Vent: That Milo Yiannopoulos talk at Berkeley was a total disaster to attend

I went to the Milo event at Berkeley in 2017 thinking it'd be a interesting free speech test. But honestly, the whole thing felt more like a circus than a real debate - protesters were screaming outside and inside people were just there for the drama. I learned that when a speaker is invited mainly to provoke, it drowns out any actual conversation about ideas. Has anyone else been to one of these hype-driven campus events and felt like the message got lost in the noise?

2 comments

2 Comments

spencer_moore3917d ago

Pretty sure the only thing that got 'debated' that day was whether the fire alarms were gonna go off again (they did, twice). Went to a similar thing at a state school once where the speaker's whole shtick was just saying the most bait-y stuff possible to get people riled up - real deep intellectual stuff, you know. Honestly felt like I was at a bad WWE show instead of a place where people are supposed to actually learn something.

charles_coleman17d ago

I mean I get where you're coming from but I kinda see it differently lol. The whole point of a debate club or event isn't always to have some high-minded intellectual exchange, sometimes it's just about getting people to actually engage with stuff they normally wouldn't. Yeah the fire alarms and bait-y speakers are annoying but I've seen some real good conversations come out of those messy situations where people actually hash things out afterwards. It's not perfect but I think writing off the whole thing as a WWE show misses the fact that a lot of folks genuinely get more curious about a topic after hearing someone say something stupid. The real value is in what happens after the speaker's done, not during their act.