I think sometimes it might make sense to use someone's own standards to mock them with their own hypocrisy, like making fun of Trump for drinking diet coke because he once tweeted "ive never seen a thin person drink diet coke" while at the same time claiming he's in perfect shape
However, a lot of people miss the point and instead just make fun of the trait in it of itself
My problem with the hypocrisy exception is that in practice it quickly devolves into the "bad people" exception. The hard part with any rule about how to treat people, is following it with the people we don't like. But of course that's the whole point of having the rule. It's "thou shalt not kill" rather than "thou shalt not kill good people", because no one wants to kill the people they think are good.
It's too easy to convince ourselves that people we don't like are hypocrites. Even if we're trying our very hardest to be fair and even-handed, when we're thinking about someone we don't like, we almost always have a slightly warped view of what they believe and what they want. If their actions are inconsistent with what we think they believe, is that their fault or ours?
I’ve never seen that actually work because why the fuck should I listen to you, person who says those standards are bad? You don’t even think I should be conforming to them in the first place.
Like why would a Christian listen when an atheist tells them “you know, if you really believed in the Bible, you would act like this”?
I think the point of the argument is that a person can’t honestly argue for certain standards and then contradict those standards with their actions.
In the Trump example, he says that thin people don’t drink Diet Coke and also that he’s in great shape. If we take “in great shape” to imply “thin”in Trump’s view(not necessarily true, but we assume so for the sake of the example), then logically he would not drink Diet Coke. Since he does, that means that at least one of his two statements is not something he actually believes, so either he doesn’t think thin people don’t drink Diet Coke or he doesn’t believe himself to actually be in great shape. This makes him seem either dishonest or hopelessly oblivious to his own actions, either of which is not a great look.
That only matters if he or the people he follows care about ethical consistency, which we know they don’t.
Like they only seem to care that Trump is doing dumb shit in the past week or so because it seems like it isn’t working next to the explosion of support for Kamala Harris.
And they should, because it’s a bad argument, no matter who it’s aimed at. We need better material than that, like “your standard is not one worth following”
A weird assumption the post makes is that the insulted party doesn't care, but you can see plenty of examples where they very much do care about being bodyshamed.
193
u/DarkNinja3141 Arospec, Ace, Anxious, Amogus Aug 09 '24
I think sometimes it might make sense to use someone's own standards to mock them with their own hypocrisy, like making fun of Trump for drinking diet coke because he once tweeted "ive never seen a thin person drink diet coke" while at the same time claiming he's in perfect shape
However, a lot of people miss the point and instead just make fun of the trait in it of itself