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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 9, 2023

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You're right, the mods aren't going to endorse tactically baiting people to try to weed out the undesirables.

"Are you okay?" was borderline and I almost gave you a warning, but we don't actually mod every statement that might be a little more snide than it needs to be. I'm more unhappy with you openly admitting that you insert ad hominems just to troll your opponents into losing it. You tend to get slightly more slack because you are generally a high effort poster with a lot of AAQCs, but now I'm going to be less chill about this sort of thing in the future.

That's fine, it's about time I improve my technique; it may be interesting to substitute ad hominem with some obvious fallacy that cannot offend (and is immaterial to the broader argument).

Your characterization isn't very fair – «just to troll your opponents into losing it» suggests that there's mendacity and some trolling effort to push them over the edge, whereas what's really happening, IMO, is they're given a good-faith response plus an opportunity to cheaply dismiss it on legalistic grounds. Their emotions don't really concern me, and for all I know they feel very smug and content when calling out a fallacy. Win-win, really!

But okay.

Consider, though, that if you start discriminating against my lines that are otherwise allowed, you'll have failed in about the same way this guy did.

Consider, though, that if you start discriminating against my lines that are otherwise allowed, you'll have failed in about the same way this guy did.

I'm not threatening to discriminate against lines that are otherwise allowed. We exercise some subjectivity in enforcement. This has always, explicitly been the case (hence people periodically complaining that long-time good posters get cut more slack, and our response being "Yes, and?") I'm saying you have burned some of the goodwill that until now gave you more slack.

That's cool! Privilege spoils, and also makes one a target of contempt.