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Notes -
Today I got a response to an old comment in which I'd argued
@desolation objected, noting that leftist activism is fully willing to make people uncomfortable:
In the interest of further discussion, I'm moving my response to the main thread.
I'll stand by the first statement, and emphasize that it refers to hobby-spaces-leaning-left, not extremists. I'm not sure what led you to this month-old post, but it was in response to a theory that "Leftists (especially LGBT-focused) congregate in highly socialized communities where every small action toward The Cause is socially reinforced." The OP had constructed a rather elaborate model of left-affiliated communities which portrayed them as hugboxing evangelists. In addition to being rather uncharitable, this overlooks an alternate theory: if a space is reasonably nice, will it end up full of leftists?
As for the second, yes and no. Yes, quoting Kendi or otherwise engaging in that flavor of anti-*ism is more socially acceptable than just being *ist. That's exactly why it drives away fewer users. It's both harder to deploy (and thus more rare) and less likely to offend leftists, centrists, or even most right-wingers.
If a community bans slurs, they will exclude some free speech absolutists. So long as there are more of those on the right, that will select for leftists. Banning slurs is a much more popular mod policy than banning "you can't be racist against X," probably because slurs are cheap and easy to deploy anywhere. Case study: Xbox Live. Would banning any discussion of critical race theory have had any impact on the population of 13yo gamers? What about banning the word "retard"? Apply the same conclusion to Discord, and we have a mechanism by which a neutral community adopts some "left-wing" norms merely by picking the rules with the most relevance. Repeat over months or years, banning the few who get really upset about censorship, and we end up with a left-leaning community which gets along smoothly.
Maybe every once in a while someone in that community gets away with...I'm actually struggling to think of anti-racist slurs? "Colonizer?" Maybe someone says that and right-wingers feel unwanted, or doxxing threats make them feel unsafe. It's also possible that the community enters a purity spiral and implodes. But this is rare, because we're talking about boring hobby groups, not activists.
Honestly, I don't see where mainstream publications come into this at all. The comments section for NYT op-eds is by no means a tight-knit hobbyist community. And while the media's stance on doxxing ranges from sympathetic to enthusiastic, I'm skeptical that such outlets have endorsed using slurs.
Yeah, left leaning communities do not ban slurs. They only ban the slurs against their patron groups.
I think the saddest, for me personally at least, community that went hard and hatefully left has been the Penny Arcade forums. Officially, there is a rule. The only insult you are allowed to use is "silly goose". In practice? That only applies in one direction.
They have rules against hateful content. But people openly saying a lot of white people need to be murdered in a revolution don't get moderated. Suggesting that Kyle Rittenhouse, in their Rittenhouse trial thread, was correctly found innocent? You get banned for hateful content.
It was not always this way. I'm not sure when the moderation began moderating hard left. I think it might have started after the Dickwolves controversy, and as a sign of good faith they brought on some "friendlier" moderators to "educate" the community.
Many discords I'm on for hobbies have a "no politics" rule, to keep things friendly and inclusive. In practice this means no bringing up conservative politics. Everyone is free to root for Biden, and complain about Republican politicians, talk about how enthusiastic they are for liberal or progressive policies, etc. It only becomes "politics" when someone disagrees, and then they get banned.
Is there a summary of that anywhere? I seem to have missed it. Was it something in the SciFi community?
*Thanks y'all, that was a wild ride.
Loose summary:
In 2010 Penny-Arcade made an irreverent strip mentioning rape that offended some proto-SJW's who thought it was insensitive to 'rape survivors'.
According to one such offendee:
Then some notable members of gaming community spoke out against PA and received a lot of insults and alleged death threats. The drama continued with one of the early designers for the PA website publicly cutting ties.
Mike Krahulic apologised and removed dickwolves merch from their store. Then later recanted and said at a later PAX Q&A panel that he regretted backing down and removing the merch. The week after PAX he clarified his comments.. I think it roughly died down after this point.
tldr; Comic used rape as a joke, feminists got upset on behalf of rape survivors. Drama ensued.
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