Clementine
6mo ago
I moderated a forum once.
Like many forums it struggled with one of the basic problems of forum moderation — how much niceness do you enforce, which I'll explain by way of some endemic user types in any forum with enough people and anything but the most milquetoast topic.
A: Here's the troll who comes by only to post egregiously offensive "go kill yourself [list of slurs]",
B: Here's the more subtle troll, who keeps toeing the line as much as he can get away with.
C: here's the user who is not a troll. They actually do participate in discussion and are clearly trying to be a part of the community. They're also abrasive and/or obnoxious and/or inflammatory.
D: And then here's the final type of user that's problematic as a mod: They're a sensitive snowflake. Honestly they need to be sub-divided further, because some of them are just born snowflakes that can't handle any opposition to their viewpoint at all, and others are retaliatory snowflakes, because if I got a ban for three days for saying this opinion is dumb then that guy also needs to get a ban for three days for saying this other opinion is dumb.
The forum was one that was trying really hard to be heterogenous in terms of opinions and also to be nice and moderating it was a nightmare, not because of the obvious ban on sight trolls but because inevitably when you want to moderate niceness now 90% of your mod time — and the mod time becomes a balloon that expands to fill all available space — is spent on dealing with constant playground supervision of the snowflakes. Also you've been slowly but steadily banning your type C members when they eventually accrue enough complains from the type Ds, and because they're really annoying you initially don't miss them until you realize that conversation in your forum is drying up a bit and also some of the valuable forum members who were friends with type Cs also got pissed off and left and also mixed into the type Cs and their friends were, inevitably, some of the more useful members of the forum who knew a lot (and hence got into arguments that annoyed snowflakes).
Also it turns out snowflakes are basically never satisfied as long and are just a self eating death spiral of a forum culture.
After my experience moderating that forum and swearing off moderating ever again, I ended up lurking the notorious kiwifarms. It was full of people who engaged in what would definitely be termed elsewhere as hate speech against me. Now, I never actually made an account there, and I also stopped visiting a few years back so idk if things have changed, but at the time I remember being struck by how much less of a threat I felt reading kiwifarms, because yeah slurs were being thrown around but users were actually arguing, you didn't just have someone with the viewpoint that was the forum consensus and then everyone else against that consensus gets to tiptoe around what they can say or get banned. Everyone shared their most idiotic opinions and had other people arguing with them no holds barred, the forum also had reaction emojis so you could freely post your insane conspiracy theory but wou would get 50 "lol look at this insane conspiracy theory" reactions.
I remember a few years ago people were still making fun of t*kt*kers and how they would asterisk everything or use idiotic word substitution like "krill myself" because otherwise they'd get blackholed by the TikTok algorithm.
Meanwhile I took a long long break from reddit and only recently returned, to a forum dedicated to a game I play, and discovered that in the interim reddit has added some kind of probably AI based site-wide moderation against violent language (or actual human beings are being this dumb idk) and it's impossible to talk like a normal person there anymore, because if you say, in a joking and friendly fashion perfectly understood by you and the person you are talking to to be friendly, "you said my build was bad, I'm gonna have to shove you off a cliff" (this example is not great because I forget the actual exchange, but whatever, fill in something more normal) then you get banned from all of Reddit and the poor guy you were talking with gets to post your exit speech from the discord you're both in as well. It does appear to be a strike system where first you get warned, since I got my first warning for telling someone who posted about a pedophile moving into their neighborhood that hopefully the pedophile would die suddenly.
It's hard not to turn this into some kind of doompost about how the internet is turning into a horrible little hellhole where no one has a normal argument anymore just constant barricading themselves into their own opinions lest they be offended by the not niceness of having to hear someone else's opinions, each little forum and its own narrow band of acceptable ideology, all while the biggest social media sites are enforcing the most transparently fake bullshit kindergarten language upon us all. It brings out the free speech absolutist instincts in me, it really does.
But what if you don't want an aggressively anti-censorship forum that will involve a forum culture of calling everyone slurs? You want the veneer of respectability and gentility but also the ability to have an actual conversation?
Well I already listed the shitty experience I had trying to moderate such a forum, against what was not bad faith actors but just human actors acting predictably human hence this being a pattern you can see all over the place, and now I have to address the flip side of the coin.
Let's by analogy discuss locker room culture. I don't actually know if locker room culture is a real thing irl so I'm going to discuss hypothetical locker room culture.
It's a group of like fifteen guys in a guy's only space. They're basically all normal guys, plus rapey Kenneth and edgy Doug. Sometimes rapey Kenneth makes a joke about how some girl in the school really needs to be fucked into her proper place in society and Doug will make some follow up joke and everyone else is maybe thinking "c'mon man can we not do this" if it's been like too many times that day but usually you're just trying to finish getting dressed and maybe John also is like "that's not cool man" and pushes back. But like, the rest of the time the atmosphere is just a comfy men's only space plus the occasional rape joke or comment about how women suck or are all gold-diggers or are responsible for everything wrong with society.
Anyway, if for whatever reason that locker room decided it wanted to actually be a co-ed discussion space instead, it would have a little problem, which is that any individual woman walking in would get the vibe — they're the barely tolerated outsider — and then leave unless they're like extra autistic/socially challenged.
Because there's just the microculture of what kinds of things are ok to say there and what aren't, and sometimes what's ok to say is anything negative about group A and what's not ok to say is anything negative about group B, and it's not really about an active policy one way or another it's just this is the overall culture of the social group, read the room and get out.
This is, unfortunately, the part where I admit that I've spent weeks now debating if I should just quietly show myself the door. I didn't mean to enter themotte under false premises, I just decided my first post wouldn't be some "here's all my labels and opinions" and would be an actual post about a controversial topic I wanted to talk about. And then before I had the chance to like, casually drop the relevant information about me and get it over with (I despise sharing personally identifiable information online, but it was nonetheless something that needed to happen eventually if I wanted to talk about any number of topics I wanted to discuss), my government did a surprise attack on Iran. I quite vividly remember someone posting a comment about there being a siren and someone else saying "can't find any news confirming it" and not piping in with "it's me, I'm the news, posting from the spotty internet in the bomb shelter". And then it became just increasingly not the right moment for it (also I was quite sleep deprived and dealing with lots of other more immediate concerns).
And in the meantime I got to have the uncomfortable sensation of listening in on conversations I felt were very obviously not meant to include me. For several days now I've been debating doing a rip the band-aid off kind of post (how? What framing?) to get it over with and be able to discuss things again or to just... Leave.
Because of course the alternative is to figure out the correct, respectful way to tiptoe around the conversation over whether Jews control the American government/assassinated Kennedy, since we aren't doing kiwifarms style dialogue where someone talks about the kikes ruining everything and someone else responds by calling him a retarded autist, you've got to politely request sources and carefully have respectful mutually productive dialogue.
Or to just like ignore that the conversation is even happening? Stick to discussion of feminism and essentially continue faking being a normal non-Jewish mottizen...
Polite respectful mutual dialogue.
But only for some opinions, because others are an "immense pain in the ass".
Yes this is the actual reason I ended up writing this comment instead of continuing to waffle over if I should just leave. Because it is actually really annoying, if I need to play nice with the neonazis and have polite and measured conversations — I am willing to do this, even though conversations with people who are (only theoretically!) interested in me and my family being dead are a "pain in the ass" to conduct civilly — and to then see someone else express some opinion that is more objectionable to the baseline motte culture, but expressed according to all the rules of the site, and get banned (temporarily) for it. Because it just means setting the lines around what kinds of people are in the locker room, which is pretending to be a co-ed discussion space, but isn't. And yes I'm biased by being more inclined towards free speech over banning and thinking that it's better to have the opinions and talk it out then constantly police what people say, sure, but if the forum can tolerate holocaust denial I think it can also stretch itself to tolerate libtards. I'm not interesting in doing some tit for tat thing where I'm like "well if you banned them for this, why didn't you ban that other person for that" because like I stated up front that's just the path to a death spiral where almost no one interesting sticks around. But still, come on, you didn't ban them for constantly sticking their conspiracy theories into every discussion couched as consensus building obvious fact. Apply the same low bar consistently. Let people have an actual conversation with actual disagreement.
Clementine
6mo ago
We already have plenty of evidence that no, people are not aware of the difference between reality and fantasy.
My sources here are going to be limited because googling these topics is a distasteful experience.
In July researchers from Melbourne and Queensland universities published a study on the prevalence of sexual strangulation among 18- to 35-year-olds in Australia and found that over half of the more than 4,700 surveyed had choked or been choked by a sexual partner. Among young people, sexual choking has become mainstream.
The prevalence study found that the main way young people were introduced to choking was through pornography (34.8%). The next most commonly reported first exposure to choking was conversations with friends (11.5%), while 9.2% had learned of the practice through discussing it with a sexual partner. One in 10 were unsure how they came across the idea and only 3.9% had never heard of it.
A majority of those surveyed (61.3%) had seen choking depicted in porn, although this included more men (71.4%) than women (51.5%).
Similarly anal:
National Survey of Sexual Attitudes research undertaken in Britain has found that the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds engaging in heterosexual anal intercourse has risen from 12.5% to 28.5% over recent decades. Similarly, in the US 30% to 45% of both sexes have experienced it.
I don't have statistics on an increase in incest irl as a result of incest in porn (and I'm not interested in doing much googling it) but it's enough of a concern that people who work in organizations dedicated to fighting child sexual assault mention is as an additional risk of the legally produces videos, aside from the cover and camouflage those videos provide for the millions of videos of actually illegal rape
Clementine
6mo ago
I actually think the driving example is a perfect example of how the underlying principles are not universal, since the levels of morally acceptable aggressiveness on the part of the driver and the extent to which is it pedestrians' and other drivers' job to get out of your way rather than your job to drive "nicely" varies a lot by culture.
...or on the other hand you could say that whether it's India, Italy, the Netherlands, England, the US, or Zimbabwe, there's at least a general consensus you shouldn't be killing people with your car. Except, perhaps, if you are very very wealthy. the moral Schelling point towards not killing other people who are ambiguously maybe from your tribe or a neutral tribe or an enemy tribe not currently actively engaged in hostilities against you, on a random Tuesday, does seem reasonably strong-ish
Clementine
6mo ago
You can either shoot the dad and now have two single moms, doubling the problem, or you think that when a man cheats on his wife either his wife or the woman he cheated with and impregnated (who he may have lied to and might not have known he was married) should be shot. Which one was the intended meaning of your comment?
Clementine
7mo ago
Thank you for sharing (here and in real life). And I hope your continued recovery goes smoothly.
Clementine
7mo ago
Where I live abortion is allowed as a blanket rule if the mother is under 18, the mother is married but the child is not her husband's, the child is a product of incest or rape, the pregnancy is a threat to the health of the mother, or the child has been identified to have a serious disability.
All other cases of abortion need to get past an ethics panel to be allowed.
I consider this to be a very good state of affairs and a very reasonable solution that everyone should be ok with. I admit not everyone agrees with me, on either side, but blanket statements about no one on the prochoice side being happy with reasonable compromises because they want a family planning card is just you strawmanning your opponents.
Clementine
7mo ago
Thanks for sharing.
This gets close to but never really actually states the argument I always felt was missing in abortion arguments.
I mean I still remember seeing some lengthy debate back and forth about how a museum is entitled to kick out some guy who decided to squat there, and then arguing that babies don't decided to squat, it's decided for them, and that you can't kick our the squatter if doing so would kill them, and none of this was like "well women's bodies aren't actually museums and hosting a baby inside your body is a lot worse than hosting a tapeworm". I kept remembering those arguments when pregnant because they planted so much of my subsconscious belief that pregnancy was just some minor temporary inconvenience.
Like even in this article it doesn't really go do far as to say "is it ethical to torture someone for nine months against their will to save a life?" She still is pretty focused on cases where it's life-saving or where the suffering from the itching is bad enough two people killed themselves over it. Probably because she thinks that's the stronger argument?
Clementine
7mo ago
Yeah, in fact I did the same till age 8 or 10 so it's jumping the gun. I'm too used to thinking in terms of "a boys room" and "a girls room".
Ugh but closets. Whatever. Need to just resign myself to furniture constellations being something I'll have to tweak and change and tweak and change.
Clementine
7mo ago
I'm not blaming men, just noting them as a category of people not talking about it that doesn't fit "well it's because they regret having kids but can't say that so can't talk about it". Men have wives and see their wife go through XYZ during pregnancy but it seemingly doesn't get discussed during public discourse.
Your point re doctors is very true. Expected = irrelevant.
Yes? I feel like you're reading my comment out of context.
We were discussing
- A specific individual nowadays for whom the odds were 1%, not 10%, but who was discussing hypothetical 10%
- The past during specific time periods when maternal mortality spiked (because they got medical care and their medical care didn't wash their hands)
Edit: no actually I see your point. Yes, it makes no sense to invoke evolution for it for temporary periods (and in fairness when it spiked people surely didn't realize what was happening)
Clementine
7mo ago
Nah I don't buy that as adequate explanation.
- Doesn't explain women who get severe temporary or permanent health problems but continue to have children (so it clearly wasn't enough to cause them to regret it) not talking about those problems
- Doesn't explain medical professionals who see these women but have no personal stake in their life choices not talking about it
- Doesn't explain men not talking about it
- Doesn't explain how little is done to alleviate or solve it
At the end of the day, I have permanent tooth problems because of how much i vomited during pregnancy. I agree that I wouldn't discuss this with my child, at her current age, but I'm not unwilling to discuss it at all, see eg here. I very much regret not knowing, going in, that this was something that could happen, and for having walked into pregnancy with the totally mistaken belief I just needed to get through it and all the suffering was temporary (for one thing, I'd have dumped the doctor who didn't take my vomiting seriously and found a doctor who would prescribe me something to reduce the vomiting, if I'd known of the lifelong negative effects extreme repeated vomiting has. And I have an excuse for not knowing — why didn't my doctor? We're back to why women's health is treated as an afterthought in medical care, but then we have "even when discussing specifically women's health problems and specifically how they're neglected by the medical establishment we're still not talking about one of the most major medical events many women will experience before they hit old age, the one that will most massively negatively impact their long term health"
Like going back to my mention elsewhere of becoming pro choice as soon as I became pregnant — how is this not part of the discussion? All the prochoice activists can't mention the 25% odds a teen pregnancy ends with the teen girl now needing to wear special underpants for the rest of her life lest she pee herself in public? Oh she might have a psychotic episode from all the hormones, possibly one permanently affecting her for the rest of her life, but that's not at all relevant to the ethical debate we're all having here? Like ok maybe the pro-life people don't want to mention it because it doesn't help their case but I read SO much online debate about this topic and all the discussion about the right to choose and the right to control one's own body and aside from "sometimes you need to abort to save the mom's life" the idea of permanently physically harming the mother just never came up. Which is. Bizarre.
Clementine
7mo ago
Any theories as to why?
Amongst my friends, I know we sometimes don't talk about it if there's anyone struggling with infertility in the room, since it seems insensitive. But that doesn't really suffice to explain a strange seemingly culture-wide taboo. Especially as you mentioned in spaces where that kind of topic seems relevant.
I have weird pseudopsych theories like "people instinctively shy away from thinking about how much suffering they possibly caused their own mother" but I don't really take that seriously as a real explanation... and "it's a conspiracy of silence to keep the human race going" is pretty absurd... And something like "oh well it's a topic that makes people uncomfortable" just doesn't seem likely, there's plenty of topics that make people uncomfortable and yet get talked about.
I just feel like I walked into having a child fully aware that labor was painful — that I definitely was warned about, that everyone talked about birth plans etc, I said I'm an overplanner and I mean it, I was researching hypnobirthing and tens machines and all that stuff before I even went off BC — and yet somehow there was this giant, humongous, gaping, blind spot around the immediate and long term health costs of pregnancy that even now years later I just find baffling. I went to pregnancy classes and it didn't come up??? I spoke to doctors before I became pregnant about what I needed to do and know in advance and it was never mentioned?
To this day I still feel like it was treated as if anything short of being actually hospitalized just didn't matter.
(After writing all of this up I think "well maybe it's the sexism stupid" but is that really sufficient an explanation? Like yes I know feminists have been beating the drum about women's health being ignored, dismissed, and neglected and I know it's true, but is that alone enough to explain it?)
Clementine
7mo ago
I assume your wife has already gone to a physical therapist specializing in women's pelvic floors, but just in case she hasn't I am mentioning it anyway as something she should try. Everyone knows about kegels but physical therapists can help suggest other exercises and help with doing kegels more effectively.
Not saying it will solve the problem entirely but it can lessen the severity/frequency for some women.
Clementine
7mo ago
Thank you for sharing your perspective!
And yes there is a joy that toddlers bring that doesn't really come from anything else. They're just so much more seriously and wholeheartedly enthusiastic about life than anyone else I've ever met.
Clementine
7mo ago
Scott mentioned it at some point, I was curious and checked it out, and I've lurked occasionally since. So I've been lurking for a long time I guess? Because I don't remember when he mentioned it.
Clementine
7mo ago
I don't think it's a weird way to think of it and you've reminded me of another reason I want a fourth. Three kids feels like it invites weird sibling dynamics with both lots of triangulation and more rigid fixation in the roles of "oldest", "middle", "youngest" whereas larger families I know seem to have more fluidity in the roles.
Although I don't think the rivalries go down at all with 3 or 4 or 5. You're still fighting over what share you get of a limited resource (parental attention). Although I don't think it gets noticeably worse even with more fingers grabbing at the same pie... So maybe I'm wrong, and the natural decrease in resources allotted to each child actually does lower the tension as well? Now I'm second-guessing myself.
Clementine
7mo ago
Yeah it does seem possible the range is the reason.
Your point about geriatric pregnancy is appreciated. It is something I keep in mind, as not "what number do we stop at" but "what age do we stop at". Also because of the increased concern for the child having issues...
Clementine
7mo ago
The way we handle mealtime is we make one supper. And then if you don't like it you can have cereal or a sandwich.
But I'm lucky to have kids with no significant/difficult to accomodate allergies. My friend has a separate set of food restrictions for each kid, it's impossible for her to make only one meal for the family, 2 meals is already an achievement.
The work I feel would linearly increase with each kid is laundry (an unending task with three, I don't know how we wouldn't fall behind with four) and the pickup/dropoff juggle dance (bad enough with the bare minimum of just school/daycare and gets ridiculous if you want to add extracurriculars). Food and supervising definitely doesn't take much additional effort once you're already making the initial investment.
Clementine
7mo ago
Oh man the bedroom splitting. So much of our household bedroom furniture arrangement depends on the sex of this not even conceived yet child.
Clementine
7mo ago
I know about the show in a completely different way than you.
For a brief period Taylor Swift dated a British singer named Matty Healy. Her fans were enraged that she was dating him, because he was a racist who went on The Adam Friedland Show and made a joke about watching violent porn and then a female friend of his walking in on him. One of the hosts suggested that he was watching ghetto gaggers and he agreed that was what he was watching. (This is relevant only because the host later tried to explain that he was the one who suggested the name and Matty didn't actually watch it)
Fans started circulating a petition that Taylor break up with Matty among other insane behavior.
The relationship fell apart very quickly, but Taylor released a double album that included multiple songs about Matty, one of which was a song about how much she hated her fans for clutching their pearls at her dating choices.
Anyway tl;dr: the humorless far left fucking loathes that show so I don't think it could be like Joe Rogan who I don't think is considered an untouchable stain by the far right?
Clementine
7mo ago
This is an interesting comparison although I instinctively find the comparison to war (evil that is only sometimes a necessary evil) to be repellent. But I suppose pregnancy and labor could also be considered a necessary evil and we have all gotten acclimated to ignoring the evil part.
Clementine
7mo ago
Whatever you choose, it's not on you to make the world a better place. It's only on you to do what is reasonable. That's all it means, to live a life of choice and value.
I am still chewing on this and still not convinced I agree (but I'm also not certain I'm understanding you correctly).
Are you saying that to live a valuable life you need to only do what is "reasonable" as in the bare minimum of not harming others? Or "reasonable" as in "make the world a better place but you can spend moderate/reasonable costs and don't have to spend severe/unreasonable costs"?
Upon checking you're right that I'm exaggerating the risks.
Meta-analyses revealed that the incidence of postpartum urinary incontinence was 26% [95%CI: (21% ~ 30%)]
So not having it isn't "uncommon", but having it is still common enough I'm definitely lucky.
(The odds during pregnancy are 45/55 so basically a coin toss, but I lost that coin toss so...)
I'd guess the most likely reason you don't hear about it is women are embarrassed to talk about it with you. It's definitely treated as an open secret between women, now that you know about it you may discover yourself catching some jokes on the topic you previously missed. For example if they make an oblique reference to what happens when they sneeze.
youre pretty much describing panic attacks here. If you want to "get over it", try this: Instead of fearing that it will suck, imagine it would for sure be like your last time again. It would for sure suck. A few years later, youre sitting at a large table full of children. Will you be ok?
This is a reasonably good approach, thanks. It doesn't really help my fear of things going much worse, but it definitely makes me feel less anxious about things going the same.
Clementine
7mo ago
My husband has definitely gotten kicked, and elbowed, and headbutted in the balls more than zero times.
Ywah I (as alluded to) know that being a mod is hard work and a shit job (unpaid forced interaction with the most annoying and worst parts of the forum you love enough to be modding)
And I accept that the balance is not just hard but imo impossible to hit.
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