http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/20502624#20502624 (@Guru Adria)
> if he was concerned about my opinion being real, then a quick, polite clarification whould easily have made me check myself

You mean like when I pointed out that "I just think it's kind of tasteless, and that this isn't the place for it"?
To me, that seemed like a good time to check yourself, and say "oh, yeah, you're right, it was in bad taste".

But you didn't check yourself. You doubled down and defended your position, arguing that it was ok to say it because you didn't actually mean it, and that it was ok to say because people were high strung and worried about the ongoing situation. You kept defending your statement, rather than retract it. You never once say that you were wrong in calling for murder, only that it was justified to call for murder as long as {you didn't mean it,you were really angry and frustrated}

http://chat.stackoverflow.com/transcript/message/20503785#20503785 (@R. Martinho)
>  Jalf thinks trivializing things like that has a negative impact. I doubt he thinks you're a murderer or actually want someone dead.

Yep, that's really it in a nutshell. I know you're not seriously advocating murder, just like a few guys sharing a rape joke aren't actually advocating rape, just like people ironically perpetuating racist stereotypes might not be racist themselves. But it is still spreading a culture in which it is okay to say these things, in which others are encouraged to think like this. Sure, you don't *actually* want to kill that terrorist in Sydney, but you talk loudly about how someone *should* kill him. Since that discussion is going on, a few others join in. Everyone hears the opinion that "people like him should just be murdered". The next time his actions come up in a discussion, one of these people will feel that it is a bit more acceptable to advocate that he should just be killed. A few more people hear this, and perhaps get into a boyish competition of trying to one-up each others with what should happen to people like him. Sooner or later, someone is going to go "hey, I've heard so many times that people like that should just be killed. I'm gonna pick up my rifle and *do* something about it".

Words are important. What we say matters. The opinions we hear others express *do* shape us. If you hear a certain opinion a lot, and if it is rarely contradicted, then you almost certainly start believing it yourself.

We live in a world where some people *do* pick up a gun and shoot people when they're pissed off. Sometimes this happens as a direct consequence of being around people who incite hatred and *talk* about how violence would solve the problem and how totally justified it is. Some times, for some people, these opinions and acts are normalized and trivialized to the extent that it seems the only sane viewpoint. Suddenly someone who's been marinating in these expressions and attitudes for a while has a bad day and decides to *do* something about the problem. And then you have something like the Montreal massacre in 1989 where a dozens of people get shot, not for *doing* anything, but because the murderer had been convinced that all feminists are evil and must be stopped. He didn't think that up by himself. He exchanged opinions with people who agreed with him, people who fanned the flames and encouraged the hatred, gradually building it to more and more extreme levels. Or you have a culture in which people who would never call themselves racist, who have plenty of black friends and strongly oppose any form of racial discrimination nevertheless find themselves saying, when a black person gets shot by the police, that "he was probably a criminal, he must have done something to deserve it". Because that stereotype has been perpetuated so often and been questioned so rarely that... well, it must be true.

Or there's fucking gamer-fucking-gate. A few thousand spoilt and entitled gamers who'd probably be fairly harmless young teenagers if you met them in person, are told that "games journalism is corrupt, and we've got to DO something", so they start tweeting angrily under #gamergate, they read what other gamergaters tell them, and they hear so often that this woman wants to censor game, and that that woman slept with journalists for positive coverage of her game that *it must be true*. And people keep telling each others how true it is, and how severe these offenses are, and how harshly they must be punished. And then you end up in a situation where several women have to flee their homes due to death and rape threats, several others quit their jobs and careers in the games industry because of the intense harassment they were subjected to. And none of the people involved see anything wrong in it. Because *most* of them aren't actually sending death threats, they're just part of the choir droning on about how EVIL these women are and how SOMEONE should do SOMETHING about it. It's not *their* fault that some people hear what they say and decide to take it one step further, that the atmosphere of hatred and threats becomes so normalized that the targets start fearing for their actual lives.

It's human to get upset and irrational when bad things happen. I can't blame anyone for saying awful things out of frustration when something like the Sydney Siege occurs. But it is still important to be able to recognize afterwards that "oh shit, what I just said was actually really really awful, and it trivializes something that I absolutely do not want agree with."

It was never about whether or not you personally, in your heart of hearts, *wanted* the man to be shot. It was about you telling others that he should be shot, and about you refusing to admit that this was a bad thing to say. It was about others hearing the opinion that "this man should be shot" uttered with no one apparently disagreeing.

Heck, for a little thought experiment, you said that you were against the death penalty. How long do you think it'd be before the death penalty was introduced if the population at large started saying that this or that person should just be killed? The opinions we express matter. They influence the public discourse, they influence other people's opinions.

We've managed to cultivate an internet culture where hatred, threats, bigotry and extremism is far too accepted and seen as something you just have to deal with. Grow thicker skin. And we've done this precisely by letting people say toxic shit without calling them out on it. Perhaps I'm just getting old, or perhaps it's all the shit that has happened online and in the "real" world over the last 6 months, but I'm getting fed up with that. I don't want to live in a world where it is ok for gamers to send death threats to game developers, where it is ok for police to shoot unarmed black men, where it's ok to harass women at tech conferences, where it's ok to express hatred against someone solely for which gender they prefer to have sex with.

So yeah, I'm sensitive to this. Not because it affects me personally, but because I think words matter, and because I don't like the slippery slope of allowing people to spread bigoted or hateful opinions unchallenged. I can't and won't censor what others say or think. But I *can* do my part in making sure that whenever people hear opinions like these, they *also* hear opposition to them, hear someone say "you know, I'm not cool with you caling for murder, or disliking all gays, or treating gypsies like shit or blaming innocent black people for getting shot by the police, or justifying sexual harassment in the workplace".

However, I didn't leave because of this specific episode. I left because of the bigotry, the sexism, racism and homophobia, because as much as I *could* argue against it, the Lounge does not belong to me and I don't make the rules. Historically, this place has had very few limits on what you can say here, and if people are ok with it being an exchange hub for these these opinions, if they're accepted here, then I'm just being a troublemaker if I keep calling people out on these things.

But I don't want to lend legitimacy to these opinions by being part of a chat room where they're the norm.