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Same here, sort of: no literal curling up or shaking for me, but other people talk about dopamine hits they get from seeing their posts have been replied to, but for me it's always a stab of dread. Sometimes I just feel something needs saying, and I guess I just have to live with it whenever I give in.
Oh, would that everything was fixable. I don't know that this isn't, but I'm not confident that it is. The fact that there's total freedom of exit and lots of alternatives (combined with how remote this site is now) makes it look pretty tricky to me, if the solution is going to involve anybody having to compromise rather than just bailing. If you have any ideas, though, we'll all be glad to hear them.
I'll be glad to read that, too! (I don't guarantee I'll reply, though - stabs of dread and all...)
Edit: to be clear, I am not saying that anyone should avoid replying to me if they otherwise would! My feelings are my own problem, and the dread is really ~never warranted, as I've found, anyway.
This is basically the only reason I post. Well, this and alcohol.
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Y'all looking for a psychiatrist? I'm cheap.
Ahem. A position I semi-endorse is that most liberals tend to be more neurotic, and less likely to post here if the waters aren't welcoming. Plus, most of the internet is liberal-aligned by default, why would they be specifically drawn here? I imagine those who do are attracted by the quality of discourse, if nothing else.
I don't fit neatly into most political categories, on a political compass scale, I end up in the middle by virtue of multiple extremes canceling out. I'd call myself quite thick-skinned (a common trait in our most prolific posters), but I'd probably not engage at all if all the feedback I received was negative. So I can't really blame you for having some degree of dread. I've submitted comments where I was confident I was right, but I certainly didn't look forward to the task of wrangling all the people convinced otherwise. It's an acquired taste.
This does have a converse effect, in that most liberals arguing politics on the internet are completely marinated in liberal-aligned or more often liberal-only spaces, and that shapes their ability to discuss things. OP's use of "libtards" is telling - lib"tards" are not welcomed here, just as rightards or libertardians are not welcomed, because they're unable to follow the rules or live up to the standards of the space. And the process of marinating in homogenous spaces does turn an awfully large percentage of online liberals into "libtards" in that sense, people who don't know how to debate outside of the context of a front-page subreddit, college classroom, or similarly low-quality space. One reason why the few high-quality and highly-emotionally-regulated liberal posters have, for the most part, been greatly valued here.
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Kinda. Out of places where I can go and find people who disagree with me and test my mettle against them, it's the one with the best quality of discourse.
That's a better reason than most, and one I share.
To me, a great deal of the attraction of The Motte is the opportunity to lock horns with intellectual peers. If my ideas can't stand up to scrutiny, I owe it to myself to find out.
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