Re: Are fine artworks in European museums deemed NSFW by forum rules?
Foxpup, on looking back over the thread, I think that my last post came off toward you in a way that I did not intend. I don’t quite apologize, because I was sincere in what I said, itself; I was simply being candid, not trying to criticize you personally. See below for a further note on that.*
Zeroth of all: Now, I am asking! —And not receiving any clear, authoritative answers. —And being criticized by some people for asking, as if I were asking a stupid question. Observe that the topic title ends in a question mark.
And first of all: I would ask, if I were doing something that I thought was questionable. I did not think that an art-museum piece was questionable; and in the first instance, I would not choose to participate in a forum where it was. As you can probably tell by now, this is an important issue to me.
(As I expected that it would be to others. Where are all of the ACLU types? Doesn’t the ACLU raise hell if some church ladies cover up a nude statue in a public park, or whatever? I am pretty sure that if I look on ACLU.org, I can find plenty of long wall-of-text essays about the social and cultural importance of protecting artworks.)
I consider the prohibition of fine art to be disgraceful. Disgusting. I wouldn’t significantly involve myself in any site where I knew that it may happen. Yes, it is a private forum that I am free to leave at any time. I was also free to not sign up here, if I knew that something like this could happen.
(That is not difficult: I have never been so deeply involved in an Internet forum; and other than some fire-and-forget throwaway accounts, I have not really participated in any forum since perhaps around 2003 or so.)
People who have praised me when I stood up for principles that they agreed with, should understand that I am being principled here. I need to explain that—not to make the topic about myself personally, but rather, because I am even puzzled at why people seem not to understand why I don’t just shrug, forget it, go back to business as usual. Not going to happen. The deletion of those posts was major turning point for me.
Deleted:
It is usually a matter of principle to me that one who values his own work should never give it away as “user-generated content” (a) to any site not under his own control, (b) without compensation. Hereby, this forum’s primary general topic is important to me. I thought that I understood the forum rules, that the rules were acceptable to me, and that the rules would be applied consistently. Whoops.
The past few days, I have almost regretted ever signing up here. —Not quite, because of some of the people whom I never would have met otherwise. And today, on the third anniversary of my very first “Brand New” post, I have been having some dark thoughts about this:
Boldface, italic, and underlining are in the original; highlighting is hereby added:
I will probably seek a solution that is more constructive. —Or more destructive. —Or both. I am talking about this to make a point; if I intended to do a drastic action, I probably would not announce it beforehand... But for those who are wondering why I don’t just blow this off and move on, I think that that adequately illustrates how seriously I take this issue.
I didn’t “know perfectly well what [you] meant”; I took what you said at face value. Doesn’t that succinctly sum up the problem whence arose this thread?
Anyway, I thought that you would appreciate discussing art history.
At this juncture, in reply to the remainder of your post, I began an earnest reply that went way off-topic... Never mind.
* Part of the problem is that the post was stitched together from pieces of a much longer draft, in an attempt to make it more “succinct”. The red-lettered warning about things offensive to Foxpup was originally in a discussion about how workplaces differ; and reductio ad absurdum, office employees at AVN, Pornhub, or for that matter, Slixa could probably be fired for reading my posts (unless it is only to demand that I be cancelled and deplatformed from the Internet). Obviously, actual porn is acceptable in those work environments. (I speak here as to non-sex employees; such companies have office staff, too!) In the original draft, it comes off very differently.
For reasons that you have succinctly described from your own viewpoint, I really do not understand the “NSFW” rule. Rules are supposed to be understandable to the ordinary intelligent person. I believe that I meet or exceed that description; and yet, I seem unable to use my usual mind-reading powers to guess what a moderator will declare “Not Safe For Work”, vague as the term is.
I don't suppose it ever occurred to you to simply ask what is and isn't appropriate, as I did when attempting to determine whether my contest entry was acceptable.Zeroth of all: Now, I am asking! —And not receiving any clear, authoritative answers. —And being criticized by some people for asking, as if I were asking a stupid question. Observe that the topic title ends in a question mark.
And first of all: I would ask, if I were doing something that I thought was questionable. I did not think that an art-museum piece was questionable; and in the first instance, I would not choose to participate in a forum where it was. As you can probably tell by now, this is an important issue to me.
(As I expected that it would be to others. Where are all of the ACLU types? Doesn’t the ACLU raise hell if some church ladies cover up a nude statue in a public park, or whatever? I am pretty sure that if I look on ACLU.org, I can find plenty of long wall-of-text essays about the social and cultural importance of protecting artworks.)
I consider the prohibition of fine art to be disgraceful. Disgusting. I wouldn’t significantly involve myself in any site where I knew that it may happen. Yes, it is a private forum that I am free to leave at any time. I was also free to not sign up here, if I knew that something like this could happen.
(That is not difficult: I have never been so deeply involved in an Internet forum; and other than some fire-and-forget throwaway accounts, I have not really participated in any forum since perhaps around 2003 or so.)
People who have praised me when I stood up for principles that they agreed with, should understand that I am being principled here. I need to explain that—not to make the topic about myself personally, but rather, because I am even puzzled at why people seem not to understand why I don’t just shrug, forget it, go back to business as usual. Not going to happen. The deletion of those posts was major turning point for me.
Deleted:
Do you suggest that this Very Venerable and Serious Museum publicly, openly displays things that cannot be embedded in posts on the libertarian cypherpunk Bitcoin Forum?
It is usually a matter of principle to me that one who values his own work should never give it away as “user-generated content” (a) to any site not under his own control, (b) without compensation. Hereby, this forum’s primary general topic is important to me. I thought that I understood the forum rules, that the rules were acceptable to me, and that the rules would be applied consistently. Whoops.
The past few days, I have almost regretted ever signing up here. —Not quite, because of some of the people whom I never would have met otherwise. And today, on the third anniversary of my very first “Brand New” post, I have been having some dark thoughts about this:
Boldface, italic, and underlining are in the original; highlighting is hereby added:
For the record: As one who does not generally contribute content to sites run by others, I myself have carefully considered very unlikely hypothetical scenarios in which I may mass-delete all my own posts here. E.g., if I were to be administratively forbidden from [...], I may decide to burn my own work and walk away. (I did say, very unlikely hypothetical scenarios.)
Whereas if I were to leave the forum in anger at its administration, withdrawing thereby my own contributions, I would not take it into my own hands to destroy the work of people who had contributed to my self-moderated threads in good faith, in accord with my local rules, and sometimes even from sincere friendship toward me. In this hypothetical, I may post a note encouraging people to follow my example. But to trash others’ work myself in that circumstance would be self-centred, narcissistic, and downright treacherous of me. I would not do that.
Whereas if I were to leave the forum in anger at its administration, withdrawing thereby my own contributions, I would not take it into my own hands to destroy the work of people who had contributed to my self-moderated threads in good faith, in accord with my local rules, and sometimes even from sincere friendship toward me. In this hypothetical, I may post a note encouraging people to follow my example. But to trash others’ work myself in that circumstance would be self-centred, narcissistic, and downright treacherous of me. I would not do that.
There is no better way to make nullius go nuclear than to attack culture.
I will probably seek a solution that is more constructive. —Or more destructive. —Or both. I am talking about this to make a point; if I intended to do a drastic action, I probably would not announce it beforehand... But for those who are wondering why I don’t just blow this off and move on, I think that that adequately illustrates how seriously I take this issue.
When I said "Western society", you know perfectly well that I meant current Western society, which I'm well aware has been negatively influenced by religious conservatives. You can spare me the art history lesson.
I didn’t “know perfectly well what [you] meant”; I took what you said at face value. Doesn’t that succinctly sum up the problem whence arose this thread?
Anyway, I thought that you would appreciate discussing art history.
At this juncture, in reply to the remainder of your post, I began an earnest reply that went way off-topic... Never mind.
* Part of the problem is that the post was stitched together from pieces of a much longer draft, in an attempt to make it more “succinct”. The red-lettered warning about things offensive to Foxpup was originally in a discussion about how workplaces differ; and reductio ad absurdum, office employees at AVN, Pornhub, or for that matter, Slixa could probably be fired for reading my posts (unless it is only to demand that I be cancelled and deplatformed from the Internet). Obviously, actual porn is acceptable in those work environments. (I speak here as to non-sex employees; such companies have office staff, too!) In the original draft, it comes off very differently.