There comes a time in every discussion forum user's life that they espouse an unpopular opinion. Not something unpopular in a way that they have broken any rules. But unpopular in a way that many other users want to chime in with their disagreement.
Ratioed
On twitter it is called getting "ratioed" where the unpopular tweets have a higher than normal number of comments relative to likes and retweets. It is viewed as a negative thing to happen when you are on twitter, because saying unpopular things on twitter is seen as bad.
Here on themotte saying unpopular things is not bad. We are here to have discussions with people who have different points of view. If you say something unpopular but not against the rules then you are serving the purpose of themotte. Not only have you not done something bad, you have done something good. You have provided everyone else here with content. There might be some tribal instincts in the back of your head screaming warnings at you "oh no! you have said something unpopular. quick! defend yourself, moderate your position, attack your most aggressive detractors!" These instincts are wrong. Instead, by saying something unpopular you have become the bell of the ball. The star athlete that all the recruiters want. Etc etc. We all want to talk to you!
Death by a thousand cuts
Being the center of attention and wanted by everyone can be stressful, especially when it feels like a form of infamy. There is a common failure mode that we as the mods have to witness happen again and again. The person that is at the center of attention is getting minor attacks that don't rise to the level of moderation. Multiple people might say the equivalent of "I think you are wrong because you aren't smart", or other forms of implied insults. The person at the center of attention will eventually get worn down by all these small cuts and jabs, and they will lash out at someone making the jabs. The lash out often does rise to the level of moderation.
You are the solution
The mods have talked about this phenomenon and we have realized that there isn't a good way to solve this problem through moderation. But! That doesn't mean there is no good solution at all.
These are the strategies I have used when getting ratioed, they've kept me sane, kept me calm, and helped me enjoy my time far more:
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Attitude - You are the popular one. Everyone wants to talk with you. Keep these in mind to avoid the tribal anxiety of 'everyone hates me I have to defend myself!'
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Match Effort - There are lots of responses flying at you and these responses have varying levels of effort. If someone has a low effort comment I do not respond with a well researched and cited response, I will often try and avoid responding to low effort comments altogether. Remember, you are the bell of the ball, they need to come to you.
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Prioritize the Best - Try and respond to your best disagreers first. The ones that bring up the best points, address all the things you said, or are just very polite about how they say it. You should be rewarding their effort, and hopefully signalling to other potential commentors that this is the type of comment you will respond to. This also helps with the next piece of advice:
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Refer back to yourself - Don't get frustrated saying the same thing a bunch of times. If you find yourself having the same argument in two different places, then only have it in the place with the better disagreer, and then point the other people to those posts, or just extensively quote yourself. "I addressed your point while talking with [other user], see my comment here(link)".
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Limit the back and forth - I will usually only give one response to most users. I will try and match their effort and address their points. I will try and have an extended discussion only with the best disagreers. So many instances of me moderating people happen ten or fifteen comments deep into a conversation, when almost everyone else has stopped reading. Both sides have already said the same thing multiple times, and they just become frustrated at each other "How can you resist the amazing logic and beauty of my arguments! Only a cretin and scum could fail to be convinced!" My suggestion is to just say your point and get out. You should expect to not have the last word when you are getting ratioed, so just embrace that reality up front.
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Leave when you are done - Sometimes even with all these strategies you might reach the end of your patience. You just don't want to talk about it anymore. Try and be introspective and recognize when you have reached this point. Once it happens, thank your best disagreer for the good discussion, say you are done with this topic and leave the discussion. Do not feel obligated to respond to additional comments. Your further participation is only likely to get you in trouble. You will likely get more and more frustrated until you lash out.
I also have advice for when you see someone getting ratioed and you want to join in on the dogpile. But that advice is more of a charitable nature, like it would be helpful to the community as a whole, but probably not as much to you personally. If people are interested I'll add it.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
yeah, if sexual pleasure was not related to reproduction it would not have evolved to be a thing, so reproduction is its purpose in that sense. but i was referring to purpose as something that is determined by the user, so in that case sex would not have the same purpose for everyone.
in the case of eating, i would not say it is primarily for pleasure, but for an obese person it is, because they would not have to eat nearly as much if their primary purpose was sustenance.
in my opinion creating more people is not obviously valuable, so it may be a negative, idk.
satisfying the desire to have sex creates pleasure which is intrinsically valuable imo, just as you believe creating more people is valuable, i think pleasure is a good thing that is meaningful of itself.
jerking off is usually not as pleasurable. and heroin has side effects that can spiral out of control.
It isn't - why not just 'determine' that the purpose of eating is for pleasure?
If you had a peaceful way to instantly die, would that be worth taking? Would it be worth most people taking it?
And if not, then why isn't the same true for a new person?
What physically makes something 'pleasurable' though? If the purpose isn't to have children, and it's just to "feel pleasure" - as if to say the point of having sex is to 'feel like you're having sex' - why not just make pleasurebots - remove the sex from the equation, just bathe neurons in heroin? Of course, if you do that, the neuron just dies - 'pleasure' only has meaning as part of a person acting, seeking. But the same is true on a larger scale - if you jerk off and enjoy it once, and you do it again, one realizes that nothing is happening, really, it seems fake - and it becomes less pleasurable. For a person - it might happen that, after having sex without children for a while, it seems repetitive and hollow. Usually doesn't, though. So what happens is - you don't reproduce, and there are fewer people (and fewer like you)!
my point was that telling someone that they are misusing something and thereby implying a negative moral judgment because they are using it in a way that is contrary to its purpose as defined by an objective framework is not a convincing moral argument, this being because of the fact that people use things for different reasons, not necessarily aligning with the purposes derived from said objective framework, meaning that things have different purpose distributions to different people. for example, the makeup of a pencil is oriented towards writing with, but that does not make it wrong to use their sharp tips to clean within nooks and crannies. Though it would be misleading to say that the purpose of pencils is to clean within nooks and crannies just because that is what you usually use it for. But this problem does not port over well to sex or sexual pleasure because most people think pleasure is the more important effect of sex than reproduction, otherwise birth rates would be a lot higher.
There are plenty of people who believe their life is bad and that they wish they had never been born, yet they do not kill themselves, are they mistaken or confused about this evaluation? Suicide is seen as a shameful, selfish, and cowardly act, so people often defy their desires to do it for the sake of keeping face/ honor. Another reason that makes people reluctant to follow through with their suicidal temptations is because they are afraid of death.
If there was a socially acceptable and harmless way to wirehead yourself, most people myself included would use it. But masturbation is not really analogous to that because in addition to bringing pleasure, it also satisfies sexual urges, which are more or less involuntary.
It does not come to feel hollow or less pleasurable because you think its not resulting in anything besides pleasure and the satisfaction of sexual drives unless you have been taught to think that way. If society keeps telling somebody that what they are doing is useless and hollow, then I assume they become more inclined to think that way, than if that behavior was not stained by those narratives.
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