If there's one thing I do when I make a meme its definitely contact the creator and ask if my specific meme goes against their personally held beliefs. Yes, this is a completely normal thing to do.
Its really annoying when I want to make a Huck Finn meme because I have to hold a seance for Sam Clement and he can be a real asshole when you wake him from the dead.
During the American War of Independence the reins were loosened a little. Further concessions had to be granted during the French Revolution. Ireland rose so quickly that her people threatened to outstrip the English. The English government drove them to rebellion and achieved the Union [390] by bribery. The Union delivered the death blow to reviving Irish industry. On one occasion Meagher said: all Irish branches of industry have been destroyed, all we have been left is the making of coffins. It became a vital necessity to have land; the big landowners leased their lands to speculators; land passed through four or five lease stages before it reached the peasant, and this made prices disproportionately high. The agrarian population lived on potatoes and water; wheat and meat were sent to England; the rent was eaten up in London, Paris and Florence. In 1836, ÂŁ7,000,000 was sent abroad to absent landowners. Fertilisers were exported with the produce and rent, and the soil was exhausted. Famine often set in here and there, and owing to the potato blight there was a general famine in 1846. A million people starved to death. The potato blight resulted from the exhaustion of the soil, it was a product of English rule.
Through the repeal of the Corn Laws Ireland lost her monopoly position on the English market, the old rent could no longer be paid. High prices of meat and the bankruptcy of the remaining small landowners further contributed to the eviction of the small peasants and the transformation of their land into sheep pastures. Over half a million acres of arable land have not been tilled since 1860. The yield per acre has dropped: oats by 16 per cent, flax by 36 per cent, potatoes by 50 per cent. At present only oats are cultivated for the English market, and wheat is imported.
With the exhaustion of the soil, the population has deteriorated physically. There has been an absolute increase in the number of lame, blind, deaf and dumb, and insane in the decreasing population.
Over 1,100,000 people have been replaced by 9,600,000 sheep. This is a thing unheard of in Europe. The Russians replace evicted Poles with Russians, not with sheep. Only under the Mongols in China was there once a discussion whether towns should be destroyed to make room for sheep.
-- International Workingmenâs Association 1867
Record of Speech by Karl Marx
Irish people were forced to eat potatoes because they were subjugated by british lords who took everything else they farmed. When the potato "famine" happened, they were actually still producing plenty of other food, just that the British lords didnt care and still forced them to hand it over.
Admittedly this is the extent of my knowledge on the situation, so you should look it up yourself if you want to know more.
The "Joke" at the irish guy in the greentext is actually pretty insensitive and rude, much moreso than asking a german why he didnt order sauerkraut.
Like all other 4chan it's just fake news, but it would make a lot more sense to school them and what the potato famine was actually about rather than to assume they're getting in a pissing match.
Also, in any case where coworkers are worried enough about race and politics to go to HR they're not going to sit around and talk about ethnic stereotypes. If you're going to sit around and talk about ethnicity and stereotypes you've already made a social pact that everybody isn't going to get butt hurt and go to HR.
At my old place five of us got together once every few weeks and had a nice dinner out. It was America so nobody that was there was first generation anything. We were descendants, Irish Israeli, black, Vietnamese. If the Jewish guy would have made the potato famine joke to the Irish guy, and the Irish guy did come back with bombing hospitals, The worst outcome would be the Jewish guy would have said touche new subject and we would have continued bs about work, sports, or technology.
If it were actually a true story, maybe autistic OP thought he was returning the joke in kind. "Lol shouldn't you be starving because the British stole all your crops but potatoes", "lol shouldn't you be bombing hospitals". Seems like a fair trade if you don't understand what was intended. Signed: an autist.
Once I had a teacher who was trying to boast to me that his uncle or someone worked in engineering some American bomber, and I responded with "how many iraqis did that kill?" I didn't get into trouble.
The fact that some event happened outside of work hours by no means disqualifies it as legitimate harassment. We should absolutely not be disparaging people for invoking this protection. Think of all the vulnerable groups who may be less likely to speak up after some shitty behavior if we start shitting on people for invoking this protection.
A hostile work environment claim may include conduct that occurs in a work-related context outside an employeeâs regular workplace.[219] For instance, harassment directed at an employee during the course of offsite employer-required training occurs within the âwork environment,â even if the training is not conducted at the employerâs facility.[220]
Example 53: Harassment During Off-Site Employer-Hosted Party Was Within Work Environment. Fatimaâs employer hosts its annual holiday party in a private restaurant. One of her coworkers, Tony, drinks to excess, and at the end of the evening attempts to grope and kiss Fatima. Although Tonyâs behavior occurred outside Fatimaâs regular workplace and at a private restaurant unaffiliated with her employer, it occurred in a work-related context, the company-sponsored holiday party. Therefore, based on these facts, the harassment occurred in Fatimaâs work environment for purposes of a Title VII sexual harassment claim.
I agree, this is a work function so HR could be invoked.
That said, I'm with Anon on this one. His coworker started it, and while on the surface Anon's response sounds much darker, Anon is punching up and Israeli Coworker is punching down.
The potato famine was an economic genocide incited by colonial powers. You'd think if they get a laugh out of that they'd also get a laugh about currently ongoing genocides.
Yes please daddy HR please mediate this mild discomfort between two coworkers because we cannot be bothered to just apologize to each other and move on on our own
Dont get me wrong i dont disagree with you that some people depend on the protection it offers, but it also makes me wonder how the person gets by outside work when they have to solve disagreements and rude interactions on their own.
One thing I learnt in Ireland is you better have a thick skin because no quarter is given when it comes to slagging and taking the piss. And the more you take yourself seriously and the more they will gang up until you learn to shut the fuck up.
Absolutely love it.
Gotta say, it's fun to read in-depth conversation explainers from other autistic people. As an autistic person myself I think it's quite fun and informative.
Actual autist here: Took me a loooong time to figure out a whole bunch of social concepts when it comes to what neurotypicals basically deem as small talk.
Firstly, you basically just have to accept that for most people, a level of classist, racist, other kinds of stereotypical insults are socially viewed as basically acceptable, even though its usually quite obvious they are, in fact, insults.
Then you have to understand the concept of proportionality in small talk. You have to reply with something that's very obviously and directly relevant, and of the same magnitude.
(Jumping from an insult about dietary preferences to an insult about war crimes is not the same magnitude)
Encapsulating this entire social interaction is the setting: coworkers of mixed nationality likely and an after work dinner likely implies an expectation of basically corporate social etiquette, ie, back handed compliments to establish a social dominance hierarchy, where the name of the game us getting as close to breaching the invisible 'wow what an asshole' line without actually stepping over it.
To avoid looking meek, docile, awkward or antisocial, you have to figure out an appropriate small talk style reply, which actually requires a fairly detailed knowledge of the other persons you are conversing with. Their culture, personal history, personal beliefs, etc.
If you don't do this at least semi-regularly, then you are a pushover who will be given higher workloads with no extra compensation and likely will not advance very far in your career, as you seem to be fine where you are.
So ok, if you know a bit about Israelis, you might attempt to insult back along the lines of dietary preferences.
But, its a faux pas to escalate even within this realm of responses: If you retort that you 'prefer your potatoes with pork', well, that's probably going to be viewed as quite rude, as that's still a higher magnitude, as it references something that is commonly known to be forbidden to most Israelis.
What might be a proportional response would be 'Sorry, I'd make them (the potatoes) into latkes for you, but I don't have any eggs'.
But that may still be deemed as overly offensive, depending on the temperament of the Israeli and the level to which the other coworkers feel the need to be defensive toward perceived anti-semitism.
So, as an autistic person, you have to consciously have all this knowledge and think through it all logically in real time, all while your actual emotion is anger because you don't give a fuck that the potato comment was supposed to be a joke, because it was in actuality a racist insult that actually references a fucking famine and a dietary stereotype that exists largely due to imperialist exploitation of your ancestors.
In summary, yeah small talk is an absolute nightmare for autistic people who are in an aggressive, hostile social environment, which, at least in my experience, is almost all of them.
Most people are not aware, but potatoes are a reference to a holodomor-like government-induced famine that occurred in Ireland when the government of England made a policy of paying far over market rate for people to ship food out of Ireland.
This weakened the Irish food market, leading to a situation where many people subsisted on the one crop that they could grow on their own property (as collective farm output was put on ships to elsewhere), which was potatoes.
In that brittle situation, a fungus called a potato blight caused many people to starve to death because they were down to one last food source after the English mucking about.
It didnât happen in a time of war so it wasnât a war crime, but what the English government did to the Irish people was definitely genocidal.
So what you're saying is this dude's coworker threw him an impossibly unfair underhand in order to hide, even if by accident, behind their nationality or beliefs.
Also autistic here, I feel calling people out works pretty well for me. No need for extended knowledge except about your own culture, just point out the offensive part and make them regret.
Example: "Are you referencing the Irish potato famine?"
It forces the person to either back out or admit that it was offensive. Third option could be "Don't be so sensetive, it was a joke". Then you can say that you don't mind jokes but that you found that one offensive.
With knowledge about the person's culture you can always use it for a counter-attack with "I thought that Israelis would know that some jokes are off limits".
Imma be real most of the time I just say fuck it and act like anon. My defense with HR would be that Israeli guy stated a racist comment first, and if I get fired then I'll have a company to add to the list of neurodivergent discriminators. I don't have the patience to play that stupid back and fourth.
Honest question: Are neurodivergents functionally a protected class from discrimination in the US, the way religion, race, sexuality, gender are?
The only even theorerical backing for that I can think of is the ADA, and I have never once heard of it or any other law being actually used by a neurodivergent against discrimination.
"oh, I thought it was about he Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland lasting from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis and subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole."
As someone who lived 5 years in ireland and saw the history its absolutely fucking horrible. If you think about it its kinda ironic. Uk occupies a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. Israel is occupying a country, controls everything there and commits a genocide. By the way as a neurotypical who has autistic family members and friends, in this case what happened is that the irish potato famine got normalized over time but the genocide in gaza is a current event. Also the israel one is political. Third thing is most neurotypicals are pussies, if you spend time with neurodivergent people you realize that a lot of things they say are funny as fuck, even if its a bit raw sometimes.
This is true, (see my second to last paragraph) but ... that is not as widely known.
Most people just think 'Idk, Irish people like potatoes'.
Most people think it is just in the realm of dietary preferences and cuisine and don't know why.
Even though there is a fairly direct equivalence if you actually know the history of the stereotype, most people don't.
Thus you are perceived as overreacting if you jump right to genocide.
To attempt an analogy:
It's like if a boomer tells a millennial or gen z to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and they point out that the original meaning of that phrase was meant to encapsulate the literal physical impossibility of doing so as analogous to making a decent living for yourself in an economy where very very few people have the means/opportunity/connections/dumb luck to earn more than basically a subsistence wage.
The boomer just gets offended or bewildered because they didn't know that, or they don't believe it, and they're too arrogant to admit they have no real, useful advice, and that all they have to offer is infantilization.
Their ignorance (and inability to admit their knowledge is flawed) allows them to keep using an offensive phrase and not see this as offensive.
I'm autistic and I've learned to stop trying to play this game. Instead, I just make assholes like this explain their sideways ass comments in a straightforward fashion for the group. Forcing people to explain bigoted comments and not allowing the subject to change has now made everyone uncomfortable. Not so fucking funny anymore. I usually don't have to do this more than once or twice within a specific group.
Also autistic here. Let's say you reply with "So why is that funny" and that person or a third person says "Don't be so sensetive". What's the best way to force the explanation?
I also stopped playing 'the game' long ago and no longer put up with shitty people, but I can only do that because I'm on SSDI and don't have to interact with people in an employment setting.
Anon here is learning the hard way that basically, to advance in almost any modern, monetarily lucrative career, and most non lucrative ones, welp, you have to play this stupid social jockeying game because that is subconsciously how most others determine your worth as an employee, as a coworker.
You can do the 'explain why thats funny' angle, but that just makes ... you look like an asshole, a killjoy ... to the people whose jobs are their lives, their selves.
One thing specifically about Irish vs Israeli is that, if I'm not mistaken, Ireland and Israel are not on remotely good terms and haven't been for a while. If the Israeli was a natural-born Israeli citizen they may have truly meant to piss Anon off.
I bid that non autistic people be named and categorized in a way that highlights their subtly hostile, backstabbing, cruel nature. You know, the common household "psychopath" who doesn't actually meet the requirements for real psychopathy, but is still pathologically a dickish cynic playing a social game for minor wins in wealth and status, instead of simply being a friendly and polite contributor to society.
They named us.
Maybe we should name them.
Describe the traits that define them. Go into detail about what exactly is so wrong with them. Why they kill rally for warmongers. Why they sabotage eachother. Why they face obvious long term problems with such oblivious nonchalance.
That's not "a nightmare for autistic people". He had every right to be angry about a famine and this was all just "submit to my authority" bullshit. I don't care who you are descended from, that is not logical nor fair nor reasonable in any social setting. I literally would have just decked him in the face and stormed out because that's the only scenario where OP is making it clear that authority does not equal privilege. Respect your employees.
What I mean by nightmare for autistic people is that autistic people, while often excelling at tasks and activities that have firm, mechanical, logical rules, are also often totally bewildered by social interactions because, on their face, they don't really seem to follow any black and white rules.
Autists try to logic their way, consciously, through a challenging social interaction as if it were a game of chess, even though the rules are basically calvinball rules.
My point is that this kind of catastrophic social interaction is more likely and more challenging for a neurodiverse than a neurotypical, not that the Israeli's incitement was justifiable.
literally would have just decked him in the face and stormed out because that's the only scenario where OP is making it clear that authority does not equal privilege.
Yep and that's how you ruin your career and possibly go to jail, have fun paying off your student loans at a min wage job the rest of your life after everyone hears about the guy that freaked out over a friendly dinner and broke the funny popular guy's orbital bone.
The same goes for the Irish car bomb drink. As I heard one comedian say "imagine how many Americans would be up in arms if I made a drink that was two kamikazes in a Manhattan and called it a 9/11."
Report the Israeli to HR for the potato joke before anyone reports you. Also mention everyone else and say that they were all laughing and pointing at you.
That is some savage shit. If Eminem were at the table, he would have taken notes.
Edit: I mean, yeah, he did go overboard, but that Israeli guy started it with the stupid ass potato joke. That shit was (1) uncalled for and (2) played out. If the Israeli guy goes to HR, they need to reprimand his ass, too, for trying to being offensive and sucking at it. At least my man here knows how to strike. You want him on your team.
âHaha, remember that time the Irish were nearly exterminated via forced famine?â Odd thing to joke about with a random coworker. Shouldâve instead suggested potato vodka served by a teenage split-lipped ginger mother of six and then segued into the specific reasons Ireland deserved the troubles. Or just avoided atrocities entirely. Either/or
As Irish you donât have distinct nationality anyway since you havenât claimed any independence from the UK
Edit if green text OP is from Northern Ireland, I am right. You can claim âethnicityâ but it doesnât mean much when a crown claims you as subject đ¤ˇââď¸
Even if it was, this is just a fucking dumb strawman argument.
Like, what does that imply? You're free to insult one's ethnicity as long as their people aren't recognized having their own nation?