone being super rude to the server and people waiting, not so much the phone use in itself. To me Becky’s body language makes it really clear she’s just standing in an obnoxious spot, but as someone who can’t stand the whining about phones, I hate people ignoring staff and screwing them around. (I would NOT yell at them, but that is the motivation I read into it.)
And of course she goes the “what’s so important” route with it, as if that’s even relevant. Like the act of using a phone is somehow “important”, with no regard to how it’s being used. But nope. Using phone, therefore phone vital, therefore worth shitting on someone’s day.
I have a very similar haircut and roadrage yell “GET OFF YOUR PHONE” at people I see on their phones while driving. 😐
But yeah. In a deli? If she’s not paying attention, just walk around her. It’s not the end of the world. She’s not going to kill anyone by standing in a deli line on her phone.
Are you suggesting that being young, female, and having a certain kind of haircut means they can’t be annoyed by someone holding up a line? I think that could universally annoy anyone.
The grin of a food service worker who gives no fucks. Been there myself.
Does anyone else encounter this problem? I’m using the Chrome browser.
The page will continually reload an ad and fail. This loop slows down my client immensely. I am convinced it is an ad, because it does not always happen on each load of the page and enabling my ad-blocker eliminates it. As such, region and whatever ads is in rotation at the moment likely plays a part as well.
It’s also slowly leaking memory from what I could test, which explains why the site gets ever slower for me over time. Initially, I thought it was related to the ads using flash as it is not as well supported as it once was, but installing and enabling flash did nothing.
On this side, I can only enable ad-blocker to fix it.
Server-side, I’d recommend finding this bit of code that fails to load these ad-plugins and removing it or fixing it.
I’ve been having similar problems for some time now, in Mozilla on Linux PCs and Silk on a Kindle Fire. I think it’s related to video ads that sometimes appear in the right sidebar between the Patreon and convention boxes. (And which don’t work in my browser anyway.) At least one of them makes it impossible for me to post comments on my Kindle, because it reloads on a sub-second cycle, and every time it reloads, it forces the virtual keyboard closed.
I don’t have an ad blocker installed, because I don’t normally block the ads that my favorite creators’ livelihood depends on. But this had gotten to the point that the browser became unresponsive and I had to
kill -1it – sometimes from a remote terminal, because X was unusable too – and restart it every time I visited the site, so I’ve started blocking specific ads’ hosts at my firewall, which has helped some but not completely solved the problem.Everything actually seems to be working fine right now, but I’m not confident that’s not an anomaly. The ad I’m seeing in that slot currently is a text ad, not one of the video ones.
I use firefox with Adblock Plus and a whitelist. On windows and linux, I haven’t noticed problems, but on android, firefox gets so slow that what I’ve typed doesn’t show up until 5-10 seconds later (which makes editing excruciating). It has flat-out crashed the browser at least once. I’ve taken to just flagging the comments I want to respond to and then responding later on my computer.
For my issue, if you open the developer tools (usually F12 on Windows) you can see a loop of errors in the console log.
Subscribing to ad plugins followed by tons of failures to load resources.
I experience the same 5-10 seconds lag on comment text. Especially if the browser has been left open for a while.
In Firefox (running on *buntu) I get the “Unresponsive Script” warning all the time on here, but if I block ads I don’t. Hence I’ll block for the specific page and reload if I’m spending a lot of time in the comments so it’s not throwing that warning every few minutes. Android Firefox just crashes after a while spent on any Hiveworks hosted page for me, not sure why. I only use Chrome to watch stuff on Netflix, which seems to run slower than pitch in Firefox (to the point of occasionally also throwing the “Unresponsive Script” warning), so I can’t really figure out whether the ads here are similarly affecting it compared to Firefox.
I have trouble with the site reloading sometimes and lately sometimes an aggressive add starts to redirect to a different page. (That one I get more in hiveworks comics thought) its really annoying and I hope there is some sort of script-blocker for iOS soon.
Most modern browsers have some sort of manner to prevent redirects at the least. I know very little about iOS, so I can’t really suggest any specific manner to fix either problem though.
Aw, there’s an “um” with no speech bubble floating near Becky’s shoulder. I feel bad for the poor little word, floating cold and alone without a nice safe bubble to live in, and no friends to keep it company…
Aww it has a home now 😀
Part of me is screaming to Becky that she could get in big trouble for hacking a politician’s Twitter account. Another part of me finds this very amusing. Still another part of me just finished a delicious feta cheese omelet and is sipping tea.
Lots of discussion upthread about whether the ends justify the means. Very few things are always; most things are sometimes. (Zooms out to include Just War Theory and self-defense, for two examples) What Becky is doing could be framed as self-defense… from a certain point of view (/Ben Kenobi voice)
Do they do a Philosophy, Politics and Economics degree at IU? That’s the one the poltico’s take in this country.
I wonder what Mindy’s smiling about…
Mindy is the person to the left of Becky in panel 5, right?
Becky is the hero we need.
Also, I love how crafty Becky is with new skillsets. Like, she’s voracious for learning and has some excellent teachers, and she’s got enough street smarts surviving her dad that she can pull out the sly subtle when she needs to, while hiding behind her loud mask.
And it’s sad in a way. If Becky hadn’t figured out she was gay, if she hadn’t been able to escape her father or was more easily cowed, this brain of hers would be wasted in a cloying patriarchal prison, only used to educate her kids.
And no one would have seen how clever she was. Or at least none who would recognize it as valid and worthy.
And I can’t help but think of Bonnie, of how she got erased to a cipher. A dutiful wife, a loving mother, clearly miserable and suffering without help.
I wonder what she would have been if she had managed to escape that prison.
Which I suppose is the tragedy of these controlling hierarchal systems. We waste so much brilliance and worth that comes from sources we don’t culturally value. And so the brilliant black homeless trans women have to devote all their intelligence and craft into survival instead of where they could truly shine if only given half a chance.
One semi-common thing for players of Crusader Kings II – a strategy game by Paradox, aka the “Medieval Murder Simulator” – who don’t have some other specific goal is to arrange for their ruler to convert to one of the heresies that allow(ed) women to hold positions of power, so as to make best use of any ladies with awesome stats (particularly in areas that do not directly apply to baby-making).
To be fair, the trait “Genius” is somewhat hereditary in that game.
People do
wonderfulterrible things in CK 2.THIS. The waste of it all just … I don’t even have words for the feeling it creates. Something like enraged puddles of tears with a desire to just scoop up all the unknown geniuses, hug them and place them somewhere they can heal and then create with abandon.
Ah, the universal expression of a service worker who just wants their shift to end. I know it well, and stand in solidarity.
I would absolutely follow a sub-comic of Becky catfishing federal policy with tweets religiously.
Like just a section of a twitter convo everyday, talking as Robin to her confused constituents and colleagues.
Is Delilah too on the nose for Ms. Deli Lady?
Also, wild speculation: the comic will end with Becky accidentally subverting the system further and becoming the all-powerful God-Queen of the United States. We then lead into a spin-off with God-Queen Becky, genetically-modified First-Dinosaur-Consort Dina and long-suffering Vice-Queen Dorothy fighting aliens and religious intolerance.
Hmm interesting, I don’t much for Becky at all and I get really annoyed with people on their phones zoning out and all but really Annas a bit over the top here in her reaction
to Smiling Cat (and others)
Motivation is a Big Thing in Buddhism.
In one of the Jataka Tales, a ferry boat captain is about to sink his boat, drowning the 500 people on board.
To prevent this, the proto-Buddha kills him.
1) Saving 500 people … well, yeah.
2) But mostly… Saving the captain from the karma of having killed 500 people.
3) And taking on the karma (with aforethought) of murdering the captain.
…
…
I will now assume the karma of inflicting AdBlock Plus on DoA.
As someone who works in a deli, this strip is clearly a farce!!
…No one stands in line at the deli, they just gather at the counter and hope you didn’t notice who got their first (surprise mother sucker, I did).
If someone is on their phone I will ask to help the next customer, to give them a chance to put it away. After that I will address the person who came after them directly.
And this is just a rando tip unrelated to the strip – If you need time to look, by all means take your time! We have loads of other things to do while you make your decision. But please acknowledge your clerk when they ask how they can help you. You’d think this is a no brainer, but people would rather pretend they didn’t hear you instead of saying “Hi, yes, I just need some time to figure out what I’d like :)” or even “Hello, I’m not ready yet.”
That’s kind of why I like it why the deli counter in most of the supermarkets in town have a ticket system going. At least that way you can be sure that nobody’s trying to sneak in ahead.