Yeah...and you can't cuss here. Otherwise, I J will just CENSOR'D the crap outta you.

Has anyone noticed how furries and goths are like the homosexuals and black people of real life?

Godwin's law is stupid. You should look up the other "Laws of internet arguing" it gets lumped in with; which include "If you're furry, you lose", "If you're emo, goth" you loose.

Has anyone noticed how furries and goths are like the homosexuals and black people of real life?

I think Godwin's law is a very relevant and effective rule of thumb - it dissuades people from making any of several logical fallacies while debating (one of which you made in your post above, by the way). I've never heard of those other two laws you're talking about.

No, it doesn't Godwins law just means you can't bring up Hitler which gets ridiculous if you are talking about certain aspects of politics that have relevance to it. It's just stupid and annoying and it doesn't stop any logical fallacies from being made as they're already covered elsewhere.

Well, Wikipedia disagrees.

Thanks Experimental Film, I couldn't figure out how to link to that article.

I'm not seeing a huge liberal complaint over how racist conservatives are to furries and goths on the Internet...

Has anyone noticed how furries and goths are like the homosexuals and black people of real life?

Except read this;

"Godwin's standard answer to this objection is to note that Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate impact."

Nobody "uses" Godwin's law the way they're meant to, you don't "call" Godwin's law before a debate begins, that's just being silly.

Well, what I was really aiming at was this bit near the end:

"Godwin's Law is not meant to describe situations in which Hitler or Nazis could reasonably be expected to be mentioned, such as a discussion of Germany in World War II."

since that's what you brought up, but I'm not really sure any more. I think Godwin's Law is more of just something humorous than serious.

Is this really the place to be discussing it, anyway?

Correct, Godwin's law was never intended to be serious originally, and isn't used seriously. Godwin reasoned that it may help to reduce the amount of throwaway Nazi references thus strengthening those that are worthy of mention. Unfortunately, since most internet people types use it in ALL cases, it really didn't work out like that.

Heh. I don't think I have a problem with Nazi being used in that manner because sometimes it's the best word for describing things. When we say Nazi we mean it short for "Puritan", "Totalarian" or "Authoratarian"; none of which are very aesthetic.

But if Facist is gone too, then what words CAN we use? Especially considering how ridiuclously authoratarian most of the internet is.

The whole point with words like that is to appeal to the emotional. Unless it's in a debate or other such thing, there's nothing wrong with emotionally weighted statements. Otherwise we'd be robots.

No, they're usually used when someone calls nazi mod on a staff member on a forum, or something like grammar-nazi on a member. You can get what they mean by, it, usually.