Is the Guardian worse than it used to be?

haven;t read the article but yeah people use it way too casually and it's weird, but it's up to them really, if they want to. stand-up comedians are the worst people.

My problem obv. is I'm not hanging around with enough wankers to have noticed the increase in casual use

it's a bit like how 'prison rape jokes' became this really easy go-to on panel quizzes. people who make these jokes are massive, gaping arseholes, but i'm not 'offended' by them, just kind of pitying.

patient zero:

http://britlitwiki.wikispaces.com/file/view/rock.jpg/143866901/rock.jpg

good work getting "prison rape" and "massive gaping arseholes" in the same post
xp

isn't it just a matter of language...words which are taboo just can't retain their impact, regardless of their meaning.

really well put tbh, and lack of ability to express this clearly is what gets me into trouble in other threads on similar subjects tbh.

yeah, I think the rise I've noticed in actual rape references and jokes is much more troublesome than 'rape' as an intensifier, stupid and thoughtless as that may be. I've been at pub quizzes where literally half of the team names were 'hilarious' rape jokes, made me wish I had deflated their party by having a team name citing an unpleasant rape statistic or some such.

What weird unpleasant people you all seem to associate with

'Rapey' has been a favoured descriptive term for about 10 years now.

Descriptive term for weird creepy stalkerish males on internet forums? I've only ever heard/seen it used here.

it's a bit like how 'prison rape jokes' became this really easy go-to on panel quizzes

And every cop/detective drama, no matter how high or low brow, will add a reference.

First saw 'rapey' and 'hatefuck' on Popbitch first, possibly during their era of the pram-face.

the tolkeinian cosmology of popbitch

Joe, back then the word 'rape' meant 'kidnapping'. 'Rape' got its current meaning through a misunderstanding of what went on during the Rape of the Sabine Women.

And, outside of the Internet, I haven't heard anyone make a joke about rape in years.

Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners, "get ready to get gang-raped again"

hat tip to graun for not contextualizing that

And, outside of the Internet, I haven't heard anyone make a joke about rape in years.

― Christine Green Leafy Dragon Indigo, Friday, September 10, 2010 2:47 PM (50 seconds ago) Bookmark

there's... an... outside...?

Jokes about non-specific rape, that is. I still hear a prison rape joke once in a blue moon. And this is the only place I hear 'rapey', I'm assuming this is a Britishism.

there's... an... outside...?

Yeah. It's awful. Stay inside, I beg you.

internet to syntax, dignity: 'grtggra'

I'm assuming this is a Britishism.

No, an Internetism

I've heard the term used in a "humorous" or ott descriptive way a bit over the last few years, prior to that, never, really. Last IRL instance I can remember was when one of the office staff at the last job's car broke down on the way to work, and she arrived in a bit of a state of high emotion. when recounting this, the (female) service department described her thus "you should have seen the state she was in, she looked like she'd been RAPED!" (emphasis was on the last word) I didn't think it was cool, I guess I should have complained, but the manager was a fucking psycho, who delighted in making the service staff's lives hell so I bottled it (she got sacked about a month after this, a bunch of service techs all handed in their notice b/c of her psycho-ness) anyway, I recognise what the guardian article's about, and don't like it.

jesus i'm no saint with language but pash that's pretty wtf

Joe, back then the word 'rape' meant 'kidnapping'. 'Rape' got its current meaning through a misunderstanding of what went on during the Rape of the Sabine Women.

not really, the modern meaning had been established for centuries by the 18th c. pope's alluding to helen of troy's kidnap etc, but he's also jokingly comparing the violation of having some hair cut off against your will with being raped.

It was the actual epitome of a dysfunctional workplace, darra, I shd maybe recount my experineces there on 77 before i forget it all, dunno, maybe better to let it fade away. I hate being unemployed but it's better than working for that lot.

aven;t read the article but yeah people use it way too casually and it's weird, but it's up to them really, if they want to. stand-up comedians are the worst people.

― The sulky expression from the hilarious "Aubrey Plaza" persona (history mayne)

agree w this, genetally, especially as regards to stand up comedians. I guess it shouldn't really be surprising. when i worked for the PA company we ofthen put on a PA for stand-ups at a couple of regular nights in n'cle. The ONLY one I remember being nice was Jo Brand, every other one wether national or local was an arrogant, unbearable motherfucker.

Related to the article, and to the guardian and other media generally, I hate seeing the existence of stupid facebook groups, and bollocks on twitter reported as if it were newsworthy in its own right, or as if it proved anything. i guess it's probably a way of doing a voxpop while being too lazt to get away from your desk, IDK, all it seems to probe to me is that such sites are a way for stupid, bored people to find common cause in saying stupid, ignorant things.

First saw 'rapey' and 'hatefuck' on Popbitch first, possibly during their era of the pram-face.

― maintenant avec plus de fromage (suzy), Friday, 10 September 2010 13:43 (55 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I always think of hatefuck as an Americanism but not sure I have any real basis for this... 'rapey', and god help me for remembering it this vividly, was on Popbitch however, iirc a quote from a 'source' about reality show crepe Paul Danan

"hatefuck" is much, much older than Popbitch. Dunno how old, but e.g. Pussy Galore, mid 80s

Ohhh yeah it is Pussy Galore but tbh I never heard anyone use 'hatefuck' outside discussion of Groovy Hate Fuck until the term wound up with Popbitch webmongs.

'hatefuck' is the sort of term that needed the internet etc in order to become popularized

Yeah, I should imagine it is easier to type casually than it is to say out loud.

the harrison/haye interview on today was fucking mind-boggling btw. best argument for banning boxing i've heard in a long time. seems to have been redacted from the archives though.

I reckon the fight will be a good advert for banning boxing.

haha

Not at all unique to the Guardian, but I'd hoped headlines like this would be on the decrease:
Man shot five because of way wife cooked his eggs

to which my automatic reaction is "No, he shot them because he was mentally unstable and chose to kill them".
Do you think this kind of headline contributes in any way to the notion that an arbitrary action can cause you to be shot in the head, or am I being ridiculous?

there's a british/american divide in how that's being reported, or there was as of last night

I know it was a few days ago but is this hip-hop-loving, indie-scorning John Harris by any chance related to the man who wrote these columns?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/jan/05/popandrock
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/oct/13/electronicmusic.popandrock

I went and looked at the comments. :(

"Any white, middle-class, university educated man who claims he can appreciate Dizzee Rascal's Boy In Da Corner, for example, is an outrageous fraud and a liar. In fact Mr Rascal's credibility as an artist relies heavily on the bogus patronage of misguided music critics. He is an inarticulate, talentless thug. Mr Harris, answer me this one question please: why do rappers never get pulled up for their homophobia and misogyny? Is it because they is black?"

i just read that 1st link and could someone who writes for the guardian please tell john harris to go fuck himself? thanks.

let's say it loud: funk is the worst musical genre ever invented, a big old stain on Brown's CV and the cause of at least four decades of grinding misery.

This, I will allow, is less a matter of such trailblazing proto-funk Brown pieces as Papa's Got a Brand New Bag, Sex Machine and I Got the Feelin', as the ongoing nightmare of chronic indulgence and musical slop they undoubtedly spawned. If you doubt this, listen to the supposed high points of the genre: anything by the likes of Tower of Power, pre-disco Kool and the Gang, Cameo before they discovered pop music, or the woeful Ohio Players. And before anyone mentions the peak-period work of George Clinton, I say only this: hats off for the UFO, onstage fancy dress and occasional pearling tune, but did everything have to be so long? (I have a friend who saw Funkadelic in Manchester in 1975 - a six-hour performance, he says, that amounted to an experiment involving the limits of human endurance.)

just fuck off harris.

John Hongris

was gonna

yeah.

more discussion here "funk"

that james brown piece is the worst music journalism i have ever read, and i'm not even going to click on that link again as every time i think about that piece of shit being published i just want to scream

if i ever met this dude i would have to say, woah, you're the guy who wrote the single worst piece of music journalism ever, well done for locating the nadir of our often sinkhole-skirting artform

i really hope you meet him!

This article was amended on 27 September 2010. In the editing process, a sentence was changed so that Steve Bell seemed to be saying he had once "heard" Gordon Brown make a remark about mad eye deficiency to Ed Milliband. The correct original sentence has now been restored.

i don't really get why a national newspaper is publishing blog posts, but i think this is the least bad blog post i remember the guardian publishing: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/the-lay-scientist/2010/sep/24/1. will be interesting to see what the bloggers make of it.

i'm sure that the ben goldacre nerd army is right that science reporting is worse than other specialisms, but i feel the same way about this as i did about that charlie brooker youtube viral on tv news: it's not that insightful just to point out the obvious stylistic features of news writing.

this is just facile: "This paragraph elaborates on the claim, adding weasel-words like "the scientists say" to shift responsibility for establishing the likely truth or accuracy of the research findings on to absolutely anybody else but me, the journalist."

attribution isn't "weasel words", and ffs what does he expect them to do, replicate the experiment in their newsroom?

yeah, it's pretty banal and self-congratulatory, and links to peer-reviewed papers is not where the fight is being lost. it's just when the guardian publishes a blog post that is not awful it reminds me that: jesus wept, the guardian is publishing people thinking out loud. i mean, i get that they're not going to run out of space, but they could set the bar a little higher.

it's pretty funny. didn't read the whole thing. does sort of raise question of 'what do you want?' if the scientific finding is 'a glass of red wine every day will kill you/extend your life', then ok, blast away. but sure, journalists can't venture an opinion on scientific specialisms -- oh noes. because of course there are hundreds of scientists who are specialists across the board and can write for a wide public.

xposts