Your thoughts on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

[william1657]

I really enjoy it.
I watch whatever is posted of each episode on Youtube eac week and really wish they would just post the full episodes.

The topic choices can be a bit odd, but overall they are very interesting and usually at least a little funny.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

There are sides?

The only conceivable counterpoint view would have been a "pro online harassment" side. What sides?

Sides as in the age old battle of the sexes. One side is getting coverage here, in this case it's basically exclusively presented as men harassing women. This is why the concept of "equal time" is necessary. Because if you take that segment by it self, without being aware of the online world, what you'll get is that it's men harassing women into hiding using the internet.

I'm not saying that it's about counterpoints here, it's about making the issue exclusive to one demographic, by using misleading coverage. That's my point. There needs to be awareness for all online harassment, using a narrow sample skews the view on who this issue hurts.

I didn't take that away from the segment at all. We must always allow for one's personal interpretation, but it might be a slight overstatement to claim that this is the "basic takeaway".

From what I saw, by what was presented to me by that segment, was that online harassment is a problem that affects women and is perpetrated by men. Now I know that's not true, I know better, not everyone does. Knowing better I was able to understand how the things John Oliver pointed out affect everyone. That said, someone who isn't intimately familiar with the things that go on on the internet could easily interpret this as; "evil men use internet to harass women out of their homes." That's what irritated me about the whole situation.

It wouldn't have been hard either for them to add in some stories of men who have received death threats, had their addresses published, and were the victims of revenge porn too. But they didn't do it that way, they presented it as an issue that only affects one demographic.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

That's the problem with heroes. You don't need to like everything someone does. That mentality leads to two scenarios:
1. You find yourself bending over backwards to justify horrible shit your hero has done to try and justify your admiration.

2. You end up getting so angry they did a thing you don't like that you can't enjoy stuff you did like.

If I can still enjoy annie hall despite it being made by a suspected child molester you can still enjoy LWT despite it being made by a man who did something you consider "intellectually dishonest" (which is itself debateable).

Well, of course, I'm not just talking about whether or not I "like" something they say/do. I'm specifically referencing when they make points that either don't hold up under scrutiny or bear the hallmarks of readily apparent bias.

It just makes me want to go back to other shows and segments to comb through, looking for incorrect information or other instances where I'd been lead astray.

It's a matter of realizing misplaced trust in what I'd erroneously believed to be fairly objective and reliable sources....ya know, 'cause I'm apparently quite naive and idealistic at my core, despite maintaining a pretense of cynicism.

Forget about the joke there for a second. He presented only one side...

There are sides?

The only conceivable counterpoint view would have been a "pro online harassment" side. What sides?

Er, I think they're using 'sides' as in 'sides of a story,' not necessarily the opposition to the opposition of harassment.

Edit: beat me to it. Takes me forever to post on a phone.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Sides as in the age old battle of the sexes. One side is getting coverage here, in this case it's basically exclusively presented as men harassing women. This is why the concept of "equal time" is necessary. Because if you take that segment by it self, without being aware of the online world, what you'll get is that it's men harassing women into hiding using the internet.

I'm not saying that it's about counterpoints here, it's about making the issue exclusive to one demographic, by using misleading coverage. That's my point. There needs to be awareness for all online harassment, using a narrow sample skews the view on who this issue hurts.

Yikes. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here, but are you suggesting that television programs such as this one need to cater to a perceived "battle of the sexes" by ensuring that issues that impact both men and women give each gender equal air time? Even if the segment in question is fifteen minutes long, and a substantial portion of that is reserved for comedy?

From what I saw, by what was presented to me by that segment, was that online harassment is a problem that affects women and is perpetrated by men. Now I know that's not true, I know better, not everyone does.

Okay, and not to seem crass, but at what point do we cross the threshold of "safety rails for idiots" when it comes to adding disclaimers to things so people who "don't know better" can reasonably be expected to understand them and not go leaping to inaccurate conclusions? This isn't the evening news, he doesn't really have a mandate to "keep the people informed".

That said, someone who isn't intimately familiar with the things that go on on the internet could easily interpret this as; "evil men use internet to harass women out of their homes." That's what irritated me about the whole situation.

Sure, but that makes me irritated with those people, not with Mr. Oliver.

It wouldn't have been hard either for them to add in some stories of men who have received death threats, had their addresses published, and were the victims of revenge porn too. But they didn't do it that way, they presented it as an issue that only affects one demographic.

They presented it as an issue and focused primarily on one demographic. It really can't be said strongly enough...claiming A affects B isn't the same as saying A doesn't affect C and D and E. It wasn't an exhaustive documentary on the subject. I can see if one was a male victim of online harassment feeling peeved that their perspective didn't get equal airplay, but that doesn't invalidate the perspectives that did. This wasn't Bill Maher openly mocking male victims of rape, for instance.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I'm a casual fan. When somebody posts a link I'll watch it.

Same as this^ guy.

It's interesting, but the humour doesn't personally stick for me. It's still not bad as it eats up 20 minutes fairly well.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Er, I think they're using 'sides' as in 'sides of a story,' not necessarily the opposition to the opposition of harassment.

Edit: beat me to it. Takes me forever to post on a phone.

No, I get it. It's just that, in this case, the "other side of the story" is the harassers side.

There are no "two sides" where on one side you have male victims of online harassment and on the other female victims, and they are somehow in competition with one another for a finite supply of public awareness and sympathy. Framing the discussion in that way would be profoundly worrisome. Ostensibly, all victims of harassment (regardless of gender) are on one side, and the harassers are on the other.

As someone who is stridently against online harassment, it didn't particularly bother me that my gender was under-represented or that a joke was made at the expense of my white penis. I considered myself "on the side" of the piece condemning online harassment. I'm actually kind of surprised at how you and Kyuubi interpreted it.

 

[EvilRoy]

Its a generally funny show, although at times it is extremely American. Not a bad thing considering it is by and for Americans, but I don't like to put too much energy in watching a show based around outrages that I personally can't help and/or have no say in. The CRA may be analogous to the IRS, but we have our own separate problems.

 

[Zontar]

That's disappointing, I thought you were a really funny Poe, not a really unfunny GG'er. I guess I shouldn't be shocked that after a year and what everyone knows about GG, that only a really hardcore type would still be around.

I don't see why, the false narrative aGG created has only been falling appart over time, not solidifying. The only place one can find it being taken seriously is echo chambers.

Uh huh. Sure. That explains the stunning recent success with the SPJ, and the topic of this very thread.

Ah yes because one person having a shitfit derails the entire movement. What am I saying, with how many straws aGG is clawing at to try and maintain the narrative some people might actually buy that. Funny thing to remember is that Bob alone did more to disprove the narrative while trying to push it, to say nothing of people like Leigh Alexander.

What happened with SPJ is a setback, but given how a sustained media attack didn't do anything, and how GG reacted to King of Pol, it would be insane to think this would be anything other then a minor nuisance at most, and quite a dangerous level of willingness to ignore and disconnect ones' self from reality.

 

[Tsun Tzu]

No, I get it. It's just that, in this case, the "other side of the story" is the harassers side.

There are no "two sides" where on one side you have male victims of online harassment and on the other female victims, and they are somehow in competition with one another for a finite supply of public awareness and sympathy. Framing the discussion in that way would be profoundly worrisome. Ostensibly, all victims of harassment (regardless of gender) are on one side, and the harassers are on the other.

As someone who is stridently against online harassment, it didn't particularly bother me that my gender was under-represented or that a joke was made at the expense of my white penis. I considered myself "on the side" of the piece condemning online harassment. I'm actually kind of surprised at how you and Kyuubi interpreted it.

That's sort of the rub here; different interpretations...and I think that, by doing it this way, they're the ones framing it as a competition from the outset.

I don't view 'sides' in this case as representative of Harassers v. Non-harassers. I view it as two parts of a whole where one part is being unfairly represented or outright mocked.

I view it as a willful effort on the part of those involved in the segment's production to downplay harassment directed at 'white penises' or 'penises' in general in a bid to artificially inflate one demographic's plight relative to the other. It comes across as intellectually dishonest when the overwhelming emphasis is placed on women if a two second glance at Twitter will tell you it's a universal problem.

Nobody is "for harassment." Nobody worth mentioning anyway, so it honestly doesn't even enter into my reading of the word 'side' to be a reference to those folks.

Really, if it's under the header "Online Harassment" then I expect it to be a fair assessment of the overall problem. If it were titled "Online Harassment of Women" then I wouldn't be taking umbrage here.

 

[Skatologist]

I enjoy the show both for the content covered and the humor. Certainly some of the issues can be expanded upon or lack complexity when talking about the piece, but it hits a sweet spot for information being thoroughly entertaining.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Yikes. I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you here, but are you suggesting that television programs such as this one need to cater to a perceived "battle of the sexes" by ensuring that issues that impact both men and women give each gender equal air time? Even if the segment in question is fifteen minutes long, and a substantial portion of that is reserved for comedy?

Poor choice of wording. Anyways I'm not saying that they had to have one example of a man suffering for each of a woman suffering from this issue. But Oliver didn't even qualify it by saying it happens a lot to men too. No it was single prespective. Regardless of the portion dedicated to comedy, it excluded the idea of men being victims. Thats all. Though that really bothered me.

Okay, and not to seem crass, but at what point do we cross the threshold of "safety rails for idiots" when it comes to adding disclaimers to things so people who "don't know better" can reasonably be expected to understand them and not go leaping to inaccurate conclusions? This isn't the evening news, he doesn't really have a mandate to "keep the people informed".

Well considering the evening news isn't free of bias, or even succeeds in "keeping the people informed". Still people can draw the wrong conclusion if given incomplete information. The fact that it happens almost everywhere, doesn't make it any less irksome. Like when people talk about transgender individuals, then focus exclusive on transwomen like myself, completely ignoring transmen.

Sure, but that makes me irritated with those people, not with Mr. Oliver.

Well it irritates me when people who attempt to be educational(the edu in edu-tainment) at all leave out information, or focus too narrowly. Because those people can't be blamed if they drew an incorrect conclusion due to a lack of information.

They presented it as an issue and focused primarily on one demographic. It really can't be said strongly enough...claiming A affects B isn't the same as saying A doesn't affect C and D and E. It wasn't an exhaustive documentary on the subject. I can see if one was a male victim of online harassment feeling peeved that their perspective didn't get equal airplay, but that doesn't invalidate the perspectives that did. This wasn't Bill Maher openly mocking male victims of rape, for instance.

No it's not the same thing, but on the other hand being narrow with information can still be used to mislead people. It's the implication I'm getting at here. Oliver didn't even qualify by saying that men get harassed to, instead he implied that it's an issue women face, perpetrated by men, and men don't face it. At least that's how I see it. Of course it doesn't invalidate the perspectives that it covered, by not covering other perspectives. On the other hand it didn't even acknowledge that other perspectives even exist, like men who have been victims of malicious revenge porn plots, for example. I don't expect a comprehensive documentary, but I do expect inclusion for other perspectives who have also suffered, not for them to be dismissed out of hand. Also Maher, yeah, got no respect for that man what so ever.

 

[Thunderous Cacophony]

OT: Aside from his Snowden interview, the show's investigative journalism, while generally decent, really only hits the surface. Though one really shouldn't expect more from that in a ten-to-twenty minute segment riddled with jokes. For example, while they just did a bit on stadiums that was pretty decent, they have yet to touch upon the problems with hosting the Olympic games. If you think 12 billion dollars for fifty stadiums that don't earn any money is bad, imagine spending that for something that only hurts your economy past a period of one month. I'm also kind of surprised that they didn't pick on the New York Giants and New York Jets, given that they're New York teams that send most of their revenue to New York while New Jersey foots the bill for stadium construction.

I'm surprised I like the show as much as I do. Honestly while I didn't find him a bad fit on The Daily Show, including during the summer that he took over for Jon Stewart, I wasn't exactly wowed either. He was very focused but his delivery just wasn't something I was too big on. Still not a huge fan of it now, tbh, but the show is worth watching nonetheless. I do find that him being an outsider to United States government and culture does give him a lense those like Jon Stewart lack. It may come off as a bit mean-spirited and holier than thou, but its a refreshing honesty.

Pretty much my feelings; he should be valued as a comedian, not a reporter. He does good enough work, and if you like it then feel free to dig deeper into the issue, but otherwise treat it as a monologue from the Tonight Show and not a broadcast from the Nightly News. A lot of his coverage is just stunts that don't actually help, like the Diseased Lung thing, but he's not trying to solve all these problems, just use them as fodder for jokes.

Although I hate to do it, in keeping with this thread I'll use his harassment episode as an example. It wasn't bad, and everything was technically true that he said, but the entire time I was waiting for him to bring up the Hulk Hogan lawsuit against Gawker, which had become front-page news just the day before. It seemed like a great way to not only talk about online harassment and revenge porn from a different angle, but what is actually being done about it.

 

[RedDeadFred]

I don't watch him regularly or anything, but I'll often go on a binge watch of all his latest Youtube highlights.

Generally, I find him quite funny and fairly informative. He talks about issues that I never would have cared about (FIFA), but makes them interesting anyway.

His rant about monopolies in the Net Neutrality video is a particular favourite of mine.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

I love him, particularly for his coverage on Canadian scandals.

 

[fezzthemonk]

There are sides?

The only conceivable counterpoint view would have been a "pro online harassment" side. What sides?

Sides as in the age old battle of the sexes. One side is getting coverage here, in this case it's basically exclusively presented as men harassing women. This is why the concept of "equal time" is necessary. Because if you take that segment by it self, without being aware of the online world, what you'll get is that it's men harassing women into hiding using the internet.

I'm not saying that it's about counterpoints here, it's about making the issue exclusive to one demographic, by using misleading coverage. That's my point. There needs to be awareness for all online harassment, using a narrow sample skews the view on who this issue hurts.

I didn't take that away from the segment at all. We must always allow for one's personal interpretation, but it might be a slight overstatement to claim that this is the "basic takeaway".

From what I saw, by what was presented to me by that segment, was that online harassment is a problem that affects women and is perpetrated by men. Now I know that's not true, I know better, not everyone does. Knowing better I was able to understand how the things John Oliver pointed out affect everyone. That said, someone who isn't intimately familiar with the things that go on on the internet could easily interpret this as; "evil men use internet to harass women out of their homes." That's what irritated me about the whole situation.

It wouldn't have been hard either for them to add in some stories of men who have received death threats, had their addresses published, and were the victims of revenge porn too. But they didn't do it that way, they presented it as an issue that only affects one demographic.

Another problem was the skit at the end. I felt that it pused the "men do this to women" idea more than anything else

 

[Zontar]

When this place changes its mind or goes down in flames, it's back to IRC and the chans.

So you're saying it's inevitable that this site will either go down or ban talking about this? I know you're new here, but I think you have a lot to learn about this place if you think GG is going to be banned from discussion, or that this place is going down any time soon. Hell, if what happened in the first three months of all this neither took the site down nor stopped discussion of this topic, then nothing outside of people no longer wanting to talk about it will do so, and given how the over 100 pro-GGers on this site are, coupled with the dozen or two anti-GGers who love to talk about the issue, that this isn't going away any time soon.

 

[shirkbot]

Was he fired or harassed till resigning or left by his own admission?

The videos look interesting.

He left because his contract was up with Comedy Central and the deal he got from HBO was amazing.

OT: I like it. Even if it's not a topic I'm super passionate about I think it's some of the best edutainment out there and I do my level best to check Youtube for the main segment every Monday.

 

[FPLOON]

When I first saw the first episode of Last Week Tonight, I was like "Oh sweet! It's like The Daily Report only unedited, kinda, and uncensored!" before going to my default "I don't have HBO!" reaction that I use whenever some shit goes down in Game of Thrones Silicon Valley... With that said, the "difference" between the first season and the current season, I'm noticing, is that the topics that Oliver's covering are getting more views on a much more faster rate than before... I'm assuming between the break between seasons allowed the LWT team to finally find their center alongside utilizing their YouTube channel to, at least, make sure than everyone [assuming the video's are not blocked or some shit like that] can see the main topic being discussed during the second half of the show... You may not be able to have the full-course meal, but at least you get to have the main course without the beginning appetizers, the pre-main topic sides, or the credits-flavored dessert...

Anyway, whenever my cable provider decides to do a "HBO Free Preview" schtick because of Silicon Valley Game of Thrones, then I'll check out the full episode of the Sunday... If a video from their YouTube channel interest me and/or it might be worth minutes of my time, then I'll check it out... Now, in terms of how the public could handle all the shit that happens when the private "bully" the public for "shit" for example, either we try to beat them at their own [pseudo-rigged] game or we do shit that would only be seen as a "good thing" once the dust clears and one side goes "Ya know what? We shouldn't be doing X and we'll do our best to make sure that we can't do X again" or some shit like that... I don't know... This "risk/reward" bullshit always feels one-sided once you try to change the non-bullshit from the inside...

 

[Zontar]

I've been lurking here for years, which is years longer than GG has existed.

#FreeKony

Wouldn't that mean your statement is even more disconnected form reality since if true that would mean you're fully aware of the fact that this site will neither ban discussion of this topic nor will it shut down any time soon?