Social events with plausible deniability
We wanted to run an event where controversial opinions could be shared without restraint: “a safe space for what you can’t say in ‘safe spaces’”
So a mechanism was devised:
Examples of what may or may have been on the slips:
“Only white men can save us.”
“Intelligent people are worth more.”
“Bestiality is good, actually.”
We also advertised the event so only a certain kind of person showed up:
One attendee said:
It was life-giving to be in an environment where I could say what I think without second guessing myself
Has anyone else run social events with plausible deniability?
[To be invited my events in SF, Hit “Subscribe” on this page.]
It’s a creative idea and would be an interesting experiment. That being said, I can’t help but wonder why the focus is on sharing such heavy opinions. I’ll be honest in that it’s not been a major challenge for me in my life to not avoid talking about things that could likely spell discomfort. It’s not even been intentional, because to me, it’s a party and I want to be talking about things that are fun for myself and for others.
If you are deliberately getting into heavy discussions about a potential socially dangerous topic, I’d ask why you feel the need to talk about it in that setting anyway. Is a party really the place where the requirements for good outcomes to the discussion are going to be present? Sure, mention something in passing but leave the actual discussion for other settings/atmospheres.
I’m not going to tell you how to party though—I just think it’s odd that when others are coming together to have a good time, voicing heavy opinions and fielding heavy discussions are where these attendees minds go to.
Many people have no context in their life where they can get feedback on socially undesirable ideas from thoughtful people so that they can potentially update them. E.g. you hear socially undesirable thing online that you suspect has some truth to it, you can’t have any reasonable discussion about which aspects might be true, which might be false, and even amongst the more true parts how to navigate having that belief or what would be a wholesome framework to use to work with it, bc no feedback.
I’ll give an egregious example. At one time, iodizing salt in developing countries was opposed by some NGOs on the grounds that the argument that it raised IQ was some sort of fake racist thing. A person in that environment might have wanted to be able to discuss things in a safer space than whatever environment produced that insanity.
What makes a discussion heavy? What requires that a conversation be conducted in a way that makes it heavy?
I feel like for a lot of people it just never has to be, but I’m pretty sure most people have triggers even if they’re not aware of it and it would help if we knew what sets this off so that we can root them out.
If OP were advocating banning normal parties, in favor of only having cancellable parties, I would agree with this comment.
Who generated the hot takes? I’d love to see the full list.
Wouldn’t that destroy the whole idea? Anyone could tell that an opinion voiced that’s not on the list must have been the person’s true opinion.
In fact, I’d hope that several people composed the list, and didn’t tell each other what items they added, so no one can say for sure that an opinion expressed wasn’t one of the “hot takes”.
Does the list need to be pre-composed? Couldn’t they just ask attendees to write some hot takes and put them in a hat? It might make the party even funnier.