naraburns
nihil supernum
No bio...
User ID: 100
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
But you modded me, not the poster I was replying to
First, the bad behavior of others is not a cognizable excuse for your own.
Second, and less importantly, no one has yet reported the comment you linked to, and I had not personally seen it. Having looked at it now, if it got reported, would I have moderated it? Maybe, but I think I'm leaning toward no because the tone is sufficiently one of exploring-the-arguments rather than heatedly-insisting-on-a-point. But the question is kinda moot because, again, no one even reported the comment, so I never saw it.
I am not even Palestinian, Arabic or muslim, but I would not be surprised if the heavy rhetoric here in the past few weeks had turned off that audience or anybody sympathetic to them. The 'boo outgroup' factor.
I disagree. My impression is that the open anti-semites who dedicate a lot of time making a ruckus here have been rather thoroughly enjoying the opportunity to go all-out in their criticism of Israel, and the ones who do so while obeying the rules have not gotten moderated for it. My impression of anyone who feels that this forum is either "too pro-Israel" or "too pro-Palestine" is that they must just not enjoy dissenting views being aired openly, because we have numerous good posters here with a genuinely diverse array of views on the matter.
I'm not saying that we necessarily need to have a heavier hand on moderation, but simply that there seems to be a slight double-standard.
You're still missing the point. You're so focused on which side you think this comment or that is on, that you are ignoring the difference between rule-breaking comments and comments that don't break the rules. Let's look at Amadan's comment, as you quoted it:
I've become blackpilled enough to believe that most Palestinians today, deep down, want the destruction of Israel and nothing less.
Emphasis added. Notice how that is a report about Amadan's psychology? Notice how this is not a report about your psychology?
the whole government of Israel uses Israeli civilians as their excuse to genocide the Palestinian people
Now, you might think, "that's stupid, obviously I'm only saying things that I think." But these are the kinds of locution that put distance between us and the issues we are talking about, and enable people who disagree with one another to speak about matters of disagreement. The same is true of 2rafa's commentary; that user was specifically reporting on their own psychological reaction to the footage of Muslim Arab terrorists from Gaza massacring civilians. Of course, someone might think they can exploit this by just putting "IT SEEMS TO ME" in front of every rule-breaking thing they want to say, but that is in part why our reputation economy is the way it is--the more good someone contributes to the forum, the more likely the mod team is to believe that users are in fact reporting on their psychology, rather than violating the spirit of the rules.
And perhaps the rational, pragmatic, ethical-altruist way of handling Gaza is ethnic cleansing, but still, how is that not BOO OUTGROUP?
"Boo outgroup" is a phrase that describes a claim or report that has no substance beyond serving as a "boo light" against a target. But sharing footage of, say, 9/11 isn't "boo outgroup," and reporting it was done by Muslim Arab terrorists, isn't "boo outgroup." A political cartoon depicting a Muslim Arab with a bomb for a turban, well, that is arguably "boo outgroup," even though it might also be an understandable reaction to having one's family terrorized by Muslim Arabs. Criticism is not the same as "boo outgroup." But criticism that is more heat than light often is.
Your mistake--and this is a common mistake when people get modded here--is your failure to imagine that you might have actually done something objectionable, and so you are carping on about what other people got away with. But that's irrelevant. You probably "get away with" bad comments too, sometimes, because we just literally don't have the time to moderate everything precisely the way it should probably be moderated. I am doing my best to explain the rules to you so you can follow them, and you asking "but what about these other people" is not especially relevant, except where it helps you to better understand what you did wrong.
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Please dial down the heat a notch. This bit is especially boo-outgroup--
Gaza is being oppwesed by Iswaew that makes me vewwy angwy ヾ( •`⌓´•)ﾉﾞ
naraburns
nihil supernum
6mo ago
Is the goal to know the man better? Assuming you're shtupping his daughter, he may prefer to keep you at a healthy emotional distance. I think "the standard" is avoiding each other whenever possible, and at Thanksgiving watching football in the same room without ever making eye contact.
I recognize that our new, purportedly "emotionally healthy" age would suggest you bond, say, over shared hobbies, or perhaps by sharing your individual hobbies: fishing, shooting, drinking, or for the higher-brow castes having oblique political or religious discussions. This is plausible too, though the closer you are in age to your in-laws the more likely it is to stick. On the other end of the extreme, if you have a poor relationship with your own father, some fathers-in-law seem to enjoy a kind of paternal surrogacy, especially if they have only daughters.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Would that have been a better comment?
Yes!
I've been trying to not lean in to the mod hat here, but as that is where I have the most direct experience with this problem... let me put it this way. From a tone-and-phrasing perspective, your original comment is indistinguishable with the black-pilled "rationally the only choice left to us is violence against the outgroup" stuff that we are periodically called upon to moderate. Sure, it might be more rhetorically effective to sneer or saber-rattle in these ways. But thought-terminating cliches are the end of discourse, and discourse is the foundation, the whole reason this site exists. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; rhetoric is the enemy of light, perhaps most especially when it is highly effective. This is more than mere stylistic disagreement, this is a question of whether you are here for discussion with people who disagree with you, or here to wage culture war.
And the thing is--you really have, now, engaged in a lot of discussion with me, here! You seem to be totally capable of it, and if you really hated doing so I can't imagine you would have continued coming back to respond to me for as long as you have. So just, like... lead with that! It doesn't mean you can't express pointed evaluations--the rule is not "no antagonism" it is "be no more antagonistic than necessary for your argument." The rule is not "don't criticize your outgroup," it is "provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be." Blunt language is fine, but there is a meaningful difference between speaking plainly and unapologetically, and simply airing disdain (whether your own, or someone else's). If your post amounts to little more than a "boo" light, then it doesn't meet the standard of discourse here.
What do you think that gets you?
I'm mystified by this kind of response to my claim, which explicitly cribs the words of the article about "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." Suggesting countries that are neither noticeably diverse nor countries that are in any plausible way committed to equal rights does not meet the spirit of the original text. "Not counting expats, we have like, two or three different religious minorities in our country!" is, I grant, a kind of "diversity," but this is still not a cultural (much less jurisprudential) commitment to the kind of broad-spectrum liberal tolerance Westerners have in mind when they talk about diverse peoples living "side by side with equal rights."
"Lebanese Jews are afraid for their lives, but they do have Christians so technically they are a nation of diverse people living side by side" does not meet the standard of "Israelis and Arabs and Muslims and Jews living side by side with equal rights." And that's before addressing stuff like sex, sexuality, political freedom, and related concerns.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
I see. Well, thanks for pointing it out--that does give me more context.
No one has actually reported that comment, and probably we wouldn't do anything about it if they did, not least because that user would have several AAQCs every month if they hadn't opted out, and essentially never gets hit with negative reports. I'm not thrilled at reading someone self-describe as having been "radicalized" by footage of these attacks, but given that we are talking about a terror strike reasonably compared to 9/11 (worse, on a per capita basis, to say nothing of the addition of infanticide, hostage-taking, and rapes) I'd be hard pressed to explain why "radicalization" is not a reasonable response. I also note that "summary execution" means without formal trial, which is worrisome but not quite the same thing as "without evidence," and "10,000-30,000 fighting age men" is not quite the same as "every Gazan," either.
In cases of war and terror, the line between "boo outgroup" and "no really, I'm arguing that this is a relatively specific group of people who have clearly caused extreme harm and are not going to stop causing extreme harm until someone puts a forcible stop to it" is maddeningly fuzzy. All the more reason to approach such discussions with maximum charity, I guess.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Why shouldn't I just assume that you're some basket-weaver taking a shit on the streets of Calcutta, or fresh from participating in a gang rape in some rural village?
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Hard to say. Maybe?
The decision to drop an official warning is not made on the basis of any hard-and-fast criteria. We let, honestly, a lot slide. There's only so much time in the day, and depending on what else is in the mod queue, the applicable standards may flex. Our approach is, in other words, inescapably conditional, adaptive, and imperfect.
Ultimately, if you're trying to get away with just enough badness in a post that you won't get called on it... odds are pretty good you won't get called on it. Until, of course, you do. Like driving over the speed limit, most of the time you'll get away with it, but if you do it a lot, you raise the odds of facing consequences for that.
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Expecting historical literacy from a college-educated progressive is like expecting fluent latin from a duck.
Do I even need to tell you why this warrants a warning?
naraburns
nihil supernum
7mo ago
Is this how it works?
I thought the whole point of health insurance was that it cost the company the same amount no matter how much of it you use.
If you doubt it, you could literally just hit your favorite search engine up for an explanation of self-insuring companies.
I thought the whole point of health insurance was that it cost the company the same amount no matter how much of it you use.
No, the whole point of health insurance is to pool risk. Companies offer it as a perk, now, but the typical American association between employment and insurance is exceedingly contingent. Insurance companies collect premiums to finance the pool, as well as to finance the administration of the pool and also to distribute profits to shareholders and do all the other things companies do. Large insurance companies have larger pools, distributing risk more widely and collecting more money to the pool. If you're a large enough corporation, however, collecting the premiums yourself (and perhaps paying a small administrative fee to an insurance company) may save you and/or your employees a lot of money, for example if your employees tend to be some combination of young, healthy, unmarried, and/or childless.
Strictly speaking, you can self-insure as an individual, too. If you forgo insurance and simply put your "premiums" into a high yield savings account every month, then over the course of your lifetime you should on average actually come out ahead of people who buy insurance, since the whole point of insurance companies employing armies of actuaries is to be sure that they don't go bankrupt--that is, to insure that more money is coming into the pool, than going out of it. So if you believe the mathematicians, you should self-insure! Of course in reality it doesn't work out this way, even if you're relatively lucky; since insurance companies also have enormous negotiating power, even when self-insuring accurately duplicates the risk pool it doesn't duplicate stuff like "in network" discounts, negotiated rates, "maximum out-of-pocket," and other such perks. To say nothing of most peoples' inability to truly weather a large financial shock on the theory that they should, by the time they are ready to die, still technically come out financially ahead.
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
Is there a reason you chose to make a low effort comment, rather than hit the "report" button? One person did eventually report @Conservautism's post, but five people reported yours first. A certain amount of community policing is good, but this I think does not meet the threshold.
(It may help to remember that we cannot be a community where people come to test their shady thinking, if shady thinking is itself banned from the forum.)
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
No--rather, we're more likely to just overlook borderline offenses, and less likely to escalate quickly. Even a pile of AAQCs isn't going to stop you from getting warnings and bans, too--we've handed out months-long bans to some of our best posters, over the years. And it's disappointing when they leave. We want them to stay! But not at the price of allowing them to ignore the rules.
The best way to stop dealing with bans is to stop breaking the rules. Is there some reason you don't consider that a live option? Is there something I could tell you that would get you to consider that a live option?
naraburns
nihil supernum
8mo ago
Sorry for the lateness of this reply, but you're banned for a week: egregiously obnoxious and single-issue posting (Jews).
Posting about the "mass graves" brouhaha (dare I say "hoax?") in Canada was fine; if someone else had posted about it and then you'd come in with this comment I would have hit you immediately for attempting to derail the conversation. My only hesitation, and why I discussed it with the other mods first, was that it's a bit weird to accuse you of derailing your own thread, I think? But it has this weird bait-and-switch feel to it; you were, refreshingly, not pounding your one-note piano for a change... just kidding, it was a post about Jews all along!
Don't do this.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
Low effort swipes at your outgroup are not permitted. Don't post like this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
Please keep your focus to the argument rather than its host's intelligence.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
By the only metric you seem to care about
In context this appears to be, at best, an incredibly hostile non sequitur. Too antagonistic, don't do this please.
naraburns
nihil supernum
9mo ago
The way you've posted this looks like linkspam. If it is not, and you are just a newcomer to the Motte, note that the content of this review makes it a better fit for the Culture War thread, where it will need some sort of submission statement.
naraburns
nihil supernum
10mo ago
I didn't even think to try sorting.
But I see it on Bump and Hot, but not New (my default). Curiouser and curiouser!
naraburns
nihil supernum
10mo ago
This seems like it might be of interest to Motte users, but without a submission statement and as the very first post from your account, it looks more like linkspam, so I'm removing it. But if you'd like to either resubmit with a submission statement, or participate a bit in other ways, I'll certainly reconsider.
naraburns
nihil supernum
10mo ago
As a post about sex differences, this is CW material and so should go in the CW thread.
naraburns
nihil supernum
10mo ago
I don't recall them discussing racial insecurity somewhere else in this thread.
This seems like a reading problem, then. From the OP (to which the person you were responding was directly responding):
Racial dynamics add to this swirl. The common case is a white man watching a white woman fuck a black man (with a large penis). This fantasy props up so much there are entire porn sites based on this concept, and plenty of alt-right fanfiction about it. Racial insecurity.
(Emphasis added.) As for this:
"Blacked" porn isn't cuckold porn. It's just interracial porn with a black guy.
This may be a fair criticism; I admit that I did not go check on the exact nature of "Blacked," and will simply take your word for it here. But if "Blacked" porn includes any interracial cuckolding porn at all, then I think your interpretation still fails the charity test in this case.
This may very well be true, but it is not really a sufficiently effortful response for this space. It is always the case that one possible response to $PERPLEXING_THING is "eh, nobody is serious anyway, this is all play-acting, there's nothing to be feared from play-actors, and nothing to be gained from engaging on substance and merits." But it's rarely a charitable response (to either the person making the argument or the people under discussion) and often just false in various ways. So if you're going to imply that someone shouldn't expect consistency, you're going to need to do it with a bit more effort.
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