"Artist" vandalizes several western National Parks...

[Irbis]

The Australian wildlife will eat her alive. She looks like a future Darwin Award winner.

The same wildlife that got the crap kicked out of it by pair of bunnies?

[Terralthra]

I don't think she has the option to outbreed it.

[Covenant]

This is another example of counter-culture rebellion I just don't get, really. There's a street art team who is posting on her Tumblr, which I get. They wanted to grab it before someone else could grab it (the rock-artist abandoned it) but they seem to delight in the stuff she does because "fuck tumblr sjws lol." She seems to be about the same.

Between this and the GamerGate horde and a whole bunch of others... who are these people, anyway? As far as I know, Tumblr is a login-required image board service that seems to exist merely as an opponent for people who hate things like equality, diversity, and national parks. They seem to act as if it is a culture police out in force. I had never heard of tumblr before someone criticized it for the social justice content. Is this just a place where libertarians, conservatives and baby fascists go to get themselves angry?

I do know this crap has pushed me repeatedly into the deepest recesses of leftist thought as the disorganization of reactionary messages is giving increasing headspace to ultra-right wing groups on the internet. Does anyone understand what is happening here? I just don't get it! I feel like the great war of this generation is going to be conducted between morons trying to out-offend the other without actually doing anything. It is a war fought entirely via passive-aggressive meme authorship.

They didn't say "fuck censorship" or anything more rebellious. It was a specific attack on the "tumblr social justice warrior" that seems to bother them. Does anyone understand what the hell is going on here?

It seems like these people are to the Political Right what Gollum is to Sauron. Is this what it feels like to see a goblin horde in action? None of them have any coherent message other than "I want those guys over there to be upset because fuck those guys" and occasionally a few bits of half-laughing confusion about "omg how many genders do you need really?" type stuff without actually voicing actual opposition to it.

The best I can manage is trying to pin the blame on Generation LOL, a term I am coining at the moment, to describe the generation of internet-culture aficionados that equate "getting angry" with "not getting the joke" and having no greater motivation in life getting some lulz. That is probably a horrible oversimplification of a cultural shift but I cannot remember a time before now when so much violence, hate, organization and effort was expended to accomplish NOTHING except some pie-in-the-face outrage.

[AniThyng]

This is another example of counter-culture rebellion I just don't get, really. There's a street art team who is posting on her Tumblr, which I get. They wanted to grab it before someone else could grab it (the rock-artist abandoned it) but they seem to delight in the stuff she does because "fuck tumblr sjws lol." She seems to be about the same.

Between this and the GamerGate horde and a whole bunch of others... who are these people, anyway? As far as I know, Tumblr is a login-required image board service that seems to exist merely as an opponent for people who hate things like equality, diversity, and national parks. They seem to act as if it is a culture police out in force. I had never heard of tumblr before someone criticized it for the social justice content. Is this just a place where libertarians, conservatives and baby fascists go to get themselves angry?

I do know this crap has pushed me repeatedly into the deepest recesses of leftist thought as the disorganization of reactionary messages is giving increasing headspace to ultra-right wing groups on the internet. Does anyone understand what is happening here? I just don't get it! I feel like the great war of this generation is going to be conducted between morons trying to out-offend the other without actually doing anything. It is a war fought entirely via passive-aggressive meme authorship.

They didn't say "fuck censorship" or anything more rebellious. It was a specific attack on the "tumblr social justice warrior" that seems to bother them. Does anyone understand what the hell is going on here?

It seems like these people are to the Political Right what Gollum is to Sauron. Is this what it feels like to see a goblin horde in action? None of them have any coherent message other than "I want those guys over there to be upset because fuck those guys" and occasionally a few bits of half-laughing confusion about "omg how many genders do you need really?" type stuff without actually voicing actual opposition to it.

The best I can manage is trying to pin the blame on Generation LOL, a term I am coining at the moment, to describe the generation of internet-culture aficionados that equate "getting angry" with "not getting the joke" and having no greater motivation in life getting some lulz. That is probably a horrible oversimplification of a cultural shift but I cannot remember a time before now when so much violence, hate, organization and effort was expended to accomplish NOTHING except some pie-in-the-face outrage.

I was under the impression that she was herself one of the SJW's, and called her opponents...uh...mansplainers and other SJW-y things.

But I personally get my entertainment watching asian-diaspora-POC SJW's on tumblr get outraged at "cultural appropriation" by white folk.

[Grumman]

This is another example of counter-culture rebellion I just don't get, really. There's a street art team who is posting on her Tumblr, which I get. They wanted to grab it before someone else could grab it (the rock-artist abandoned it) but they seem to delight in the stuff she does because "fuck tumblr sjws lol." She seems to be about the same.

Between this and the GamerGate horde and a whole bunch of others... who are these people, anyway? As far as I know, Tumblr is a login-required image board service that seems to exist merely as an opponent for people who hate things like equality, diversity, and national parks. They seem to act as if it is a culture police out in force. I had never heard of tumblr before someone criticized it for the social justice content. Is this just a place where libertarians, conservatives and baby fascists go to get themselves angry?

No. The stereotype of the "Social Justice Warrior" certainly has them engaging in recreational outrage on Tumblr more than other places, but I've never run across them myself. You've got artists who post their own work there, fans that post excerpts of things they like, and people who repost other people's posts. It's not used by big name celebrities or big companies, but apart from that it's a lot like Twitter.

[Thanas]

Lot of celebrities and sports people use tumblr. It is merely an image sharing site. Think of it as a longer twitter. There is nothing special about it, like any social media outlet it has its share of idiots. I don't think it is defined by it though.

[Covenant]

More than it being defined by its own idiocy, I felt like it was being defined by the raging idiocy of its detractors. It reminds me how I had never heard of ACORN or similar groups until some of my fellow Americans decided they were the devil incarnate. It just seems like there is an active community (and a somewhat broad one) motivated to counter the impact of the tumblrites. Whereas I never see anyone from the tumblr community going out and censoring free speech or anything, I do constantly get reminded of tumblr's presence as other people go out and actually DO things to other people and places as a form of protest.

A form of protest that hurts people and things, generally harmless and good people and things, to attack an opponent that does not seem to exist outside of their own minds. It looks like mass lunacy from where I sit.

Are these people really so upset that someone from some random corner of the internet thinks something, on their own little blog, that they must go out and fuck with petroglyphs? I... I just... I don't understand!

[Thanas]

It's not a new fad, but an old one largely made easier by the internet. Before you had to resort to placing a call or sending a letter to threaten somebody. Now all you do is press send. No new idiots, but now it is much easier to spot them.

[Covenant]

If people do not mind the further derail, I wanted to address a secondary point, though I take about half this post to get to it:

But I personally get my entertainment watching asian-diaspora-POC SJW's on tumblr get outraged at "cultural appropriation" by white folk.

First of all, cultural appropriation is a real thing, and most notably occurs within colonialistic and imperialistic cultures, so dismissing it as entirely irrelevant is silly. If you are under the thumb of a foreign culture, and they begin adopting and misusing your cultural signifiers to the degree that they lose their original meaning, then your culture will be worn away. Eventually the original meanings will have been sandblasted away and all you are left with is the new meanings assigned by the dominant culture, which are most likely assigned without respect.

If we want to look at a rather harmless example, look at the Leprechaun. The iconic leprechaun we think about is actually a fabrication and kludge-cultural artifact created by English folks who didn't much care about the original contexts, depictions, and so on of the leprechaun. For one, the little guy is supposed to be wearing a tri-corner hat and a red coat, not a green coat, and it has become basically just a stereotype of the Irish themselves. I say this is harmless because it is also rather well-known, but it shows how a dominant culture can nonetheless infect the world with a demeaning and embarrassing "re-imagining" of a subordinate or weaker culture.

Mythology is rife with examples, really. Look at the idiotic way that the Greek Pantheon to is often re-branded to conform with Christian mythology, with Zeus as the good guy and Hades as the bad guy. Or in a similar way in which Anubis is often rebranded as a scary evil monster god because of the Western phobia surrounding death. These examples are not often brought up as "cultural appropriation" but mythology and spiritualism are very easy to appropriate and strip of their original meaning.

Yoga is another example, especially here in the states, of something which is both beloved and appropriated so thoroughly that very little of the original cultural context remains.

You can skip to here > But that is where it gets confusing, and where I start getting confused about the actual progressive merit of this. What happens when cultural artifacts suffer from memetic mutation, like Yoga, but is not actively being suppressed within the appropriated culture? America is not shutting down Ashrams in India, for example, so this feels more like an element of cultural exchange and cultural slippage than of actual appropriation. I suppose we could try to assert that the increased capitalistic value of Yoga may lead to cultural slippage. But that would mean banning Yoga in order to save Yoga, or trying to find True Scotsmen to perform True Yoga, and, what, culturally verifying people who take it? And stopping anyone from modifying or making a new form of exercise based upon it? That's madness and nonsense, so now what?

One of the main problems with cultural appropriation criticism is that it very rarely has an actionable next step. You can identify something being appropriated by a society, but then what do you do? Once you identify something as appropriation (yoga, leprechauns, dreadlocks, etc) how do you remedy the situation? Do we create a social good by stopping all yoga shops in progress (and they are legion) because they are an act of cultural appropriation? If there is a "cultural identity" which we seek to protect, should we stop those cultures from changing those signifiers themselves? I doubt anyone would say yes. But what is the point of cultural conservatism, which seeks to put walls around cultural icons to contain them within a proper context, if there is an inevitable shift in meanings over time that will erase the original meanings anyway?

It feels like a Prime Directive not to alter a culture any faster than it would if left alone. But the bottled culture is a troubling concept too, it begins to look like a Culture Zoo. It also synergizes poorly with egalitarian, globalized structures but works just fine with a host of right-wing politics that seek to put people, cultures, and artifacts "back where they belong." If you accept that Culture B should be maintained as it is, and not altered, then it is no stretch to believe your culture, Culture A, should be that way too. Which makes the expansion of cultural norms (rights, beliefs, traditions, etc..) much more difficult. If you reject the idea of a traditionalism as an ideal then it seems patronizing and hypocritical to treat other cultures like they're some unique, immutable thing that sprung up without outside contact.

Really, when it comes down to it, when you have problematic Cultural Appropriation it seems that the exploitation of the culture is the real principle at fault. If these cultures are free to self-determine then the term for this is cultural exchange, not appropriation, which is a somewhat arbitrary distinction. Exploitation is wrong for much more obvious reasons, and it has a much more actionable solution than the question of appropriation.

Cultural appropriation seems to rely on a bedrock of exclusive and "authentic" identity politics which are at odds with actual social progress. I don't want to tell people they should not be mad when a pop star mish-mashes their culture, but I think they should be less mad that they are "appropriating" the culture and more upset at the insensitive and exploitive way their culture has been mish-mashed. It seems a to be a slippery slope otherwise. I am always concerned with issues of "authenticity" with cultures because that's the same garbage used by National Fronts and fascists. It also encourages people to divide themselves and scrutinize the borders between cultures.

I took several courses in Post-Colonial literature and politics in my college days, so I'm not trying to say this isn't a serious issue in some contexts, but in others it seems to be a broad-brush that supports monoculturalism. It's potentially an invasive brain-bug that masquerades as progressive empowering thought while leading to a patronizing conservative outlook.

Am I totally off-base here? I hate appealing to the Europeans on the board as some kind of third-party in this, but I figure our anthropologists and historians might have some idea. I'm all aboard the "don't use sacred costume for a halloween party theme" non-exploitation train, but I see the dangers in cultural exploitation and dehumanization mockery (ala blackface/redface/etc) as the weaponized hate worth dismantling, while appropriation (if divorced from a more relevant colonial context) seems so inevitable and essential to a melting-pot world that criminalizing it is more harmful than good. It's more like a feel-good cause than a do-good cause. Am I super wrong?

It just feels like these online micro-cultures are slinging very public bullshit back and forth without either of them actually having a... I don't know... a political context? Does this happen often in history?

[AniThyng]

To expand a but on this, I get the impression that in some cases they are trying too hard to literally be more <insert relevant asian ethnicity here> than the folks back home! (I mean, culturally home? On one hand they seem to reject the idea that they are not Americans from America but on the other they like I observe, can't get enough of asserting they are not white but <insert ethnicity here>) I reckon actual people in the old country don't give two shits that white girls like wearing kimono as a novelty or adore K-drama. What makes it even more puzzling to me is that to understand their jargon I myself had to immerse myself in reading tons of what is basically to me western ideas. ( I saw a post where someone was enthused that Cantonese, here ancestors tongue, had no gendered pronouns...as if that means Cantonese culture in Asia is tolerant of such notions as gender fluidity?!)

[Thanas]

It hardly is exclusive, emigrants always try very hard to defend their home country. Heck, you can see it in every online community where people of a given ethnicity defend their home country. Given that the west doesn't think much of China as a nation besides "hey, evil guys who make cheap stuff", you are bound to run into them everywhere. This can be a reflex where they automatically defend everything China does just to stick it to the west despite them being otherwise intelligent people.

But this is just a given in every environment and one shouldn't fault them for it. People who have been ripped from their identity try to adapt. If I were living in the USA permanently I would also probably become quite the defender of my home country because you do miss it after all.

[AniThyng]

It hardly is exclusive, emigrants always try very hard to defend their home country. Heck, you can see it in every online community where people of a given ethnicity defend their home country. Given that the west doesn't think much of China as a nation besides "hey, evil guys who make cheap stuff", you are bound to run into them everywhere. This can be a reflex where they automatically defend everything China does just to stick it to the west despite them being otherwise intelligent people.

But this is just a given in every environment and one shouldn't fault them for it. People who have been ripped from their identity try to adapt. If I were living in the USA permanently I would also probably become quite the defender of my home country because you do miss it after all.

While I agree that is true, these kinds of posts seem more prevalent in 2nd generation diaspora who may not even have been born "back home". This isn't really about people justifying China's actions in the SCS like we see on here, I'm referring to people who outright explode with rage (against other POC, even, and ask them questions like "How do you not see this is problematic??") when confronted with a white person that dresses up in a Kimono or wears a chinese hairpin for fun. I mean they get offended at people who learn random phrases from their ancestral language to sound cool. Which while I agree is maybe somewhat offensive since it implies that's all the language is good for, if that bothers you, most people "back home" where they actually speak the language appreciate the effort*.

*And do the same with english ANYWAY.,

@Covenent: the very fact there is a subreddit called "Stormfront or SJW?" that makes a game out of guessing if a post is one or the other probably validates some of your points regarding where white supremacy and POC SJW somehow manage to turn into ironic reflections of each other.

It's probably worth noting that by some definitions I may in fact qualify as "whitewashed**", hence my inability to comprehend some of these things personally.

**insumuch as that can apply to someone who only set foot in a western country after he was an adult, but had a childhood diet of american kid's shows, british and american kid's literature, and american video games and grew up in a ex-british colony that still has numerous ties to the UK when it's not busy playing at being more arab than the arabs.

[Joun_Lord]

The thing about this woman Casey Nocket doing this that strikes me as ludicrous is the fact she put evidence of it on the web for all the world to see. She had to know it was illegal, she had to know there would be an investigation, and if the internet caught wind of it they massively overreact as they are inclined to do. I wonder what was going through her head. Did she think she would get famous or was she some spoiled brat with a case of "afluenza"?

Its also apparently not a uncommon phenomenon for people to brag and post evidence of their misdeeds online as a Google search makes hilariously clear.

I don't think she deserves jail time (jail is something I'd wish only one the worst of the worst) but she should definitely be made to pay for and participate in the clean up and be made to do an appropriately high number of hours of community service.

[Havok]

Dude, she signed her 'street' name on the fucking art. It's not that hard to figure out her real name based on that. A competent investigator could probably figure it out in a few days if he used this new tool called the 'Internet' that the kids are raving about.

[Havok]

From her Tumblr:
"I wonder if I can paint Uluru, I hear Australians are drunks with no guns so it should be pretty easy."
Perma-Link
Yeah, she's as dumb as a box of rocks. I have no issues with her getting locked up for a very long time.

Why is it when we say things like this, it's obviously sarcasm or just joking around, but when someone else says it they must mean it down to the very core of their being?

[Gandalf]

The thing about this woman Casey Nocket doing this that strikes me as ludicrous is the fact she put evidence of it on the web for all the world to see. She had to know it was illegal, she had to know there would be an investigation, and if the internet caught wind of it they massively overreact as they are inclined to do. I wonder what was going through her head. Did she think she would get famous or was she some spoiled brat with a case of "afluenza"?

Isn't that what Banksy does, or does he get permission before he paints buildings?

[Joun_Lord]

The thing about this woman Casey Nocket doing this that strikes me as ludicrous is the fact she put evidence of it on the web for all the world to see. She had to know it was illegal, she had to know there would be an investigation, and if the internet caught wind of it they massively overreact as they are inclined to do. I wonder what was going through her head. Did she think she would get famous or was she some spoiled brat with a case of "afluenza"?

Isn't that what Banksy does, or does he get permission before he paints buildings?

As far as I know his stuff is illegal too. I don't think he asks for permission considering he is an unknown person and doesn't like to advertise where he paints so as to keep up the mystery or for it to be about the art and not him (or he just doesn't want to get caught). However (as far as I know) his stuff is not on centuries old paintings of cultural and archeological significance.

Ms Nocket probably did think she was the outdoors version of Banksy but the fact she was damaging irreplaceable things shows the difference between the two even if what both do are illegal.

[PKRudeBoy]

Considering a Banksy original can add several hundred thousand to a property's value, I doubt too many people complain.

[Lonestar]

Why is it when we say things like this, it's obviously sarcasm or just joking around, but when someone else says it they must mean it down to the very core of their being?

Because in this specific case she has already established a track record of multiple acts of vandalism. Which is why the "prison time is overkill" statements are such bullshit; it isn't one instance in one park that you can shrug off with a warning or a fine, it's several (that we know of) instances around multiple such parks. And at least at one point she know what she was doing was bad("I know, I'm a bad person..." ), so it's hard to claim ignorance on her part.

[Broomstick]

Considering a Banksy original can add several hundred thousand to a property's value, I doubt too many people complain.

I have heard a couple of small businesowners/proprietors who have gone on at length about what as asshole thing to do that is. For one thing, if "several hundred thousand" is added to a property's value the tax on that property goes up. It's not like the owner can simply remove the painting and give or sell it to someone else. A business or property owner may or may not want the sudden attention or traffic a Banksy could generate. Not everyone appreciate Banksy's art or style

Basically, their view point is that some asshole vandalized their property that is now going to cost the owner thousands or more to deal with. That can cause significant hardship to someone of modest means.

So yeah, plenty of people complain and think he's a criminal.

(Personally, while I like some of his work I question the attitude that he someone has a right to commandeer someone else's property to make them.)

[Havok]

Why is it when we say things like this, it's obviously sarcasm or just joking around, but when someone else says it they must mean it down to the very core of their being?

Because in this specific case she has already established a track record of multiple acts of vandalism. Which is why the "prison time is overkill" statements are such bullshit; it isn't one instance in one park that you can shrug off with a warning or a fine, it's several (that we know of) instances around multiple such parks. And at least at one point she know what she was doing was bad("I know, I'm a bad person..." ), so it's hard to claim ignorance on her part.

I'm talking about her crack about Australians numbnuts.

But since your brought it up, change 'rocks in national forest' to 'skyscraper in New York', 'train in Chicago'. Those are defacing things literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but no one in here would be advocating prison time, but oh no paint on something I LIKE and it's Federal Time You Fucking Criminal!
Unless she actually DESTROYED something historic, none of this merits more than some semi big fines and the community service time it takes to remove her paintings.

[Ziggy Stardust]

To be fair, that crack about Australians might not have even been her. She deactivated her Tumblr when her tags started making the news, and some troll quickly nabbed the url and has been using it ... well, to troll.

[Darmalus]

I'm talking about her crack about Australians numbnuts.

But since your brought it up, change 'rocks in national forest' to 'skyscraper in New York', 'train in Chicago'. Those are defacing things literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but no one in here would be advocating prison time, but oh no paint on something I LIKE and it's Federal Time You Fucking Criminal!
Unless she actually DESTROYED something historic, none of this merits more than some semi big fines and the community service time it takes to remove her paintings.

People would probably flip out if those were irreplaceable thousand year old trains and skyscrapers. To paraphrase an Indiana Jones movie, in a thousand years our old cat food cans and candy wrappers will be worth something.

[Havok]

And again SHOW ANYWHERE that she actually DESTROYED anything irreplaceable? Like I said, if she painted on or over 1000 years old graffiti then yeah, that is a whole other level. Destroying history is practically unforgivable and I have stated my stance on that, IF, that was the case.

As it stands now, it looks like it is rocks in a National park and rocks CLOSE to the ancient paintings, but not over any.

I mean, you can go to any forest and paint on a rock and it is going to be thousands of years old. It is what is already there that matters.

[Broomstick]

But since your brought it up, change 'rocks in national forest' to 'skyscraper in New York', 'train in Chicago'. Those are defacing things literally worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but no one in here would be advocating prison time, but oh no paint on something I LIKE and it's Federal Time You Fucking Criminal!

Actually, having lived in a urban area and frequently witnessing graffiti I could get behind a couple months prison time for the guilty parties.