Saturday, August 10, 2013

How Not to Debate What We Should Be Doing at Movie Theaters

How Not to Debate What We Should Be Doing at Movie Theaters - Richard Lawson - The Atlantic Wire
Then this morning, another tech guy, writer and self-described entrepreneur Anil Dash, wrote a smug, scolding piece about priggish "shushers" and their obstinate refusal to let other people enjoy movies the way they want to enjoy them — meaning talking, texting, tweeting, tromboning, whatever. It's a gruesome read.

Most glaringly, Dash, in an effort to paint these "shushers" as people standing athwart history yelling stop, invokes slavery of all things as evidence that societal norms are forever changing.

No, he really did: "This list of responses pops up all the time, whether it’s for arguing why women should not wear pants, or defending slavery, or trying to preserve a single meaning for the word 'ironic,' or fighting marriage equality, or claiming rap isn’t 'real' music, or in any other time when social conservatives want to be oppressive assholes to other people."

In likening the social stigma against bringing iPads into movie theaters to the defenders of slavery, Dash was, he explained on Twitter, "providing a wide range of examples of cultural conservatism, I showed a continuum from trivial to profane."

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