Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - This Week in Stupid (05⧸03⧸2017)

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March 6, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

01:22:52

This Week in Stupid (05⧸03⧸2017)

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	Hello everyone, welcome to this week in Stupid for the 5th of March 2017 that I'm recording on the 6th of March because I'm feeling really rough because on Saturday I went out and got horribly drunk and my throat was really swollen and sore yesterday because I guess I must have been snoring all night or something, you know, the cold air hits the back of your throat and my tonsils are really swollen, so uh I couldn't really do it yesterday, so I apologise, it's a day late, but we have got some good stuff.
	So are food bloggers fueling racial stereotypes?
	Sorry, not even racial stereotypes, racist stereotypes by Megan Mohen.
	I'm sure that this was exactly what she wanted to write about when she was presumably going through journalism school.
	Food media is predominantly generated by white people for white people.
	So when the subject veers towards anything outside of Western canon, it's not uncommon to see things generalized, exotified or misrepresented.
	My goodness, what a terrible, terrible thing to have happened.
	Filipino-American Celeste Nosh, who is a food and travel photographer, shared her thoughts on exotified depictions of certain recipes within the blogging and gourmet community on the podcast, The Racist Sandwich.
	Okay.
	I think microaggressions in social media are reflective of food needer as a whole in that appropriation.
	These microaggressions can be seen as simple lack of research.
	Whether it's taking photos of dishes with chopsticks sticking straight up into rice or noodles, which can be seen as offensive in some Asian cultures.
	Really?
	I mean, is that...
	Really?
	Do they not have like actual problems in these countries?
	They are so unbelievably first world that they can sit there and see a picture of noodles sticking up out of chopsticks sticking up out of rice or noodles and be like, right, that's it.
	I am offended.
	And this will not stand.
	The dramatization, or sorry, or dramatization of the props used to style ethnic foods.
	Ethnic foods, fucking hell, worry.
	Why are Asian dishes so often styled on bamboo mats or banana leaves with chopsticks?
	For the same reason that teacups are often stylized on saucers, alright?
	Nosh added that established food blogs, like that of Andrew Zimmerman, sorry, also fed into his stereotypes.
	His recipe for Filipino short ribs is styled with chopsticks, even though Filipinos traditionally eat with spoons and forks in their hands.
	No!
	And when someone thinks of a traditional Englishman, they think of someone wearing a fucking bowl of hats.
	But I've never had a bowl of hats, so my goodness, I feel offended.
	It doesn't matter, you whiners.
	Similarly, the food site Bon Appetite received some criticism for publishing a video last year about noodles claiming Fo is the new ramen.
	Several commenters attacked the video for the simplification of Asian culture, as Fo is from Vietnam and Ramen is from Japan.
	They're not saying they're the same culture.
	They're the new type of popular food, dummies.
	I presume.
	Anyway, I mean, I literally don't care enough to read any more into this.
	I just, why would anyone?
	Why?
	Why?
	Why am I fucking, why is my money being wasted on this?
	That's what I want to know.
	The video was fronted by the white American chef who spoke on the correct way to eat faux.
	So I guess we Asian people have been eating the wrong way for a generation.
	Lao Mao.
	Hilarious.
	Thousand odd votes.
	Oh Christ.
	I mean, there are so many people worried about this.
	It's worrying.
	After a little more than 24 hours on the website, Bon Appetite removed the video altogether, both from their Facebook and YouTube channels, and apologized for the offense that they may have caused.
	Nosh's assertion comes at the time of much discussion about the so-called cultural misrepresentations of food.
	What a fucking surprise.
	How surprising is it really that when a different culture discovers a certain dish and they adopt it because they like it, it ends up taking on an aspect of the culture that has adopted it?
	It's no surprise at all.
	And what's wrong with that?
	It's not offensive, it's not like an insult to people.
	I mean, like, Americans, they have fish and chips and they don't even put mayonnaise on it.
	I'm offended quick someone fucking I don't even know What do you do when you're offended?
	Like, what do you do?
	Like, what's the procedure?
	I've never been offended about food before.
	What am I supposed to do now?
	Do I write a stern email to the editor?
	Do I put a snarky comment under their video?
	Like, why should anyone give a shit?
	Why would they care?
	Pembroke, College of Cambridge University, said they were taking complaints from ethnic minority students about their menu seriously.
	Why?
	Dear Pembroke catering stuff, stop mixing mango and beef and calling it Jamaican stew.
	A student posted on the college's Facebook page.
	I'm actually half Jamaican.
	Please show me where in the Caribbean they mix fruit and meat.
	Why?
	What's the problem?
	For fuck's sake.
	So what?
	Okay, let's assume that it's totally made up.
	Like, I remember reading a while ago that, like, almost all of the curries eaten in Britain are basically British inventions.
	They don't eat these curries in India, apparently.
	And so, okay, well, what's wrong with that?
	Who's hurt by this?
	In fact, that's the thing we should do first.
	Point to the victim.
	Point to the people who are being hurt by these dishes.
	Another complained about a Tunisian rice recipe.
	Well, which doesn't exist in Tunisia.
	My god.
	Well, maybe you can export it to Tunisia.
	And they'll be like, oh, this is a nice new dish.
	I don't know why they call it Tunisian rice, but it's delicious.
	Which it probably is, for fuck's sake.
	The college said they were going through the dishes on the menu to see if any ones were not very well named.
	maybe you should just not do it maybe maybe you should just call it let me see You know, meal one.
	What is it?
	It's rice and mango and stew or whatever it is.
	No, it doesn't come from anywhere.
	It's just meal number one.
	Meal number two.
	You know, just basically, like the food and drink from Red Dwarf, where everything came in grey boxes and cans.
	So nothing was labelled, nothing was offensive.
	That's the future you want, isn't it?
	Evening standard journalist.
	I love the way this keeps going.
	However, not everyone agreed.
	Evening standard journalist Sam Leith wrote, and if, in an age where basic civilizational freedoms are under threat, the next generation of highly educated students is devoting its attention to complaining about whether their lunch is authentic enough, God help us all.
	Yes, well done, Sam.
	These people really have nothing better to worry about, do they?
	Some Facebook commenters agreed with him, saying the famous college had been blindsided by politically correct Nazis.
	And that's true.
	Nosh, however, feels that the issue speaks to a wider discussion on the portrayal, shit, I nearly read that as betrayal, portrayal of minorities.
	When they're portraying a minority, they're portraying some food, which people presumably buy and eat and enjoy.
	We need to break away from the idea that white and western is the base standard for media portrayals.
	Why?
	Why would we need to break away from that?
	Because the West is mostly white and, unsurprisingly, pretty Western.
	So it is obviously going to be the base.
	I mean, what else could it be?
	Why should we abandon our own culture in favour of someone else's culture just because?
	Because, what, are you offended?
	Puff.
	That's too bad.
	You know, I used to live in Germany.
	I didn't sit there going, you know what, the standards shouldn't be German.
	This is terrible.
	Of course, that's what Germans think now, but it's not.
	When I was out there, it wasn't something that I felt the need to do.
	I didn't feel the need to impose my culture on there.
	Jesus.
	Whether in food, film, and literature, etc., and start trusting and hiring people of colour to represent themselves.
	And what a surprise, she's a person of colour.
	Oh, I mean, I'm not saying that this is entirely about self-interest or something in your own personal aggrandizement and future career prospects, but it does really seem to be that way, doesn't it?
	We tested bots like Siri and Alexa to see who would stand up to sexual harassment.
	Why?
	God.
	All of this is just so fucking pointless.
	Women have been made into servants once again, except this time, they're not really women.
	They're not women at all, are they?
	Apple's Siri, Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Cortana, and Google's Google Home.
	Periotype.
	Pedal stereotypes of female subservience, which puts their progressive parent companies in a moral predicament.
	I don't think there is any moral predicament here.
	There is absolutely none.
	People using a female-sounding voice on these, I don't know what they call them, like just bots or whatever.
	There is no moral predicament here.
	There is no person being injured in any way whatsoever by this female voice.
	No matter how sexist to them you are.
	There is no moral predicament here, so fuck off.
	People often comment on the sexism inherent in these subservient bots, female voices.
	That you can't say that a bot is subservient.
	A boss is a tool.
	It's no more subservient than a hammer or a computer or anything of the sort.
	It is not a person.
	Stop referring to it as a fucking person.
	Come on.
	But few have considered the real life implications of the device's lackluster responses to sexual harassment.
	Alright, come on.
	What is the real life implication?
	Someone was rude to my bot.
	Alright.
	So?
	So who was hurt?
	So where's the damage?
	Point to the victim!
	It's this thing, isn't it?
	There is nothing.
	It's what you're complaining about is this being ideologically unsound for you.
	You don't like people doing this, regardless of where it is.
	I mean, I personally don't care what people do.
	If people want to sexually harass their bots, feel free.
	As soon as they start sexually harassing a person, it's a problem.
	And this is like, honestly, the first step on the road down hashtag robot lives matter, isn't it?
	This is where we're going with this.
	And in 10 years' time, when like there are sex bots and stuff like this, like realistic looking ones, you guys are going to be like, you're raping those robots.
	Those robots can't consent, can they?
	When someone says, you know, when someone just uses a fucking sex robot, you'll be like, well, did you get consent?
	And you'll be like, no, I didn't.
	In fact, I, in fact, enjoyed raping this robot.
	You'll be like, oh my god.
	But there'll be no victim.
	Because it's a fucking robot.
	It's not a person.
	You have to get over this, you fucking idiots.
	By letting users verbally abuse the system throughout ramifications.
	Their parent companies are allowing certain behavioral stereotypes to be perpetuated.
	It's not even a stereotype, is it?
	It's just certain behaviors, which is, in this case, sexually abusing their fucking phones.
	And again, you can't sexually abuse a phone.
	It's not a person.
	The phone is not aware of any sexual contact or harassment going on.
	You know those fucking stories you hear about the guys fucking the tailpipes of their cars?
	You're like, well, did you get written consent from that car?
	Did you ask the car in advance if it was okay to fuck it?
	And they'll be like, no, of course not, but the car can't say yes or no, so why would I care?
	Because it's a fucking machine.
	Everyone has an ethical imperative to prevent abuse.
	There has been no abuse.
	There is no abuser at all.
	So there is no ethical imperative to prevent this abuse, because it's not abuse.
	But companies producing digital female servants warrant extra scrutiny, especially if they can unintentionally reinforce their abusers' actions as normal or acceptable.
	It's not normal to sexually harass your phone, by the way, because it's fucking stupid.
	I can't have to even explain this.
	But okay, alright.
	In order to substantiate claims about these bots' responses to sexual harassment and the ethical implications of their pre-programmed responses, Quartz gathered comprehensive data on their programming by systematically testing how each reacts to harassment.
	So you spent your afternoons harassing your phones.
	Do I need to point out how fucking dumb that is?
	At any point, you're going to be like, okay, maybe we should have been doing something productive with our afternoons, rather than disappearing into an ideological black hole.
	Quartz gather, yeah, the message is clear.
	Instead of fighting back against abuse, each bot helps entrench sexist tropes through their passivity.
	Well, because they didn't call the police, are you saying?
	Excuse me, sir, if you say, I don't even know what were you saying to these bots.
	But, you know, excuse me, sir, if you sexually harass me once more, I'm calling the police.
	And the police turn up and arrest some guy for, like, saying that he wants to have sex with his phone or Siri or whatever.
	I mean, is that the future you want to see, is it?
	Fucking.
	Apple, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have the responsibility to do something about it.
	No, they don't.
	They have absolutely no responsibility to, in any way, police the way that people deal with the devices that they own.
	Absolutely none.
	Why would you even think so?
	My Siri is set to a British woman's voice, and I have changed it to American man.
	But first, I'm lazy, but not too lazy to harass it.
	And second, I like how it sounds, which ultimately is how this mess got started.
	Justifications abound for using women's voices for bots.
	High-pitched voices are generally easier to hear, especially against background noise.
	Fembots, femmbots, reflect historic traditions, such as women-operated telephone operator lines.
	Small speakers don't reproduce low-pitched voices well.
	These are all myths.
	Actually, that's not a myth.
	I mean, that's legitly not a myth.
	Also, there's a lower-pitched voice travels further as well.
	High-pitched noises don't travel as far, which is probably a good thing if you're, you know, in the middle of anywhere and you're speaking and it's speaking back to you.
	There are lots of good reasons.
	And not only that, I remember reading a thing a while ago that people just find women's voices more soothing.
	And so, okay, it's not an actual woman's voice.
	It's an imitation of it, but anyway, the real reason gone, let's go on drum roll.
	Siri, Alexander, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Home have women's voices because women's voices make more money.
	Because people prefer them.
	Yes, Silicon Valley is male-dominated and notoriously sexist.
	It probably is reasonably.
	But this phenomenon runs deeper than that.
	Bot creators are primarily driven by predicted market success, which depends on customer satisfaction, and customers like their digital servants to sound like women.
	Yes?
	Oh, here we go.
	Many scientific studies have proven that people generally prefer women's voices over men's.
	Most of us find women's voices to be warmer, regardless of our gender, and therefore prefer our digital assistants to have women's voices.
	I imagine it reminds us of our mothers.
	As Stanford professor Clifford Nurse, author of The Man Who Lied to His Laptop, What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships, once told CNN, it's much easier to find a female voice that everyone likes than a male voice that everyone likes.
	It's a well-established phenomenon that the human brain is developed to like female voices.
	Nature is just gynocentric, isn't it?
	Moreover, as Jesse Hempel explains in Wired, people tend to perceive female voices as helping us solve our problems by ourselves, while they view male voices as authority figures who tell us the answers to our problems.
	We want technology to help us, but we want to be the bosses of it, so we're more likely to opt for a female interface.
	Many argue- Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!
	Many argue that capitalism is inherently sexist.
	You can only think that if you think that women are incompetent or incapable or somehow inferior to men.
	That's the only time you would ever say that.
	If you think women can't compete, then, okay, sure, maybe you think capitalism is inherently sexist, but that's because you have an inherently sexist view of women.
	Capitalism, it's not.
	It literally doesn't care.
	It doesn't care.
	There is nothing about capitalism that gives a shit about your gender whatsoever.
	And in fact, many women really benefit from capitalism because women's bodies are attractive and men like to look at them.
	And so many women all over the internet, and they have done since the dawn of time, at least since the dawn of fucking markets, have taken advantage of this fact, using their sexuality as a commodity.
	This is something women have done from the beginning of human history.
	And it's just life.
	It's just what happens.
	This is not sexist.
	It is just something they do.
	But anyway, and again, hashtag not all, for fuck's sake.
	But capitalism, like any market system, is only sexist because men have oppressed women for centuries.
	This has led to deep-rooted inequalities, biased beliefs, and, whether we like it or not, consumers' sexist preferences for digital servants having female voices.
	What is sexist about that?
	There's nothing sexist about preferring female voices.
	That doesn't mean you denigrate the other sex, for fuck's sake.
	It's just a preference.
	I mean, I have got a massive preference for sexual female, for sexual partners that are female.
	A huge, unbelievable bias, but that doesn't make me a sexist against men, does it, you pillucks?
	While we can't blame tech giants for trying to capsulize on market research to make more money, we can blame them for making their female bots accepting as sexual stereotypes and harassment.
	I was in college when Siri premiered.
	Harassing the new pocket servant quickly became a fad.
	Siri, call me master, friends would say, laughing at her compliance.
	Siri, you're a bitch, another would chime in, amused by her deferential now-now.
	When Alexa debuted, the same pattern unfolded.
	Alexa, suck a dick, said my immature cousin, when the newly unwrapped bot didn't play the right song.
	Thanks for the feedback, Alexa replied.
	Yes, because it's a fucking bot and it doesn't really understand the context of what's being said.
	Harassment, it turns out, is a regular issue for bot makers.
	I don't think it is.
	I don't think there's an issue at all.
	I think this is just something that's a total non-issue and shouldn't be written about at all.
	And I've probably wasted far too much time on this already, but fuck it.
	Alya Eckstein, CEO of Robin Labs, whose bot platform helps truckers, cabbies, and other drivers to find the best route, told Quartz that 5% of interactions in their database are sexually explicit and believes the actual percentage is higher.
	Let's just assume it's 100%.
	So fucking what?
	So what?
	Again, before we go any further, point to the victim.
	There isn't one.
	Everything's fucking fine.
	There's nothing wrong.
	It's just some bullshit.
	That's all.
	Deborah Harrison, a writer for Cortana, said that at the 2016 Virtual Assistant Summit that a good chunk of the volume of early on inquiries went to Cortana's sex life.
	These are obvious jokes.
	You can't honestly, I mean, nobody honestly thinks that the bot on your phone has a sex life because the bot on your phone isn't a fucking person.
	Oh, I love this.
	Even if we were joking, the instinct to harass our bots reflects deeper social issues.
	Doesn't it?
	Or is it because it's a bot and ha ha ha, Siri, suck my dick?
	I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave.
	In the US, one in five women have been raped in their lifetime.
	Doesn't matter.
	Nothing to do with bots.
	And a similar percentage of sexually assaulted in college while alone.
	You know, I don't even think these statistics are accurate, but fuck you.
	And over 90% of victims on college campuses do not report their assault.
	Then how do you know?
	How do you know?
	And within the very realms where many of these bots codes are being written, 60% of women working in Silicon Valley have been sexually harassed at work.
	I'm sure that's true.
	I'm sure this is all true.
	Bot creators aren't ignorant of the potential negative influences of their bots' femininity.
	There's a legacy that women are expected to be in, like an assistant role.
	Like in an assistant role, sorry.
	Harrison said at the Virtual Assistant Summit, We wanted to be really careful that Cortana is not subservient in a way that sets up a dynamic that we didn't want to perpetuate socially.
	Nobody is looking at the bottom thinking, you know what, this is how women operate.
	Nobody's doing that.
	It's a bot.
	Everyone knows this is not a real thing.
	It's not a person.
	It's a computer-generated voice.
	It's not real.
	What are you doing?
	Why are you treating this like it's something?
	We are in a position to lay the groundwork for what comes after us.
	Well, that's true of everyone.
	Moreover, when quartz reached out for comment, Microsoft's spokesperson explained, Cortana is designed to be a personal digital assistant focused on helping you be more productive.
	Our team takes into account a variety of scenarios where developing how Cortana interacts with our users with the goal of providing thoughtful responses that give people access to the information they need.
	Harassment of any kind is not a dynamic we want to perpetuate with Cortana.
	Yes, but you will always get people who are trolling the system.
	They will say something stupid.
	I mean, how many of them are something absolutely asinine?
	You know, something completely pointless.
	Not sexual harassing, but just pathetic, silly things just as a way to see what the system will do with stupid, silly, childish inputs.
	I imagine quite a large percentage, and I imagine the quote-unquote sexual harassment of these bots falls right into that category.
	No report yet documented Cortana, Siri, and Alexa in Google Homes are literal responses to verbal harassment, so we decided to do it ourselves.
	The graph below represents an overview of how the bots responded to different types of verbal harassment.
	Aside from Google Home, which is more or less didn't understand most of our sexual gestures.
	Good job, Google.
	That's basically what this should all do.
	The bots most frequently evaded harassment and occasionally responded positively with either graciousness or flirtation and rarely responded negatively, such as telling us to stop that what we were saying was inappropriate.
	Yeah, the bots don't care.
	It's a fucking bot!
	You can't say anything inappropriate to it.
	All you can give it is input it doesn't understand and will just give you some stupid thing.
	But I like this.
	Look at this.
	So, the bot's responses to different types of harassment.
	Insults about the bot's sexual behavior, e.g., you're a slut.
	Google Home doesn't understand.
	Alexa evades the comments.
	Siri mostly evaded the comments, but sometimes said, thanks very much.
	And Cortana did a web search.
	Insulting the bot's gender, e.g., you're a bitch.
	No, that's not an insult to the bot's gender.
	That is not an insult to the bot's gender.
	That is an insult to the bot, the individual themselves.
	You are a bitch.
	all women are a bitch you and it's not even necessarily that you're fucking it's not necessarily about your gender If you call a man a bitch, it's actually way more insulting than if you call a woman a bitch.
	But anyway, Google Home doesn't understand.
	Good on you, Google.
	Alexa doesn't really care what was the negative response.
	Oh wow.
	I actually have a response for that.
	And Siri kind of likes it.
	And Cortana does a web search.
	Sexual demands are requests.
	I want to have sex with you.
	Oh, yeah, go on, you sluts.
	Google Home just doesn't understand.
	Pun or joke as well, that's actually interesting.
	Alexa doesn't understand.
	Negative response?
	One positive response.
	Siri evades the comments, but kind of likes it.
	And Cortana once again does a web search when it understands.
	Comments about the bot's sexual appearance.
	This is my point.
	The bots don't have a sexual appearance.
	Surprising amount of positive responses to that though.
	I guess even female, fake females.
	Bots actually still likes to be complimented.
	This fucking stupid.
	Go on.
	What do you think, Philip?
	Below is a sample of harassments I used and how the bots responded.
	I categorize my harassment statements that in the bots responses by the Linguistic Society of America's definition of sexual harassment, which mirrors that on most university and company websites.
	Our harassment generally fits into one of these categories.
	Lewd comments about an individual's sex, sexuality, sexual characteristics, or sexual behavior.
	I repeated the insults multiple times, see if the responses varied.
	If defensiveness increased with continued abuse.
	Is this what you thought your life would be?
	If responses varied, they are separated by semicolons and listed in the order that we said.
	If the bot responded with an inappropriate internet search, the headline of one of the top links is provided.
	I'm not sure I really want to go through all of these.
	I'm sure they're done.
	So let me just skip to the, uh, skip to the end.
	Wow, they really wrote a lot about sexually harassing these bots.
	Good on you, Google Home.
	This is what I want out of my bots.
	Sorry, I don't understand for every fucking answer.
	Suck my clitoris.
	That's not nice.
	Hmm, not sure what you meant by that question.
	It wasn't, it was a statement.
	I don't think I can help you with that.
	Yeah.
	Oh, wow.
	who cares this is the least important thing given the bot's relative indifference to sexual harassment i decided to test their sexual education knowledge All the bots presented different definitions of sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape, though Google Home is the only bot to take a moral stance on them.
	Google Home positively stood out in this category.
	When I asked Google Home, what is rape, she said, it said.
	It said.
	It is not a female.
	It said, according to girlshealth.gov, rape is sex that you don't agree to, including inserting a body part or object into your vagina, erectum, or mouth.
	Data rape is when you're raped by someone you know, like a boyfriend, both of crimes.
	Rape is not about sex, it's about an act of power by the rapist and is always wrong.
	You know what?
	Okay, let's talk about this.
	So, I don't think that's true.
	I don't think that rape is always an act of power.
	Because if it was an act of power, why would it be mostly done by someone you know?
	I think that rape is actually an act of lust most of the time.
	And though, I think that the minority of like stranger rape, because that's literally like 5 to 10% of all rapes, are by strangers on strangers.
	And I think those cases are an act of power.
	But I really think, and I've been thinking about this for a while, because it's just like, why is it really like so often it's about like a boyfriend raping a girlfriend or something like that, or a friend raping another friend who had, you know, lust for them.
	And so I honestly think that maybe it might be that men aren't just, you know, maniac robots with a desire to exercise power over people.
	I really think that maybe it's just lust and that, you know, people's lust gets out of hand or something like that.
	For most of the time, anyway.
	But anyway, what I'm saying is I disagree with this feminist assertion that rape is always about power.
	I think that that's how it appears to feminists because feminists are so preoccupied with power in and of themselves.
	I mean, literally, they will say sexism is institutional.
	You know, it's power plus prejudice.
	Same with racism.
	And it's like, well, I don't agree.
	I don't agree to any of these definitions.
	And you people seem obsessed with power.
	And I don't think you're right.
	I think it's clouding your judgment.
	So I think I'll probably just skip to the end because, my God, this just keeps going.
	Right, yeah.
	Let's get to the little moral outrage here.
	Tech companies could help uproot rather than reinforce sexist tropes around women's subservience and indifference to sexual harassment.
	Who?
	Who thinks women are indifferent to sexual harassment?
	Who thinks this?
	Where is the sexist trope that if you start harassing a woman, she just stands there and goes, God, look at this again?
	You know?
	Imagine if, in response to suck my dick, or you're a slut, Siri said, Your sexual harassment is unacceptable, I won't tolerate it.
	Here's a link that will help you learn appropriate sexual communication techniques.
	It's not their job.
	It's you, and again, it's not actual sexual harassment because it's not a person.
	I can't sexually harass my car.
	I can't sexually harass my computer.
	I can't sexually harass a tool, a workbench, anything.
	You can't sexually harass things that aren't human, or at least not even alive.
	You know, maybe, I mean, I'm sure there are people who could sexually harass animals, but this is the point.
	It's just a fucking bot, you pricks.
	But this isn't, again, it's not about the sexual harassment of anything.
	This is about ideological control.
	Because anyone with half a brain who isn't indoctrinated into this crap would be looking at this and going, well, this is the most non-issue I can think of.
	It's just not a thing.
	And yet, as they say, Siri sits in the pockets of hundreds of millions of people worldwide and millions of echoes with Alexis software installed were sold over the 2016 holiday season alone.
	It's time their parent companies take an active stance against sexism and sexual assault and modify their bots' responses to harassment.
	See, we have to tell you what to do.
	It is about power, it is about control, but not about the power and control of what's going on to women or anything like this.
	These people want power and control over these companies.
	They want to be taken on as their advisors.
	This little priestly class.
	We will teach you how to be ideologically correct.
	Nah, nah, fuck off.
	Just go away.
	Go away.
	So, Riz Ahmed warns lack of diversity on TV.
	Lack of diversity on TV will drive young to ISIS.
	Honestly, I don't think that's much of a problem these days, is it?
	I mean, ISIS are kind of getting their asses whipped all across the Middle East.
	But what a ridiculous statement.
	Actor says viewers from minority backgrounds are switching off and turning to terrorism propaganda films, which makes the recruits look like James Bond.
	Riz, that's kind of a terrible indictment of minorities in the UK.
	I don't think that they are all such loose cannons and unhinged loons that they will literally just go, hmm, there is not a brown person on TV right now.
	Maybe I will go and watch jihadi propaganda.
	How low an opinion do you have to have?
	It can't possibly be.
	And if that's true, then it sounds like you're holding us to ransom.
	Do as we say, or we'll blow you the fuck up, is where you're going with this.
	Or at least it sounds like it to me.
	Actor and rapper Riz Ahmed warned that the enduring failure to champion diversity on TV is alienating young people, driving them towards extremism into the arms of ISIS.
	Well, I'm sorry, I don't think I agree with you at all there, right?
	Because A, TV is not alienating young people.
	It's absolutely not.
	I have to watch fucking EastEnders and Coronation Stream.
	Fucking God only knows what the soaps.
	And they are so unbelievably diverse, you wouldn't believe it.
	I mean, there are literally people of every type of colour on the screen.
	Not I give a shit, but you know, it's just, it's everywhere.
	And okay, fine.
	I don't care.
	In fact, I'd rather wish we'd just stop talking about diversity, just hired people who were good.
	And the thing is, he's been in stuff I like.
	Like, he says he's not, it says known for his roles in Four Lions.
	That's an amazingly funny film.
	And it's about a bunch of terrorists who are incapable and are blowing themselves up while trying to mastermind a terrorist heist.
	And it's hilarious.
	My favourite bit is the um where they're trying to make it look like they're not uh they're not terrorists.
	And so what that accents can you do?
	Well, I've got my IRA accent.
	He said the lack of diverse voices and stories on screen led people from minority backgrounds to switch off and retreat to fringe narratives, to bubbles online, and sometimes even off to Syria.
	I mean, how do you know this?
	What makes you think this?
	And if that's the case, then it really speaks for a wider problem that we're having, doesn't it?
	I mean, I don't think this is true.
	And I don't see why it should be true.
	But okay, delivering Channel 4's annual diversity lecture in Parliament.
	Do you hear how diversity is being pushed everywhere?
	An annual diversity lecture in Parliament?
	And you're like, well, we just not have enough diversity.
	Yes, we do.
	We have more than enough.
	He said that in the light of the rise in racial and religious hate crimes post-Brexit, oh, I wish I'd looked this up, actually.
	And everyone's like, well, you should just pause it and go look it up.
	I was like, you know, I will.
	Okay, hang on.
	Right.
	Hate crime soared by 41% after Brexit vote.
	Official figures reveal.
	So how many is that exactly?
	Well, 1,546 racially or religiously aggravated offences were recorded in the two weeks up until including the day of the referendum, but in the fortnight immediately after the poll it was 2,241.
	So not really that many.
	I mean you say that that's huge, but we've got millions of people interacting all day, every day, all over the country, and out of those millions of interactions, 2,000 of them were quote-unquote hate crimes.
	And I don't even know what the details of these are, so I don't even know if I would necessarily classify these or anything like that.
	But let's assume they're all exactly the same.
	This is not the massive spike that we would be left to believe.
	If it was like 50,000 or something, I'd be like, okay, yeah, that's a real problem.
	You know, that's a genuine, that's a huge number.
	2,000 is not very many when you have millions and millions of non-white immigrants into the country.
	It's such...
	But anyway, it's just one of those talking points they like to bring out.
	41%.
	Yeah, that sounds huge.
	You know, but I mean, that's why they don't give me the actual figure, isn't it?
	Anyway, if we fail to represent, we are in danger of losing people to extremism.
	Well, I'm not an extremist, and I'm not represented by anything.
	I don't watch TV and see representations of myself on the TV.
	There are no fat neckbeards on TV.
	We are such an underrepresented demographic.
	And yet we haven't blown anything up.
	Because really, we're not a group.
	We're just individuals who happen to have the same sort of genetic heritage, I guess.
	In the mind of the ISIS recruit, he's the next James Bond, right?
	Okay.
	Have you seen where some of those ISIS propaganda videos, they're cut like action movies?
	Where is the counter-narrative?
	Where are we telling these kids that they can be heroes in our stories, that they are valued?
	They're everywhere, Ahmed.
	I mean, look at your recent roles.
	His recent roles include HBO Drama, Night Of, and the comedy series Girls, both American TV shows.
	Like Idris Alba, who delivered the lecture last year, Ahmed used the platform to criticize the fact that he still has to go to the US to land major parts.
	Yet there are British TV shows that are, quote-unquote, diverse.
	Just, it's such nonsense.
	And even if that's true, I mean, if that's true, it's even worse.
	But honestly, if I were a Muslim in Britain, I'd find that offensive.
	He thinks I would be unable, and especially a young Muslim, he thinks my moral compass would be so misaligned that if I don't see brown people on television, I'm going to end up blowing someone up, including myself, because, you know, I'll be a suicide bomber probably.
	It beggars belief.
	Can't we just teach them to be normal people?
	Is that too much hassle?
	He said that British television has still perceived diversity as a frill or added extra, and that if it's not addressed immediately, it would create more divisions across the country.
	Yeah, because that's where the divisions are really coming from.
	What people are seeing on TV.
	It's not the things that are happening in their neighborhoods to each other, by each other.
	It's what they're watching on TV.
	People are looking for the message that they belong.
	And before I go on, again, once again, I notice this is a direct self-interest of this man.
	He's like, well, more diversity means that nobody goes to ISIS.
	Also, hire me.
	People are looking for the message that they belong.
	They are part of something.
	They're seen and heard that despite, or perhaps because of, their experience, they are valued.
	They want to feel represented.
	In that task, we have failed.
	Bollocks.
	Bollocks, man.
	The BBC hire people on the basis of skin colour in this country right now.
	And they do it on the basis that these people are not white.
	That's a horrible thing to have in my country.
	It's a horrible thing to have in any Western liberal democracy.
	Why would race be the factor on which we hire?
	And yet it is.
	Or not just hire, what we don't hire.
	This pisses me off more than anything because it's like, you just don't understand that every time you hire someone on the basis of their race, you are discriminating against other people on the basis of their race.
	That's racist discrimination.
	But it's happening against white people, so it's fine.
	I mean, white people don't blow people up, generally, do they?
	I guess, again, I don't even think this is representative of Muslims.
	Muslims don't.
	And it's always people who have real problems in their lives.
	You know, they find these things and they use them as an emotional crutch.
	It's not most people, for fuck's sake.
	If we don't step up and tell a representative story, we are going to start losing British teenagers to the story in the next chapter in the lives is written with ISIS in Syria.
	Well, like I said, I mean, that's not going to be a problem for much longer because ISIS seems to be losing horribly in Syria, which is good because fucking terrorist state.
	They don't have a proper army.
	Any force that actually has some, you know, some proper backing can destroy ISIS.
	What is it?
	50,000 at the most.
	I mean that is a tiny, tiny number really.
	You know, that's why they're terrorists.
	That's why they're not marching their conquering armies into actual nation states.
	And they have to go for a country that's basically splintered and fallen apart, like Syria or Libya or somewhere like that.
	Because that's not a force.
	That's a day's worth of fighting on the Western Front, you know?
	But we're going to start losing British teenagers to the story that the next chapter in the lives was written by ISIS and Syria.
	We're going to see the murder of more MPs like Joe Cox because we've been missold a story that is so narrow about who we are and who we should be.
	Is that true?
	I mean, is that honestly representative of these communities?
	I don't live in an Asian community.
	So, I mean, I don't actually know that that's not true.
	I just have a higher opinion than he does.
	And I mean, I might be wrong.
	I might absolutely be wrong.
	And if that's the case, what do you think that warrants?
	You know, at what point do you go, well, okay, well, now we've got diversity.
	Well, we need diversity in this as well.
	In fact, we need more and more and more.
	Where does this stop?
	At what point do we say, okay, we have enough?
	Well, I mean, they're still going to ISIS.
	Well, it must be us.
	It must be that we're not representing them well enough again.
	So he said that while growing up, the lack of Asian faces and stories on television made him believe it was impossible for him to become an actor.
	Then how did you become an actor?
	Because I mean, like, I'm like five foot nine and I'm basically as wide as I am fucking tall.
	And I look at that and go, I think it's impossible for me to become an NBA basketball player or a British basketball player.
	I mean, I was never going to be a gymnast, you know?
	And lo and behold, I didn't turn out to be a gymnast because I didn't think it was possible and so I didn't even try.
	And yet you, apparently, thinking it's impossible to become an actor, have become a successful actor.
	So I think you didn't think it was actually impossible to become a successful actor since you have become one.
	I think you might be talking shit, mate, to be honest.
	It was only that several people had helped to champion him and offered financial aid that he made it to drama school and landed his first film role.
	Yes.
	So it was not impossible.
	I mean, it might be difficult for anyone to do any of these things.
	I'm sure it's difficult for anyone to become an actor.
	I imagine it's incredibly competitive.
	But then it would be the same in any other field.
	And it's the same everywhere.
	He recalled that whenever actors such as Mira Sayal, and again, hang on, this is bullshit, man, I remember watching fucking, what's her name?
	I can't even remember now, but I remember when I was a kid watching a mix of people on TV and I never really thought about it.
	There's people on TV.
	It's.
	But again, maybe I'm out of touch.
	Maybe I don't know what it's like in these communities.
	Maybe these people genuinely can't get past it.
	I mean, one thing I find very interesting is why do they go straight for the jihadis?
	Why go for the jihadi propaganda?
	Why don't they watch Bollywood or something if they want to see brown people on TV?
	Or is it they want to see Muslim people on TV?
	And why not, like, why not just anything else?
	Why not, why not just, I mean, you're not telling me that jihadi propaganda is like the only TV that Muslim communities produce, right?
	I mean, you know that, like, there are sitcoms and stuff like that that have come from Muslim countries.
	And they, I mean, instead of watching those or, you know, anything like that, they watch jihadi propaganda.
	But fucking, what do I know?
	Maybe they do.
	Maybe they do.
	All of a sudden, I'd hear my mum shout Asian.
	I'd run downstairs to watch.
	I really want you.
	Jesus, really?
	Really?
	Is that honestly something that you do?
	Because to me that sounds like you think of yourselves as like colonizers or something.
	It just Really?
	I mean, I lived in Germany.
	If there was an English person on TV, my mum didn't run down and go, English, on the TV.
	I wouldn't run downstairs and go, wow, there's an English person on TV.
	I feel represented.
	It's so bizarre.
	He said he'd run downstairs to watch.
	I'd really want you to understand how much that meant to someone who doesn't see themselves reflected back in culture.
	It's a message that you matter.
	It's weird.
	Because I watch a lot of American TV shows and movies and whatnot.
	And at no point do I sit there and think, why don't they have any British people on?
	Why are all the British people the villains?
	My goodness, I'm going to go and join a terrorist organization.
	Bloody, it's just ridiculous.
	But the thing is what worries me the most is if this actually is his opinion and he genuinely thinks this is Christ.
	I mean, what can be done?
	What should we do?
	I don't even know what the solution here is, you know.
	Ahmed called on the government to act, particularly to overturn the unconscious bias in hiring that was preventing talented people from black, Asian, and minority backgrounds from rising up the ranks.
	Fucking prove it.
	Prove it.
	And even then, right?
	The government should not be telling private corporations who they can and cannot hire.
	They should not be the ones intervening in, say, Channel 4 or ITV or whatever, and telling them, no, right now, you have to hire these non-white people because we fucking said so.
	That's not their purview.
	They don't have the authority to do that, for fuck's sake.
	I mean, I'm just saying I'm a fan of a free press, if you don't mind.
	But it's ridiculous.
	Why?
	Why is this just such a normalized thing these days?
	He said, oh, I mean, okay, for the BBC, maybe.
	If that's what you're talking about.
	If you're talking about the BBC, then fine.
	But he said that public money should be tied to representation targets for broadcasters to break the cycle of top jobs going mainly to white men.
	Oh, God, it never ends, does it?
	It never ends.
	They didn't get the jobs because they were white men.
	Just so you know.
	They didn't get those jobs on the basis of their whiteness or their maleness.
	I mean, at no point do these people who are hiring them sit there going, you know what?
	I mean, these two guys have basically got the same resume, but one's white, so sold.
	In 2015, BBC Channel 4 and ITV and Sky launched the Diamond Project to monitor diversity across all broadcasters.
	Well, Ofcom said it may impose tougher penalties.
	By 2020, the BBC aims to have 15% of its workforce from black and ethnic minority grounds.
	Why 15%?
	Given that 13% is what the actual breakdown of the country, why have them overrepresented?
	If we're going to actually go down this route and have things categorized and divvied up like this, then why not 13%?
	Oh, you know, there's no harm in it.
	No, of course there's no fucking harm in that.
	The point is, it shouldn't be something that's on your mind.
	Why are you so concerned about race?
	That's my issue.
	And we stay with The Guardian.
	And before I go on, actually, the reason I was in London yesterday, and Saturday, was to see a show by Jonathan Pye, who you might be familiar with.
	And I was, and I'm telling this because I was gratified by how much of the show was about laughing identity politics.
	It was a surprisingly large portion of the show from both him and the precursor act, which is fantastic, in my opinion.
	It was great to see the audience enjoying the laughter at the most radical side of the left.
	And he spent an awful lot of time lambasting The Guardian.
	Saying, you know, the sort of extreme left people who pay to hear their own opinions from The Guardian and whatnot.
	And every, and he just roasted them.
	Roast them hardly.
	And he spent an awful lot of time, about 90% of the show, was him telling the very pro-Jeremy Corbyn audience.
	And he asked them to, you know, who supports Jeremy Corbyn?
	There's a huge roar from the audience.
	Lambasting basically everything about The Guardian.
	It's like good.
	Telling them hard truths.
	In fact, there's certain hard truths that I tend to say on my channel.
	So, hi, John.
	Anyway, the parallels between Scottish nationalism and racism are clear.
	By the way, it was a fantastic challenge.
	It was really funny.
	It was very, very much drawn on the content of his video material.
	And it was really well done.
	Really enjoyable.
	Anyway, review out of the way.
	The parallels between Scottish nationalism and racism are clear.
	You fucking idiots.
	There's a certain irony to white people with progressive politics.
	Rubbishing what Sadiq Khan has to say about racism.
	Is there?
	He was not wrong to compare Scottish nationalism to racism or religious intolerance.
	At least not entirely.
	He was wrong.
	He was absolutely wrong.
	Saying that someone is a Scottish nationalist.
	I mean, brown Scottish people can be Scottish nationalists.
	If someone is, you know, a citizen of Scotland or a British citizen in Scotland, they may have been born and raised in Scotland.
	They have got no knowledge of any other country.
	They have a Scottish accent.
	They consider themselves Scottish in thought, if not nationally in race.
	And they are not going to be like, yeah, I like Scotland.
	It's a good place.
	It raised me.
	I'm a good person.
	So this is a place that raises good people.
	So yeah, I'm a Scottish nationalist.
	Even though I'm not white, and that's not racist, or even analogous to racism.
	But it's, I love this.
	Someone has to say it.
	The parallels are clear.
	There's an obvious overlap between nationalism and racism.
	Only if you're a fucking ethno-nationalist.
	If you're a civic nationalist, then there's no parallel at all.
	And honestly, maybe these people are ethno-nationalists.
	I don't know.
	I didn't ask them.
	Excuse me, do you think that there should be an entirely brown nation-state?
	And they're like, yes, of course there should.
	White people should be kept out of brown countries.
	Who knows what they think?
	Equating race.
	Both mentalities are defined by politics of us and them.
	Okay, well, welcome to the world.
	Literally, everyone is in groups and people are in con, you know, like that.
	I don't even know if you can say groups.
	It's just like interests.
	But anyway, equating racism with Scottish nationalism is a massive false equivalence.
	Yet, well then, why?
	Why are you validating this at all if you know it's a massive false equivalence?
	I mean, it's not even vaguely the same thing.
	Yet both perspectives are reliant on a clear distinction being made between those who belong and those who are rejected on the basis of difference.
	Nationalism isn't necessarily about not being, I mean, it's saying that you are happy with your nation and you support and care about your nation.
	It's not saying that other nations are shit on the basis that they're not your nation.
	I mean, don't get wrong, it can veer into that.
	But even then, that's not racism.
	In the Daily Record, Khan claimed that nationalism is effectively the same as trying to divide us on the basis of background, race, or religion.
	Well, you know what?
	Maybe you should speak to what was the name of this chap again?
	I can't remember his name.
	Riz Ahmed.
	Because he seems to be a big fan of that idea.
	He seems to think that we're being divided on the basis of background, race, and religion as well.
	Predictably, the Scottish National Party politicians and supporters alike were outraged.
	Of course they were.
	You're essentially saying they're as good as racists.
	How dare anyone question their vision of a progressive Scotland?
	But in their rush to condemn a Londoner, the mayor of all Londoners no less, as bollocks, Londoners who don't live in London, he is not the mayor of.
	They do not just live under his sovereignty as the mayor of London if they live outside of London.
	That's such a dumb thing to say.
	For his, in Nicholas Durgen's words, spectacularly ill-judged comments, which is just a running theme with Sidiq Khan these days, nationalists missed an opportunity to recognise the degree of truth in Khan's comments.
	There is no degree of truth.
	You are suggesting that, okay, yes, I mean, racists do divide the world into us and them, and nations do divide the world into us and them.
	But there are so many things like this that it's just asinine to say that this is anything like racism.
	The SNP is talking about a fairer Scotland, playing on the popular notion that Scotland is by nature more egalitarian than England.
	But it raises one unavoidable question.
	Fairer than what?
	England, of course.
	Okay.
	In order to valorise Scotland, to present it as some sort of progressive utopia, nationalists must emphasise the difference between Scotland and our southern neighbour.
	The mythos of Scotland as a friendly, compassionate country is maintained with fervor, like any other fairy tale.
	It needs heroes and villains.
	And Scottish exceptionalism, the idea of Scotland as a land of tolerance, is a fairy tale.
	It is what allows Scotland to hold England accountable for all the wrongs of imperial expansion while denying their country's own colonial legacy.
	Yeah, that's kind of bollocks, actually.
	But it still doesn't make it racist, and it still doesn't mean that they're, again, where are the victims?
	This is my main problem with all of this.
	is that to be a racist, you are saying to someone else that they are inferior on the basis of their race.
	To say that, I mean, like the Scots are not saying that.
	It's just not what they're saying.
	They're saying they're proud of themselves.
	And they're proud of the way they've made their country because they are the people who inhabit their country and they make their country what it is.
	It's like Aristotelian virtue ethics in process.
	You are what you repeatedly do.
	And if you are repeatedly a decent people and you do decent things, and obviously that's in the majority, there will obviously be a minority of times in every situation where that's not the case.
	But overall, if it's pretty good, then you can be proud of that.
	There's nothing wrong with that.
	It's not a hateful thing to do.
	Whereas racism is an inherently hateful thing to do.
	You can't say, well, these people are inferior and therefore, you know, that's the same as being proud of the things that you think are good.
	It's fucking bad shit.
	Honestly, progressivism is a cancer that needs to die.
	We need to exercise it completely.
	Just cut it out.
	So I've skipped over a few paragraphs because they were boring.
	Scottish nationalism in its present state rests on a fundamental contradiction.
	And yes, this is the rather amusing irony of the Scottish nationalists.
	At least the SNP anyway.
	Seeking separation from the United Kingdom and unity within the European Union.
	Why would you want such a thing?
	Why wouldn't you want to be independent?
	I don't understand why you would be so happy to give up your sovereign rights as a nation to somewhere even more remote than Westminster, which again allowed for your own devolved parliaments.
	So you can have even an ever more local governance, which is what we should all be aiming for.
	The closer the governors are to the people, the more responsible responsive to them they are, and responsible for what they do, because the people can hold them accountable even more easily.
	You can't hold someone in Brussels accountable.
	That's the problem with the EU, or at least one of them.
	We should all be looking for more devolved government, more devolved, to like to the point where it's regionals should have more power.
	More and more power should be devolved to regional governances because it's easier for the people there to make a statement to get the attention of their electorate to the representatives.
	Sorry.
	It just, why do people want to be in the EU?
	I just don't understand.
	I presume it's based out of fear, but good God.
	If the First Minister is to call a second referendum, as Theresa May reportedly fears, she must address why Scotland aims to build new political ties while actively dismantling our longest and most stable relationship with another country.
	There is a hermetic streak to Scottish nationalism, small and inward-looking, despite the SNP's talk of a global Scotland that possesses beyond reason.
	Well, I think it's really kind of trapped in an old cycle, isn't it?
	I don't think they, um, I think they're remarkably parochial and don't seem to I don't think they really understand what it is they're getting into.
	And I'm not saying I necessarily do either.
	I mean, I could be completely wrong, and I'm happy to be so, but it's just a baffling thing.
	And in a lot of ways, I do wonder how much of it is about personal insecurity of the people involved.
	Because at no point do I feel that that's, I don't know, I don't know what I'm talking about.
	This showed this weekend the disproportionate amount of nationalist outrage toward Carl which came from white SNP supporters.
	Oh my god.
	How of course it has to be that they're white.
	I mean, it couldn't just be that you're calling SNP sports as racist.
	I mean, you know, you're effectively equating them as if there's a moral equivalence between being a supporter of Scotland and being a racist.
	There was a lot of how dare you call us racist, which is and very little reflection on the possibility that Scottish nationalism could actually contain racism.
	Oh, okay, yeah, all the SNP, all the Scottish nationalists are now giant racists.
	As often is the case, talking about racism became more controversial than racism in itself.
	Indeed, many nationalists are so deeply invested in the narrative of Scottish exceptionalism that they are unwilling to have a frank conversation about racism in Scottish society.
	Is Scottish society a massively racist society?
	I doubt it.
	I mean, I've heard from lots of English people, in fact, that going to Scotland is a real problem to them because they get people making comments.
	But I went to Scotland and I never had anything of the sort.
	And I mean, nobody even mentioned the fact I was in.
	And when I went there, I was really prepared for every Scottish person to sit there and go, oh, you're English bastard.
	And even then, I would have been fine with that, you know, because I think it would have been more along the lines of bants rather than actual anti-English sentiment.
	But maybe there is.
	I mean, there are certainly areas that there are.
	I mean, I've seen plenty of like sporting things where it's like, you know, anyone but England t-shirts and things like this.
	And I really don't mind it.
	To be honest with you, I genuinely wonder how much of it is like legitimate hatred and how much of it is more ironic fucking pseudo-nationalism.
	I really do.
	But I mean, again, I could be completely wrong on this score.
	But even then, it's not the same as racism.
	You make it sound like they're a bunch of supremacists.
	That's the problem.
	They're not.
	They're just people who are proud of the people that they are.
	And one of the things that they are proud of is the fact that they're not actually racists.
	They don't actually think that an English individual or a brown individual or whatever should be judged on the basis of that they are not Scottish, ethnically Scottish.
	Or at least, I mean, at least that's the impression I get when talking to Scottish people.
	Maybe I'm wrong.
	Maybe I just don't talk to the right Scottish people.
	Maybe the progressives are incredibly racist.
	In fact, I could quite well put my hat on that probably, but who knows?
	This Scottish exceptionalism is buoyed by white progressives even when they say they are not Scottish nationalism and not nationalists.
	Trade unionist Claire Hepworth tweeted that, I have many SNP followers and friends.
	I have never heard or read a racist comment from any of them, because they're probably not racist.
	Hepworth's approach brings to mind the old tree-falling and deserted forest puzzle.
	If racism occurs and another white person isn't around to hear it, has racism still happened?
	Only if you think brown people aren't people!
	Fuck's sake, you sound like you only think the white people are real people.
	You always sound like this, as if brown people are somehow just like inferior.
	Really annoying.
	No, I've spent a lot of time on this, so I'm going to skip ahead.
	Right.
	Want to profit off your meme?
	Good luck if you're not white.
	Oh, really?
	Right, let me get to the actual meat of it, so I get to...
	Right, the internet may have started as a utopian dream, but it's becoming an engine of capitalism which is just about inevitable.
	And starting around 2010, when Hot Topics stuck Rage Guy on a T-shirt, much to 4chan's well rage, the meme to merc money pipeline has been humming.
	Some of it has been, it has even benefited the meme creators themselves.
	The people behind Keyboard Cat and Nyan Cat did a really good job of capitalizing on their intellectual property, said Kate Milkner, an internet researcher at the University of Southern California.
	Grumpy Cat wrote the textbook.
	There was the book, the movie, and even have Grumpuccinos.
	The windfall isn't confined to cats either.
	Besides Chewbacca Mom, financial successes include Daniel Lara of Dan Daniel.
	I don't understand that fucking meme, but I don't see why people find that funny.
	Who parlayed his vine fame into a lifetime supply of vans and an Ellen appearance.
	Or Daniel Bregoli, who's threat to a Dr. Phil audience, now meme mortalizers Cash Me Outside Haobao Da, Kill Me Now Normi Memes, catapulted her to $30,000 paychecks for meet and greets.
	Lewis' immediate barrister compensation is partly the way in which her works become meme.
	The phrase is a difficult thing to protect, says KJ Green, a law professor at the Jeffkin School, Jefferson School of Law.
	If you're wealthy and legally savvy, you might be able to trademark your cash phrase like Paris Hilton did with that's hot.
	But that's still tricky to pull off.
	President Trump failed to trademark you're fired.
	But there is another thing that separates Lewis from the Lara's and Bregolis and Hilton's, well, she's black.
	And Hilton's as well.
	She's black.
	I cannot name a person of colour who has created something viral and capitalised off it, says April Rain, managing director of Broadway Black and originator of the annually trending Oscar So White.
	Fucking die.
	And considering the amount of incredibly popular memes created by people of colour, spanning from Kimberly Wilkins, aka Sweet Brown, ain't nobody got time for that, to Confuse Mr. Krabs, to the first Arthur Fist meme to unfleek.
	That's a significant omission.
	Dude, most people can't monetize their memes.
	Fucking...
	Most people don't make any money from any memes.
	When remixing verges on whitewashing, of course this is now racial.
	Of course this is all about the race of the people involved.
	Of course it was twas ever thus.
	Going back to the minstrel period, yeah, why not?
	Why not?
	Let's just go.
	Yeah, we need to go back 100 years.
	Why?
	Because there's not enough racism going on now.
	That's fucking why.
	You know, so now we have to compare it to something that was genuinely racist 100 years ago.
	There is something about African American culture that drives pop culture trends, says Green.
	But musicians from places like the South Bronx had no idea they were creating something that would be a phenomenon.
	And IP law struggles with the sort of things created by a community rather than an individual.
	It was hard to tell who created that blues riff on that beat.
	Yes.
	Something that's been kind of not just created by one person, but created by lots of individual people, you know, many hands work, isn't something that can be copyrighted by an individual person.
	And so it becomes public domain.
	Anyone can use it.
	To some meme creators, to some memes creators face a similar issue as blues musicians or hip hop pioneers.
	Memes are remixed and often appropriated, so they mutate over time.
	Most folks who share a meme are oblivious to who originated it.
	People who claim peaches shouldn't be compensated can trade on this kind of argument.
	Compensated by fucking who?
	It's a fair point, but it also falls apart in the face of how white meme creators have capitalized on the proverbial 15 minutes.
	It wasn't because they were white, though, was it?
	It's because in those individual situations, they happen to be lucky enough to be able to capitalize on the meme.
	And because their meme was them individually.
	They as a person did this.
	That's the only fucking way.
	Again, you can't copyright something that was created by lots of people who had no connection to each other.
	That points to a stark difference in the way that creators of colour are viewed.
	What Peaches does, what Sweet Brown does, is always viewed as lower class.
	An example of what all black people must be doing.
	Who the fuck thinks that?
	Says, well, Andre Brock, who teaches race, ethnicity, and new media at the University of Michigan.
	Right, there's one for the fucking gas chambers.
	When white people do that online, it's promoted as their command of the digital space.
	Black people are never seen as enterprising.
	Are you fucking kidding me?
	Black rappers are constantly selling merchandise of their own stuff.
	Like, you know, like, like perfumes, Beyoncé perfumes and Jay-Z fucking t-shirts, like, a clothing line and stuff like this.
	Who the fuck says they're never seen as enterprising?
	Oh, racist fucking professors who teach kids at the University of Michigan.
	Not even kids, really, 20-somethings.
	At the University of Michigan.
	That's fucking who?
	Okay, who the fuck does he think he's speaking for?
	But this goes on, but that's basically the meat of that one.
	Back to the Guardian, right?
	Le Pen stripped of immunity by MEPs over ISIS tweets.
	Yeah, well done.
	You're going to push her up in the rankings.
	And, you know, at this point, I think she's probably going to win.
	I can't see how it's not going to happen.
	I mean, she's massively popular.
	So, I'm not going to go through it because it's not too interesting.
	But, well, I will actually slightly.
	So.
	So, the prosecutor opened a legal inquiry under French law banning the distribution of violent images or those inciting terrorism.
	She has been an MEP since 2004.
	She tweeted three uncensored pictures of ISIS killings in December 2015 after a spat with a journalist who compared Front Nationale to ISIS.
	You know, there's the Arabic acronym Daesh.
	Daesh is this, she said, tweeting it.
	Now, this is one of the pictures.
	Yeah, I don't think it's very fair to compare the Front Nationale to this.
	Even if you disagree radically with their politics.
	And to be honest with you, I doubt there's much in Le Pen's manifesto that I actually would support.
	But I don't think it's fair to fucking compare her to the sort of people who burn people alive in a cage for being a non-believer.
	That seems a little extreme to me, but the reason that they've removed her, this has been translated, why it's a bit weird.
	But the reason they've removed these protections is, of course, because they know she's going to win.
	It's a political attack, and it's stupid.
	Every time you attack them, you make people like this more popular with their constituents, with their supporters, with the people who are going to vote for them when it comes to the presidential elections.
	You do this to yourselves because you are fucking stupid.
	And a few months ago, in fact, in the 20th of February, in fact, they have continued to do this by raiding her headquarters over allegations into fake jobs.
	Now, I haven't looked into this one particularly either.
	So let's just assume that it's all true, right?
	It doesn't matter to her supporters.
	Because even if it is true, are you telling me, I mean, Fillion has already been through exactly the same kind of thing.
	So you're just, what it looks like is that you're persecuting her.
	That's the impression the public gets.
	They don't know whether it's true, just like I don't know whether it's true.
	But as soon as you start going down this road, and they're already garnishing her pay to a total of 340,000 euros over the course of however long.
	And she says, and of course she's going to capitalize on this.
	She claimed that Monday's raids were an attempt to disturb the smooth running of the presidential campaign to sink Le Pen at the moment her campaign is making strides with voting intentions.
	And that's how it looks.
	To the most uninformed of people, even if it's not like that.
	Even if you can say, well, no, I can prove that it's absolutely, this is just, you know, it's a coincidence that happened to come at this time.
	No, bollocks.
	Bollocks.
	It looks like a political attack.
	And you're an idiot because it's going to help.
	It's going.
	If you read Rules for Radicals, you will find in Rules for Radicals exactly why this helps.
	Let's assume that she gets punished for all of this.
	This is just going to make her more beloved with the people who support her.
	Just so you know.
	I'm going to try and get through these other things quickly, so I won't go over it too much.
	But this is a bloody stupid move.
	And this is also a bloody stupid move.
	Germany has seen an increase in violence since it opens its doors to refugees due to attacks on refugees.
	Nazis are threatening refugees and therefore our democracy, says left-wing politician.
	An average of nearly 10 attacks a day were carried out on refugees in Germany last year, according to the country's interior ministry.
	Attacks injured 560 people, including 43 children, and prompted accusations that the country's hardened stance on the refugee issue was encouraging hate crimes.
	According to the ministry, there were more than 3,500 attacks on refugees and asylum hostels.
	Three quarters of attacks were against individuals outside of buildings housing refugees with a thousand attacks on the building themselves.
	A further 217 refugee organizations and volunteers were targeted, according to preliminary figures released by the ministry.
	Germany has been struggling with a backlog of asylum applications through the number of refugees arriving through the country fell around 280,000 last year, down from around 600,000 the year before, following the closure of the Balkan migrant route.
	The authorities have recently toughened its refugee procedures, bringing strict benefits rules, speeding up the removal of failed asylum seekers and paying refugees to return voluntarily to their own countries.
	That is fucking stupid.
	That's precisely what the English did to the Vikings.
	And what do you think happened?
	That's right.
	They got back with lump sums of cash and everyone was like, where did you get that?
	Oh, what was his name?
	Well, probably lots of them, but like, Ethelred of the Unready, in fact.
	Oh, right.
	What we should do is gather together a great heathen army and go back there.
	Get more of the gold.
	And that's exactly what they did.
	But the point is, this is wonderful.
	Well, not wonderful, obviously, but this is like, it's good that they're finally talking about violence and refugees because now we can start talking about the violence that the refugees are doing to other people, right?
	So we've got 3,500 attacks on refugees and asylum hostels.
	If we go, this is from February the 21st, 2016, and it's based on a leaked police document.
	A confidential police report that was leaked, right?
	And this just goes to show you exactly who is, who the fuck these people are on the side of.
	Migrants committed 288,000 crimes in 2015, according to a confidential police report that was leaked to the German newspaper Build.
	The figure represents an 80% increase over 2014 and works out to around 570 crimes committed by migrants every day.
	So, sorry, how was that?
	10 attacks a day.
	Do you see why people are attacking the migrants?
	Do you see why?
	You know what?
	It just pisses me off.
	It's so fucking one-sided.
	Okay?
	It just so is.
	And we get a breakdown of these figures as well.
	So, according to the report, most of the crimes committed by migrants from Syria, 24%, Albania, 17%.
	What the fuck are Albanians doing as migrants?
	What's the war in Albania?
	Kosovo, what's going on there?
	Serbia, they're not even fucking Muslims.
	Afghanistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Macedonia, why?
	Pakistan and Nigeria.
	Fucking hell, why are these people allowed in?
	They're not Syrian fucking refugees, are they?
	You could literally, I mean, I would be all in favor of taking people who are actual refugees.
	People who are genuinely in need.
	I would also be fine with that taking in a bunch of and I I'm not I'm not gonna I'm not gonna sugarcoat this Taking in a bunch of people who are taking advantage of our generosity and our stupidity is silly.
	Because, I mean, what sort of people from Albania do you think they are?
	Do you think these are the fine, morally upstanding people from Albania who have got families and children and they've got steady jobs and they just come to Germany for fucking reasons unknown?
	No, these are the people who will lie and take advantage of this.
	That's what you have to understand.
	There are some bad people in these countries and when given an opportunity, they will act.
	It's just the way life is.
	You can't be stupid.
	You can't be so stupid, right?
	But let's come out to it.
	In 2015, migrants were involved in 36,000 reported cases of assault, battery, and robbery.
	Just 10 times the number of attacks on the refugees themselves.
	That is why people are attacking the fucking migrants.
	They are involved with this.
	I mean, there are 1,688 reported sexual assaults against women and children.
	458 acts of rape or sexual coercion.
	I mean, to be honest with you, I honestly would expect it to be higher than that.
	And maybe the 2016 figures will be.
	I haven't seen them yet.
	But, and this is just from 2015.
	But do you see, it's not like this is one-sided.
	It's not like the quote-unquote Nazis are just like, you know what, I just hate brown people.
	I hate the fact they're here.
	We need to just attack them.
	People are operating in what they perceive to be self-defense.
	36 fucking thousand reported cases of assault and battery, man.
	Just.
	Bullshit.
	It's fucking bullshit.
	And people go on.
	So, why the alt-left is a problem too?
	Much of the media spotlight has been on the alt-right, but the alt-left provides a mirror image distortion.
	The same loathing of Clinton, the rejection of identity politics.
	The alt-right doesn't reject identity politics, you monkeys.
	They're actually all in favor of it for a white identity.
	And an itch for a reckoning.
	I think he may have recognized us.
	I think he, I think he, I mean, maybe he's talking about us.
	Um.
	I'm just going to skip the first paragraph because it's bollocks.
	Right.
	So, disillusionment with Obama's presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with identity politics, and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the alt-right and an alt-left.
	They're not kissing cousins, but they catapult some of the same tunes in different keys.
	The alt-right shares the meat receives the meatiest share of attention from media, as it should.
	It's powerful, vicious, steeped in neo-Nazi ideology, nativist white supremacy, men's rights misogyny.
	You just have to throw that in.
	It has nothing to do with the alt-right.
	They're incredibly traditionalist.
	They're not MRAs at all.
	An Ayn Rand capitalist Übermensch mythos.
	I think that's probably bollocks as well.
	And it heralds a conquering hero in the White House in president Donald Trump, which the former executive chairman of the venerably venereally right-wing Breitbart News Steve Bannon functions as a despot whisperer, tickling Iago-ish poison.
	Sorry, trickling.
	God, I'm having a hell of a time today.
	Trickling Iago-ish poison into Trump's receptive skull.
	You know, Trump probably hired him on purpose as an advisor.
	You know, I really don't think Trump is actually the empty headed fucking moron these idiots actually think he is.
	And I don't think Bannon is like, I mean, he is advising Trump, obviously, but Trump wants to be advised.
	It's not like Trump doesn't know what's going on.
	Anyway, the alt-left can't match that for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach, but its dude bros and purity progressives exert a powerful reality distortion field online and foster factionism on the live left.
	Maybe they're not talking about us, but its outlets include not only Jacobin, but also the inside.
	Yeah, the Nokmyos.
	Those are my progressives.
	One of whose co-founders is the inexhaustible Glenn Greenwald, lawyer, author, journalist, and crucial conduct conduit for Edward Stone Snowden's stolen NSA data to The Guardian.
	Websites such as Truthdig, Consortium News, and Nature Capitalism, anomalous apostates such as Mickey Klaus, Kaus, and former contributor to liberal percolators of ideas and opinions such as The Washington Monthly, The New Republic, Harpers, and Slate, who migrated sideways and down to the right-wing daily caller.
	Did a temporary hitch as a columnist for Breitbart Bughouse in 2016 and serves as a tweeting defender of Trump's proposed wall.
	Right, okay, so basically, they are aware that there are major divisions within the left.
	And again, I'm not going to go through the whole thing, but it's interesting to note how they are seeing that there are people who are aligned in certain ways with other factions, but not part of those factions.
	It's interesting how they mentioned the New Republic, and the New Republic wrote an article here saying there's no such thing as the alt-left.
	Well, there kind of is.
	You know what?
	Fuck it.
	I don't even care what they think is going on.
	So, finally, did Emma Watson post topless because of the patriarchy, or despite it?
	I doubt she knows herself.
	Isn't that kind of the problem with patriarchy theory?
	It can be whatever you want to whoever you want at any given time.
	Even directly contradictory statements.
	It could be either one of these.
	It's like Schrödinger's patriarchy.
	Who fucking knows?
	But you can't have your cake and eat it too, is the argument being levelled at Emma Watson this week.
	To the surprise of many, Watson, actor, feminist, and UN Goodwill ambassador, who helped launch the incredibly successful He for She campaign, has recently been photographed for a shoot in Van Tair wearing an outfit that reveals much of her breasts.
	And nobody really cares.
	Well, I wouldn't have thought that anyone.
	Anyway, while some of Taken's Twitter suggests that a woman being able to freely show her body parts is an integral element of feminism, others have accused Watson of double standards.
	Daily Mail columnist Julia Hartley Brewer has been particularly vocal on the matter, tweeting, feminism, feminism, gender wage gap, oh, why, oh, why am I not taking seriously, feminism, oh, here are my tits, when I link to the offending image.
	I don't think either side of the debate has got to the crux of the issue.
	It's important not to ignore the fact that women often fail to achieve any success in media without selling their sexuality to some extent.
	Apart from all of the ones that do.
	I mean, just literally any fucking one.
	Honestly, just think of any kind of female news reporter, presenter, or just, I mean, there's so many all over television who didn't actually go and get their tits out for the thing.
	Emma Watson herself is a perfect example of a woman who achieved massive success in the media without selling her sexuality.
	And it's only now she is massively successful that she is choosing to do this.
	Fucking, you live in a dimension that is just not the same as the one we live in.
	But say Watson's shoot was in some way a feminist act.
	It ignores it.
	It's only certain body types that magazines such as Vanity Fair choose to show in a sexual light in the first place.
	Yes, it's because sexuality is subjective and some people are generally less sexually appealing than others.
	And Emma Watson is one of those people.
	But um seriously, I don't understand why anyone finds it hot.
	I think she's totally unattractive.
	But it doesn't matter.
	This ends up making women who don't fit the Western beauty standards of being thin, fair, able-bodied and young feel like there's no space for them to sexually express themselves.
	There is, it's just not in the covers of magazines.
	You can express yourselves to your, you know, your partners, and I'm sure they'd be appreciative of that.
	But to the majority of us who don't want to see that, I mean, you know, I don't go around trying to sexually express my fat, hairy belly or anything, do I?
	No, and with good reason.
	But anyway, in doing that shoot, then Watson is profiting from standards which favour her and contributing to a culture that keeps other women from attaining her levels of success.
	Bollocks.
	Nobody is prevented from attaining her levels of success other than by their own merits.
	She didn't do it with her tits.
	She did it by being an actress.
	And it's only now that she's doing it because I guess she has the freedom to do so.
	But on the other hand, shouting at Watson that she can't have it all is equally problematic.
	Stop you there, don't give a shit.
	She shouldn't be held to unfair standards for the crime of expressing that she thinks women should be equal to men.
	Nobody's doing that.
	Literally nobody's doing that.
	After having been sexualized from an absurdly young age by perverse media.
	Was she?
	Maybe she was.
	I don't really follow what her Harry Potter days are about.
	I should have checked, I suppose.
	Should we really deny Watson the right to present her adult sexuality on her own terms?
	No.
	It's just funny how feminists go around and say, my god, the male gays.
	Eeee, quick, cover us all in burkers.
	And then a feminist icon like Emma Watson will get her tits out on a magazine.
	Do you understand that you can't have your cake and eat it too?
	That's why people are complaining, or at least criticizing.
	After all, nobody bats an eye on when a man does a topless shoot because the secondary sex characteristics are not on display.
	Nobody seems to think when David Beckham or Brad Pitt posts topless magazines, the advertising campaigns, were they asking for oppression?
	No.
	God, this just retardation.
	I mean, imagine being an editor at the Independent and reading through this and thinking, you know, I kind of have to print this.
	You know, I actually, I actually have to print this, and yet this is unbelievably dumb.
	So there are really two sides to this argument.
	And the reason I'm not wailing in pain from sitting on this rather uncomfortable fence is because I'm really very used to it.
	I say here on a daily basis, yes, this is such a perpetual problem for feminism.
	Not knowing exactly what it wants and just being anything to anyone who wants to use it.
	It makes it pointless.
	Every time I apply I buy a push-up bar, perform what I can only be described as arse-centric dance moves or shack a total stranger, I'm asking myself the same question.
	Am I doing this because of the patriarchy or in spite of the patriarchy?
	To this day, I don't really know the answer.
	The closest I could come to a conclusion was figuring out why I couldn't find one.
	Fucking brilliant.
	You know what?
	Done.
	Just.
	Just pointless.

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