People collectively calling a large group of people hypocrites

DonZabu

When the group is large/faceless enough that there's no guarantee that the people who said one thing are the same people who said another thing. It's extremely presumptuous and built on conclusion-jumping.

Khwarizmi

I don't like this kind of attitude.

Also holds true if you substitute in a different word in place of "hypocrites", like "bastards" or "intellectually dishonest".

Vorpy

Allegedly Cracked.com is a collection of said persons.

GLORIOUSLeader

Cracked has a ridiculously callous comments section. For any given article half the comments will inevitably be "You got a fact wrong, ergo you're a dumbass" if it has not yet devolved into base insults already. 

Gelzo

"Also holds true if you substitute in a different word in place of "hypocrites", like "bastards" or "intellectually dishonest"."

I guess this might not be saying much, but I wanted to point out that there are groups of people you really can't be a part of unless you exhibit some quality, which can be negative.

For instance, it's fair to say that all hypocrites are hypocrites.

Khwarizmi

Of course, but I think Don Zabu was talking about groups sufficiently large and diverse that that doesn't apply.

(All hypocrites being hypocrites doesn't count because that's a tautology.)

Gelzo

I'm sure it can apply in some cases, but I'm having a hard time thinking of a good example.

I guess it depends on how much leeway you'd allow for generalizations. It shouldn't be unreasonable to say "Republicans want low taxes." but I'm sure that isn't true in every case.

DonZabu

^ I see it a lot when people talk about double standards. If a male does something and doesn't experience backlash, but then a female does the same thing and does experience backlash, they'll accuse entire fandoms, or even entire societies, of harboring a collective double standard attitude, even though those groups account for huge, highly variable sample sizes, especially on the Internet, and as such there's no evidence that the people who weren't offended by X are the same people who were offended by Y.

-catches my breath from that run-on sentence-

GLORIOUSLeader

Don't worry. In Spanish they value run-on sentences. Or so I've heard.

OT: It's easy to accuse someone of hypocrisy, but only if you don't like them and/or their opinions. 

Khwarizmi

@ Gelzo: I think that's what Tibetan Fox would consider an acceptable heuristic - not true in all cases, but generally true.

Stormtroper

Oh, I thought this thread was about people in groups holding one out of two mutually incompatible opinions and then calling said group hypocritical (such as when people say that "wtf Cracked is contradicting itself" when something one editor writes is debunked by another).

If that's not the case, then I don't see what's wrong with saying that there's a double standard such as in ^^^. If there's such a difference in reactions, that means a noticeable amount of people being inconsistent, and calling the group hypocritical for this doesn't make less sense than any other generalization, as has been pointed out.

Don't worry. In Spanish they value run-on sentences. Or so I've heard.

Not true.

JHM

^ Pre-Victorian Modern French did. Look at Victor Hugo.

On-topic: It is unfair... most of the time. It is not unfair, however, to suggest that small, decision-making groups within larger bodies may be more uniformly subject to hypocritical behaviour than those larger bodies. For example, not all Republicans are hypocritical about budget deficits, but one could safely say that most of the Republican representatives to Congress, objectively, are.