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moroveus's friends list, well, I'm sorry, you should be, he's a very entertaining guy, and his posts always have content, whether or not you agree with them.But that's not what this post is about.
It's about his Operation Jour de Poisson, a project in which he decided to make a very pro-Pledge-of-Allegiance-in-classrooms meme, with an image of a flag and the text "one nation under God" superimposed over it. He added some vague text that could support the issue either way to it, but it looks like it very vehemently supports the image. He then joined tons of communities, mostly very Christian-conservative ones, and spread the meme. Tons of people took the bait (hence its name, "Jour de Poisson", which means "Day of Fish", the French version of April Fool's Day). Then he changed the image to somerthing very against putting God in the Pledge of Allegiance. Chaos ensued (read the comments).
Putting your opinion on God in the Pledge of Allegiance aside, I want to know what you think about this sort of chicanery. Is it moral? More importantly, is it immoral enough that actions should be taken against this sort of behavior? This is the first instance of meme deception that I've ever seen, but I think it may become more commonplace as the blogosphere continues to mature (or age, depending on your take on this sort of thing).
So, tell me what you think.
March 27 2004, 20:59:58 UTC 8 years ago
I mean, it has to be a -little- mature and intelligent to merit a sociological debate, right?
March 27 2004, 22:10:12 UTC 8 years ago
March 27 2004, 21:15:28 UTC 8 years ago
This also reminds me of when one of my ljfriends posted a comment in my journal saying "This picture made me think of you..." followed by a very large photo of a penis. I was sort of taken aback. Then I looked at the picture's URL and found that it's from somethingawful.com, a humor site -- and the real picture at that URL was innocuous enough, but apparently the site admins dislike having external links to their images, so they have their server substitute the huge-spurting-penis picture if the referer header comes from outside their site.
Fortunately I was able to delete the comment before many people (incl my parents) saw it...
March 27 2004, 22:11:21 UTC 8 years ago
March 27 2004, 21:22:33 UTC 8 years ago
Why not hack into someone's journal and write a bunch of crap to make them look bad? Why not put a nasty bumper sticker on their car that they wouldn't agree with? Why not spread lies and gossip about someone else to all their friends? Heck, why not just put a "kick me" sign on their back?
It's lame and a waste of time, amusement at someone else's expense. The best jokes and the best sense of humor are when both parties can laugh. Sure, you can use April Fool's Day as an excuse, but I still don't think you should fuck with people, especially with such a sensitive issue such as this. There are much better ways to facilitate a debate than pissing people off through trickery and deceit. You need to gain people's trust and respect, otherwise they won't give a crap what you are talking about, no matter how rational or good you think your argument is.
March 27 2004, 22:23:09 UTC 8 years ago
March 27 2004, 22:49:56 UTC 8 years ago
He is obviously pissing people off... I don't know if you think this is a problem or not. And how does one go about educating people on how to trust others? I see what he did as a form of trolling. Too bad LJ doesn't have a karma system in place, like Slashdot.org
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March 27 2004, 21:30:45 UTC 8 years ago
March 27 2004, 22:19:57 UTC 8 years ago
The real question, to me, anyway, is, what's the fix?
March 27 2004, 23:10:20 UTC 8 years ago
And the Slashdot system is pretty much a joke - it's designed to weed out the spammers, crapflooders, and basic idiot trolls. It fails as a system of trust because /. Karma exists as a system with rules that make people feel like they can trust the numbers to tell them who to trust.
March 28 2004, 11:31:40 UTC 8 years ago
When flaming and harassment take place in communities that are supposed to be open, welcoming, and friendly environments, that's when it becomes a troubling issue. One of the fabulous (or not-so-fabulous) things about the internet is that anyone can say (almost) whatever they want with a chance of getting read. However, on whose website they're doing this is another matter, and when rude comments or tricks played end up in something getting deleted by someone in a moderating position, chaos ensues. People shout out TYRANNY! and OPPRESSION! and label the moderator(s) in question as fascist dictators who should be put on trial for heinous crimes. We've all seen that in one place or another.
So for personal websites or blogs, I'd just ignore them and move on. For communities or forums, I'd request something get done. If nothing gets done in such a case, I'd move on and find somewhere better. One advantage the internet has in dealing with such behaviour is that it's easier to ignore such things. If people behaved this way in real life, it's much harder just to simply ignore.
March 27 2004, 22:44:40 UTC 8 years ago
Unlike great power, anonymity does not come with great responsibility.
I don't see where the harm is - I don't see how this is immoral. Deceptive, certainly - but I don't think it's worthy of moral sanctioning.
March 27 2004, 22:48:22 UTC 8 years ago
But isn't deception immoral, unless it's for causes that are moral?
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March 27 2004, 22:46:20 UTC 8 years ago
March 28 2004, 00:01:13 UTC 8 years ago
When I lived in America as a foreigner (and yes, I do love your country, and I'm very fond of you people), I found the American obsession with flags, anthems and national pride extremely offensive. I went to an American school that did not do this pledge of allegiance thing, and I don't want to know how sixteen-year-old me would have reacted if they had made me do it. No other western democracy is so obsessed with national pride, and I quite welcome the fact that there are people who challenge it.
That said, there's no need to call other people names.
March 28 2004, 06:53:27 UTC 8 years ago
(see dante, eighth circle.)
this bothers me far less than the tactical backlash -- wingnuts aggrieved by proponents of separation of church and state, now all seen as deceitful motherfuckers.
March 28 2004, 07:24:48 UTC 8 years ago
For maximum good taste, he should have made the switch on 1 April, whihc he clearly cannot have done, given when I'm reading this posting.
That said, meme deception is potentially extremely annoying, particularly when it becomes a general thing. I half expect gags at the beginning of April, and am only moderately annoyed to fall for them. I'd probably avoid an environment where such things were a daily routine.
Still, I don't think it's particularly immoral, or not more immoral than e.g. posting flame bait. And on the third hand, things can be forbidden or blocked even if they aren't immoral; this could lead to some commmunities forbidding memes entirely, or forbidding offsite links in meme output. That would perhaps be a shame.
March 28 2004, 07:33:56 UTC 8 years ago
I was rather thinking the opposite, that less image memes would be better, for the most part, as they tend to lack original insight and could be called just "information pollution," for lack of a better word. But that's just my take. =P
March 28 2004, 09:28:29 UTC 8 years ago
March 28 2004, 10:40:20 UTC 8 years ago
March 28 2004, 15:24:01 UTC 8 years ago
I would probably be a bit peeved if I were in the position of one of the pro-pledgers; it would be frustrating for a person to 'express' themselves with a political meme and later find that the meme in their personal journal expressed a viewpoint that was diametrecally opposed to their own beliefs. It might have been less annoying if it was done on April first, since people would be more willing to shrug it off as a joke.
That said, I don't find this particular switch to be that terrible, since it didn't incorporate obscene or innately offensive language or imagery. I don't understand why the people who posted the meme would make the effort to comment/flame at all. It seems easier to delete the meme and, if one is somehow that worried about giving friends a false impression, quickly explain the mistake. Though I wouldn't mind taking action in cases where the joke was more extreme (for example, if the revised image/text was "not safe for work"), I don't know whether this prank is offensive enough to warrant intervention.
March 29 2004, 09:31:37 UTC 8 years ago
HE won't join, so...
FromDamn you, friends only!
Well, the community I tried posting to is friends only, and I have no interest in becoming friends with it, so I'll simply link to req's journal, and state that this is my reaction to morveous' prank.
One problem I see with the prank is that there's no sister prank to the flip-side of the issue. Where's the anti-pledge meme followed by subbing in a pro-pledge picture? The sad fact here is that if the people that took the bait were instead the ones who thought and enacted the joke, you all would've been much madder, and this would've been one more bit of ammo to use against the christian-conservatives.
Aside from that, I ask this: what purpose did it serve? I mean, given the fact that he didn't make a sister-prank for a liberal group, I have to assume that moroveus is at least leaning to the left. So how does this prank help a liberal cause? It doesn't. What it does is this: it tells everyone who catches wind of this that liberals are deceitful little bitches (a) afraid to just come out and speak their views, instead resorting to a prank that offers the victims no substantial way to rebuff, and (b) exactly the kind of thing they pretend to be fighting against. A lot of liberals have been waxing for years now on the lies and deceit by Bush's administration. How does this prank make them look any better?
I chalk this up to one more highschool knowitall thinking he's smarter than his parents. He may be in college (or past that) and not living with his parents, but clearly he hasn't moved beyond that phase of life yet.
PS: I invite moroveus and anyone else to post here if they choose. I'm not on friend's only posting (except for not-for-work posts) and I'm not about screening responses to my journal, because it defeats the purpose of making a journal on a public website.
Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: Elton John - Rocket Man
March 29 2004, 09:32:38 UTC 8 years ago
Re: HE won't join, so...
For the record, I agree.April 2 2004, 12:40:32 UTC 8 years ago
Folks got what they deserved. I'd be saying the same thing if someone had baited-and-switched one of those insipid colorbars.
So, yeah. It was moral. It's always moral to mock the stupid and lazy. (Lazy, I say, because if one really wanted to take a stand on an issue, one would write their own damned opinion about it, which would take more than fifteen seconds of effort.)
April 2 2004, 16:16:05 UTC 8 years ago