“Violence” is the word of the day today, thanks to Will Smith’s decision to punch Oscar presenter Chris Rock over a joke about Smith’s wife Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair loss. But in order to discuss violence, we must first understand violence. So, what is violence, really?
New York State Assemblymember Yuh-Line Niou took a stab (see what we did there?) at defining it this morning. Have a look:
https://twitter.com/yuhline/status/1508408203872243718
Direct violence, structural violence, cultural violence.
Self-directed violence, interpersonal violence, collective violence.
People are seeing and feeling all of these different layers of violence today weighted diff for diff folks and it will be directing America’s convos.
— Yuh-Line Niou (@yuhline) March 28, 2022
We went ahead and got screenshots of her tweets, because we could totally see her wanting to delete them at some point:
We’d definitely be inclined to delete something that embarrassing. Because man, that’s embarrassing.
NOTE: Only one of these things is violence. https://t.co/IqX0JFcpjO
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) March 28, 2022
Pssst! Yuh-Line! Can you guess which one it is? Take all the time you need.
Everything is violence https://t.co/xE1dj5QahI
— Jay (@OneFineJay) March 28, 2022
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We’d ask Yuh-Line Niou to just list the things that aren’t violence, but there’d be nothing left.
It’s violence not to understand violence. https://t.co/ODYZ1h85ZV
— Joe Pilot, MD (@JoeSilverman7) March 28, 2022
It is violence to torture the definition of words like this.
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) March 28, 2022
Why you gotta be so violent, Yuh-Line?
https://twitter.com/Jay6Rey8/status/1508442363072585730
I think it’s violence for you to be so stupid. Thank you https://t.co/oZNAspPKFF
— Logan SIimcock (@JamesKarl69) March 28, 2022
Being assaulted by stupidity really is exhausting. Where do we go to file charges against Yuh-Line Niou?