I’ve had this debate before and was unable to come to a conclusion. It seems to me that any criticism, no matter how valid, could be characterized as harassment.
What do you guys think?
Is there a heuristic for determining which one a statement is?
Does everything just exist on a continuum between the two?
Is this harassment?
Interestingly the word criticism doesn’t appear in the wiki article on harassment =/
This implies that only statements devoid of criticism could be considered harassment, but I think almost any statement could be characterized as criticism, so this doesn’t seem like a very useful definition =/
I don’t think this implies that. Criticism is not inherently useful. Unwanted criticism very rarely is!
Sometimes the people that need criticism the most, don’t want it ^>^
Yeah, fair enough. But the concept of useful unwanted criticism reminds of an argument that I used to hear as a kid during the ‘anti-bullying’ debate. The argument was that being bullied was not only helpful but even essential during a child’s development because it helped them to ‘toughen up’ to face the real world.
Yeah, in their mind, they’re serving the public interest.
I guess this means you need to have scientific support for your claims if you’re going to make the “public interest” claim 🤔