If we're going to delete everything hat dehumanize others, we can't have comparisons to animals anymore. No more gators, sea lions or stuff like that.

which I don’t see a problem with.

the sea lion thing is worn out, unfunny, and never sat right with me to begin with.

as far as the “gator” thing, that all depends. I don’t think the majority of people using “gator” here mean that they’re referring to GG as alligators. I personally use gater because it’s just like truther or birther and that’s pretty much what they’ve always been.

Eventually, we will run into the problem that mocking people is dehumanizing in a way too, because we turn them into an object of ridicule instead of seeing the whole person beneath the stupidity.

I’m not really sure how we’d get to that point.

what the intent is here is that, instead of relying on “lol just a bunch of angry white virgins” we move more towards “wow what a terrible idea and/or thing to say”. that’s something I’ve not liked anytime I’ve seen it, and tried my best to never engage in. it’s the exact kind of shit you see in /r/fatpeoplehate or /r/cringepics or whatever, where the immediate jump is to the person’s appearance, sexual activeness, or some other completely irrelevant thing.

honestly, if we get to a point where we’re solely attacking their ideas for being extremely hilariously ridiculous, that’d be great, because I don’t see why it should matter how many times they’ve had sex, whether or not they live in a basement, or the state of their facial hair.

it’s about keeping the insults precise, rather than having a lot of collateral damage. I’ve spoken up when people have made basement-dweller jokes in here, because I’m a fat white guy with a beard who lives in my grandpa’s basement. it hurts to hear that I’m just like gaters because I live in a basement.

and you know what? I haven’t seen comments like that for awhile. and that’s a positive thing.

so yeah, precision drone-strike insults is what we should aim for.