so consider the argument:
"[acceptable target] won't see your tweets that use [ageism, ableism, racism, &cet] but your [old, disabled, POC] friends will"
i agree with the basic values that would prompt someone to say this argument. like if one person is saying WLOG "Andrew Tate has smol pipi", and one person is making this argument against saying that, ceteris paribus I share more values with the second person. whenever i ramblebabble about "don't use weapons that can act indiscriminately" this is what i'm talking about. or as that one gifset from tumblr says it-- "This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not use it."
but. as someone who looks closely at words and such. every time i see the sentence "[acceptable target] won't see your [bad] tweets but your [marginalized] friends will" I am filled with incandescent rage, because:
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"[acceptable target] won't see your bad tweets" isn't necessary to figure out you shouldn't say [acceptable target] has WLOG tiny pipi. put another way: does the target seeing your tweet make your e.g. ableist joke more ok?
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"but your [marginalized] friends will" ALSO isn't necessary to figure out you shouldn't say [acceptable target] has WLOG tiny pipi! in fact i think it's a huge trap to think in this pseudoconsequentialist fashion about what kind of speech is right. one of many problems, imo, is that once you assume the extreme of "a joke is offensive iff one of my friends is offended by it" your worldview is "what if Positivism let you say slurs if your friend group is all white"
in other words, literally no word in this sentence contributes to an argument i find at all acceptable.
yet the sentence as a whole is a signal that someone shares a value that's important to me.
do you see how this absolutely shatters my brain. its like if you blew a dogwhistle and it shattered your favorite cup like a opera singer breaking glass
and lest the reader think this is all five-dimensional word chess with no bearing on reality, the Posters of the hour have literally said (in the fashion of a joke-that-is-also-trying-to-make-an-argument-because-thus-is-the-social-function-of-humor) "ok but Elon Musk is seeing your tweets saying he has WLOG small pipi. keep going gang".
