"Really?"
January 13, 2025 7:45 AM   Subscribe

 
I will be flagging every anti-bean comment as hate speech.
posted by mittens at 7:53 AM on January 13 [26 favorites]


This could be parodying the left's inclination to eat its own young or it could be parodying the left's inclination to actually care about people and feelings, and I am not sure which it is.
posted by jacquilynne at 7:57 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]


Meanwhile off in the distance, Rome was still on fire.
posted by Diskeater at 7:57 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]


Did you consider the feelings of people in LA before posting that comment?
posted by flabdablet at 7:58 AM on January 13 [24 favorites]


Flagged as delicious... just like every chili FPP should be.
posted by cupcakeninja at 8:01 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


Did any of you stop to consider whether I would get your joke in the same style as this article before making your own joke in the same style as this article?
posted by billjings at 8:06 AM on January 13 [14 favorites]


or it could be parodying the left's inclination to actually care about people and feelings

Or that this is often used on the left to cloak bullying with an air of righteousness or as a shield against any complaints about someone's behavior.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:12 AM on January 13 [37 favorites]


MetaFilter: did you stop to think about everyone who has ever lived and how it could make them feel?
posted by Captaintripps at 8:14 AM on January 13 [20 favorites]


Did you stop to think about how Metafilter would feel before making that joke?
posted by numaner at 8:20 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


Especially given this site's longstanding attitude toward plates of beans. Just unforgivable.
posted by flabdablet at 8:30 AM on January 13 [12 favorites]


If loving my personal chili recipe is a crime, then let me be guilty!

said guilty plea conditional on my pleading to a misdemeanor and the sentence restricted to community service, said community service restricted to stuff that I was going to do anyway and not at a time when I have other commitments
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:30 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]


sentence restricted to community service

Community service is so 2024. This year we're all about the unconditional discharge.
posted by flabdablet at 8:32 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]


I felt sad bringing my chili to the work potluck. I know the others worked hard on their chili dishes but were feeble in comparison to my masterpiece.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:39 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


community service: making a very large pot of chili for the community. get on it!
posted by supermedusa at 8:45 AM on January 13


I feel personally attacked.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:46 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


If you want an example of what this piece is mocking, see e.g. that tweet from a few years ago where a woman said she starts every morning having coffee and talking with her husband in their garden and was immediately inundated with replies attacking her as classist, ableist, insensitive to the pain of others who couldn't do that, etc.
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:49 AM on January 13 [38 favorites]


If you didn't know about the chili thing, I will (sadly) enlighten you.

There was a long-time twitter poster, Chinchillazilla IIRC, who posted a tweet about how she had made chili for her neighbors. I'm not looking any of this up, it's too depressing, but the deal was that they seemed like students or otherwise poorly organized young guys and she had some chili and she thought they might like some, which they did, and again IIRC offered to help her out with some chore as a thank-you.

But this turned into a huge twitter pile-on, like how very dare she offer them chili, it could be a huge burden to them if they felt pressured to accept if they didn't want it, or it could be triggering for them if they wanted to say no but had a history of people violating their boundaries, or maybe they were allergic to or did not eat the ingredients and they were being pressured by normative food choices, or maybe they didn't have bowls or forks for financial reasons, only ate convenience food as a result and would feel class-shamed. Or maybe there was some gender-creepy aspect, Chinchillazilla being in her thirties (?) and these kids being in their twenties. It was huge and went on for days, and drove Chinchillazilla off the internet, at least under that handle.

Backstory: the fuzzy tropical fruit farmer website had been gunning for her for reasons I don't know, and that was part of what drove it. But it wouldn't have gotten so big except for the sheer lunacy of "you are forcing emotional labor on your neighbors, who are just pretending to be happy you gave them home made chili to hide the shame of not owning bowls, you creepy older woman".

It was awful, and that's what this post is referencing, so I'm pretty sure it's about...I wouldn't call it the left so much as a certain cultural tendency on the internet, especially twitter, for whom no defensive crouch is deep enough.

ETA: Not driven off the internet, just off twitter.
posted by Frowner at 8:50 AM on January 13 [60 favorites]


This is spot on and why regular people hate a small sanctimonious set of very online people.
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:51 AM on January 13 [16 favorites]


I feel personally attacked.

I'm sure everybody is sorry you feel that way.
posted by flabdablet at 8:53 AM on January 13


A recap of the Chiligate Frowner mentioned.
posted by tavella at 8:55 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted, poster's request.
posted by travelingthyme (staff) at 8:56 AM on January 13


why regular people hate a small sanctimonious set of very online people

Pointless waste of perfectly good hate. Point it instead at the piss-poor moderation policies embraced by the operators of the specific social media sites that encourage this kind of behaviour as an engagement-promoting cultural norm.
posted by flabdablet at 8:57 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


Love that we have two totally separate examples of people being subjugated to this kind of weird pile on, and I'm sure we could think of more if we stopped for 30 seconds.
posted by Braeburn at 8:58 AM on January 13 [7 favorites]


flabdablet, how dare you say we piss on the poor?

[tumblr joke]
posted by Lawn Beaver at 9:09 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


Also, you know what? I tried your recipe. I followed it exactly. Except that I replaced the cayenne pepper with cinnamon, used water instead of broth, and used cream instead of tomato juice. But other than that, I followed your recipe to a tee.

And I’ll tell you what, it totally sucked.

posted by doctornemo at 9:13 AM on January 13 [18 favorites]


I didn't have any beans, so I used small stones. I didn't have any tomatoes, so I used broccoli. I didn't have any chili powder, so I used sugar. I don't like ground beef, so I substituted an expired can of Spam from 1997. Your chili recipe is horrible and you should be ashamed.
posted by mygothlaundry at 9:13 AM on January 13 [15 favorites]


It does seem like online social lefty types either have really badly calibrated bullshit detector for bad faith actors, or are worried about all the other people with badly calibrated bullshit detectors dogpiling them if they push back against said bad faith actors.
posted by Ferreous at 9:15 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


I remember when the ChiliGate drama happened; it makes a lot of sense that this is a purely internet tendency because you just never meet anyone like this IRL, or at least I haven't. I wouldn't say it's parodying "the left" as much as parodying the type of person who just lives online entirely and has completely malformed ideas of social justice, disability rights, public health, etc.

Recall the dad who recounted the goofy story of trying to teach his 6 year old daughter to open a can of beans and even people on Metafilter were like "Fuck this. This is a abuse. Full stop." lol
posted by windbox at 9:17 AM on January 13 [7 favorites]


This has little to do with anything but social media being a cancer on the body politic.
posted by aspersioncast at 9:20 AM on January 13 [6 favorites]


I just want to note for the record that the behaviour this piece is describing is a form of bullying; one which was rampant here for years; one that drove a lot of users away from the site; and one which the moderation here seemed to be at best ineffective against, and at worst actively supported.

It's great that we seem to be able to joke about it now, but if there's one single thing the new board and moderation committee could do that might encourage a lot of people to come back, it's to make an explicit policy to address this pattern of behaviour.
posted by automatronic at 9:24 AM on January 13 [60 favorites]


Any chance we're overthinking this?
posted by chavenet at 9:37 AM on January 13 [13 favorites]


Certainly not me, while trying to find a definitive source of whether kiwis are tropical or subtropical.
posted by achrise at 9:43 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


Any chance we're overthinking this?

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Across studies, we found initial support for the validity of Moral Grandstanding as a construct. Specifically, moral grandstanding motivation was associated with status-seeking personality traits, as well as greater political and moral conflict in daily life.
posted by Brian B. at 9:51 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


the dad who recounted the goofy story of trying to teach his 6 year old daughter to open a can of beans

beandad really benefited from the 1/6 insurrection pushing every other conversation out of the room
posted by edward_5000 at 9:54 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


> maybe this?

Cayenne Pepper: Twice the amount of crushed red pepper flakes. [foodnetwork]
posted by HearHere at 9:59 AM on January 13


FYI "fuzzy tropical fruit farmer website" == [Redacted by a moderator]. (That's everything I know, I just googled it for you.)
posted by whuppy at 10:03 AM on January 13 [3 favorites]


k.f. is a troll site that endeavors to bully people into suicide
posted by glonous keming at 10:10 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Bluesky just had a whole spate of people freaking tf out in this fashion when it came up in conversation that it is more expensive to order in than to cook at home (and, yes, there are a few nuances to that, but it is, in fact, true). Treating a general statement as a universal moral judgment or making up elaborate edge cases to get mad in defense of are sure signs of either (a) being very young, in which case it's forgivable, but exhausting or (b) having realized that oppression exists in approximately 2016, but never having done anything except Discourse about it since then (I used to call it "my first woke," but that term's been destroyed by the right), in which case, geez.

It's not a terrifying scourge of society, but it can be tiring. If you're a POC posting on social media in particular, I've observed that a small subset of this group can get quite out of pocket at you.
posted by praemunire at 10:26 AM on January 13 [9 favorites]


(I would suggest deleting the direct naming of that site, for the protection of this one and in particular its trans users.)
posted by praemunire at 10:27 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


This recently happened in a current thread, so no, not even here can we have nice things.
posted by Kitteh at 10:34 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Bluesky just had a whole spate of people freaking tf out in this fashion when it came up in conversation that it is more expensive to order in than to cook at home

Between Actual Twitter and its children, this one must happen weekly.
posted by atoxyl at 10:34 AM on January 13


being very young, in which case it's forgivable, but exhausting

I really began to think bsky was not for me, at that point. Who has the energy to come up with a Hypothetical Person For Whom The Grocery Store Is Actual Harm, but doesn't have the equivalent time to compare the cost of a homemade burrito vs DoorDash?
posted by mittens at 10:42 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


METAFILTER: having realized that oppression exists in approximately 2016, but never having done anything except Discourse about it since then
posted by philip-random at 10:47 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


The TikTok version of this phenomenon was when someone posted a video of them cooking a bean soup recipe and one of the comments was something to the effect of "what if I don't like beans?"
posted by mhum at 10:47 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


I'm sure we could think of more if we stopped for 30 seconds.

Stopping to think for any length of time goes entirely against the spirit of the exercise.
posted by mhoye at 10:49 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


Cayenne Pepper: Twice the amount of crushed red pepper flakes.

True story…One year for thanksgiving, my wife’s niece was doing the turkey with a rub recipe she found and liked. The recipe called for about five tablespoons of paprika. When she started putting the rub together, she discovered she had no paprika. Rooting around her spice shelf, she found a bottle of another red powder called cayenne. She didn’t know what it was but, since it was red, she figured it would do as a one-to-one substitute for the paprika. So in went five heaping tablespoons of cayenne.

I loved the result. The rest of the family, not so much lol.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:50 AM on January 13 [21 favorites]


I’m Texan. You’re doing chili wrong. Fight me.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 10:51 AM on January 13 [1 favorite]


This recently happened in a current thread, so no, not even here can we have nice things.

so I'm the one that dropped that "meanwhile off in the distance, Rome was still on fire" line which seems to have stirred up some responses.

I honestly wasn't intending to condemn anything. In fact, I found the live band playing along to a Speed Run a nice thing indeed, the right kind of silly. And perhaps all the more relevant because Rome is still burning (as it has been all of our lives). In other words, rather than collapse into doomism, these "kids" are choosing to have a little fun.

Also, I notice my line has shown up in this thread.

Hmmm?
posted by philip-random at 10:54 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Every time I see this kind of behavior I'm reminded of this scene from The Simpsons Episode "Bart Star" where Ned is coaching a kid football team:
Lisa:[appears at the gate, with one of her trademark confrontations]
What position have you got for me?
[crowd gasps]
Lisa: Thats right. A girl want to play football. How about that.
Ned: Well, thats super-duper, Lisa. We've already got four girls on the
team.
Lisa: [let down] You do?
Ned: Ah huh. But we'd love to have you onboard!
Lisa: Well... football's not really my thing... after all... what kind of
civilised person would play a game with the skin of an innocent pig?!
Ned: Well, actually, Lisa, these balls are synthetic!
Janey: And for every ball you buy, a dollar goes to Amnesty International!
Lisa: [crying] I've gotta go!
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:59 AM on January 13 [23 favorites]


Meanwhile off in the distance, Rome was still on fire.

What? Rome's not on fire. And if it was, what does that have to do with chili? Is this something I'd need a TV to understand?
posted by mazola at 11:02 AM on January 13 [4 favorites]


The dynamic is that bad actors or people without self-insight start the thing off - "this could cause harm if it were a totally different and very unlikely situation" - and people who are for one reason or another overscrupulous start reflecting "oh my goodness, I could have thoughtlessly offered someone chili without realizing that I could be class shaming them!!!!" and join in the discourse. The overscrupulous also don't like to rock the boat when someone bugs them, so it is easy to assume that other people are constantly seething with unspoken rage at having been offered chili.

And then there's the bluesky/Eternal September issue of people feeling that they must evince an opinion or offer a response to everything. Like, okay, you don't like beans? You think that neighbors offering you stuff is annoying? You don't need to jump in if you don't have anything additive to say. It's okay to just read a thread rather than adding momentum.

I think there's three takeaways:
- Eternal September is eternal, until climate change and fascism kill us all this type of posting will always be with us at least somewhat
- We should strive to know what we think and not be swayed like grass on the wall every time someone asserts something. I think, for instance, that even if someone isn't delighted to get a pot of chili, it's not a harm to them and therefore no one should flip out.
- BlueSky has a very good block function; when people start with this stuff and it seems to come from a place of meanness or just seems like posting you don't want to read, block them. Blocking limits their reach and stops the endless reply-all aspect of this.

And a fourth takeaway, actually: we should have a more parsimonious definition of harm. Harm has to be more than "I was uncomfortable or annoyed for a minute" or "I had to do something small and quick that I didn't really want to do but that was pretty trivial". It shouldn't even be "I encountered a story in my free time that upset me and that I think had bad politics" (remember Isabell Fall, where her story was supposed to be so harmful that it had to be scrubbed from the internet and she should give an abject apology?)

Giving someone a pot of chili might in some instances be annoying or cause a logistical problem, but it isn't harm.

And a fifth, while I'm about it: we should all get in the habit of saying no, normalizing no and expecting others to be able to say no to low-stakes roughly power-equal requests/suggestions. Your boss or your abusive parent forcing you to eat food you don't want - that's one thing. But acting as though the average adult is both too fragile to say no to a low-stakes thing AND so fragile that not saying no is going to shatter them, that's ridiculous and we have to stop doing it. Most adults can either decline the pot of chili or be sort of annoyed and scrape it into the garbage without incurring immense psychic damage.
posted by Frowner at 11:03 AM on January 13 [33 favorites]


Is this something I'd need a TV to understand?

It's not my job to educate you.
posted by Diskeater at 11:09 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]


k.f. is a troll site that endeavors to bully people into suicide

yeah [Redacted by a moderator] is real bad, and full of actively vile people trying to do harm.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:12 AM on January 13


I honestly wasn't intending to condemn anything. In fact, I found the live band playing along to a Speed Run a nice thing indeed, the right kind of silly. And perhaps all the more relevant because Rome is still burning (as it has been all of our lives). In other words, rather than collapse into doomism, these "kids" are choosing to have a little fun.

it read to me as a classic 'how dare you have fun while something bad is happening' metafilter threadshit, fwiw.
posted by Sebmojo at 11:14 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]


In some ways, I think this can be traced back to the popularization of a misunderstood version of "intent doesn't matter".

I mean, of course intent matters. If a toddler hits you in the face you don't react as you would if a colleague hit you in the face. If someone is suffering horribly and lashes out at you, that's different than if someone is having a great day and says something ugly to you because they find it fun. Someone who grew up in a very isolated and ignorant situation might say or do something out of ignorance basically in innocence. Hell, if someone mistakenly started a kitchen fire because they didn't have a lot of cooking experience, we don't treat that like they're an arsonist. We all treat intent as important all the time.

Intent doesn't matter in the sense that you don't need to intend to cause harm in order to cause harm, and therefore you can't wave away harm by saying "you shouldn't be harmed, I didn't mean to". But that's not how it got into the discourse - just like "it's not my job to educate you", it turned into something that could be said to excuse mean treatment of others and excuse putting the worst possible interpretation on their words and actions.

"Think of the worst possible way to interpret someone's actions and assume that's a real thing that could happen" seems to me to flow from the whole "all people who do a thing are equally bad" version of intent-doesn't-matter. Like, looking for a reason to put the worst possible spin on an action.

My bet is that this happens more to low-status than high-status people - the more affluent/famous/male/white/etc a person is, the more likely they are to get some kind of "boys will be boys" deal when they've obviously done something genuinely awful 100% on purpose.
posted by Frowner at 11:20 AM on January 13 [25 favorites]


The logic of theoretical harm will always outweigh actual good is one that social media and internet culture in general loves.
posted by Ferreous at 11:29 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


it read to me as a classic 'how dare you have fun while something bad is happening' metafilter threadshit, fwiw.

Irony is a Philip's forte.
posted by Brian B. at 11:34 AM on January 13


Eternal September is eternal, until climate change and fascism kill us all

oh thank god, something to look forward to
posted by mittens at 11:39 AM on January 13 [10 favorites]


BlueSky has a very good block function

Too bad BlueSky was almost purpose-built to be the new home for exactly this kind of person.
posted by star gentle uterus at 11:40 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


it read to me as a classic 'how dare you have fun while something bad is happening' metafilter threadshit, fwiw.

yeah, so that was sloppy on my part. All apologies. I'll aim to improve my aim in future.




but shouldn't I be saying this in the other thread?
posted by philip-random at 11:44 AM on January 13 [2 favorites]


you're right on target
your aim is straight
in the wrong thread
i say what of it
posted by flabdablet at 11:57 AM on January 13 [5 favorites]


"Consider whether your actions may be harming people you didn't think of; consider whether your assumptions about people's abilities, resources, and privileges are universal; keep in mind that just by being able to post online you are more fortunate than many": these are actually valid and important principles! It's just that, even for good-faith actors, they can be deployed disproportionately, without nuance, and more in the spirit of a theoretical game than an actual attempt to improve the impact of one's actions on the world. As I said, you do expect younger people to make these mistakes. When it's forty-five-year-old white dudes yelling at Jamelle Bouie on bsky, though, I just want to lie down and take a nap.
posted by praemunire at 12:02 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


It MeFi
posted by inparticularity at 12:07 PM on January 13 [3 favorites]


Hey! Only 10-12% of the earth's population lives in the Southern Hemisphere. Not billions!
posted by Liquidwolf at 12:08 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Irony is a Philip's forte.

jet fuel won't melt irony
posted by chavenet at 12:20 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


I'm going to lay it out there, and I defy any of you to disagree with me.

Beans make you fart.

There, I said it.
posted by BlueHorse at 12:34 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Hey! Only 10-12% of the earth's population lives in the Southern Hemisphere.

And they don't even know they're left-handed.
posted by Brian B. at 12:36 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Beans make you fart.

Yes, but the more you toot the better you feel...
posted by Reverend John at 12:50 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Straight up: beans don’t make me fart. probably because I’ve eaten them so steadily so long. MEAT does. not as bad as when I was first leaving vegetarianism though.

Gut biomes v complex and not static.
posted by clew at 1:01 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Where I come from, chili is three or four tin cans - at least one of beans - an onion, a green pepper (I think?), some ground meat, and a couple tablespoons of chili powder. Serve with grated cheddar and Saltines.

I should hunt down the recipe, this weekend feels like a good time to offend Texas.
posted by mersen at 1:10 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


chili is three or four tin cans

How long do you have to cook those for them to be soft enough to eat?
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:11 PM on January 13 [9 favorites]


you cook chili?
posted by chavenet at 1:16 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


This year we're all about the unconditional discharge.
That happens to me every time I have chili.
posted by MtDewd at 1:19 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]


I’m Texan. You’re doing chili wrong. Fight me.

My brother in Christ, y'all don't even know which animal to barbecue.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:29 PM on January 13 [13 favorites]


Greg_Ace: The alchemy part went over my head, alas, this is why I am in need of a recipe.
posted by mersen at 1:33 PM on January 13


which animal to barbecue

Let's agree that many animals are tasty when barbecued, so we can focus on fighting over whether to use mustard-, ketchup-, or mayo-based sauce.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:35 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


^ on chili. I'm chaos, just try and fight me.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:37 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


Whenever this kind of "concern one-upmanship" crops up, I think of Napoleon Dynamite's brother Kip and his "like anybody could even know that."
posted by rhizome at 1:40 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Anybody got a good chili recipe I could try adding pineapple to?
posted by flabdablet at 1:44 PM on January 13 [8 favorites]


Let's agree that many animals are tasty when barbecued, so we can focus on fighting over whether to use mustard-, ketchup-, or mayo-based sauce.

I was laughing along and then "vinegar-based" didn't appear at all and now I've already vomited with rage 18 times.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 1:47 PM on January 13 [14 favorites]


It's probably all that vinegar you're ingesting.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:58 PM on January 13 [7 favorites]


Amazon sells a handy throat bidet to clean that up.
posted by mittens at 2:01 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Redacted the name of that site for the protection of MeFi and its members. KF likes to brigade websites that use it's full site name.
posted by loup (staff) at 2:21 PM on January 13 [4 favorites]


i am making chili because of this, thank you. no beans, texas chili con carne.
posted by supercres at 2:47 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


So that's cubed beef, whole tomatoes, cumin, and cocktail sauce?
posted by wenestvedt at 3:37 PM on January 13 [1 favorite]


A real Texas chili con carne contains eggs, pasta, Parmigiano reggiano, and guanciale.
posted by box at 5:31 PM on January 13 [6 favorites]


Oof, this is spot on.

Riffing on some of the above discussion, one of the problems with social media is that discussions aren't always better the larger they are. I mean yes, discussion is often richer when the participants are not near carbon-copies of each other. But like Frowner notes above with "harm" or "intent doesn't matter" etc. there are a lot of ways of thinking/speaking and vocabulary that developed in academic and/or leftist spaces that were useful within those smaller communities (even if not without imperfections), but got greatly distorted in the social media algorithms designed to amplify rage bait. A good example of this is the range of academic work on how violence is not always physical - for example, the boarding schools that forced first-nations people the learn English at the expense of their own language was epistemic violence (obviously those schools were physically violent too). Understanding different types of violence is useful. That doesn't mean a neighbor bringing you chili is violence though - nor does saying that really illuminate anything but how online you are. See also: gaslighting, emotional labor, toxic masculinity, etc. All fine terms/concepts originally.

Another aspect on the Internet that I think connects is how we are now all asked to review everything and everyone on our screens - our restaurant order, food delivery person, doctor's appointments, commercial purchases, TV shows, etc. Sure, plenty of us just ignore these requests or quickly click a number of stars, but no wonder some people feel the need to comment on everything.

And finally, isolation during COVID definitely accelerated the existing trend of people struggling with conflict. While the trend to pile on seems to suggest the opposite, like Frowner points out, part of the imagined "harm" in so many of these instances hinges on the imagination that all people are incapable of saying no/advocating for themselves, or handling views that may be slightly contrary to their own.
posted by coffeecat at 7:15 PM on January 13 [5 favorites]


handy throat bidet

Which, incidentally, is the name of Brian Eno's next album.

(We used to call these "water fountains" when I was in school. I remember all the sweaty kids getting mad at the first person in line when they just stood there letting the water run until it got cold. "Hurry UPPPP!" we'd shout in glee. Then one after another we'd put our lips all over the spigot as we drank. Happy carefree days...)
posted by Greg_Ace at 7:52 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


part of the imagined "harm" in so many of these instances hinges on the imagination that all people are incapable of saying no/advocating for themselves

The flipside is that so much of the dismissal hinges on a logic that of course all people are capable of saying no, etc. There's comments in this very thread like that!

The reality is that people are different, universal rules rarely work, and context matters. Every situation is unique and needs its own evaluation. The concern about being offered chili is obviously somewhere between overtuned and outright ridiculous, but some of the responses can be a little overtuned in the other direction as well. It might be ridiculous to assume that offering your neighbours chili is a kind of violence (okay no, it is ridiculous if you have no good reason to believe it) but it is also untrue (if less ridiculous) to say that it can never be problematic, that all people can always happily say no and feel no shame, etc.
posted by Dysk at 10:41 PM on January 13 [2 favorites]


I love the tilt at the bottom, matching a bunch of Tiktok and other social media where incomprehension and seemingly random substitutions dissolve any criticism because it's not that recipe any more. It's a microcosm of our current time.
posted by k3ninho at 1:42 AM on January 14


mayo-based sauce.

what fresh hell
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:47 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]


it is also untrue (if less ridiculous) to say that it can never be problematic, that all people can always happily say no and feel no shame, etc.

And absolutely, people should look for cues that someone might not feel good saying no, or might not want the thing being offered. And if they see those cues, or get a funny feeling when they're offering, absolutely they should back down. But the default assumption should not be "do not interact with people outside your immediate close friend/family circle in any way, always assume that if you interact with others they do not want the interaction but are incapable of ending or refusing it, and if you do interact with others knowing this then you are rude at best and a monster at worst".

Seriously, I say this as a very introverted person - I hate phone calls, responding to email makes me extremely anxious, chatting with people is often fatiguing, etc. But for me, like for most people - but not everyone! - literally truly living in isolation with no experiences that involve even the most minor challenge has proved really bad. Real, serious discomfort is bad for people and should not be imposed on them; having to say two polite sentences to the barista or greet a neighbor or ask the bus driver for your stop is good for you.

In a way, I think this is a public-health/individual knowledge discourse problem again: in terms of public health, on average people are happier when they know their neighbors a little bit, when they get out of the house a little, when they have some human interaction. And on average, people get extremely lonely and bored when they don't. Individual people can differ, and their preferences should be respected. But it's not wrong or monstrous to say that in the absence of other social cues, you can interact with others in a brief, casual way.

~~~

There's a strand of internet discourse that says "your immediate response to something reflects your true preference and what will be best for you, go with that, even if it's 'I can't be expected to greet the barista'". But for most of us - again, not all! - that same old "ugh, I hate seeing friends/talking to the barber/leaving the house, I just want to be by myself" isn't a reflection of what is good for us, it's a hurdle we have to get over in order to reflect, coming home, that getting out of the house really does take your mind off your troubles.

My point here is that unless there are definite cues, I think it's bad to start from the standpoint of "literally leave everyone in isolation as much as possible, not doing this is harming them".
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on January 14 [14 favorites]


But it's not wrong or monstrous to say that in the absence of other social cues, you can interact with others in a brief, casual way.

Absolutely! My point was more that it makes sense to take context into account, treat each situation/person as unique, always, rather than act on blanket assumptions, even ones that work most of the time.
posted by Dysk at 6:40 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]


(Further to which: randos on twitter or wherever typically lack access to any context to comment their judgement of the situation, and thus should mind their own damn business.)
posted by Dysk at 6:48 AM on January 14


Adding to @Bluehorse comment, my beans 'joke':

Why do most 1 pound bags of beans contain 239 beans?

Because adding one more would make it 240.
posted by indianbadger1 at 8:07 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]


mayo-based sauce.

what fresh hell


I wouldn't call Alabama "fresh", but it certainly feels like hell in the summer.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:29 AM on January 14 [1 favorite]


mayo-based sauce.

Mayo based sauce is perfectly fine. It's called 'fry sauce' around most of the US, (for french fries or chicken tenders) but you change it a tiny bit and it's a barbecue rub.

Also ketchup is sugar and vinegar. The tomatoes are just for color. Therefore vinegar-based barbecue sauces are basically variations on ketchup. If you want to dip your fries in tomatoes, I recommend a tomato-based pasta sauce.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:09 AM on January 14



mayo-based sauce.

what fresh hell


Did you even consider my lived experience before recklessly posting your condemnation of not even one of the five worst condiments? What fresh hell indeed? Ketchup on the other hand ...
posted by philip-random at 9:36 AM on January 14


My point here is that unless there are definite cues, I think it's bad to start from the standpoint of "literally leave everyone in isolation as much as possible, not doing this is harming them".

And importantly, being able to read social cues is a skill that requires on-going practice if you want to keep those skills. Being able to say "no" also requires practice, which you won't get if everyone is afraid of interacting with strangers on the off-chance they'll offend them with chili.
posted by coffeecat at 9:48 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]


what fresh hell

Did you even consider that the hell I live in is not fresh because I'm too busy being on fire and suffering to freshen it? Thanks for adding shame to my suffering - that I'm too damned to freshen my hell and the concept that one would even expect my hell to be fresh -like my cliche'd hell is too basic for fancy people like you. That's a reflection of your immense privilege - me being eternally tortured and you still expecting my hell to be fresh and non-cliche when you reference it.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:51 AM on January 14 [4 favorites]


Metafilter: too damned to freshen
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:43 AM on January 14 [2 favorites]


I would gladly reconsider my stance on mayo-based sauce if provided with samples of slow-cooked meat prepared with same. I prefer pork but wouldn't say no to a nice bit of chicken.

Did you even consider that the hell I live in is not fresh

If it's not fresh, it's not really hell--hell by its nature has to renew the agony each moment throughout eternity to maximize the suffering, otherwise it's just sparkling purgatory. (Why, yes, I am gatekeeping. On the internet, nobody knows that you're a three-headed dog.)
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:23 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]


Pointless waste of perfectly good hate. Point it instead at the piss-poor moderation policies

Moderation won't save you from saying something like 'something, something, emotional labor of some chili'. It DOES work to save you from being told in an insulting way that you are wrong/that statement is lacking. And in some cases even being told you are wrong without insults.

Moderation and blocking can prevents people who say baseless things from being called out beyond a 'community notes' feature. If your worldview is the US is now being overrun with Russian Operators to the point you claim a guy getting punched in NYC is due to the punch thrower being on the Russian payroll, if anyone is able to make a comment that you are outta line means said anyone is on the Russian payroll and their posting in your thread means you are right, or if you read a post from someone who's said you are wrong in the past that is all over the place your reaction is the post is obviously Russian stenography sending secret messages what SHOULD be the moderation effort for such statements or such a person?


In the case of this Russian hunting person they were making statements about a person not in the US of A was committing felonies due to a google name match and was being obnoxious and loud enough the feds called out the claims as not supported by the evidence in a court filing. It is rare for stupid to get a shout out in a court filing. So is it harassment and worthy of moderation when a new hurf-durf-Russians! post is made the response of 'you might want to consider this person's past analysis' with a pointer to the court case?

Are you entitled to moderate away people pointing out you being wrong?
posted by rough ashlar at 3:20 PM on January 14


The good news is, starting next Monday, we'll all have much more substantive and justifiable things than chili recipes to object to.
posted by Rykey at 6:46 PM on January 14 [1 favorite]


"good"? You sure?
posted by Greg_Ace at 6:56 PM on January 14


Pointless waste of perfectly good hate

You underestimate the amount of hate I have in me
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:12 PM on January 14 [3 favorites]


Thanks to all the Classic Mefi commenters. Here's more context from the author, available if you support McSweeney's Patreon at Behind the Tendency Classics.

On the idea for writing the piece...

I got this idea from being on social media. I'll watch a TikTok for a recipe or read a Tweet giving some advice, and very often, the comments are complaining about how the post doesn't work for an individual. I thought it was funny to see people commenting something like "But what if I don't like bananas?" on a banana bread recipe, so I wrote about it.

Metafilter: "But what If I don't like bananas?" on a banana bread recipe.
posted by k3ninho at 1:49 AM on January 15 [5 favorites]


A take on this kind of thing that resonated with me that I read online recently is that a lot of the policing on this kind of thing is young people bullying other young people about the things young people have bullied over since time immemorial - food, fashion choices, aesthetics, music, communication style - but with a veneer of righteousness because Politics. Of course that's just a slice of it and not "all of woke" but based on my life experience (which we can all agree is comprehensive and unbiased) it's definitely true sometimes.
posted by thedaniel at 4:31 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


Just saw this old post from Xitter, thought it might fit here:
essentially an enormous part of the reason that online leftist spaces suck so much is that they are filled with people who believe it is more important to do nothing wrong than it is to do something right
Having been raised in an Evangelical environment with a similar attitude, perhaps that's why I ended up drawn to/comfortable in leftist spaces like that.
posted by clawsoon at 8:51 AM on January 15 [11 favorites]


"But what if I don't like bananas?"

PUMPKIN BREAD ERASURE
posted by mittens at 8:53 AM on January 15 [2 favorites]


but what if I don't like eggs?
posted by philip-random at 9:10 AM on January 15


for an easy replacement, remember that about half of human blood serum protein is albumin!
posted by mittens at 9:32 AM on January 15 [3 favorites]


philip-random: but what if I don't like eggs?

I'll walk, alongside you, the road from Omelettes.
posted by k3ninho at 2:46 PM on January 15 [3 favorites]


but what if I don't like eggs?

Then how will you ever grow to be roughly the size of a barge?
posted by clawsoon at 4:37 PM on January 15 [2 favorites]


but what if I don't like eggs?

Then make something other than carbonara.
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:53 AM on January 16 [1 favorite]


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