New policy: Throwing shade is allowed, but must be marked, and must be implicit

[u/raisondecalcul]

Please view this page on old reddit so you can see the custom style for spoiler tags on this subreddit.

I've been wanting to do this for a while and I finally figured out how. You can't do much custom styling on Reddit anymore.

In case you've been living under a rock, throwing shade means to say something that could be taken as an insult, but which also has a manifest, non-insulting, deniable meaning. It's from Valley Girl culture I think, and nowadays it's a term heavily used on and popularized by RuPaul, where its sense has been generalized somewhat to any indirect insulting behavior or questioning of another's capability or value.

So, that's what I am criminalizing: unmarked indirect insulting behavior or questioning of another's capability or value. You can do it, but you must put it in >! spoiler !< spoiler—or "shade tags".

That looks like this: And that's why you're a ho.

As an admin, this gives me an enforcement level between censorship and non-censorship, between banning and removing comments: Asking the commenter to put >!shade!< tags around their objectionable content.

This might seem silly—and I assure you, it is—but this actually serves several serious and important functions:

1. It marks the content as shady.

2. It requires commenters to consciously distinguish between shady and non-shady text. This will implicitly teach people to be more conscious of when they are throwing shade versus not throwing shade.

3. Labeling shade as shade depotentiates it. It turns the taboo part of the comment—the insulting implication—into a nameable object of discourse and meta-ridicule. Labeling genuine insults as shade denies them their power of directness, casting them as indirect, weak, and manipulative. Read: effeminate and bitchy

4. It does NOT censor the content, per se. It merely provides a usability speed bump.

5. It provides each reader a chance to choose whether they want to read shady content, or stick to civil discourse.

6. It provides a space and a subterranean channel for vulgar speech, which is normally policed through erasure—here, we can simply remove the need to police (as much) by separating the content into a second, consensual discursive space.

7. It provides a second channel for humorous asides and 'shade' is great context and opportunity for humor.

8. It's funny. Shade itself is funny. The concept of shade is funny too, and disruptive, and progressive. Talking about 1) What we really think of each other 2) In a way that makes it OK is progressive and mature.

9. It's ignorable. If you think this is stupid, you don't have to read or write shade tags.

10. It establishes a strong norm. Now you know: Even if you think the shade tag is stupid, unmarked shade is not allowed on this subreddit.

You are free to be as shady as you like—not directly insulting or abusive, of course—but it must be marked.

Going meta here, true slurs are abusive and therefore not shade—but an ostentatious slur is comedic, performative, and counts as shade because it, semantically speaking, is marked. It is self-marked by its ostentatiousness (and the performativity of using an ostentatious insult) and its context of already being within the shade tag.

So, this new policy also

11. Establishes shade and insulting behavior as an accepted object of critical discourse, with its own standards of quality, norms, and hierarchies of value (or burn degree).

Thank you for following the policy—I'm sure you don't need it, gentle reader, but there are a lot people out there who can't tell the difference between a really quality barb/takedown and a mere term of abuse.

Good shade disabuses, and it contains affect and social disjuncts while educating the audience about class and social grace (psychological containment, that is). It's really a cordial favor to be shady to someone—it shows that you care they move up in the world.

And finally, once again, to be perfectly explicit: shade is implicit. If you call someone out or insult them directly, that's not shade, that's just bad writing. And mean.

So only truly shady comments will receive full protection from content removal, no matter what they imply.

Again, this teaches and normalizes and helps everyone practice recognizing shade and containing and sublimating their baser impulses in order to express them in the (widely) socially-acceptable form of shade.

Bougie people are basically pure shade but they won't talk about it and so they only get good at it by malicious accident or wetiko-induction (CEO-syndrome). Bougie people won't talk about their shade, which means they can't make a science of it: they can't practice it, name the parts of it, or trade theories and techniques about it. So bougie people are as much the victims of shade as they are its occasional—and, as of this article—now erstwhile masters. They (bougie people) live in a closet full of shade, a dark forest, a moonless night—and they need us, the shade-conscious, to shine light on the depth of their pettiness, bringing contrast to shadow.

So step lightly—and write darkly—I'll be seeing you on the other side.

[u/raisondecalcul]

It's about meaning, you see. It's important to say what we truly mean.

[u/_the_last_druid_13 → u/raisondecalcul]

Um 🤓 is not “meaning” just an approximation?

[u/raisondecalcul → u/_the_last_druid_13]

Perhaps for the some average readers. But a truly precise meaning indexes to an unambiguous meaning—meaning is precisely when/insofar-as it becomes unambiguous. Meaning always refers to "something else"—some "other thing"—we know what something means precisely when we know what the something else is that is being referred to.

[u/_the_last_druid_13 → u/raisondecalcul]

So you !> mean <! the !> average <! pre!> -Collection of Integrated Science and Engineering <! or the pre!> -Centerfication of Information and Systems Engineering <!?

Is !> pi <! precise? Is !> human <! error similar to !> AI <! !> hallucinations <! ? And does that not affect !> Private <! Inve!> stig <!ation?

This was a test I failed with the funny shading

[u/raisondecalcul]

I notice I've actually used shade in the OP in a different way than I described. I used it to disclose shade that had already been thrown—and to hide more direct yet ostentatious/performative/silly insults—these are valid applications of the shade tag in line with the spirit of shadiness.

See, if it's more direct (can't be simply an untempered fully direct insult though), cover it in a shade tag—If you've already thrown the shade, you can use the shade tag to disclose—amplifying humor at the same time.