NOAA fisheries said that a dead bottlenose dolphin was found on West Mae’s Beach in Cameron Parish, Louisiana with multiple gunshot wounds on March 13.
Yeah taking “single dolphin shot repeatedly” to “but what about the fishing industry” isn’t a productive take, it’s whataboutism. They are independent issues, and trying to put focus on one removes the focus from the other
Racism:“You can put those people in a camp because they have a different skin color”
Speciesism:“You can put those beings in a camp because they have feathers”
The step you need, to go from “racism is wrong” to “speciesism is wrong” is to extend your circle of compassion to all sentient animals and not just humans.
It is amazing to watch someone’s mind melt like this just because the truth of their food source is pointed out to them. This is a full-blown insane comment.
Anybody who gets so triggered and defensive when someone points out how disgusting factory farms are doesn’t have a diet that they are proud of. Whether your cognitive dissonance allows you to acknowledge that or not is a different story.
I don’t think this is whataboutism in its most deflective form; I think it’s,“Why are we concerned about a one-off incident but not looking at the elephant in the room?”
I guess I don’t consider things whtaaboutism if it’s pointing to something that encapsulates the original issue. These issues are not mutually-exclusive and signal the same problem: It’s just asking why people are inconsistent with their outrage. In other words, whataboutism in this context can be effective when pointing out hypocrisy and double-standards.
To contrast, whataboutism as a deflection tends to be a substitute for,“You did it, too! Thus ignore what I did / what I did wrong is justified.” Again, this is not that.
Except one (shooting a dolphin repeatedly) is an act of sport or maliciousness, while the slaughter of marine mammals is an issue of the fishing industry. It’s like someone locking someone up in their basement vs the unjust imprisonment for many inmates that happens in the US. One is personal, and specific, one is systemic, happens all the time, and needs to be approached with a broader scope. They are all wrong, but you can’t lump them together because you are generally upset
I think we can absolutely say that industrialized slaughter is objectively worse in terms of the scale of suffering for the victims. We abstract the moral suffering in the fishing farm; but whoa, if someone individually shoots an animal — totally different! At the end of the day, scale is what matters.
Personally I couldn’t care less about the assailant’s state of mind; what matters is the victim
I disagree because it connects two topics — one that is generally accepted by society — to another that everyone perceives as wrong because of an intimate emotional reaction.
Sure, but instead of saying “what about the shit they are doing to other sea life,” it could be worded as “this is a good time to check up on what’s going on with the fishing industry in general, here’s some links, and ways you can help”
One is just telling people they are assholes for even caring about the shot dolphin and should be better people by caring about bigger issues, the other is knowing people will care about the emotional story and then guiding them to learn more about the shit that happens in the fishing industry. People are emotional, you can’t just say “hey dummies what about this” and expect it to connect, it doesn’t help, you need to guide people.
Saying this is unimportant and people should focus elsewhere is disruptive and doesn’t move people toward bigger issues. Connecting this to bigger issues through conversation and generally better rhetoric does
This is a really great way to phrase it. I am very curious to see if this difference in phrasing would really be received differently than the more blunt approach, which certainly doesn’t seem to work for most people. Hopefully, we will all have AIs soon that can spoon feed anyone who can’t connect the dots on their own.
It blows my mind that people can be reminded of the mass slaughter that is happening daily and think that it must somehow be excusing the one-off brutal slaughter of an individual. I always just assume that people hate to be reminded of the implication of their “sustainable” wild caught tuna or whatever.
It’s a one time incident. This is like when everyone lost their minds when a single turtle got a straw stuck in its nose. I’m not saying that wasn’t a bad thing. Just like I never said someone shooting a dolphin isn’t horrible.
But why offer a 20K reward for this while completely ignoring the mass slaughter taking place every day? Talk about unproductive.
Probably because shooting a random dolphin isn’t great
Yeah taking “single dolphin shot repeatedly” to “but what about the fishing industry” isn’t a productive take, it’s whataboutism. They are independent issues, and trying to put focus on one removes the focus from the other
I think it’s good to make people connect their disdain for animal abuse to something they can actually do something about
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Huh? I am against slavery. Of any species.
Direct quote of you equating different races to different species.
Racism: “You can put those people in a camp because they have a different skin color”
Speciesism: “You can put those beings in a camp because they have feathers”
The step you need, to go from “racism is wrong” to “speciesism is wrong” is to extend your circle of compassion to all sentient animals and not just humans.
It is amazing to watch someone’s mind melt like this just because the truth of their food source is pointed out to them. This is a full-blown insane comment.
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Anybody who gets so triggered and defensive when someone points out how disgusting factory farms are doesn’t have a diet that they are proud of. Whether your cognitive dissonance allows you to acknowledge that or not is a different story.
I don’t think this is whataboutism in its most deflective form; I think it’s, “Why are we concerned about a one-off incident but not looking at the elephant in the room?”
I guess I don’t consider things whtaaboutism if it’s pointing to something that encapsulates the original issue. These issues are not mutually-exclusive and signal the same problem: It’s just asking why people are inconsistent with their outrage. In other words, whataboutism in this context can be effective when pointing out hypocrisy and double-standards.
To contrast, whataboutism as a deflection tends to be a substitute for, “You did it, too! Thus ignore what I did / what I did wrong is justified.” Again, this is not that.
Except one (shooting a dolphin repeatedly) is an act of sport or maliciousness, while the slaughter of marine mammals is an issue of the fishing industry. It’s like someone locking someone up in their basement vs the unjust imprisonment for many inmates that happens in the US. One is personal, and specific, one is systemic, happens all the time, and needs to be approached with a broader scope. They are all wrong, but you can’t lump them together because you are generally upset
I think we can absolutely say that industrialized slaughter is objectively worse in terms of the scale of suffering for the victims. We abstract the moral suffering in the fishing farm; but whoa, if someone individually shoots an animal — totally different! At the end of the day, scale is what matters.
Personally I couldn’t care less about the assailant’s state of mind; what matters is the victim
I never said one was worse, I just said that derailing the conversation of one to focus on the other wasn’t productive
I disagree because it connects two topics — one that is generally accepted by society — to another that everyone perceives as wrong because of an intimate emotional reaction.
Sure, but instead of saying “what about the shit they are doing to other sea life,” it could be worded as “this is a good time to check up on what’s going on with the fishing industry in general, here’s some links, and ways you can help”
One is just telling people they are assholes for even caring about the shot dolphin and should be better people by caring about bigger issues, the other is knowing people will care about the emotional story and then guiding them to learn more about the shit that happens in the fishing industry. People are emotional, you can’t just say “hey dummies what about this” and expect it to connect, it doesn’t help, you need to guide people.
Saying this is unimportant and people should focus elsewhere is disruptive and doesn’t move people toward bigger issues. Connecting this to bigger issues through conversation and generally better rhetoric does
Can’t argue with that, I agree!
This is a really great way to phrase it. I am very curious to see if this difference in phrasing would really be received differently than the more blunt approach, which certainly doesn’t seem to work for most people. Hopefully, we will all have AIs soon that can spoon feed anyone who can’t connect the dots on their own.
It blows my mind that people can be reminded of the mass slaughter that is happening daily and think that it must somehow be excusing the one-off brutal slaughter of an individual. I always just assume that people hate to be reminded of the implication of their “sustainable” wild caught tuna or whatever.
It’s a one time incident. This is like when everyone lost their minds when a single turtle got a straw stuck in its nose. I’m not saying that wasn’t a bad thing. Just like I never said someone shooting a dolphin isn’t horrible.
But why offer a 20K reward for this while completely ignoring the mass slaughter taking place every day? Talk about unproductive.