Brickbat: Don't Say That

A British court has sentenced Simon Sillwood to eight weeks in jail for racially abusing online a player for the West Bromwich Albion soccer team. Sillwood, a fan of the team, was upset after it lost a shutout to Manchester City. He posted on a Facebook group that midfielder Romaine Sawyers, who is black, should receive the "Baboon d'Or" award, a reference to Balloon d'Or trophy awarded annually to the best soccer player. Sawyers told the court he felt "harassed, alarmed and distressed" after reading the post. Sillwood claimed he meant to post "buffoon" but misspelled it "bafoon" and autocorrect changed it to "baboon."

Comments

[m4019597]

Whining about being called a baboon is something a loser would do.

It’s fitting that the player did lose a game.

So he’s a loser loser.

[perlhaqr]

Romaine Sawyers sounds like a whiny little cunt. He's probably one of those worthless assholes who throws himself on the ground screaming like his leg's been broken when a player from the other team passes him a foot away.

Actually, on further consideration, Romaine Sawyers is a completely psychotic bitch, to begin a process that sees a man thrown in jail for two months because his pathetic little fee-fees got hurt.

[m4019597]

I blame it on his mother for the life of micro aggressions he suffered by being named a type of lettuce.

[m4019597]

/sarcasm

[Longtobefree]

Never use a sarc tag; it's a sign of weakness.

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[Stuck in California]

I've seen people react seriously this week to both OBL and RabbiHarveyWeinstein. So I can see the temptation to label even things so absurd even Poe's law shouldn't be in effect.

[Chumby]

Romaine complained about a word salad. Lettuce rejoice he is in Britain and not the US.

[Don't look at me!]

Leaf him alone. I’m sure Romaine’s heart is in the right place.

[Chumby]

Anymore epithets may cause Romaine to fall into a vegetative state.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Poe's Law. Cole's Law. What's the difference?

[Chumby]

Still can’t believe Romaine wilted from this criticism.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

My dog says "lettuce, turnip, and pea" on him.

[Tyval Dayall]

There has to be some joke about tossing Romaines sallad.

[The Encogitationer]

Friends! Romaines! Countrymen! Lend me your ears!...

[perlhaqr]

I am definitely hoping Romaine has a ceasar.

[The Encogitationer]

Cole's Law is thinly-sliced cabbage. Vinegar marinated is best.

[The Encogitationer]

As far as I carrot, he can take a cabbage across the drink.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kuckland]

The best part was while in court the soccer player collapsed, grabbed his ankle, and demanded a guilty verdict for his injury

[Joe Dokes]

Now that's funny. 🙂

[James Pollock]

If the match officials didn't keep falling for that crap, it would stop happening.

[James Pollock]

"Whining about being called a baboon is something a loser would do."

But whining about someone whining about being called a baboon is totally hip, yeah?

[Fist of Etiquette]

The Limey constitution isn't a suicide pact.

[Davy C]

As I understand it they don't really have any meaningful constitution; Parliament can change everything whenever it feels like it.

[Ragnarredbeard]

Yep. England is founded on the belief that the people are subjects and government can do as it damn well pleases. The US was founded on the belief that the people were citizens who told the government what to do. Sadly, the US becomes more like England every day.

[Ajsloss]

Except their children go to school unmasked. They hate grandma over there (aside from the queen, of course).

[The Encogitationer]

It's a Non-Existence Pact.

You know who else's pact turned into a Non-Existence Pact.

[Utkonos]

The Warsaw Pact?

[Jerryskids]

Good thing he didn't call the player a water buffalo, who knows what the penalty for that sort of racism is,

[Chumby]

Yup. Baboon was just him monkeying around.

[James Pollock]

Blaming it on autocorrect, though, doesn't seem very British.

[Quo Usque Tandem]

Well it was soccer, not cricket.

[Rob Misek]

This is what the “allies” do.

[Chumby]

One played the race card so the other got a red card.

[mad.casual]

Sawyers told the court he felt "harassed, alarmed and distressed" after reading the post.

And then promptly fell to the ground.

[Chumby]

At least he didn’t go apeshit.

[Ajsloss]

Beautiful.

[Chumby]

Shouldn’t this article be posted as a Britback?

[The Encogitationer]

This would make the site dyslexic-friendly.

[bevis the lumberjack]

While he’s correct that autocorrect sucks, and he should be able to say what he wants anyway, his excuse is b.s.

I just typed in “bafoon” and autocorrect changed to to “bacon”. He said what he meant to say. Him going to prison is the type of world our progressives want here.

[Chumby]

It was a rather niggardly defense.

[Don't look at me!]

Then he got black balled.

[Earth Skeptic]

Ding ding ding!

[mad.casual]

Yeah, he's ignoring the implicit assumption that white people never get called damned dirty apes or that, conversely, there's some special reason why every reference to primates directed at black people is exceptionally racist.

Honestly, I'd feel better if they found him guilty of so crassly subverting longstanding tradition of racist linguistic subtlety.

[Ben of Houston]

While mine suggests "bacon" as well, autocorrect is based on what you have typed previously. It's possible he had a prior discussion about primates that made Google or Apple think he meant monkeys instead of breakfast.

[mad.casual]

autocorrect is based on what you have typed previously

It's a best guess that takes what you've previously typed into account. It can make a (bad) guess without knowing what you've previously typed. Mine comes up with 'Baboon' and 'Baloo'. I'm fairly certain I've never typed the word 'Baloo' into any phone. Bear, probably. Disney probably. Jungle Book almost certainly not. Rudyard Kipling probably.

Between the little German and Greek chars I type into my phone, I get some pretty batshit crazy suggestions. I can only imagine it's worse in Europe.

[JFree]

Mine suggested buffoon.

[Agammamon]

Because every company uses the same underlying dictionaries for their autocorrect.

SMDH

This is the level of technologica sophistication that gets you a seat on a Congressional tech oversight comittee.

[James Pollock]

"I just typed in “bafoon” and autocorrect changed to to “bacon”."

Autocorrect uses machine learning to guess what you meant to say. So if you use the word baboon a lot, it's going to guess that's what you wanted.

[Thrillhouse]

FWIW, I typed "Bafoon" on my iPhone and it autocorrected it to "Baboon." "Bacon" was another option on the bottom when I highlighted the misspelled word.

Maybe it depends on the operating system or something else. That or my phone and the British guy's phone are racist.

[James Pollock]

Yeah, yeah. That's the ticket. IT's the PHONES that are racist.

[perlhaqr]

Apple is racist for even *having* that word in their autocarrot dictionary. In fact, it should be listed as a misspelled word and autodefected to something else. Mandatorily. Even primatologists should be forbidden from ever using the b word.

[James Pollock]

Yeah, if you just take the word "baboon" out of the racists vocabulary, they won't know how to be racist any more and everything will be rainbow unicorn farts from now on.

[The Encogitationer]

I'm against prosecuting the man for offensive speech, but I agree that the defense is lame as Hell.

Autocorrect is a choice. I always keep mine off and let my own errors be mine. Take me "As is, No Warranty," warts and all, or not!

[The Encogitationer]

Not that I have warts, of course. Dry ice works wonders. 🙂

[Longtobefree]

Using the logic of common sense gun control, this entire sad situation is entirely the fault of the programmer who wrote the auto-correct, and England should require every web site in the world to include a preview and edit function.
(for the Reason posters)

[mad.casual]

Just think of all the minorities that could be saved from inadvertent verbal offense!

[James Pollock]

If either of you understood how autocorrect actually works, you'd be able to make actual suggestions of how to improve it.

[Longtobefree]

If either of us thought this was a site for serious posts, we wouldn't be here.

[James Pollock]

If you in particular had any capability or serious posts, it would be a net gain.

[Cal Cetín]

To organized soccer: Seriously, this is your fan base. They're rude and crude, are you going to prosecute *all* their insults? Focus on actual harm, eg. soccer riots.

[Chumby]

It was decades before the facts fully came to light in the Hillsborough tragedy. 96 fans were trampled to death and the government covered up its ineptitude.

[Ajsloss]

The number was bumped to 97 deaths a few months ago.

[The Encogitationer]

So much for gun-free, cane-free, (soon-to-be) knife-free Brits not being violent.

[Chumby]

The narrative pushed by some media and authorities at the time was “typical drunken Liverpool FC fans.” This was not the case. There is at least one documentary on it. There were several institutional failures and a failure by authorities to respond appropriately once things started going sideways.

[James Pollock]

Not wanting to deal with typical drunken Liverpool FC fans isn't exactly a surprise, even for law-enforcement types.

[Don't look at me!]

How much jail time for the word buffoon?

[markm23]

That depends on who you called a buffoon. If it's the King of Thailand, you could go away for a long time.

[loki]

This Romaine guy seems like a total nagger.

[loki]

Got dimmed auto correct!

[loki]

*God-damned*

[Hendo]

"a reference to Balloon d'Or trophy awarded annually to the best soccer player"

It's Ballon d'Or, not Balloon.

[Earth Skeptic]

So, Babon d'Or?

[Chumby]

Gibbon?

[James Pollock]

"So, Babon d’Or?"

BabAR is an elephant, en Francais.

[Thrillhouse]

Autocorrect/spell check strikes again, probably.

[Ajsloss]

How did you get three extra letters? I only got "THRILLHO".

[Earth Skeptic]

So if the fundamental legal criteria is personal offense, are we ready to institutionalize an honor culture? And if so, perhaps we can hope that government action can be replaced with dueling. Just like the Old South (or modern gangsta Chicago).

[mad.casual]

(or modern gangsta Chicago)

Out: Too many chiefs, not enough indians.
In: Too many duelists, not enough witnesses.

[James Pollock]

Out: Whinging about things from the safety of the Internet.
In : Wearing bullet-resistant clothing 24/7/365

[perlhaqr]

It's not just Shitcago. I watched a young gentleman go absolutely chimpanzee this morning in Bloomington because someone else had bumped into him. And apologized for it. I'm thinking the apology was a mistake.

[Jerry B.]

I am offended when the liberal commentariat at WAPO calls me a Trumpkin, Rethuglican, etc. Can I successfully sue? I don’t think so.

[James Pollock]

"I am offended when the liberal commentariat at WAPO calls me a Trumpkin, Rethuglican, etc. Can I successfully sue? "

You're responsible for your own choices.