[1153] Brähmer Coefficient
└ posted on Thursday, 13 February 2020, by Novil
- Sandra: Today, we’d like to introduce you to a brand new social concept, the Brähmer coefficient Θ. It describes the physical distance between two people in terms of their personal core value.
- Woo: Brähmer coefficient?
- Sandra: I can assure you that this has absolutely nothing to do with the generous donation we recently received from Brähmer Metallverarbeitung GmbH, the leading manufacturer of ring head cylindrical pins!
- Woo: That’s good to know!
- Ye Thuza: My family means everything to me.
- Caption: Θ = 0.01
- George Best: I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.
- Caption: Θ = 0.1
- Woman: I’m a happy social justice warrior.
- Woman: … Anyone?!
- Man: I’m sexually attracted to Saturn.
- Caption: Θ = 1000000
![[1153] Brähmer Coefficient](/comics/2020-02-13-1153-braehmer-coefficient.png "[1153] Brähmer Coefficient")
…and HOW there’s no one near the guy sexually attracted to Saturn? That makes no sense at all!!!
KillerOh wrote:
Of course not everyone hangs with their secret crush Jupiter, but Jupiter doesn’t realize because its so dense….
Hm. Wonder *why* someone looking for justice wouldn’t be happy? Maybe because justice isn’t being served, and that’s why they’re looking for it?
Just an observation…
It’s hard to maintain happiness when you’re not blissfully unaware of the world. Especially when you’re directly affected by it.
@ Xiro:
Eh. There are a lot of happy/warm social service workers and even at least two happy EMTs that I know. In terms of awareness of the less pleasant parts of the world, they’re often literally up to their elbows in it. Happiness is a function of self-awareness rather than awareness of the world.
Careful, here comes the butthurt SJWs.
@ TachyonCode:
People genuinely interested in bettering society don’t tend to call themselves by this term, which so beloved of Right-wing trolls – see below.
There you go, by illustration’s distance one name change and hula hoop away from a happy couple. Lot of potential for offspring too given the amount of moons Saturn actually Has now.
https://nineplanets.org/questions/how-many-moons-does-saturn-have/
@ maarvarq:
The modus operandi of the modern slacktivist: “Something bad is happening to someone somewhere in the world, therefore I can be as much of a sociopath as I want because my warped logic thinks that acting like a petulant child is somehow saving the world”.
There are plenty of social justice warriors who go home and lead happy lives. You ever attend a rally for marriage equality? Almost always a huge party afterwards.
Is it me, or do the “social justice” girl look a lot like Sadness from Inside Out?
@ butts:
It may be true. But I think the comic reflects the public perception of these people: they seem to be angry with the world, which causes some kind of aversion in people which aren’t in their movement. Maybe if activists were able to portray their demands in a more friendly way, they would gather more support from the society.
@ Grijan:
In the german version she is claiming to be a ‘lebensfrohe linke feministin’, so a left-wing feminist that is cheerful/happy with her life.
Which is not quite the same meaning as ‘social justice warrior’.
‘Social Justice Warrior’ is a term that is used as an insult.
So in such a case it is not about about how their message is told. But it is an attempt to silence the messenger because of fear of discussing about their message.
Similar statements have been made about me for being a minority, an underweight man, a feminist, an atheist, pro choice, a nerd, a person with a disability, and/or a gamer.
It is a mean spirited barb that is founded in negative feelings and stereotypes. It is fundamentally biggoted to make claims about people that way. I don’t have strong feelings one way or another about SJW’s but I wouldn’t like it no matter what group was put as the butt of the joke.
I miss the character driven arcs.
So nice to see George Best up there, as an Irish person.
RIP
@ KillerOh:
They where all at the guy who loves Uranus
That’s right, you silly SJWs! When you see discrimination, injustice, and inequality you must laugh instead of getting concerned or angry! Better yet, you could just turn around and let yourself be entertained by whatever else and forget about all the suffering and misery of others like well-adjusted people do!
Birds, heh
@ milnhat:
That is by far the best description of an SJW I have ever heard. Right to the point. Thank you.
Sorry, fella… someone else already put a ring on it 😉
TachyonCode wrote:
Because “justice” is inherently individual, (“Justice” is treating people according to their own merits.) so social justice warriors are pursuing a contradiction, and can never win?
Does anyone actually call themselves a Social Justice Worker unironically? I’m pretty sure it’s only used as an insult now.
So… number of readers stagnates and Novil prepares for a litte shitstorm to spread publicity?
…I prefer Uranus.
The strip may be interpreted as “anyone fighting for social justice in today world is not a happy person (because there is a lot to do)”. Considering Trump and others this would make sense but I do not think it is what Novil is trying to say. I am a little disheartened that a strip that has give us so many great character arcs has conformed itself to cheap shots for attention like these and all that thing about using the name of the commenters in the strip.
I bet Novil makes these strips just to sit back and eat popcorn while reading the comics.
*comments, sorry
maarvarq wrote:
It originally was used to describe themselves, but was essentially ceded to people who oppose them.
Though social justice arguments have a bad habit of defaulting to Marxist class conflict and basically arguing that for any demographic line you can cut that X is the oppressor and not X is the oppressed and therefore not X needs to be given special privileges or have a right not to be offended or have depictions that are unflattering (or too flattering) stricken from media.
Then you ask for evidence, and they start being selective about what does and doesn’t count, specifically along lines that match their pre-ordained oppressor/oppressed narrative. For example, prison sentencing gaps are a clear example of oppression if we’re talking about race, but mean nothing at all when talking about gender.
@ ArcaneDarkness:
This bums me out, note even just because of the content, but because this comic is so blatant about what it is trying to do. You could replace all the art with Stonetoss, tell us that Stonetoss made it, and no one would bat an eye. You can’t get any more blatant and political than Stonetoss without being a literal political cartoon/Facebook meme. I miss character arcs.
@ Paul:
The only people who I’ve seen using the term are right=wing trolls, and even then it’s been years since I’ve seen it used prolifically…
Don’t get engaged to Saturn unless he offers you a ring.
I’m really split on what this comic is trying to say…
1. it’s (trying) making fun of people who are genuinely trying to better the world by resorting to an insult (which hasn’t been in common usage since 2018 or earlier) that says way more about the person using it that the person it is aimed at
OR
2. it’s making the point that unless you’re blinkered you can’t be happy about the state of our society and the inequalities and inequities in it.
im also a happy(i.e. not depressed. or pessimistic) SJW that doesnt talk shit, and instead talks about theory and academe *a bit too much*
also is the scale logarithmic to the distance?
@ TachyonCode:
valid point
What is this about? I don’t get it.
I happen to know a “social justice warrior” who is very happy when playing old games on the Sega Saturn.
As a transgender lesbian, I of course am an advocate for both feminist and LGBT+ rights, but I would NEVER call myself a “Social Justice Warrior”. A person can advocate for social justice without stooping so low as to become an SJW. I myself have been attacked by SJWs; I can’t undergo hormone replacement therapy due to medical reasons, and I can’t currently afford any surgeries, so I’ve been literally screamed at by the local SJWs for being “a crossdresser appropriating the transgender and lesbian labels”, called a homophobe and transphobe, had things thrown at me, and deliberately and purposely misgendered because I “don’t deserve to be called by those pronouns”. (Also, because I use the term “LGBT+”, I’m apparently claiming that other gender identities don’t exist? I’m sorry, but I’m not going to start calling us QUILTBAGs.) These very same people once held a loud, obnoxious, and very disruptive protest outside a local business because it didn’t hire a person that the owners had no idea was gay, but of course the SJWs did what they do and twisted the facts around to make it seem deliberate. They kept the protest outside, but they harassed customers in the parking lot, physically blocked the driveways, and caused a not-insignificant amount of property damage until the police came and needed to forcibly remove them, getting screamed at for being “cis-het-patriarchist establishment pigs” the whole time. In college, the Gay-Straight Alliance (one of the oldest and most influential LGBT+ advocate organizations) office was regularly vandalized by the local SJW population (for not being “progressive enough”, and therefore only “enabling the cis-het establishment”), and we needed to regularly remind everyone that the SJWs were NOT part of the GSA and that their actions did NOT represent us in any way.
The term “Social Justice Warrior” used to refer to people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, but it’s changed over time, like words and ideas tend to do (to use a tired overused metaphor: “Nazi” used to simply mean “member of the National Socialist German Worker’s Party”, before it eventually came to mean “evil Fascist Aryan supremacist”). Because modern SJWs deliberately seek out attention and make themselves such a loud obnoxious spectacle, people tend to look at them and think that “Oh, ALL feminists must be like that” or “ALL gay rights activists, and therefore all gays, are like that”. Due to this, they may have actually done far more harm to the movements that they claim to support (feminism, LGBT+ rights, etc.) than almost any organization opposing those movements.
TL;DR – “SJW” doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It really, REALLY doesn’t.
@ Nellis:
Speaking as a cis-het male feminist, LGBT+ supporter, I grieve to agree with you. SJW’s have become their own worst enemies.
@ Paul:
They use to.
Schadrach wrote:
That’s pretty much the sad point I’ve reached with the “movement” myself.
The irony is that that in fixating “justice” based on artificial divisions of race, class, gender, etc, the movement itself becomes about all those things, and makes them worse. Identity politics are toxic as hell.
TachyonCode wrote:
NOT justice. “Social justice.”
Someone who truly seeks justice needs no qualifier before this word. “Social justice” has a special, identitarian flavor to it. Think people who want to fight specifically for “transgender rights” instead of human rights. Look at the shouting contests on whose clique deserves the most attention, and it is revealed as tribalism, not a principled application of liberalism.
The wording is often telling. Whoever is in the way can get called out as cis, patriarchical, white, and other identitarian ad hominem terms. This shows how the people fighting for “social justics” are typically themselves significantly more racist, sexist, and authoritarian than the targets they harrass.
Everyone else is the enemy, they are in a constant state of outrage, and can never be happy. I know this sounds like a strawman, but unfortunately it is not.
Actually, like many conceptual names (e.g. “The Big Bang Theory,” “Capitalism,” “The Dark Ages”), Social Justice WARRIOR was a term coined by their opponents, then adopted by its adherents.
The term itself is mocking the attempt to reclaim the term “social justice” by political activists from (primarily Catholic) theologians. Obviously, there is overlap between religious and political movements (the American Civil Rights movement being a prime example), but the Social Justice Warrior moniker was poking fun at the idea that these activists had the religious fervor of a “spiritual warrior” but without the philosophical underpinnings that support the desired social change, instead having to ascribe metaphysical import to the problem itself (for instance, racism is not the result of evil or ignorance but is treated as an active force of evil in itself).
This is actually relevant to the idea of happiness in an activist as very few believers in any classical Social Justice theory would call themselves a “Social Justice Warrior” because they would identify first with the moral philosophy (usually religious) which informs their definition of “social justice” and being a part of that philosophy gives them reason for hope and happiness (most being Christian, they could simultaneously feel outrage at the injustices of the world and happiness that their belief holds that this world is temporary and destined for perfection which they are cooperating with). By contrast, one who adopts the term “Social Justice Warrior” is likely doing so because they have no stronger affiliation than to defiantly embrace the term used against them and thus have very little reason to be happy, hopeful, or even confident in their own stance beyond their emotional discomfort with the injustices they feel are self-evident.
Vandroiy wrote:
Precisely.
Injustices are committed against human beings, no “identities”.
I almost feel like it is still too soon for a George Best joke. Almost.
@ KillerOh:
simple Saturn does actually exist even if far away and incompatable. while the happy SJW is a myth.
Well……I am mostly happy, I am in a great relationship, have a great job and am a social just warrior. Is it a group just to pick on? Like, they are women who must be ugly and unhappy because they believe in something better? Naw…..I thought this place was better than that.
I find it sad that people here are so out of touch to think this sort of strip just exists in a vacuum. Like Novil just woke up this morning and went “Hey, nobody mentioned SJWs in a while, let’s poke fun at them”. Which means these people have not heard about James Pethokoukis’s (CNBC, Reuters, TheWeek) about dating and politics, nor the AEI article it’s based on.
There’s a timing to these strips. Of course, there are other similar sources, tweets and articles, so I might be mistaken about the specific source. But it’s a good place to start.
Plot twist: He’s talking about the Roman god.
@ KillerOh:
Because they’re too busy staring at Uranus.
@ Nellis:
Nellis, I’m begging you. Don’t let them cut you up. The doctors dont really know what they are doing. Talk to anyone who’s gone through it, they regret it.
@ KillerOh:
lad, there are people attracted to cars. At least he won’t be found in public diddling an exhaust pipe.