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I looked at the three examples you provided as bad posts and they don't seem to be the same level of bad as some of Turok's post. Obviously I am biased so I may be blind to the stake in my eye but I'm going to give it some effort.
If making a statement about a group that could be considered negative is mean then you can never have any discussions about anything. The difference is the negative statements about the groups in the three posts are about specific behaviors and aren't just calling the groups names. It's part of an argument that could be challenged. And then you have to consider how people response to criticisms/challenges of an argument. I don't think I've ever seen Turok acknowledge someone made a good point and he usually only responds to direct questions. It is infuriating to have a conversation with someone that never engages or acknowledges your strongest points and only nitpicks your weakest points. Which is an effective tactic in a debate, but then it's not really a proper conversation in good faith. It's even more infuriating when the same line of reasoning that was never addressed is then repeated in future posts.
I actually didn't see anything in 2rafa's post that could be considered a generic mean statement about a group. The worst thing I could see is this statement.
But that's actually a conclusion in an argument, something that can be challenged and dismantled if one provides evidence otherwise. It's not a statement like "hispanics are trash", even if you think it is implied that's not what is stated. If the implication is bad dismantle the argument.
Sohois says the African "immigrants are much lower quality" but this is followed by a list of characteristics that could be challenged. If the Africans in Europe aren't lower quality to hispanics in America, they must be the same or higher quality. If you take issue with that statement, can you provide evidence proving otherwise?
Worst thing I could see in Sloot's comment is this initial statement
This is a statement about a group's actions and behaviors. You can challenge this statement. Is Sloot wrong? It could be implied sloot thinks the modal chick is dumb but sloot doesn't actually make that statement.
Meanwhile Turok's post:
I consider myself leaning more conservative, I went to a top tier university and I have a degree. I know many people who have gone to high tier universities. An increasing amount of them are leaning more conservative as time goes on. So from my experience his statement is incorrect. Perhaps if we really want to be technical, I'm being uncharitable here and my point doesn't actually address his claim, but he hasn't provided any evidence for his point. Are higher percentages of people with no college degrees becoming conservative? What exactly are third-rate colleges and are they producing more conservative leaders than before? He might be correct that conservatives have been losing in institutional powers like academia but that's not the claim he made here.
Also, there's something about this line of thinking that I have issue with. It's as if I said bananas are the food of poor people. Poor people do eat bananas so it's technically true. But what if I made this statement to a group of rich people using bananas as part of their morning smoothie? What was the purpose of making that statement? What's the implication here?
His statement on how conservatives are smoking copium about how noble manual labor is - this seems like making a mountain of a molehill. I see no concerted effort from conservatives in trying to push summer jobs to kids. Until conservative right adjacent sphere tiktok and social media is full of influencers bemoaning how the youth should be getting a summer job because it's going to teach them the value of hard labor one article from one conservative leaning site doesn't really mean much. I haven't seen this talking point in like years until I saw this post.
I have never heard of the group CommonPlace until yesterday. Their twitter has less than 5k followers. Linked in around 100. Facebook under 100. This is very weak evidence for conservatives as a group smoking copium. They might be a conservative think tank and maybe the people they actually reach have more influence, but until I see the messaging reach the intended audience this is nothing to me.
If you look at the parent post, his analysis is contradicted by evidence in the article itself, which I quote in my reply to him. I didn't bother touching on his 2nd paragraph earlier but I might as well expand on why I have an issue with his analysis. He makes this argument:
The causal link between higher income and going to art museums is very weak, while one can come up with a causal link between industriousness and adulthood happiness (work hard > more purpose in life > more likely to have material goods to have a higher quality of life). I don't disagree with him that genetics is a factor, but the two positions are not equivalent in their erroneousness. For them to be equally flawed statements would suggest a human being can never learn to become more industrious, and that industriousness has no effect on mental health. Yet surely we can find examples in our own lives that would suggest otherwise. Think of people that after being put into a sports team learned to work hard with a team, or even all the statement made here in the motte of people talking about how working a job helped them appreciate hard work or motivated them to work even harder to get more lucrative jobs. There is also psychological literature supporting the idea that it's possible to increase conscientiousness. I have just made an argument for why increasing industriousness can increase adult mental health. I would struggle to make a coherent argument for why subsidizing art museums would increase income.
To be honest, I should probably ask Turok to expand on his points rather than typing out why I think his argument is flawed in a post not even responding to him directly, but based on his previous interactions with others and to my post I can't say I have much interest right now in actually talking to him specifically.
If there are issues with those bad right wing posts, surely someone could put in the same level of effort I just did here to break down why they think it is bad. Perhaps my analysis is flawed, but at least I put in the effort. Where's the effort to show why these right wing posts are bad or flawed? Even if there is some level of group consensus, truth should prevail and if an argument has no flaws at that point the only option would be to ignore it or to resort to bad faith tactics and logical fallacies, and at that point it's breaking the rules and should be moderated. Upstream, there are some people making an effort to argue with that "virulent invasive species" metaphor is flawed, and I'd like to see more of those conversations than people complaining that the statement is mean. I do agree with you that people on the other side complaining about left leaning posts should also be better and try to address the argument instead of getting mad.
I broadly agree with this sentiment and think the rule should be relaxed a bit in general. But under the current status quo, if the moderators of this forum insist it should have a bad rule no matter what, it should at least be enforced consistently.
I think Sloot's post is closest to being at the same level of badness as Turok's post.
vs
Your statement here:
Can be applied symmetrically to Turok's post. You could challenge Turok's post through a discussion on education polarization if you wanted to. You could have anecdotes pointing in one direction, but the data consistently points in another, at least for now: the higher your education, the more likely you are to vote Democratic.
But correctness of these points isn't really the issue. The issue is that it's framed in a somewhat antagonistic light for both of these posts. A right-wing poster might see Turok's post and assume he thinks Republicans are all retards who support stupid things because they're stupid, while a left-wing poster would probably be closer to saying "he's just making a neutral point about which side tends to go to college more".
That's actually a good point and yea you're right that anecdotes are pretty weak in the grand scheme of things.
I dont' think there's any disagreement that the percentage of people with college or higher tend to vote democrat especially in the last 20 years, but Turok's point was specifically that conservatism is increasingly becoming the party of the uneducated, yet if we look at the data for the last 3 election cycles the lead democrats had amongst people that voted with college or higher has actually been decreasing:
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/
Percentage of people that voted for republican in 2016, 2020, and 2024 Post grads 29 > 32 > 33 Grads 41 > 42 > 46 Some college 49 > 50 > 54
It's increased for each group.
Granted, just because you voted for Trump doesn't mean you are conservative. Possibly other factors such as people not voting that could impact the numbers. I guess Turok is technically correct since High school or less also increased from 51 to 59.
Maybe you're right and mods are unfairly applying mod posts to Turok. Personally I don't think Turok should have been modded for that statement specifically but looking at Amadan's post it seems to come off as a mod post about his behavior across multiple posts and not specifically the post he made that got the modded comment.
Anyways it looks like the virulent post that modded and I see some mod comments as well so hey seems like you are making an impact.
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