Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
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User ID: 297
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
Hating Jews and also having a problem with Muslims and Christians who don't believe the way you think they should are not mutually exclusive.
If 2crafa were regularly starting threads about Palestinians and dropping references to how savage and barbaric they are even when the topic wasn't really about Palestinians, until it was a notable pattern that she really, really likes to talk about how Palestinians are bad, yes, I would conclude she hates Palestinians and has something of an anti-Palestinian agenda. (I mean, she probably doesn't like Palestinians very much, but she doesn't seem to be obsessed with them.)
You're allowed to have an obsession with Jews and feel like it's very important to talk about their "disproportionate power," how they negatively impact society (in your opinion), etc. Other people are allowed to take notice of this, and conclude that you don't like Jews even if you never type the words "I hate Jews."
The poster I responded to got modded because even if one concludes you hate Jews, it's not appropriate to just say "Hey, this guy is a Jew-hater, don't bother talking to him about Jews." But it's not inappropriate to notice when people have axes to grind.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
“This person’s comments are motivated by pure racial animus” is uncharitable. Were I to say that a Jewish poster who continually defends Israel is motivated by unadulterated racial hatred against Palestinians, and smeared him as an Arab-hater, clearly that would be rule-breaking and I would be banned.
This is not accurate, and you know it's not accurate. "I'd be banned if the shoe were on the other foot!" is the favorite complaint of people who are never actually saying the equivalent thing but something entirely different.
Unless you kept doing this after being warned, you would not be banned. You would be warned to address the actual arguments being made and not the person, and not to uncharitably project motives onto them that they have not expressed.
Yet there have actually been commenters who have cited the IQ of Jews as reason for why they deserve their illegal territorial conquest.
I don't recall anyone saying this explicitly (though I don't doubt you read it that way), but even if someone did say that, there is no rule against making such arguments. People are allowed to make outrageous, specious, or offensive arguments (as defined by the reader) - you are allowed to take issue with them.
“Jews” have been a steady culture war issue this year because of Israel and the protests. And because of their over-representation in influential American positions of power, organized Jewish groups have been worthy of discussion for previous years and for years into the future.
Yes, and you're allowed to talk about Jews. As you do. Constantly.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
It is poor form - you can note that you know what someone's biases are and that you expect them to have a certain perspective (I have done so myself, because you're not wrong about @coffee_enjoyer) but don't just jump into a conversation to tell someone "Hey, don't waste your time arguing with this guy." It's the same sort of insufferable thing you see everywhere else on the Internet: "Reminder: JK Rowling is a transphobe, Thou Shalt Not Engage with her!" People talking to @coffee_enjoyer can usually figure out for themselves where he's coming from, he doesn't exactly hide it.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
Unitarian Universalist if they are "spiritual but not religious" but still like to go to church, United Methodist if they consider themselves Christian.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
Accurate. Me and most of my Blue tribe circle would check at least half those boxes.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
As @naraburns has said, we used to cap our bans at a year and day.
What happened in practice is that when someone's year+day was up, they either never returned, or came back and behaved exactly the same as before.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
3d ago
We do give leniency to people having a bad day. At most we give someone a temp ban - I don't know where anyone gets the idea that we're casually expelling people right and left. Permabans generally happen only with obvious trolls or with posters who've been bad for a long time and been repeatedly warned.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
I don't think I've seen any clarity from the mods on whether stating such beliefs are against the rules.
Implying someone is "hiding their power level" (i.e. concealing their true beliefs) is not in itself cause for a ban. It is, once again, more about tone (how you say it) than about the specific accusation. Are you trying to engage someone or are you just trying to "call them out" or bait them into flaming back?
Once more: Hlynka's ban wasn't any one post (even if it was one post to which his permaban was eventually attached). It was a pattern of behavior going back years in which he would continually behave in an antagonistic manner, we would tell him to please stop doing that, and he would (sometimes explicitly) tell us that he was not going to stop doing that because he thought his principles and how he thought the Motte should be run were more important than Zorba's policies or our wishes. And you know, fair enough. In a sense I respect that he stood on his principles. But he did so knowing we were going to ban him, because we told him we were going to ban him if he didn't stop flagrantly violating the rules and all but thumbing his nose at us. In his calmer moments he would even tell us that he understood why we kept modding him (but that he wasn't going to stop doing what he was doing).
A long term good poster and someone with a lot of respect in the community absolutely refused to abide by the rules. Eventually, after many, many bans of escalating severity and pleading with him to knock it off or go touch grass, he got banned for good because we were tired of this dance (and of people asking us why Hlynka got to get away with so much).
Hlynka committed "Suicide by janny."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
Stop posting low effort comments like this. I'm actually happy to see someone defending the verdict and pushing back on what's clearly a dominant opinion here (this is completely orthogonal to what I personally think of the verdict) and it's unfortunate that the only pushback is coming from someone whose responses can mostly be summarized as "Neener neener."
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
have this site keep being viewed as a joke by actually smart people.
I'm tempted to ask where all these "smart people" are whose opinions we're supposed to care about, but I don't really care.
So why ban Tomato for writing a mild few paragraphs poking fun at his political opponents?
Because poking fun at your political opponents is not what this place is for.
You have a long record of exactly the sort of comments this place is not for, and since you went full I Am Very Smart with a post you surely knew would result in a ban, why don't you go find smarter pastures that are more fitting for your intellectual caliber?
You have one AAQC and a bunch of warnings and (remarkably) only one previous ban. I'm giving you a one week ban, but I strongly suggest you decide whether you want to return if this level of sneering really reflects how you feel.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
Mostly the Israelis, but also other Palestinian factions (notably Hamas).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
Very broadly, what you suggest is how we already do things. Long-term good posters get more slack (but not infinite slack). I do not think anyone should be immune to the rules, no matter how many AAQCs they write.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
If you don't want to engage someone, then stop engaging. That means stop before you take your parting shot calling them bad faith or ignorant.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
4d ago
Maybe he does? I hate this idea that only Jews living in Israel have the esoteric moral knowledge regarding Israel. Sorry but you have been a controversial nation for decades, lots of people know how Israeli politics work.
Really? Can you explain in detail the Israeli parliamentary system, the various factions that are currently part of the government coalition, how Haradim are currently seen by the right and the left, exactly when the Israeli left and support for a two-state solution collapsed (hint: long before October 7), and numerous other surface-level details about Israeli politics? Not even getting into esoteric or political wonk territory? Do you know how the feelings of Israelis in Tel Aviv and in the settlements differ? Do you know why Netanyahu was on the verge of being turned out just before October 7? Can you explain the controversy that was the top Israeli political issue the day before October 7?
I don't think you can (you, specifically, because your analysis of Israel always begins and ends with "Jews"), and I think very few people can, especially outside of Israel, in the same way that most people in the world have a general understand of American politics (they know we're essentially a two-party system with Republicans=conservative and Democratics=liberal), but how many of them understand the electoral college and why there is so much emphasis on "swing states," the implications of mid-term elections, the factions within the Republican and Democratic parties, and other more complicated details that only someone who is actually knowledgeable about the political system can describe?
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
Depends what you consider "best contributors." A lot of the best contributors are also the spiciest ones - i.e., the ones who write long polemics about how their outgroup absolutely sucks donkey balls. And people who share their feelings about that outgroup stand up and cheer, and get very upset that someone who writes so eloquently about how their hated outgroup sucks donkey balls gets banned. But the thing about those people is that it's usually not the essays about their outgroup sucking donkey balls that gets them banned (because they take great care to write those in a Motte-appropriate fashion). It's the fact that their seething hatred of their outgroup and anyone who would defend them leaks everywhere, so while the sucking-donkey-balls essays get AAQCs, their snippy, condescending, and antagonistic posts directed at people who disagree with them eventually get them banned.
Now if you think we should just let people who write really good donkey-ball-sucking polemics get a pass for insulting everyone they disagree with right and left, that would be one way to "maximize light." But it would also maximize heat.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
So what do you think we should have done about Hylnka? Honest question, because we warned (and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned and warned ....) him, going back to the old subreddit, giving him far more chances after multiple bans than almost anyone else in the history of the Motte has ever been given. And we took a lot of flack for that (because as much as you may like and miss him, and like @FCfromSSC, I really liked him and really, really wanted him to stop doing things requiring us to ban him also), he was equally hated by many, and a lot of people thought (with some justification) that he was getting away with way too much that no one else would get away with. So should we have just let him keep going forever after telling him, explicitly, multiple times, "If you keep doing this, we are going to have to ban you, we don't want to do that, stop doing this pretty please?"
Yes, banning Hylnka was (IMO) a loss for the community. I also don't see what other choice we had.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
5d ago
If I may briefly interject: there is a reason we tone police here, and it's because words (and their resonance) matter. You are expressing bafflement that @TracingWoodgrains took offense to you calling him a "prog." "What?" you say. "I don't take offense to being called a trad!"
Assuming you're being sincere (probably you are), I will just tell you: the two terms are not equivalent. Some leftists may call trads "trads" in a derogatory fashion, but I have seen it used much more frequently by trads themselves (or if it's being used in a condescending fashion, it's usually by traditional conservatives or DRs). (Leftists are more likely to call you "fascist.") Meanwhile, I almost never see progressives/leftists/wokes call themselves "progs." Everyone knows that's meant as an insult.
Generally speaking, we wouldn't mod someone for calling another poster a "prog," but depending on the tone and the context, it could very easily be read as intended to insult. Whereas while I suppose someone could take offense at being called a "trad," you'd have to be going out of your way to boo the outgroup to make "trad" into an insult.
While you may think this is a semantic argument, it gets to the root of your exchange with @TracingWoodgrains. You casually call him a "prog," which you and he both understand to mean that he is in the enemy camp, a member of your outgroup, one of Those People. He, not even considering himself a proper progressive, finds it indicative of what he's talking about - being put in a mislabeled box by people who don't bother to understand what he actually believes - and you blink in astonishment that he took your label as an act of belligerence.
If someone called me a "prog" I wouldn't take offense, exactly, but I would conclude two things: (1) This person is an idiot who doesn't care what I actually believe and just throws everyone with slightly left-leaning views into the same box; (2) This person meant to offend me (and will probably pretend they didn't and say "What's wrong with being called a prog?" if I call them on it).
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
Man, we're not even trying.
I think you overestimate the degree to which most of us "care" that The Motte becomes A Thing in the zeitgeist, and underestimating the level of effort it takes just to get volunteers to keep things running.
Zorba does a heroic amount of work behind the scenes with coding and feature requests and the like. On top of that, you want him to be out there hustling for new members, trying to schmooze social media darlings into promoting us, etc.? Even in a best case scenario, none of this is going to earn enough money for him to do more than pay his expenses.
As for us mods, we got lives, man. Yeah, I care about the Motte and now and then drop a link to it elsewhere, but I am not going to go try to evangelize it (not like I even have a social media following) because that is not in my skillset.
Yes, I find it sad that in a few years the Motte will probably be just another dead, has-been forum, but that is the way of the Internet. Nothing lasts forever, there is always a new thing.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
Low effort, condescending, and consensus-building. You have a bunch of bad posts recently. Improve your posting quality or you're going to get a timeout.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
As annoying as @The_Nybbler's doomerism can be, you need to engage with the words on the screen and not turn it into digs at the person.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
Make it less personal and less condescending, please.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
Do not engage in this kind of sneering, low-effort personal attack.
Amadan
"I would put a screwdriver through your eyeballs if I could"
6d ago
You've been spamming threads with these kinds of snide remarks, and the last time you did this you ended up getting banned and told to knock it off. Once again I am telling you to knock it off, and banning you for three days. If you have a point to make, make it clearly and directly. Stop attacking people (not just me, you've been attacking people almost at random for the past couple of days). Your contributions so far seem to be nothing but low effort and obnoxious. Keep it up and you will be permabanned.
I have a premium account. It did not get it right, even after I pointed out its errors three times.
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