What do they mean when they say lie?
2024-04-08 06:20:00 +07:00 by Mark Smith
Yesterday I asked what people here meant when they say 'lie'. There was a massive uptick in people saying the word as they walked past me. Women, men, school children, everyone was doing it. I wasn't doing anything, just walking down the road or sitting observing the world.
Well this morning things become more clear. A taxi driver shouts loudly at a shoe shine / shoe repair bloke as he walks past to get his attention. 'Lie!'. It's clearly a beliteling derogatory term, on par with calling someone a dog. People are referred to as lies. Think about that for a second. It's basically saying you are so low you don't exist. You are a lie, not even real.
Relatedly often people walking past, say 'you are' which I guess is saying something like 'you exist'. Which is nice until you realise that a load of people are actually saying 'you our', as in you belong to us. As in our property. But I digress. Recently it's been a lot more of the later. It seems any term will get corrupted.
Back to 'lie'. They also use 'lie' to tell people to chill out, to wait. All this the same across most asian countries I've been to. So it has this dual purpose which means gives those who want to lord it over others, to be total assholes, to do it in broad daylight, and no one bats an eyelid.
I think it's worth pointing all this out because as we go forward into a world mediated by AI, we have to remember that in much of the world people treat other people very badly indeed, and there's no reason whatsoever to believe that will be any different in the near future. It's clear AI tools will be used by some humans to subjugate other humans.
Having said all this, it's worth noting that this particular set of incidents might all have been manufactured, including the taxi bloke and shoe repair guy. I say this because during the uptick yesterday, one of the incidents that happened was a women walking a dog talking with some police. As I passed she shouted 'lie' at the dog. About 30 seconds earlier two school kids teenagers walked past me in the opposite direction that I was walking, one of whom said, you guessed it, 'lie', as they passed. This morning I shouted to the taxi bloke 'you are lying' and he nodded looking a bit embarrassed.
So in summary, groups of people definitely create situations where they openly use extremely detogatory ways of addressing others in public, in broad daylight. And this doesn't even get registered by anybody around as not normal, or not acceptable. It's clear this sort of thing also happens for real. Why wouldn't it, the fakers are basically teaching on-lookers that it's an okay and normal way to behave.
Anyway, enough said, this sort of stuff makes my blood boil. How are we ever going to build a better world for all if this sort of thing is happening? #