2w ago

Elon Musk keeps tweeting the 'R-word.' Disability advocates say he needs to stop.

www.usatoday.com Elon Musk keeps tweeting the 'R-word.' Disability advocates say he needs to stop.

Elon Musk's slurs against disabled people anger them and their advocates. They're speaking out.

Elon Musk has the ear of one of the most powerful people in the world – President Donald Trump – making him one of the most powerful people in the world, too. He's been given unfettered access to adjust the federal government's budget and headcount.

So what's he doing posting a slur multiple times targeting the disabled community on social media?

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85 comments

Useless headline. The R-word is apparently "retarded".
I spell it out here because this isn't mentioned at all in the article. Figuring out what it was talking about required finding and reading text that was embedded in an image on xcom.
- Yes, it is... stop.
  
  I just Ctrl+f'd the article and can confirm it's not defined. Why do you say it is?
  Edit: woof there's something going on in the replies that I do not want to be part of.
  
  They edited their post to be completely different from when I replied. I haven't been back since. Everyone else that replied before the edit doesn't make sense anymore either.
  Kind of sucks that can happen, maybe we should be notified when something we replied to is edited.
  
  They edited their post to be completely different from when I replied.
  No, I did not. I added a second paragraph to address your obvious misinterpretation.
  The first paragraph is what you replied to, and remains intact. You could have tried to understand it on its own, but instead you chose to look for an excuse to chide a stranger. That was unkind, unwarranted, and unnecessary.
  The question asked by throwback3090@lemmy.nz stands.
  
  His question wouldn't make sense if you didn't edit your post, though. As my post would have referred to your first sentence absent the second. And you'll notice everyone read your post the way I did before you edited it. When I came along, you had -5. The only reason mine seems like a weird response now is because I responded to what was effectively a completely different post, even if the original post is still in there.
  You were correct to edit your post. I don't want to edit mine, but I will add context.
  "You" knew what your original post was supposed to mean. But if every other viewer saw it as meaning what was written instead and you had to turn it around, are all of us readers really the ones in the wrong?
  
  As my post would have referred to your first sentence absent the second.
  There was never a point where my comment contained the first sentence absent the second.
  And you’ll notice everyone read your post the way I did before you edited it. When I came along, you had -5.
  Bandwagoning is very common on web forums. People are easily influenced by the first reply they see, and will often click a vote button before thinking about what was actually written.
  The paragraph I added was to try to guide people away from that bad habit once the bandwagoning had already started. It does not imply fault in my original comment.
  When I am the listener or reader, any time my first impression of a comment is negative, I consider it my responsibility to stop and consider other meanings before crying foul. That's the only way we can avoid miscommunication, after all, since it's not possible for a speaker or author to predict every potential misinterpretation, and the burden of avoiding it should not be entirely on them. I wish more people would do the same.
  
  So, you advocate for a generous reading of peoples posts. But, despite knowing what your original post contained, took me at my direct word instead of what I clearly meant... weird, why would someone do that? You knew I meant paragraph, and yet assumed malicious intent. While saying people shouldn't do that...
  And in your case it should have been even clearer I wrote the wrong word to convey my intended meaning.
- I can't wait for your treatise on pronouns, Sir Edgealot.
  
  Using the actual word for reporting is not the same as using the word as an insult. Bowdlerizing news doesn't do anything besides making them uncleared.
  
  You're in the wrong here. Reread the message and the tone of the message and then I'd like a 500 word essay on which particular diction in the post makes you think he's an edgelord rather than someone who genuinely doesn't know who would abbreviate something "r-word" as if it's an equivalent moral choice to call a person by that word as it is to call a person by a word that evokes 400 years of triangle trade suffering (or for a subset of the us population, the analogous c-word which many view as evoking 10,000 years of misogynistic behaviors).
  Once that essay is done, I'd like 1000 words on why you think this post makes him anti-trans or, if it's easier, anti-"pronoun" whatever that happens to be a dog whistle for in your head. Feel free to use their comment history for this one if needs be.
  
  The post was edited since that reply, not alot of people go back and check if that happened.
  
  The edit to my comment merely added the second paragraph, which explicitly spells out what should have been obvious to anyone with basic reading comprehension skills, or failing those, at least a modicum of simple human kindness.
  
  In retrospect, with the added context, I can see what you originally meant. But without it, your post very much was just another person using the word as though it was fine to say and weird that people wouldn't say it. And with it being at -5 when I posted, I wasn't the only one that read it that way. You even felt you needed to correct it after I left.
  
  But without it, your post very much was just another person using the word as though it was fine to say and weird that people wouldn’t say it.
  No, that's something that came entirely from you. My comment merely pointed out a failure of the article to say what it was talking about.
  It's important to be careful when communicating with others about issues that feed strong emotions in us. It's all too easy to project meaning that isn't there, and mistakenly vilify someone based on our own biases.
  And with it being at -5 when I posted, I wasn’t the only one that read it that way.
  Yes, and at least some of that was surely due to the influence of your comment.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect
  You even felt you needed to correct it after I left.
  That's faulty reasoning. What I added was not a correction, but an explicit statement of what should have been obvious to a reader who wasn't looking for a quarrel. In other words, I went the extra mile to do the reader's job for them. My addendum doesn't imply fault in the original.
  I did this only because I'm familiar with the way misguided replies can lead to toxic snowballs on web forums, and I noticed that your comment had the potential to start one.
  In retrospect, with the added context, I can see what you originally meant.
  A simple "I'm sorry for mistakenly chiding you" would have sufficed here. Good day.
  
  I can't make it be -5 before I posted based on what I posted. Your edit obviously clarified what it meant for most people and turned around your negative. I'm not trying to be a jerk, I am literally defending myself from you.
  Whether you knew what your post should have meant or not, it was obviously not clear, I wasn't the only person who read it the way I did. Why did you feel the need to edit it?
  This isn't actually a big deal. I'm ok that it happened. Don't worry about it.
  Edit: I will add that there is a reason it's a common practice to put "edit:" in front of any edit that might change the context of a post, especially if there are already replies to it at the time that will change their meaning with that edit.

85 comments