The BFD | Let’s All Play Nicely in the Sandpit

Andrea Vance, Senior Journalist at Stuff has penned an opinion piece entitled “The culture of nastiness: insults have replaced arguments in political debate“.

Andrea suggests that this needs to change and says, quite rightly, that being rude does not help:

In my small way, I am breaking the cycle. Being rude to someone generally provokes a bad-mannered reply, setting in motion a sequence of increasingly discourteous interactions.

Andrea

Insults have replaced arguments in debate.

Andrea

Andrea wants no part of the nastiness. She ends her piece with:

On it goes – the venting and ranting, no matter how irrational or hurtful in order to ensure a “healthy” debate and the maintenance of “free speech.”

Just leave me out of it.

Andrea

Andrea says that being rude to people is not productive and that she wants no part of the irrational and hurtful venting and ranting. Noble aspirations indeed.

Let’s have a look at the article Andrea wrote. It starts off relating a story about an email from an angry correspondent who had not been given the courtesy of a reply.

Maybe Michael did write to me before. If his emails didn’t end up in my aggressively filtered Spam folder, I probably did take no notice.

Andrea

“Being rude to someone [by ignoring their correspondence] generally provokes a bad-mannered reply.” Yes, that seemed to work nicely Andrea, so why ignore people?

Maybe Michael did write to me before. If his emails didn’t end up in my aggressively filtered Spam folder, I probably did take no notice. I have a strict policy of ignoring dickheads.

Andrea

“Insults [like ‘dickhead’] have replaced arguments in debate.”

In another confession, Andrea says:

Upsettingly for my correspondents, I do not self-censor. I am emotionally numb to the abuse. I care not that you are a man (they are always men) with a strong opinion and a keyboard. Your long, potty-mouthed tirade was in vain, it was most likely never read.

Andrea

Andrea, last time I looked, was a woman and, it seems, with a strong opinion and a keyboard [and a media outlet to publish through] and is now venting and ranting, no matter how irrationally or hurtfully.

All in all, her opinion piece to suggest that we reform our ways and play nicely is an exercise in anti-male rhetoric. She states it is always men who are abusive online while publicly calling Michael a dickhead. Hypocrisy?

Maybe it is because nobody accuses women of being sexist just because they criticised something that a man said online? Any man who criticises Ardern is called a “misogynist”, but women who criticise Luxon, for example, are never called misandrists.

The article then moves on to the Freedom protest:

The sheer strength of their malice seemed to justify and embolden their extreme behaviour. The ugly mood has awful consequences: 40 police officers were injured restoring order.

Andrea

40 police injured “restoring” order! Really?

If you have not yet watched the video River of Filth | The Peoples Perspective then please do so.

We have already seen violence against public figures: James Shaw was punched in the face in 2019.

Andrea

Curiously, there was no mention of dildo or mud throwing against National politicians.

And there is a paradox. Any culture shift – whether it be ‘political correctness’ or Ardern’s bid to restore kindness to politics – has backfired.

Andrea

The sort of kindness that deliberately creates classes of people? “That is what it is so, yip, yip”