Walking in Waterloo Region

[danbrotherston]

Consumers will want what they want and the market reacts. It's not advertisers calling the shots, it's us. The best thing auto manufacturers can do now is pivot towards electrical sedans, SUVs and pickup trucks. Electric vehicles still need a heck of a lot of work since they're environmentally destructive and compared to gas/diesel vehicles tend to suck in a million ways, but improve that and then there's nothing wrong with owning an SUV or whatever someone wishes to drive (not that there's anything wrong with owning a traditional combustion engine SUV).

Besides the fact that it is verifiably true and well understood that the US emissions standards, incentives like crash safety ratings, and margins on the sale price of larger vehicles are all reasons car manufacturers would want to bias towards larger cars, it is wild to assert that you think the billions spent on automotive advertisement and cultural influence have no impact on customer preferences.

Indeed!

It is also foolish to believe that there is nothing wrong with owning a dangerous and harmful vehicle. Why is it not wrong that we are collectively choosing to own vehicles that poison our air, water, and directly kill others.

A persons unwillingness to face the reality of the harm of their choices reflects only on their unwillingness to face reality. I'm not saying that you cannot own a car, or even a truck, or that doing so makes you a bad person. These things are necessary in our society (well, not usually the truck) and that's just a reality. But being unwilling to acknowledge the problems with that DOES make one a problematic person.

[KevinL]

As Abigail puts it here, such people have 'phantasms' about how they should approach the world that they self-rationalize to avoid the anxiety that would come from confronting the fact that they've not actually been good people. This is a problem in all corners of our current political environment, and won't be fixed easily.

[danbrotherston]

As Abigail puts it here, such people have 'phantasms' about how they should approach the world that they self-rationalize to avoid the anxiety that would come from confronting the fact that they've not actually been good people. This is a problem in all corners of our current political environment, and won't be fixed easily.

Yeah, an excellent video, really looking forward to the rest of the series. Her content is generally very good.

[Bytor]

Europeans are buying more SUVs and similar vehicles because they like them. While partially true, it isn't really because car companies and advertising firms are brainwashing them into buying these things. Consumer demand is why a company like Citroën's current range includes numerous North American style large sedans, crossovers, SUVs and so on. People just want these sort of cars, and it makes sense because they're larger and nicer.

Except those "large" Citroën SUVs are smaller than a Ford Explorer or other North American-market SUVs. So your assertion doesn't hold water.

Not Just Bikes fangirls might seethe

Blatant homophobic insults right there.

[Rainrider22]

Europeans are buying more SUVs and similar vehicles because they like them. While partially true, it isn't really because car companies and advertising firms are brainwashing them into buying these things. Consumer demand is why a company like Citroën's current range includes numerous North American style large sedans, crossovers, SUVs and so on. People just want these sort of cars, and it makes sense because they're larger and nicer.

Except those "large" Citroën SUVs are smaller than a Ford Explorer or other North American-market SUVs. So your assertion doesn't hold water.

Not Just Bikes fangirls might seethe

Blatant homophobic insults right there.

OMG,  really !!!    fan·girl
INFORM
noun
plural noun: fangirls

1. a female fan, especially one who is obsessive about comics, movies, music, or science fiction.
   "your average fangirl, despite the implication of the name, is a grown-up"
   

[ac3r]

Blatant homophobic insults right there.

How in the hell did you come to this conclusion because I used the word fangirl? Lmao. No seriously...what? I'd love a play by play of the mental gymnastics you did to arrive at this asinine assumption. Holy crap.

Or this is just bait. In which case, you got me good this time.

[danbrotherston]

Except those "large" Citroën SUVs are smaller than a Ford Explorer or other North American-market SUVs. So your assertion doesn't hold water.


Blatant homophobic insults right there.

OMG,  really !!!    fan·girl
INFORM
noun
plural noun: fangirls

1. a female fan, especially one who is obsessive about comics, movies, music, or science fiction.
   "your average fangirl, despite the implication of the name, is a grown-up"
   

And yet we all know the majority of NJBs audience, and indeed most of us here in this conversation present as male. 

Intentionally misgenerdering us as female I would probably call misogyny but homophobia fits too.

[ac3r]

1) It's misogynistic to assume very few women watch NJB or post here.

2) It can't be both homophobic and misogynistic. That makes no sense.

3) I was making a blanket statement. I was not referring to you. Lose the main character syndrome please.

4) If I said fanboys, would that then be misandric?

Get it into your head that some people - a lot of them, really - aren't going to think like you. People have different opinions and views. If you can't stand that, oh well. And my choice of words does not matter nor confirm you own biases.

[Bytor]

So we're supposed to believe you were just randomly referring to other random people not involved in the conversation about car sizes?

As opposed to what you no doubt thought was a snarky dismissal of the other people you were arguing against, a pretty much uniformly male-identifying group, by using a bog-standard homophobic/sexist insult that compares men to girls, rather than arguing in good faith?

Yeah, sure you were…

[dtkvictim]

Seriously? I can't believe how quickly I have to turn around an defend ac3r after just calling him an idiot. Do any of you talk to real humans outside of your terminally online extremist echo chambers? No one says "fanboying", and "fangirling" is basically a gender neutral expression at this point.

I can understand, if you misrepresent that general intent of that statement, how you might call it sexist. But homophobic?

[danbrotherston]

Seriously? I can't believe how quickly I have to turn around an defend ac3r after just calling him an idiot. Do any of you talk to real humans outside of your terminally online extremist echo chambers? No one says "fanboying", and "fangirling" is basically a gender neutral expression at this point.

I can understand, if you misrepresent that general intent of that statement, how you might call it sexist. But homophobic?

First of all, you don't have to defend anyone...nobody is forcing you to, you're welcome to just say nothing...just because you feel someone is wrong on the internet™️ doesn't mean you have to present a defence. And in fact, doing so would be the fastest way to move past this conversation and get back to actual discussion (you see what I mean when earlier I said that ac3r's disrespectful and derogatory rhetoric degrades the conversation here).

Second of all, you're just wrong. I mean, I agree, homophobic isn't the right word, sexist/misogynistic is however.

Again, it's not a secret, it isn't a surprise, we all know that NJBs audience, and this forum is largely dominated by male voices. I'm sure ac3r also knows this.

"fanboy" might be a neutral term, but "fangirl" is clearly not (that too is unfortunately part of the inherent sexism of our society but it's true). Their choice to use "fangirl" rather than any neutral term is not an accident. Now the only question remains one of motivation.

So yeah, maybe they're just a quirky person who likes to say weird things and it's just a chaotic choice...but given their record of spewing emotionally charged and largely negative, even hateful rhetoric, there is no reason to ascribe a chaotic motivation rather than an intentional one. They intended, as Bytor put it best, to use a sexist insult to dismiss the views of a group of people (us in this case).

To use a metaphor, you are hearing a dog whistle and you are insisting that there is a dog...and there ain't no dog to be seen.

[SF22]

I would also hesitate to assume that you are in a primarily-male space, especially when talking about an anonymous message board, because many women purposefully leave their gender out of their screennames or the messages they post, as it can invite harassment that they wouldn't receive if they are perceived as male. You are only seeing the women that want to be seen.

[danbrotherston]

I would also hesitate to assume that you are in a primarily-male space, especially when talking about an anonymous message board, because many women purposefully leave their gender out of their screennames or the messages they post, as it can invite harassment that they wouldn't receive if they are perceived as male. You are only seeing the women that want to be seen.

For NJB's audience, (which ac3r referred explicitly to in the quote) the data is very clear, and many youtubers including NJBs have spoken about it: his audience is strongly male dominated.

For this forum, it is true, I cannot know the gender identity of many here, but those which do present a gender in their username are all male--save one that I know personally, who isn't participating in this discussion at the moment. A couple others I'm aware they have suggested themselves to be male in previous conversations. Even if the remainder that I do not know are highly skewed female it would still be less than half the people in this conversation, although perhaps overall not as skewed as much as the YT audiences are.

That would actually be a nice surprise to me.

But I really did think about it before I wrote it, but you're right, I probably could have qualified my statement.

[ac3r]

I know some of you are extremely terminally online and apparently have so little going on in life that you have the time to research the demographics of YouTubers and have that knowledge on hand, but I'm not one of them. I'd almost envy that level of free time, except for the way it is being spent. If the first thing you do when hearing the word "fangirl" is to spend numerous days arguing amongst yourselves whether or not the use of a word may be sexist, homophobic, misogynistic or misandrist - possibly all or none of the above, it doesn't seem as if you have been able to yet decide how to feel offended - then you need to log off lmfao. Seriously that's just sad. Besides, I thought you super socially just liberals were supposed to be neutral and ambivalent when it comes to gender and language? Let me guess, you are, except when it suits you not to be?

It would have been a lot easier to just disagree if you had a different opinion or just ignore the post, but clearly you just couldn't resist the temptation to start whining and derail yet another thread with irrelevance because the leftist addiction to feeling outraged and wanting to tell everyone who doesn't think like you that they're wrong is insatiable. Many such cases.

Try going for a walk next time.

[Bytor]

I know some of you are extremely terminally online and apparently have so little going on in life that you have the time to research the demographics of YouTubers and have that knowledge on hand, but I'm not one of them.

Insult, intended to dismiss the other instead of dealing with the points they raised.

Bad-faith debating. Can potentially be taken as an admission the person has no valid counter argument.

I'd almost envy that level of free time, except for the way it is being spent.

More bad-faith insulting and dismissal.

If the first thing you do when hearing the word "fangirl" is to spend numerous days arguing amongst yourselves whether or not the use of a word may be sexist, homophobic, misogynistic or misandrist - possibly all or none of the above, it doesn't seem as if you have been able to yet decide how to feel offended - then you need to log off lmfao.

Hypocritical bad faith response, given that you're taking just as much time as anybody to keep responding.

Seriously that's just sad.

More bad-faith insulting and dismissal.

Besides, I thought you super socially just liberals

More bad-faith insulting and dismissal.

were supposed to be neutral and ambivalent when it comes to gender and language? Let me guess, you are, except when it suits you not to be?

Strawman. Bad faith.

It would have been a lot easier to just disagree if you had a different opinion or just ignore the post, but clearly you just couldn't resist the temptation to start whining and derail yet another thread with irrelevance because the leftist addiction to feeling outraged and wanting to tell everyone who doesn't think like you that they're wrong is insatiable. Many such cases.

The problem here is not any debate over what type of insult you deliberately used, but rather that we let ourselves be derailed, which is probably exactly what you wanted in the first place, given that you have admitted to trolling in the past and how multiple people have commented on this attitude of yours on more than one occasion.

Your actions here are toxic to this forum.

Try going for a walk next time.

Dismissive insult, bad-faith response.