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- Hacker News
- Another day in Everything is About Mate Suppression
- Sigh. Reductionist thinking again. Yes, of course, if you literally say “small penis” the plaintiff would rightfully cite this history.
But it’s not meant to be taken literally, like those are magic words. You say “he failed upwards, funded by family wealth and connections, despite everyone thinking he was an idiot who could barely string a sentence together”
The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.
by brookst - This sounds like exactly the kind of thing that some with a small penis would say ...by techscruggs
- > The point is to emphasize, even exaggerate, low-status negative qualities.
Or, to cite other potentially preemptive design, add enough other absurdity where someone can just say something like "It is obvious nobody would think the real would %person% impregnated Satan".
by to11mtm - It isn't the size of your tort, it is how you use it.
Also, are men this easily manipulated?
Yes.
by genxy - Were you trying to reply to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48797302? Because as it is it seems like you're being snarky with Wikipedia.by pessimizer
- I can't imagine judges would normally except this especially since it seems to be a known way to skirt law.by z_open
- I think the point is that you can apply it to any shameful-enough aspect of the libel/parody.by tarpitt
- The judge doesn't accept it, and the Wikipedia page points out that this isn't a good legal strategy for that reason.
But it can be a good social-engineering strategy: the "rule" is based on the hope that the person on the other end of it won't bring legal action in the first place, for fear of socially confirming their association with a small-penis'd character.
by kelnos - If nobody brings forward a lawsuit in the first place, why would there be a judge?by steego
- It's not a legal defense strategy, it's a social engineering strategyby nfw2
- If you accuse someone (not me) of having a small penis (I don't) they (not me) don't have to show that they (not me) have a large penis (like me). Just the accusation they made (to you, not me) is slander enough. But I'd gladly drop-trousers in a court.by comrade1234
- I don’t think you’d get to use the courts anymore.by cwmoore
- I don't think it would be me accusing you of having a small penis (since of course you don't). It's me accusing someone named romcade4321 of being a generally shitty person, and also having a small penis. If you think romcade4321 is a reference to you, you would have to prove the similarity between them and you (maybe by dropping your trousers in court?)by arijun
- This is not the point. The point is about deterring lawsuits. The point is not about defending lawsuits. This is very clearly explained in OP.by baobabKoodaa
- I wonder if the Catch Me if You Can guy counts. He apparently lied about a lot of his adventures as a scam artist, making him more of a fabulist.
However, if anyone taken in by his stories were to complain publicly (say, a book publisher or something), they'd be admitting not only to being a rube, but a rube to a liar who had already claimed publicly to be a scam artist. Even worse, that scam would be real and count as a success, restoring the scam artist's tarnished reputation from fabulist back to bona fide scam artist.
by jancsika - A Jewish comedian made a joke about how jews (only in the US*) were offended that Ferengi in Star Trek were based on them - "why would we assume these ugly greedy people are _us_?"
*Outside the US, it looks like the Ferengi are mocking American capitalist culture.
by rsstack - I think that is a bad example. I haven't heard of Jewish people being offended by Ferengi, but anti-Semitic depictions are very often exactly "ugly, greedy people" (just look at any Nazi propaganda). Once it becomes a common thread it works less as a defense.
I imagine "small hands" would similarly work poorly as a defense against a defamation suit from Trump: he doesn't have to claim he has small hands, only that he is often depicted as having them.
by arijun - When being defensive about the genocide, some people invoke against the protesters, e.g. "Where were you when the atrocities in Sudan were happening?", admitting that the genocide being committed is as bad as the Sudan conflict...by netsharc
- The Ferengis do have a lot of superficial similarities to Jewish caricatures.by Thraway198
- Is it true that the Ferengi were based on Jews? I suspected so, but then I also considered they may have been influenced by the Chinese.by secondcoming
- Wish you’d been more specific, “a Jewish comedian” sounds like the setup for a joke.by cwmoore
- I never knew about this complaint either, the connection never occured to me at the time as the capitalist cristicism seemed par for the course for a post-scarcity Federation. I don't understand this knee-jerk self -owning behavior. It's like that bizarre tweet by the Israeli government about the photo of an IDF soldier destroying a Christian ornament. The gov. official insisted that the physical features of the soldier contained so many antisemitic tropes that it had to be AI. Thus, the guy was inadvertantly described as the ugliest person on the planet in excruciating detail by his own government.by sillyfluke
- Sidestepping your original premise - how do the Ferengi even make sense in Star Trek? Its supposed to be a post-scarcity society, at least on an individual level - and an imperialist one on a civilization-scale, the latter being a step back even from how the modern world works.by torginus
- I'm sure South Park had no idea about any of thisby conartist6
- It's pretty amazing that South Park hasn't been sued (or lost?)
I wonder if Peter Thiel took umbrage at how South Park portrayed him recently [0] and is lurking in the shadows planning Gawker v2 [1]
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfSOC6-G044
[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdrange/2016/06/21/peter-thi...
by khurs - Then again, money.
> A jury in New Mexico awarded $412 million to a man who sued over what he said were unnecessary erectile dysfunction shots that decimated his penis
On the one hand, now you're famous for having a dick that doesn't work, on the other hand, $412 million.
https://amp.sacbee.com/news/nation-world/national/article296...
by fragmede - $412 million in actualized damages?
That’s international dynastic money over a penis.
by bellowsgulch - You could write a Seinfeld episode around this.
The defendant fears that the news coverage of his case means that no woman would ever be interested in him again. Once the judgement and the payout is announced he finds himself being constantly approached by gorgeous women.
- > For a fictional portrait to be actionable, it must be so accurate that a reader of the book would have no problem linking the two
Sorry this argument makes no sense. If I (or any average reader) read a passage dissing a public figure (not me), which describes them with a small penis, I wouldn't consider the description as not fitting - I have no way of telling how big their penis is.
If the public person in question came forward, and read the passage, he could successfully argue, that readers of the book would have no information about the size of his package, and thus that would be irrelevant to the argument. So him suing the author based on this would not mean he admits his dong is small.
by torginus