It seems that what this person wants is that everyone he talks to think like he does.
You say "seems," but it doesn't just seem like that, it is exactly that. The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves of (minor point, but I'll clarify because I don't want conversation to degrade to pedantics).
Why should he care if others use Twitter ?
If I had to jump into speculation, I'd say he cares because he feels excluded from a tool many of the rest of us can choose to ignore or live with.
>> The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves
"Safe space" is a much abused phrase. The meaning of 'safe' as it applies to physical harm is fairly easy for us to agree on. When it comes to emotional and psychological harm, what does it really mean? Where is the line drawn?
It seems that some people will not hesitate to demand the complete absence of anything they find the least bit objectionable, all in the name of 'safe spaces'.
I think that's the point. With a more community oriented system the line could be drawn at the single user's discretion. Like on Facebook. I don't agree with the author of the article that twitter should die, though.
Oh, I understand that the ability to draw that line himself is part of what he is seeking. I meant to say that the idea of 'safe spaces' can be used to conflate 'preventing harm' with 'indulging arbitrary wants' and even 'pandering to narcissists'. Unlike with physical safety, I don't see a line we can use to semi-objectively declare that one has left one domain of 'emotionally safe' and entered another domain.
Notice that I'm not arguing against the establishment of circumstances in which a person can feel safe! Only that we should pay attention to the language and how it is used, lest we become manipulated into an unhealthy dynamic, all in the name of pursuing a healthy dynamic.
> Oh, I understand that the ability to draw that line himself is part of what he is seeking.
Why, then, do you keep insisting that we should somehow "semi-objectively" declare one? There isn't even a clear line as to what is physically harmful. Why do you think that something as inherently subjective as emotional harm would have to be objectively defined to be considered?
As for "indulging arbitrary wants"; I bid you welcome to the social network business and wish you will have a pleasant stay.
> Why, then, do you keep insisting that we should somehow "semi-objectively" declare one?
It's very strange that you say 'why, then' while coupling these sentences, as if the existence of the first makes the second less sensible. Its exactly because of the existence of the first that we should consider the 2nd.
> There isn't even a clear line as to what is physically harmful
Obviously, physically damaging one's body works as one line - a line - for physically harming someone. Surely you can see how radically different this is from so called 'emotional harm'.
> inherently subjective as emotional harm would have to be objectively defined to be considered?
Oh, did someone say that, somewhere? Did someone say that something must be objectively defined in order to be _considered_? I wonder what that person might be thinking. Maybe they are constructing false dilemmas and straw men.
> It's very strange that you say 'why, then' while coupling these sentences, as if the existence of the first makes the second less sensible.
I'm not asking you why because I think that the two ideas are inherently tangled, but because I don't understand the relevance semi-objectively declaring a "line" has to the discussion.
> Obviously, physically damaging one's body works as one line - a line - for physically harming someone.
Where is the line drawn when it comes to damaging one's body? Eating too much? Sleeping to little? Hitting someone in the face? Too little exercise? Bad ergonomics? Suicide? Watching TV? Smoking? When do you leave the domain of physically unsafe and enter the domain of physically safe?
> Surely you can see how radically different this is from so called 'emotional harm'.
Surely you can see that this isn't an actual argument, and I won't respond to it as such. Explain how it is radically different and I will return to you.
> Oh, did someone say that, somewhere? Did someone say that something must be objectively defined in order to be _considered_?
No, you didn't outright say that, but it's the idea I got from your reasoning. Your argument seems to be that the phrase "safe spaces" is abused, and the only reasoning you support that conclusion with is based on the idea that emotional harm is hard to define. That seems like the opposite of the dictionary definition of considering something.
> Obviously, physically damaging one's body works as one line - a line - for physically harming someone. Surely you can see how radically different this is from so called 'emotional harm'.
The idea that emotional harm doesn't involve physical (even if not structural) damage to the body requires that emotions exist in a non-physical realm rather than being epiphenoma of physical states of the body.
The idea that so called emotional 'harm' cannot involve physical changes is not assumed in anything I've said.
The important thing here is that it is easy for reasonable, practical people to agree on what constitutes the act of physically harming another. Your own statement demonstrates that it is not so easy to draw a line on what constitutes 'emotional harm'. Which structural changes deserve the label "results of harm" ? The innate slipperiness of the concept is exploited by those who wish not only to 'protect' themselves from hearing unpleasant opinions, but also to elevate the act of silencing others to a righteous form of 'protection from harm'.
And if you consider being offended to qualify as "unsafe" or "emotional and psychological harm," then anything you find offensive violates your "safe space" criteria.
> The meaning of 'safe' as it applies to physical harm is fairly easy for us to agree on. When it comes to emotional and psychological harm, what does it really mean? Where is the line drawn?
Offer a meaning of safe as it applies to physical harm. Let's see if we actually agree to that as easily as you presume we would first.
A space where you have no reasonable expectation of any form of personal injury, perhaps excluding self-inflicted harm caused by negligence (e.g. cutting off your own hand in the kitchen, but not somebody else cutting off your hand in the kitchen).
Great! In only 41 words, and seemingly off-the-cuff, you've crafted a perfectly reasonable definition of an 'acceptably physically safe space'.
The term 'safe' should never have been brought over like this to apply to psychological comfort. With physical safety, there is a clear and obvious event around which related concepts can be built: the event of physical damage to the body. We can point to those events, and it is easier to trace back a chain of cause-and-effect and discuss reasonable domains of responsibility.
With 'emotionally safe' spaces, there is no line that prevents the notion from being abused, and substituted for "the absence of anything I don't like".
You say "seems," but it doesn't just seem like that, it is exactly that. The terminology he uses is "safe space." It doesn't mean zero joking or disagreement, but only the type and levels he approves of (minor point, but I'll clarify because I don't want conversation to degrade to pedantics).
Why should he care if others use Twitter ?
If I had to jump into speculation, I'd say he cares because he feels excluded from a tool many of the rest of us can choose to ignore or live with.