(Shrug) "It's common" is not, by itself, a very strong justification for doing things a certain way. If "it's the way things are usually done" were an adequate justification for anything, culture would never change, there'd be no social progress at all, and we'd be stuck in some sort of medieval stasis.

You must think the world is chock full of sad, shameful women.

I'm sorry, but I can't help reading the comment as: "Singapore is a great country. The government tries to brainwash people. There is tons of censorship. Criticizing the government is illegal. It's a great country."

I will always pronounce it "gee-eye-eff", just to be difficult. :P

Clearly, the light-speed barrier is really just a limit in our universe's clock speed...

... Hm. Well, this public discussion about silly animated .gifs (on a publicly viewable discussion forum, which is meant for public discussion of things) certainly escalated quickly...

Well if you already knew why they posted it, then why are you asking?

I took it as an illustration of the theme "a person is confused by a very simple thing, and proceeds to blame someone else for this."

No, no, I believe you. In fact, I don't think you ever posted at all. You most likely don't even exist, and this entire conversation is taking place in my fevered imagination. :P

Probably not to the point of endangering health or life in the way we see here, but yeah, I'd say it's more or less a truism that everyone has at least one serious mistake to regret, at one point of their life or another, and that for most people it was a mistake that in retrospect could have been avoided. If you've…

I don't understand such posts. Yes, it was a very stupid mistake. But this is a person who's going to spend the rest of her life blind. I mean, you know, that seems like punishment enough. I have a hard time not feeling at least a little sympathy. I certainly don't understand the need to make posts about how stupid or…

Oh my. Isn't this pretty much the same sort of thing that "get off my lawn!" types have been saying about *all* computer games for decades now? :P

"Everyone's entitled to their own opinion, but if you control a corporation, you're also entitled to your own facts." Love this line.

Er... You start off with "I'm not defending the arrest," but by the end your comment reads almost like "oh, that poor cop, forced, forced into such a terrible situation! The poor dear!"

They don't, unless it's a chance to yell at someone for breaking gender stereotypes. Every conservative arse thinks that that's the most important job in the world.

These are fair points, but while they're an interesting exploration of the bigger issue, I don't think they're going to make a gay man getting stoned to death in some intolerant culture feel better, you know? What should the West do? We can't ignore it, especially if it is historically our fault.

Yesss, thank you. I think Biden's remarks should be supported, 100%. "Culture" and "tradition" should not be magic words that let you do whatever you want, and act like an arse — or worse — towards people. If your culture involves taking away people's rights, or physically assaulting them, or worse, then you can…

Hee. An angry, mildly insulting internet comment on a video game website, accusing someone else of being a man-child and complaining about men who aren't emotionally mature... :P

Loud agreement here, from one non-stereotypically-masculine guy to another. :)

I see where you're coming from here as well, and ultimately I don't have a better answer myself — I just think this is the correct direction to move in; I don't necessarily believe it's realistic that we'll actually get to a state where there's really no presumptions about gender at all. But that's true of many social…