Meta: Has no one seen Taken?
So Brian's front page post on the B-School kid trying to "actualize" concepting song-like objects got a whole lots of posts calling it a threat on ruining careers. I'll explain the damn joke. There was a movie in 2009 called "Taken". Liam Neeson delivers a speech then [SPOILER ALERT] kills bad guys who kidnapped his daughter (see, she was Taken). Brian's post was an OBVIOUS parody of this speech. My question is... how did you miss this?
Taken was such a big hit they made a sequel. Then a THIRD!
Family guy parodied it!
it was in a superbowl commercial two weeks ago! Lighten up folks.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:06 PM ^
Would you say they should have TAKEN a chill pill?
/been reading too much @Adam_Jacobi
February 11th, 2015 at 3:06 PM ^
That Super Bowl commercial actually was a personal attack on a couple of Michigan students?
February 11th, 2015 at 3:08 PM ^
Brian started the post with a joke of taken reference than took it too far by actually posting something from the kids twitter in an attempt to clearly mock him with the result that he had to take down his twitter.
Brian was a jackass, having a joke in the topic doesn't make him not a jack ass. If I make fun of someone for being fat with a fat albert reference and other people laugh it doesn't make it suddenly all right.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:10 PM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 3:15 PM ^
It wasn't posted on twitter. Brian tweeted out his username.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:17 PM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 3:20 PM ^
But Brian specifically on twitter called the kid out, with his username...that was then deleted because of all the harassment he received. This happened before he made the post.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:24 PM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 3:33 PM ^
If I recally correctly, Brian is the owner of MGoBlog. He can say whatever he likes here.
Don't like it?
February 11th, 2015 at 3:36 PM ^
When a 30ish year old in a position of power uses that power to publicly ridicule a college student. Brian can have an opinion, even tweet the article and say it's a terrible idea (it is). But calling out his username crosses a big line, and Brian looks really bad for it.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:42 PM ^
Yes because tweeting this guy has a really bad idea that I disagree with and saying that people should attack him for it, potentially try to ruin his life for it, and deserves to have his character and person harrased for what amounts to a harmless idea is totally the same thing.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:40 PM ^
And only a couple were remotely bad.
https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%40ayzapps&src=typd
The fact remains that a simple Twitter search for "Adam Weiss" revealed his account almost instantly. I saw it before Brian posted it. If we're saying that re-posting images of social media content that was ORIGINALLY INTENDED FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION is cyber-bullying, I don't know what to tell you.
February 11th, 2015 at 3:43 PM ^
Before he took his twitter down. If someone want's to search the guy and tweet him, that is their business. Brian directing them to his twitter page is just wrong.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:01 PM ^
And in that capadity as an elected official (of a teeny weenie election, but still) he's making a proposal to the CSG. How in the tapdancing hell is telling people to tell that guy who ostensibly represents the student body that his idea is TERRIBLE AND NEEDS TO BE THROWN INTO A VOLCANO a bad thing?
Like any social media, a Twitter feed is exactly as private as you choose to make it. Before Brian said one word, I (as a person who has never met Adam Weiss and knew nothing about him) searched for him and saw this within 30 seconds.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:07 PM ^
You didn't specifically tweet this person's username out. You did the correct thing. But you aren't going to dare disagree with Brian or anything he does. He was wrong to do it, and you are wrong to defend him.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:27 PM ^
But if I had, what exactly would have been wrong about that? Seriously, what information would I have been sharing that wasn't already freely available for anyone with 30 seconds and an Internet machine? Hell, what information would I have been sharing that I didn't find with 30 seconds and an Internet machine?
February 11th, 2015 at 4:32 PM ^
If you think it's totally fine that a person of authority and 40,000 twitter followers tweets out a college student's twitter handle so that his followers will tweet negative things to him. It's taking the low road, and it's a very bad look for him and this blog. I liked this place because it was better than this.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:40 PM ^
Saying "hey, this is the member YOU ELECTED to the governing body trying to do a stupid thing and asking for your money to do the stupid thing, so tell them to stop doing the stupid thing" is a pretty damn acceptable use of social media. If this was a state legislator or a Congressman, no one would say anything.
For the life of me I can't see why you think this individual is above people responding directly to them in a medium designed exactly for that purpose.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:43 PM ^
Keep taking the low road and not getting the point. THE POINT (since you love to type in caps) is that if anyone feels the need to tell him this, they can look him up and do it how they please. Brian tweeting his username out to people to attack is not the way to do it. But since you think it's ok to tweet things to people, I'm going to go harass recruits on twiter if they aren't picking my school.
February 12th, 2015 at 1:34 AM ^
February 12th, 2015 at 1:51 AM ^
Basic Lesson of Social Media #1
If you don't want people to know what your opinion is, know the dumb things that you did, or look at your sex tapes, do not blast it out on social media. That applies to this guy and everyone else.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:56 PM ^
"hey, this is the member YOU ELECTED to the governing body trying to do a stupid thing and asking for your money to do the stupid thing, so tell them to stop doing the stupid thing" is a pretty damn acceptable use of social media.
I agree.
Doing all that plus mocking his dress, photographs, etc, etc. isn't.
Mock the IDEA and direct people to comment on the IDEA - acceptable use of social media.
Mock the person proposing the idea and direct others to mock the person proposing the idea - not an acceptable use of social media.
If this was a state legislator or a Congressman, no one would say anything.
It's be just as wrong to mock Chris Christie for being fat on social media, or Hillary Clinton for being ugly...
February 11th, 2015 at 4:58 PM ^
Were you here for the great purge of 2013?
http://mgoblog.com:8080/mgoboard/apparently-i-have-say-treat-recruits-r…
He does.
It wasn't.
I'm not sure what else there is to say.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:06 PM ^
This is the type of person BiSB is.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:26 PM ^
I regret that post a great deal. In my mind at the time (and for a good while afterward), it was making fun of a really bad music video. But it was only "amusing" because of who made it... and it was a 17-year-old (I think) who made it. I didn't get that at the time. I get that now. But I'm not going to unpublish it, because hiding that stuff doesn't help, and the ability to wipe the slate clean in hindsight makes people less considerate when they originally hit "publish."
But here, we're talking about an adult. Perhaps the line is an arbitrary one, but it's a pretty broadly accepted one in our culture. Second-semester sophomores are 19 or 20. They've lived away from home for two years. They can drink in Canada. Besides, this is a guy who isn't getting pulled into this from the background. He put himself in the foreground, both by becoming a representative and by putting forward a really terrible proposal to that body. Was posting the picture mean and unneccesary? Maybe. Hell, probably. But does being "mean" make it inappropriate? I don't think so.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:26 PM ^
is narrow
February 11th, 2015 at 5:37 PM ^
But does being "mean" make it inappropriate?
By definition, yes.
Mean: being below the normal standards of human decency and dignity. Mean suggests small-mindedness, ill temper, or cupidity.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:49 PM ^
No "Brian Kelly is an angry purple little man" jokes? No "Tom Izzo is a whiny little man" jokes? No "Branden Dawson punches inanimate objects" jokes? No "Anything related to Tom Crean" jokes?
Not every argument is made with the purest forms of logic and reason, and arguing otherwise is nuts. And if you're going to argue that this is a pure ad hominem, I think it's worth pointing out that the picture confirmed the same "vibe" as the proposal, which was... uh... not something we old folks were super amped to see brought forth.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:54 PM ^
I'm just narrowing this narrow string of comments. I've never seen it get this narrow before. God this site layout is terrible...
February 11th, 2015 at 5:58 PM ^
So NOTHING can be mean?
No - lots of things can be mean, and are therefore inappropriate. You're welcome to choose to be inappropriate. There is, in general, no law against most bullying.
I'll say the same thing I say to me 12 year old when he screws up:
We all make mistakes and poor decisions - Just OWN it.
February 11th, 2015 at 6:04 PM ^
If your position is that we can't make fun of ANYTHING on the internet, that's cool. We'll just have to disagree. It's a perfectly fair position, just one that I happen to vehemently disagree with.
As for mistakes, I don't think I have a mistake to own here. I came in well after the fact here, and am just discussing the general point. I owned up to a mistake a couple of posts above, but beyond that I feel pretty blameless.
February 11th, 2015 at 6:10 PM ^
You can make fun of anything you'd like on the internet. I often do.
When you make fun of people in a bullying manner (as I have occasionally done in my life) - it is inappropriate.
I'm sometimes inappriopriate - and when I am, I don't deflect and obfuscate... I just say "Yep, I chose to be jerk" and own my choices.
I don't try to change tha narrative to make it appear that my inappropriate behavior wasn't.
February 11th, 2015 at 7:13 PM ^
A few posts up, by posting the definition of mean, you essentially said any time someone is "mean", they are being inappropriate. So, by your point, it doesn't have to be in a bullying manner to be inappropriate. Mean = inappropriate.
So in your world, basically anytime someone makes fun of anything in any way, they are being inappropriate. It sounds like the internet is not the place for you, and you are sitting on the highest horse of all time.
February 12th, 2015 at 10:32 AM ^
Anytime someone makes fun of any person in any way, they are being inappropriate.
The internet is fine for me - because I understand it's full of people being inappropriate, and accept that. As I said above - sometimes, I'm inappropriate.
My issue is - own your behavior. If you want to be an asshole, be an asshole - but be like Dennis Leary sang "an asshole and proud of it".
February 12th, 2015 at 11:33 AM ^
read
ing
this
thread
hurts
my
brain
February 11th, 2015 at 3:46 PM ^
If you are re-posting the image in an attemp to make fun of the person and have other people ridicule them then yes it is exactly cyber bullying. If I am overweight and someone takes a picture I have posted of myself and uses it to mock me that is exactly what cyber bullying is. The picture Brian chose to post had no connection whatsover to the issue at hand and was used to show the folks at mgoblog how much we should be mocking him. The intent was ridicule of the entirety of the person not of a single idea. If you don't see how that is wrong for 30+ year old man to do to a college sophmore I don't know what to tell you.
February 11th, 2015 at 5:07 PM ^
I bet Brian has learned his lesson, and next time he'll put up fliers on campus to organize a letter-writing campaign in which we politely and respectfully suggest that a college student government representative carefully reconsider his idea to replace the Victors with an extremely unique new fight song. As we speak, I'm sending a telegram to Brian echoing your concern.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:07 PM ^
Adam posted that picture for all to see, in a manner that made it extremely likely that anyone who wanted to see it could find it in short order. Brian then posted a picture of the that exact same thing, which was available to the exact same universe of people.
By your standard, linking to anything anyone coule ever consider embarassing (picture, stupid student newspaper article with byline, public performance, whatever), is cyberbullying.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:24 PM ^
By your standard, linking to anything anyone coule ever consider embarassing (picture, stupid student newspaper article with byline, public performance, whatever), is cyberbullying.
Depending on intent, it is.
February 11th, 2015 at 6:16 PM ^
Maybe the intent was "This person wants to change 'The Victors.' And this is a picture he posted and how he represents himself as a Michigan student."
I feel they are pretty connected. He's not ridiculing the guy for being overweight or for his physical appearance. IF he's ridiculing the guy, he's ridiculing him for the way he is representing himself as a Michigan student. And since he's an elected official of the student body, how he represents himself as a student is pretty relevent.
February 12th, 2015 at 1:40 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 6:29 PM ^
Sorry double post.
February 12th, 2015 at 10:43 AM ^
That is not true at all and you are setting up strawmen. The issue isn't with posting a picture or with saying the idea was a bad idea, neither of those things are bad on their own. The issue was with the intent of the use of the picture and that is what you can't seem to get through your head. Intent matters. Brian posted that picture because he wanted that person ridiculed, not just for one bad idea but for the entirety of their person. The purpose of posting that picture wasn't to show how it was a bad idea it was to make fun of the person who had the idea. That is where Brian took a step too far. If he just makes fun of the idea he does nothing wrong but posting that picture on the front page of message board so everyone can laugh at the kid is wrong.
Lets just say you enjoyed playing world of warcraft and had a picture posted from you sitting in front of a computer with a headset on and we disagreed on who should be the starting QB. If I then post that picture and say lol at listening to this guy that is crossing a line. This is the same thing. Making fun of and getting a community to ridicule the entirety of the person rather than ripping on one bad idea is what took this a step too far. It blows my mind that people can't make that distinction.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:12 PM ^
Disingenuity isn't a good look on you, BiSB.
February 11th, 2015 at 4:23 PM ^
I have no reason to be disingenuous here. I'm not receiving a nickel from the site. I'm not even writing for the site anymore, other than the occasional response to the This Weeks Obsession articles. I'm not trying to make inroads in the blogging community.
I don't always agree with Brian. I just happen to not think he did anything wrong here, and I get tired of people who don't understand how social media works..
February 11th, 2015 at 4:42 PM ^
This has nothing to do with "how social media works." His twitter feed had nothing to do with his CSG proposal.
In this day, everyone has a public online profile to some extent. That doesn't mean it's OK for a 36 year old man to mock a 19 year old by picking out a photo and essentially saying "look at this idiot."
Imagine some of the stupid shit you said or did as a 19 year old. Now imagine that, immediately after you said it, a website with a huge following, run by a grown man, posted a goofy picture of you and called you an asshole. And for the rest of your life, google searches of your name lead to that website. I'm sure you would think it's totally justified, because that's just how social media works.
February 11th, 2015 at 11:10 PM ^
February 12th, 2015 at 1:46 AM ^
February 11th, 2015 at 3:16 PM ^
Is that also cyber bullying?
This kid made a deliberate choice that put himself in the public eye. How is it different?
Sent from MGoBlog HD for iPhone & iPad
February 11th, 2015 at 3:49 PM ^
How the fuck is presenting an idea to student government putting yourself in the public eye?