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Topic: Anti-meme for Godwin's Law? (Read 1332 times) |
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deusdiabolus
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Anti-meme for Godwin's Law?
« on: 2007-05-12 15:43:39 » |
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The inspiration for this:
Godwin's Law is named after cyber lawyer Mike Godwin. Godwin's Law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one."
Godwin's blog links to Wiki, where you can learn that the concept was initially used in specific reference to Usenet newsgroups discussions but has since been applied to any threaded online discussion.
In Usenet tradition, when someone uses the Nazi/Hitler analogy, the thread is over and whoever keys the dissembling dis indicates he or she has "lost" the debate.
(...)
In a 1994 Wired article Godwin wrote: "the best way to fight such memes is to craft counter-memes designed to put them in perspective. The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering - crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones."
Which, of course, is (theoretically?) something we could do. So...in order to create an anti-meme, I guess the thing to do would be to come up with a suitable alternative...but what?
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David Lucifer
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Enlighten me.
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Re:Anti-meme for Godwin's Law?
« Reply #1 on: 2007-05-13 05:39:42 » |
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I think the nazis and Hitler are invoked so often in internet arguments simply because in most circles everyone agrees they were evil. I'm not sure what a counter-meme would look like, any ideas?
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deusdiabolus
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Re:Anti-meme for Godwin's Law?
« Reply #2 on: 2007-07-04 07:54:25 » |
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Quote from: David Lucifer on 2007-05-13 05:39:42
I think the nazis and Hitler are invoked so often in internet arguments simply because in most circles everyone agrees they were evil. I'm not sure what a counter-meme would look like, any ideas?
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Significant question: would the counter need to be something extremely good, or extremely evil but with no reference to Nazism?
For extremely good things that most people would agree on: Ice cream, Jimi Hendrix, pizza, picnics, dolphins, Muppets, orgasms
For extremely evil things with no references to Nazism: the Darfur genocide, Enron, McCarthyism (although swapping Nazis with Communists may not be an improvement), hurting children, killing dolphins
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