Bonus #81 - Instagram Approves of Swastikas! (Extra Dose)

EGNORRR

“Social media circle of life” got me.

Adam Buckley

Yeah this appears to be a single texture that maps itself onto specific parts, it's not procedurally generating anything... like everyone always gets the same thing on their left arm, their chest, etc, and then it's "smart" enough to go "oh that's clothing, I won't put it on that". You can see from the one photo where the person has demonstrated the image on their hand, where the filter isn't quite smart enough to know that's a hand, only that it's skin on the left side of the body or something, so it's projecting the arm tattoo on the hand not understanding those are fingers and no one would get a tattoo that way.

The actual Swastika is a Buddhist symbol representing inner peace and predates the symbol used by the national socialists by 5000 years or so. Basically, the national socialists culturally appropriated (to use the parlance of our time) this symbol, mirrored it, and turned it by 45°--resulting in the "Nazi cross". The original symbol is rather ubiquitous in many countries of South-East Asia. That is to say if you visit a temple complex in Thailand or Korea, for example, there's a very good chance to find the symbol integrated into walls and as part of the decorative work. It's not as historically charged in South-East Asia as it is in the Western world, to say the least. At the end of the day, it's just a symbol. Symbols only have as much power over us as we allow them to have, so the self-appointed internet police getting worked up over every little thing is certainly a step in the wrong direction.

Adam Buckley

Nah luckily I think Aussies are the one group I can definitely make fun of and they'll never get upset. They have a great sense of humor about themselves and don't mind when other people from other parts of the world take a few fun digs at them.

Mizutina

You can always pick on the Aussie accent and I'd still stick around Then again, people are easily offended over anything, especially if it offends them in someway and instead of maybe moving on cause it's a dumb thing or privately deal with it, they proceed to make mountains over it and must make everyone know about their problems cause it hurts them. Oh and of course, gotta have those filters that makes them look so pretty and stuff

Ash Archer

God forbid these nimrods lose access to a bloody filter

Pim

Also surprised that they were even able to change the symbol directly. I was under the impression that all these snapchat filters were AI, meaning nobody controls directly what's happening and the algorithm just fills it in. Then it's not just a matter of changing an image in a database or something. Maybe it's just a single tattoo texture that gets mapped onto everybody exactly the same. Boring. But that makes you wonder how the hell nobody checked that texture beforehand for anything problematic.

Pim

I'm always a bit confused about the whole argument that it's somehow completely different when the swastika goes the other way. Like, it was a symbol that was mainly put on flags. Flags have two sides, don't they?