Y'all must be trying to kill me. The sheer volume of quality contribution reports, combined with the outrageous volume of text you maniacs generate every week, made this an astonishing month to be sorting through the hopper. By far the busiest month for AAQCs since I took over the task. This made winnowing them down especially challenging, and some very good posts simply didn't make the cut simply because the competition was so fierce.
Good job, everyone.
This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions in Culture Peace
@problem_redditor:
Contributions for the week of September 26, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
@problem_redditor:
@Ben___Garrison:
Contributions for the week of October 3, 2022
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 10, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 17, 2022
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of October 24, 2022
Battle of the Sexes
@cae_jones:
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Notes -
I found a reference in FC's comment to one of my old comments in the Reddit version this post, and it motivated me to respond for whatever reason. I don't know who remembers me but I recognize a lot of names.
That said, I probably won't stay, as FC is completely lying about what I said. I forget the details, but the deleted comment in question was someone's on-site reporting of the Minneapolis riots, discussing how most people in the community were pitching in to help, and the media wasn't reporting on that. So either FC remembers that and is lying about what happened, or he forgot but just filled in the blanks on his own based on what felt right. Either way, in no way did I say that the riots were "necessary". He's lying, in that unmistakably sanctimonious way of his, about how he's just a harmless, peace-loving family man being forced into conflict against his will.
If this is what the intellectual culture has come to, I'm glad I left and have no interest in coming back. Against shady thinking indeed.
Edit: Naraburns' response was fair. I have been very emotionally unstable lately, and seeing my old comments being referenced can be a bit of a panic moment.
You're welcome to stay, indeed I would encourage it. But I don't read FC as characterizing anything you said, beyond it being a response to a different comment.
FC does not say that you said that. FC says the deleted comment you responded to says that.
I admit that I have a hard time believing that the comment as you describe it got to a score of -14. I also have a hard time understanding why you would reply to a comment as you describe it with a criticism of the subreddit as lacking empathy. And /u/ridip's response to you suggests that the deleted comment was "openly admitting to criminal activity," which is a long way from the description you've offered.
I don't know what the deleted comment said, but the context cues I see suggest that either you are lying about what happened, or you forgot but just filled in the blanks on your own based on what felt right.
I'll invite you, as I have invited so many others, to be the change you wish to see in the world. Maybe FC is remembering wrong. Maybe you are. I have no way to check. But FC did not criticize you or attribute to you any of the things you are complaining were attributed to you. My inclination is to believe that FC's account of the comment is basically accurate, and that your response here is based on you misreading FC's comment as attributing claims to you rather than to the deleted comment.
How's that for "against shady thinking?"
This doesn't need to be a mystery, pinging @Thirteenvalleys,
what was once gone can return
Alright, well, the comment I was thinking of did exist, but it wasn't the one in this conversation. What (I think) I meant was, 1) on-the-ground primary-source reporting is always valuable for its own sake, and 2) if you model your enemies as being inhuman and monstrous in their desires will always fail as a model of reality, and if your model of reality isn't accurate how can you hope to solve the problem? And yes, this qualifies as empathy, the ability to understand viewpoints that are not one's own. Being symapthetic to those viewpoints is, well, sympathy.
Just so.
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Likewise though I felt very little empathy from the left as someone who watched from the roof of my building as rioters rammed a uhaul through several storefronts on my block. I heard cheering when the bike police turned the corner and washed the chaos away.
I think I do understand the perspective of the people who cheer as police are pushed from the city, and I don't mean in the cynical because they can then do mischief way, there is a narrative that the police's main function is oppressing the weak for the benefit of the strong. Bulstered by horrific videos amplified to the greatest ability of the media. It's the kind of narrative that would have appealed to me in my rebellious teen phase. But it's nonsense. They're tilting at windmills and illusions drummed up by a class of people in their revolutionary word games. Not only will exiling the police not solve the problems, real or imagined, that they want solved but it will impose real costs on everyone else. How many life's works in the form of small businesses were burned on the pyre to not solve police violence?
My most substantial disagreement with broadly "the left" is the existence of what seems like an assumption that all the good that society does is somehow separate from all the bad things that society does not prevent. That without the imposed order of society there would be a warm bed for everyone and no one would go without. But the absence of order is no utopia, it is chaos. It is rammed storefronts, beaten proprietors, private security and prices raised so that even more go hungry. And that's the best case.
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Nothing makes me see red like people lying about this shit. It's the most scummy, insulting, manipulative, and (given that the internet never forgets) stupid things someone can do in a discussion.
And it makes me wonder what the point of any of this is if it all comes down to who's more willing and able to gaslight everyone.
They aren't lying. they read the reference wrong, which is understandable because it was somewhat awkwardly written.
Asynchronous communication is fraught. Everyone screws it up now and again.
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In defense of all parties it really is a pretty forgettable comment that is probably easy to impregnate with your own narrative in a false memory. Both seemed to have mentally added some stuff that doesn't seem to be there, FC with the "necessary" and 13Vs with "the media wasn't reporting on that".
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