Speaking of which… 😎

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&persist_app=1&noapp=1&v=NC16orUje4M

Mwahahahahahaha!!! My evil plan is working! 😈

Oh, but of course. Bats is as batty as the rest of them, and he also had that One Bad Day.

Agreeing or disagreeing with each decision Alison makes =/= constantly rehashing whether or not Alison is a bad person after every decision (or, often, when no particular decision is being made and people just can’t stand that such a terrible person is daring to kiss her boyfriend or whatever).

Yeah Alison is probably an imperfect Mostly Good person and without some huge plot twist/reveal/development, that probably isn’t going to change. I can see where discussing whether she is good or bad on each individual’s subjective scale biweekly could get out of hand, but aside from pointing out art errors and arguing about how super powers REALLY work, that’s pretty much what comments sections are for.

Right. Because she maimed Patrick with that mug. You can see all the maiming now…

Well then, who do you she maimed? I’ve been familiar with the claim she maimed Patrick, not anyone else.

What she did to Max and Rat would go down as Assault and Battery, terroristic threats, and (in the case of Max) kidnapping and torture, and (in the case of Rat) kidnapping and reckless endangerment.

The problem with Alison is not that she’s a “bad person,” but that she’s spent her whole life being told how awesome she is…nonstop. Constantly buttered up and cajoled by people who were never able to tell her when she was out of line. As a result she behaves not unlike like a Hollywood celebrity – they try to be good people, but no one will tell them when something is a bad idea.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/twenty-years-in-the-life-of-mel-gibsons-publicist/

Actually torture is a crime in the US. 18 USC 2340A and 18 USC 113C

Usually when prosecutors charge people with crimes, they often tend to list as many applicable crimes as possible. Gives more negotiating in case of pleading and in case the defendant doesn’t meet all the requirements in one crime or another. Usually people do not get charged with JUST one crime when torture is involved. I get what you’re saying though. I’m just being a lawyer – sorry, law school warped my ability to argue like normal people argue sometimes 🙂

+1 for quoting Futurama.

I don’t think anyone has said “You’re a Jerk”, but from memory… Patrick, Brad, Her ex-roommate (Violet? admittedly not a reliable critic), her sister, her mom, her doctor, Moonshadow, the professor she got fired, whatever Gurwa is/was, some of the people at Brad’s group, Hector (who might have actually called her a jerk, but I’m not going to look to confirm), and various randos,

Honestly, I figured a big thing near the beginning of the comic was that everyone but the government was mad at her and she was trying to fix that. But, I also thought her and Violet(?) were going to have a Goofus/Gallant thing going on, wrt Social Justice issues, but that didn’t really happen.

The people I listed did criticize her, and to her face. Some have been subtle about it, and some have done so without what either of us would call proper justification (hence the varying degrees of accuracy qualification), but they did do it, which was my point.

This is from memory, so maybe some of it is wrong:

I believe during the Feral arc, Patrick criticized Alison’s attempts to solve the world’s problems as largely futile.
Brad stated flat out that Alison wasn’t a good friend, and later reminded her that his group isn’t a recruiting pool for her.
Someone in Brad’s group was upset that Alison gave a speech to abnormal looking people about how they were awesome, or whatever.
Her mom criticized her for trying to lesson herself to fit in, and then for pushing others too hard. Both of which were normal parenting, honestly.
Fired Professor’s legitimate criticism was that Alison carelessly caused a lot of collateral damage.
Gurwa criticized her for being obstinate in class, which is doubly worse in a philosophy class.
Hector was mad at her for thinking The Avengers or whatever was beneath her, which did culminated in his dream dying, so that’s sort of 50/50.

I don’t remember what I thought the doctor’s problem was, and everyone else’s problems were largely meritless. I only brought them up because Alison was shown to think they were important at the time.

I think we are mostly in agreement about the overall effect on her character,

Holy cow, Arkone Axon’s opinion about Alison! Reiterated again and unrelated to the current comic!!! As true as the north star and as nuanced as a straight line. Can’t wait til next week, when we get to hear exactly the same arguments, but this time: again!

I apologized to Lisa Izo because I realized Lisa Izo wasn’t saying exactly the same thing Lisa Izo always says. You are saying the same thing you always say, which is boring. I am not attacking you, I am saying that your point is the same thing over and over again. Your content has been debated repeatedly – I am not debating your content. That’s my point. I am so, so tired of seeing your content debated. Please stop saying the same thing over and over? Please? These boards would be better if you would stop saying the same thing over and over.

Yes, I’m saying the same thing I always say: “This assertion that Alison’s actions were not really crimes is untrue, here is a reminder of the multiple felonies she committed.” You want me to stop correcting factually untrue statements, convince other people to stop making factually untrue statements.

Again: this isn’t me spouting my “opinion,” this is me reiterating inconvenient facts that contradict other peoples’ headcanon.

(also, your personal attack – which was a copy/paste of the one you made to Lisa Izo – was exactly that. Including the way you declared “unrelated to the present comic,” as if we weren’t discussing Alison’s behavior and the morality of her decisions, and in a thread where people are specifically discussing the legality of her actions)

Except that people continue to make the same factually untrue statements. If you want me to stop “saying the same thing over and over,” look to the people who continue to dismiss Alison’s actions in the previous chapter as “twisting a selfish jerk’s arm for refusing to save millions of lives.”

(To borrow from current events, it’s kind of like referring to the cop who arrested the nurse in Utah as “sitting an uncooperative twit’s ass down for actively hindering an investigation.” Specifically, this officer:

http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/08/31/utah-nurse-arrested-after-complying-with-hospital-policy-that-bars-taking-blood-from-unconscious-victim/?ncid=edlinkushpmg00000313 )

You don’t like it? Tough. You made a personal attack. You still have not acknowledged that you engaged in a deliberate attempt to wound my emotions in order to silence me, let alone apologize for the attempt to achieve a hurt, unhappy silence. So my response to your personal appeal is: No.

Translation: “Speaking as a self-appointed representative of the entire fanbase, I’m going to pretend to be the mature adult because you won’t stop voicing an opinion I disagree with.”

You were rude. You were immature. You were offensive. And I say that with the caveat that in half a day the comic will update and these comments will go unread by most. This message is aimed directly at you: You were rude, and so I have zero interest in either complying with your requests, or letting you pretend to be the “mature and civilized adult” without poking holes in that pretense.

Actually, I’d stop in a heartbeat – if you acknowledged your actions and apologized for them.

That’s the mark of a truly mature person: someone who can admit when they’re wrong.

I accept your apology for being rude. I will stop commenting in this thread.

…Not going to stop repeating my “default talking points,” mind. As long as people continue to repeat blatant untruths, I will continue to correct them with the facts. But I will stop harping on this particular thread; you apologized for your discourtesy, I’ve accepted it, moving on.

Cool, we will make sure to have this conversation again on the next comic, since you asked so nicely.

Glad you are enjoying the conversation AustinC123!

Everyone has that option.

Everyone else just doesn’t get a free pass for doing it.

I’d argue that she tries to be a good person, but is way too good at justifying excessive action for anyone’s good. I guess that comes with spending adolescence beating up superhuman crooks for occasionally-flimsy reasons.

At best, she can be summarized by the quotes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” – St Bernard of Clairvaux, and “Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

At worst, she’s just a monster who doesn’t like to deal with the self-realization of being a monster. “There are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say ‘That person I see is a monster.’; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do.” – Noam Chomsky

“Can Noam Chomsky really have such a homogenous set of friends?”

He’s not talking about friends, but rather about the nature of evil people in general. The basic idea is that there are very few people who are actually evil for evil’s sake. They almost always rationalize what they’re doing as something good, or rationalize what someone else is doing as something good despite it being obviously bad, just because they agree with them and are going to their baser instincts.

“Though it’s a little weird right now, as my father is dying.”

I’m really sorry to hear that. My condolences.

“Mostly, I think the generalization that everyone does so is right up there with “everyone think their own religion is the best” ”

And throughout history, a lot of people have used religion as their rationalization for doing evil things in the name of good. Alison’s ‘religion’ is social justice. It has the same adherence to a set of dogmatic rules that allow her to do evil and delude herself into thinking that she’s doing good because it fits into her dogmatic understanding of social justice at that moment, even if they conflict with their own basic tenets on a fundamental level. There’s a reason why so many religions are based on utilitarianism.

That being said, I recommend this new TV show – The Good Place. I won’t even tell you why I’m recommending it. It’ll become obvious.

I agree with you here 100%. It is very, VERY important to help such people (I know more than a few… there are people I know who have failed to commit suicide on certain occasions only because they promised me they wouldn’t, or because I lent them money and they hadn’t paid it back – and I still won’t let them repay me, because it’s worth it to keep them alive).

That being said, Lisa Izo is right about the evil done by people thinking they’re doing the right thing. In the Jewish faith they call it the “Yatzer Hara,” the Evil Inclination, the desire to indulge in selfish sin (i.e. to do things you know are wrong because… you want to.). And the problem with the Yatzer Hara is that it’s easy to rationalize what you’re doing, to justify it. Until you’ve convinced yourself that giving in to the temptation is the moral thing to do. This is why one particular variant of the Yatzer Hara is “the evil born of Good Intentions gone astray.”

“This is everybody’s fault but mine.”
—Homer Simpson

The reason he says ‘very few people’ instead of ‘No people’ is because it’s foolish to deal in absolutes. There can always be a few outliers or exceptions to the rule.

Teenagers can be quite evil and delusional jerks, just like adults. Hell, I taught for a year as an aide – teenagers can totally suck and be horribly crappy people who have no concept that they’re being horribly crappy and hypocritical people. Also I was a teenager not THAT long ago, I remember that we can suck even as teenagers.

And just like adults, teenagers can act like they are not, even while they are doing something bad. Being a teenager does not exclude you from humanity. The person in the ‘popular kids clique’ who treats the ugly kid like a loser and picks on them without even the slightest self-realization that what they’re doing is vicious and cruel, just ‘what happens in high school’ for example. It’s not like bullying is a rare thing among teenagers, right? 🙂

I think that Chomsky’s quote was about those people who DO bad things not recognizing themselves as being bad, and that’s pretty much it. Whether people are inherently good or inherently bad – that’s more a Calvin vs Hobbes debate. 🙂

Also the quote isn’t really about people who are NOT evil but think they are. It’s about people who are evil and think they are not. I think I get your post now though.

Oh wow um… that will be a VERY long conversation to get into. Entire theses have been written on what you’re asking me to elaborate on, but okay. I’ll give the cliffnotes version of examples of utilitarianism as part of various religions, including Abrahamic religions. By the way, i’m not even saying that it’s the ONLY way to interpret religion, but when religion does use utilitarian logic, it’s usually responsible for the most atrocities because it’s where man tries to interpret what God thinks is good or bad, so they will go to the good place or the bad place. Or in the case of Judaism, which does not have an equivalent of Hell, although it still does have the concept of negative consequences for bad actions.

At least when it comes to the Abrahamic religions, there’s a question of Utilitarianism vs Kantianism, as well. Although in Christianity (and to a lesser extent Judaism), a lot of it comes down to following the commandments issued by god in Deuteronomy 28:1-68 – God issues to the Israelitesvia Moses the 10 commandments – positive consequences if obeyed, negative consequences if disobeyed. In Islam, it’s more about following the Quran and the Sutra and hadith for this same concept of ‘the more you follow it, the more you are ‘good,’ while the more you disobey, the more you are ‘bad’ (with certain exceptions like martyrdom which puts you (at least in the more literal readings of Islamic texts) in Paradise after death.

With other non-Abrahamic religions, like Hinduism there is literally a utilitarian formula to determine if you were good enough to advance up the hierarchy or bad enough to go down the hierarchy of reincarnation.

So yes, X is good because God says so can be based on utilitarianism, because God is telling the followers what is good and what is bad, and so you’r supposed to do more good than bad, and there are some bad things for which sometimes no amount of good will help (although in Catholicism and I’m asuming some other subsects of christianity, if you confess you get the sins absolved). The whole concept in Christianity of Jesus sacrificing himself is a type of utilitarian balancing act – he sacrifices himself to counteract Original Sin in man, for example.

Right wing chestnut? What’s right wing about it? Human beings are social animals, and need SOME form of rules for behavior to live by so as to not devolve into anarchy and barbarism. You know, in order to maintain some form of justice. Whether karmic justice via a deity, capitalistic justice in the idea of risk and reward, justice by the State, or ‘social justice.’ For a long period of time, for most of civilization really, this role has been filled by religion of one form or another. In societies in which religion is either banned or not in vogue, some other thing fills the void that is used to provide some sort of moral center for rules of the individual, so they can function within society. In fascist and socialist and communist systems, the role of religion is usurped by an all-powerful state. Libertarians on the more extreme side put their faith in capitalism as the role that religion normally fills (unless the libertarian is also religious for some reason). In other systems, it can be usurped by other moral systems. In Alison’s case, it’s a system of ‘social justice.’

I noticed that you made your snide comment, without actually even TRYING to debate the merits of what was said. Most likely because you don’t have a good comeback to arguing something on the merits. Religion, ‘the state,’ and social justice all seem to fill the same need for a moral set of rules to follow for the individual.

Actually I think the reason is that you’re incapable of debating. Little hint – just trying to insult people isnt debating. The idea that social justice fills the same void that religion tends to take up, or adherence to the head of state as the all knowing father motif, is not a right wing thing – it’s just simple observation.

One that you seem incapable of discussing without ad hominem attacks and miscategorization for some reason.

And… you’re just proving my point.

Well it’s not exactly a big hint, now is it? The basics of a civilized debate, as opposed to kindergarten yelling, is ‘do not start calling your opponents names in response to their making legitimate points,’ ‘do not resort every time to ad hominem attacks,’ and ‘at least try to address ONE of the points if you’re going to speak.’

It’s not exactly like I’m asking for him to be at the level of Christopher Hitchens or Winston Churchill or Cicero or something. I’m just expecting halfway coherent posts rather than ‘ring a ding ling’ and ‘Counsel, I don’t see the point’ and ‘Right winger! Right wing chestnuts, you right winger!’ for something that isn’t even inherently right wing – unless he also thinks religious dogma is left wing.

My condolences as well. My own father is… well, “dying” is the best way to describe it. Things are just falling apart for him; his heart’s bad, his joints are bad, he keeps going into the hospital for tests and such. It’s not a case of “terminal illness,” just a case of “parts are breaking down and getting worn out.”

We had some unpleasant stuff in our past relationship, but there was always respect, and later I realized my parents never, ever meant to hurt me and that they always tried to do the right thing by me. Which is why I’ve been arguing against the position of rushing to “save the world” without taking time for consideration. I learned what it’s like to hurt someone you love. And my father (and my mother, who is… an interesting personality, let’s leave it at that) were there to help try to mitigate the consequences of my horrible, horrible mistakes. After that, I forgave my parents for… everything.

Yeah, the statement about “information I did not yet have” definitely strikes a chord with me. My parents knowingly permitted my brother to defraud me and steal a great deal of money from me, because it was me being robbed and nobody cared.

…Except… years later, it turned out that my parents did NOT know about the fraud. My brother relied on one of the standard lynchpins of a good con: don’t let the victims communicate with anyone else, especially each other. After the truth came out my brother ceased to be the favorite child.

Then there’s the intense unhappiness they inflicted upon me because… they were instructed to place me on psychoactive medication that was supposed to help, and instead just pacified me… meaning I wasn’t able to express anger or unhappiness when I was being hurt. Meaning I literally couldn’t say “that is hurtful to me, please stop.” So they didn’t know… and my brothers jumped for joy because they knew they could get away with deliberately cruel actions for their own pleasure and/or profit.

And all that amounts to a lot of unpleasant memories that I try not to dwell on (Because then I feel the rage that I couldn’t express then, and I waste time and energy in a fury over issues long since dead and buried), because it’s better to move forward. You’re a successful person, you’ve achieved a lot, and it’s important to remember that. Even if you can’t help but wish for what might have been, you can look to what you have and what you’ve accomplished.

Assuming that most people “keep a good self image of themselves” seems shortsighted and where the flaw in your argument comes in for me. Show me someone who doesn’t have at least occasional or, more often, even regular bouts with self-doubt, even if they put up a good face, and I’ll sell you the first of many bridges I’ve got in stock. It seems to me that making a caricature of ‘people doing evil who think they’re doing good’, is something of a strawman.

In short, I think the number of people who suffer from the sort of constant self-assurance about the righteousness of their actions is a good deal smaller, or at least more limited, than you’re presenting.

Depression is not really an uncommon disorder. And it comes with strong feelings of worthlessness/thinking you’re an awful person. And it sucks because you don’t want to feel that way, but you can’t stop feeling that way – which leads into nasty spirals of feeling bad that you can’t stop feeling bad.

Sure, MOST people don’t have those feelings. But “most people don’t” isn’t equivalent to “very few people do”. Because there are millions of people with depression which is not at all “very few people”.

There’s more than a little irony in explaining to me what I said (in fantastically patronizing fashion, no less) in order to accuse me of misinterpreting what you said. But hey, you do you.

I’m very sorry to hear about your father. I hope you manage to keep strong through this <3

To be fair, I see the comments being mentioned too, and I’m pretty sure a large part of this is very specifically the ‘Alison is a tyrant’ side that makes some extremely provocative comments that practically amount to graffiti, hamfisting in the bloodlust no matter how farfetched, thus provoking people to respond to it.

I personally would love to let the issue die (and I’ve only spoken on it once or twice), but there’s some people with a crusade and lacking the willingness to ‘stop’.

All of that.

The discussion to which I’m referring is not a nuanced exploration of the moral weight of each decision/action, but a constant re-articulation that a person who made a decision/action many pages ago cannot be good.

Lethologica – yeah, I agree.

I don’t think they were complaining about Alison being a super hero that struggles to figure out the right thing to do. But rather the fact that the comments debate whether she’s a good person or not every single comic. And not even about the new things happening, but her past decisions. It’s gotten kind of stale.

At least it looks like there’s going to be new material to pick apart now

Sure, but when the same points keep getting brought up every page and said page fails to let most (if any) of them be recontextualized, it gets dull. It’s like playing the same level of a video game every 15-20 minutes for a whole day. And not in one of those games like Hitman where the levels are interesting and emergent-behavior-ey or branching-path-ey, something more like a platformer where you quickly learn the most efficient way through.

Boy it’s a good thing that isn’t what I was doing!

My comment only specifically covered part of Alison’s fan-base, which occasionally refuses to acknowledge that sometimes Alison does Bad Things.

But it’s a good thing I wasn’t discussing whether the central character in a comic about justice and morality was a good person or not. That would be totally off-subject and I wouldn’t want to bore you.

Perhaps if you stopped trying to frame others’ positions to suit your arguments, you would be less confused.

My original reply ignored whether Alison was a good person or not and merely explained to Hanover why someone might say Alison was “accused” of doing something she was explicitly shown doing (except the manslaughter bit, she’s had legitimate legal defenses in both common instances).

Your reply to that stated that you thought people’s constant reiterations of whether they thought Alison was a good person or not were boring. Which would be fine, on it’s own, except for the implication that the people of the comments section shouldn’t discuss things you find uninteresting.

My reply to that was clarifying that I was not at the time even discussing Alison’s theoretical moral alignment. The sarcastic bit at the end was to highlight the futility of being bored by the discussion of an important thematic element to this comic, IE: Whether Alison is ‘good’ or not.

And I don’t believe you actually believe that..

My original reply specifically didn’t mention Alison by name and was only meant to remind that guy why someone might soften someone’s actions by implying they were accused instead of explicitly shown in the narrative, as was his question.. That was literally all I had said in that line. Any ‘confusion’ from that is suspect, and your accusation that I was offering an opinion on Alison’s overall morality with it is tenuous, if not baseless. Maybe had I replied to you directly instead of the other guy, but I didn’t.

Complaining about people discussing Alison’s goodness/badness might be sensible in the pages where she’s not present, or where she’s out on a date montage, but on a new page during a sequence where she’s being dishonest to her friends about something that directly effects them?

Would that be why you flagged all my comments?

Personally I think the complaining about the “problem” is worse and more consistent. The complaints happen every single page, the accusations about allison are not nearly as frequent.

Yup, I’ve seen plenty of “inb4 Alison is a terrible person” kind of stuff, and *any* time that someone says something bad about Alison there is someone there to say “oh look, someone bashing Alison”

You might need to check your math there. inb4 is people saying that people will hate on alison *before* anyone has spoken negatively of alison. A response is when people complain about people hating on alison *after* someone has spoken negatively of alison.

If the first happens *sometimes* and the second happens *every* time, the complaints about haters are more frequent than the actual “hating”.

Not that it really matters. The “haters” often have a point in their statements, while the people complaining about haters are almost always vacuous “stop being so mean” comments. So even if they were equal in number, the complainers are far lower quality comments.

>What are they even talking about, in that case?

Imaginary future accusations of Alison being a problem. Have you never seen anyone say “Inb4”? Its not a complicated concept.

If I saw a pattern of people saying ‘Alison is good’ over and over based on months-gone examples I would complain about being bored by that. I am asking one side of the debate to shut up because only one side of the debate is boring me.