I think the issue comes when you have things that some people find hurtful and others don't. If people are expected to be contrite whenever someone else says they've done something hurtful to them, it kinda opens the door to controlling behaviour where people can influence others to act in the way they want by claiming to be hurt. That would be a very childish and manipulative way to behave, but sadly I think a lot of people are that childish and manipulative (a personal, admittedly cynical belief which I suppose probably makes me less likely to believe people who claim to be hurt by things).
That's a good point. I've generally lived trying to give people the benefit of the doubt until I have reason to believe otherwise and so far at my venerable age, I haven't come to any harm by doing so other than being on the receiving end of a few sharp words. If someone tries to manipulate me that way, shame on them. They will find trust doesn't come so easily the second time around.
It works both ways, though. When you look at those leaping to defend the 'victim' in the story which spawned this discussion, it's hard not to see an element of control in the way it's all playing out. Would-be victims weaponise call-out culture by employing the exact same tactics they blame others for using on them, which makes it dreadfully difficult for those in a position of lower power (here, non-championship cosplayers without so many resources and fans) to criticise anyone more important than themselves. I am generally inclined to heed the underdog in these situations because they're the ones who are going to be buried under flames from thousands of white knights and doxed off the Internet. The cost of speaking out is high unless you are either ludicrously popular or a narcissist who thrives off any kind of attention at all. It's usually quite easy to spot that type. For everyone else, speaking out about things that make a person feel uncomfortable is not usually met with the acclaim and praise that the defenders of the status quo fear.
As for the right to be offended, I agree that it's hard to tell what other people will find hurtful without talking to them and because of the way our society is set up, we seldom get to hear those voices. I remember a very colourful conversation with a certain former forum member here about how they were 'allowed' to say racist things in public because a friend of that race didn't tell them not to, never considering that perhaps other people might not share that person's opinion (or indeed that the friend might not have spoken up because they didn't feel comfortable doing so). I've also been in real-world conversations which were exceptionally offensive to me (ranging from rape threats
aimed at me personally to horrendously violent language aimed at marginalised groups, but I've often kept quiet until someone else has joined and needed defending because nobody wants to be that guy who rocks the boat until they're bullied out of the conversation. I recall one time where I joined a friend's group in an online game only to find that the culture in that group was to insult women and LGBT+ folks with casual slurs all the time in the public chat for that game. My otherwise-sensible friend never spoke up against the group once even though he knew that it was wrong and didn't participate directly. Had I not made it abundantly clear how I felt, they could easily have argued that they didn't know anyone found it unpleasant because the culture of looking the other way was so deeply ingrained.
I've had it with holding my tongue in such situations by this point. If people don't speak up, some people don't seem capable of realising that joking about bullying minority groups isn't funny. And then they are shocked later on when someone flips out and tells them it's not acceptable because they genuinely had no idea it was upsetting everyone. It's a conversation we all need to be hearing until it's second nature. And when we hear that something we do is causing hurt, we need to be able to dig deep and ask whether doing that thing is really worth another person's tears. Sometimes we'll still choose to do it anyway, but it's better to have that moment of soul-searching instead of fast-tracking straight to the defensiveness.
If people are going to cry over obviously spurious things then they should clearly be ignored, but there's a massive grey area between 'things that are obviously offensive to me even though I'm not affected' and 'things that literally nobody finds offensive unless they're trolling'. For things like the cosplay, it only takes a couple of seconds to Google to check whether it's still considered insensitive. I honestly find it hard to believe that she was even able to search for techniques for achieving the look without tripping over a hundred or so 'don't black up your skin for cosplay' posts written by exasperated American bloggers.
It is hard to understand ignorance when we are all living in a world where we can easily access other viewpoints. To use an example from my own personal experience, when I was growing up it was considered perfectly acceptable for children to make fun of East Asian stereotypes in the playground at school - I'm pretty sure even the teachers joined in. I felt it was nasty at the time but it was normalised and I was virtually mute as a kid so I never queried it. That kind of stuff makes my younger non-white relatives cry themselves to sleep at night and constantly ask why they are treated like they are inferior to their schoolmates. They aren't snowflakes; the kids who think their right to be racist without repercussions is more important than someone else's right to belong are the ones who are snowflakes. The kids from earlier generations weren't any less hurt by that stuff.
Personally, I'm inclined to believe that people have become more audible more than they have become more sensitive. There are indisputably cases of people getting offended for the sake of being offended (and other being counter-offended for the exact same reason), but at the same time there are a million stories of people living with casual racism/sexism/abuse in the 'good old days' before actions had social consequences, and I'm not sure that the experience has ever been character building or fun. It was a paradise for those who were not being picked on and a constant barrage of microaggressions for everyone else. I know I swallowed a lot of my own discomfort on a regular basis and I'm lucky enough to have avoided a good amount of the nonsense other people have to live through. Partly by virtue of my comfortable upbringing, partly by general avoidance of other human beings and overwhelmingly by luck.
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