JM2K6 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:37 pm
I don't know what it is about rugby that makes you such a disingenuous prick to converse with but it's genuinely weird.
Margin__Walker wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 1:40 pm
I know you're not stupid Os, so why pretend to be on here?
Guys, these seem like honest posts expressing disappointment. They seem genuine, so I'll respond in kind.
I enjoy an argument, South Africans generally do like a fight. There's some similar stuff going on with the Irish (religious society with a manichean outlook, blah blah). The most over the top threads on PR were the SA provincial battles, we've doxxed eachother, we've found accounts of eachother on other sites, extreme personal abuse is the least of it. It was all good fun, no one ever got upset for long, there was minimal reporting.
I wouldn't say I'm better than any of the other Saffas in the group on here. They've all outsmarted me at some point in the past, it would be a mistake to think any of us are idiots, it would also be a mistake to take us that seriously. I do think we tone it down a lot on threads where it isn't just Saffas. I'm not going to argue with someone that doesn't enjoy it, or where there's no possibility of changing anyone's mind or my own mind changing. Wild horses couldn't drag me onto the Israel v Palestine thread, or any of the royal family threads, etc.
On this thread ...
Le Roux celebration. I've never trolled any non-SA teams, or got upset about how other sides played the game. The variety of ways a side can win is one of the thigs that makes rugby interesting. In this RWC I was impressed by how England beat the Pumas and posted as much. In this match England's strategy was very interesting and prevented the Bok counterattack working (because there was nothing to counter from), I also posted pre-match England weren't as bad as some were saying. I'm not some rabid England rugby hater or whatever. England's gamesmanship antics are annoying but I can't recall commenting on them before this match (maybe when Marler grabbed Deon Fourie's dick last year?). For me all this talk about the Boks "destroying rugby" is absurd, and my posts around the Le Roux celebration were about poking some fun at that. They were very much in the style of the posting on an SA provincial thread, where there is a point being made, but there's also a lot of nonsense/trolling some will find amusing.
The Curry v Bongi thing is different, and the exact type of subject I avoid. My posts on that have been short and focusing on process only. What makes it different is someone decides Bongi is potentially racist or not, then it all gets a bit binary. It's not a Le Roux celebration where there's potential for an England fan to think "hmm, maybe our gamesmanship is a bit shit" or a Bok fan to think "this is quite funny". It's more of an Israel v Palestine where people get entrenched and seriously angry.
I'm definitely in the camp that Bongi is not a racist, he would've been dropped years ago if he was. It would run counter to a lot of his biography if he were. If someone isn't a racist then they can't do racist things. I do think the UK gets a bit witch hunter around the subject of racism, the bar for racism ends up being extremely low, South Africans have a better understanding of what a racist is imo.
Finding someone guilty of racism means burning their whole life down, It's absolutely correct that there needs to be evidence, as SS posted the testimony of the plaintiff alone is hardly enough. It's not expressed by who you would expect in the way you would expect (it's not lefties waffling on about colonialism), but many white South Africans would say that someone in Curry's situation should just harden up (that sentiment has been expressed on this thread), and that someone shouldn't pay for some words by losing everything. Depending on the context (there's a difference between an opponent in a rugby match and a boss who has power over you) many white South Africans will be quite blunt about "hardening up" when a white person is on the receiving end, but would think the same thing without expressing it when a black person is on the receiving end. Many would not agree that a derogatory word with a racial prefix is automatically burn the witch time. English are clearly culturally very different on this.
I still believe the UK media (especially the Telegraph and Mail), have been irresponsible in their reporting. SA isn't England, under the ANC the SA state has collapsed in a lot of ways, there's no prospect of policing online abuse. It's noticeable SA rugby publications have been muted in their coverage, racial disagreements can get completely out of hand in SA. We're talking: death threats to the entire family, full public doxxing of the entire family, contacting employers, actual mobs of people in real life turning up at the home/place of work, and I'm aware of at least one case of someone being physically beaten by a mob outside their home. Because this is racial in nature it goes beyond rugby into a far more scary place, where crazies back their race group without caring about facts.
Finally, Saffa humour is either word play based and doesn't travel well because it gets lost in translation (Oom's clever "white car" joke). Or it's crude slapstick. This will become a joke in SA, it involves inter language wordplay and talking about cunts, which is the sweet spot. Nando's have already released a kant ad campaign. Streisand effect looks unavoidable.
You're really reaching now. 
