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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2095 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 31, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What the fuck does this have to do with being Indian?! I am complaining about posting topics and you accuse me of racism. If this was anyone else they’d get modded by you.

Vanilla and Self made both post quite a bit about developments of their personal lives in a very episodic way. Which again is fine, but gets tedious when it’s obviously not even relevant to the threads topic.

Vanilla used to do it more and self made has really turned up the volume recently. None of it had anything to do with being Indian you fucking asshole

After discussing this with other moderators, we are reducing your ban to "time served."

A couple of things, for you and for everyone:

First, other people's behavior is not, never has been, and never will be an excuse for your own. Directed invective like "you fucking asshole" is ban-on-sight behavior even if the other person did something to deserve it. This is pure heat. Use the "report" button instead.

Second, our moderators are generally pretty thick-skinned, and we usually avoid modding in a thread where we're participating. But sometimes users think that means it's open season on the mod team. This is not the case.

Finally, it seems to me that a combination of Internet-mediated communication and partially hidden information (specifically, some "user reports" on various comments, and some inter-user histories) combined here to create conversations that were effectively "garbled" by how they played out. This is one reason I personally try to avoid the "meta," if at all possible.

Anyway, I'd like to end the litigation of this here, and hope everyone is willing to cooperate with me on that.

None of it had anything to do with being Indian you fucking asshole

I don't know what kind of a crash-out this is, since you posted something so obviously cruising for a ban and then reported yourself, but wish granted. If you're have a bad week, you need to take it out on someone else.

3-day ban. You can complain about the modding, but not like this.

  • -15

>impute racist motivations

>get (somewhat understandably) upset response

>reach straight for the banhammer

Outstanding move. This is not your first mod decision I consider objectionable, but it's definitely the most naked flex so far. I don't mind the blogposting myself, it's entertaining if nothing else, but when the volume reaches several posts per week (from the same posters, on roughly the same themes) people are absolutely allowed to complain. At no point is race required to enter the consideration.

From downthread:

We both thought it was odd that he grouped the two Indian posters together like that in such an unrelated fashion.

Maybe because they are the two posters who liberally blogpost as of late? If I'd made @iprayiam3's point they would've been my go-to examples as well, no Nooticing required.

Ctrl-F'ing the first 5 pages of @iprayiam3's post history turned up 0 mentions of Indians specifically and one direct mention of immigrants. What, respectfully, are you on about? How does race even factor in here, why does your theory of mind go straight to race-based motivations? I held my tongue last time I got warned for off-handedly mentioning "jewish tricks" without a meme disclaimer (point taken) but here I'll say it - I understand janitorial duties take their toll but you really gotta fix your racism/antisemitism detector, the false positives are visibly stacking up.

I agree that @iprayiam was factually correct about the frequency of blogposting by specific mottizens, and that racism seemed to play no role in it, and that the mods read too much into it.

But his reaction was also clearly out of bounds and did deserve punishment.

I agree it was out of bounds, but considering the circumstances of @Amadan (I think undisputably) firing the first proverbial shot here it would be more prudent to warn first, and tempban after if he does not chill.

IMO it's hard to find a sweet spot here. For the language used by @iprayiam, a mere warning seems too light, even given the circumstances. And it is only a 3-day ban. I just hope it won't be held against him in future mod decisions.

Unfounded accusations of racial prejudice seem roughly as bad as calling someone an asshole; claiming to have made them as an attempt to lighten the mood crosses the line into straight up dishonest argumentation. Mods closing ranks on this is pretty bad too; I suggest that smh was a bad choice for a mod, and this should be rectified. Iprayim has the right of it downthread; nothing personal but the guy is bad for the forum. (as a mod)

Unfounded accusations of racial prejudice seem roughly as bad as calling someone an asshole

TBH I think it's a quite a bit worse - for many of us we live in a situation where being called racist in real life would be a profound existential threat, and in the overall blue milieu it is pretty much the worst thing you can call people.

I know I have an involuntary autonomic reaction to it even if I know I'm safe through anonymity or whatever.

I think this is the first time I have ever been utterly confused and disgusted by a moderation action on this forum.

If you are confused that calling someone (including a mod) a fucking asshole will earn a ban, then I am not sure what your expectations were.

  • -14

It seems like a pretty reasonable reaction to being accused of racism by two different moderators for absolutely zero reason that I can see.

As I said in a reply before I found out he was banned, I do not actually think he was being racist towards me. I was more mildly peeved by the idea that my writing would be clubbed in with silver's. It really was a joke, I have thicker skin than that.

We did not call him a racist. We both thought it was odd that he grouped the two Indian posters together like that in such an unrelated fashion. But he wasn't modded for that.

There is almost no situation in which calling someone a fucking asshole is going to be considered a reasonable or acceptable reaction.

  • -13

We did not call him a racist. We both thought it was odd that he grouped the two Indian posters together like that in such an unrelated fashion. But he wasn't modded for that.

With all due respect, you did strongly imply it:

We also agreed you're being kind of an ass about this, and not just because you apparently think all Indians are the same.

OTOH, the following is absolutely fair, even if you fired the first shot (sort of, anyways) by calling him "kind of an ass".

There is almost no situation in which calling someone a fucking asshole is going to be considered a reasonable or acceptable reaction.

Can't really disagree with that.

You said, apparently seriously, "you apparently think all Indians are the same". That is an accusation of racism, and not the boring scientific kind most of us are, the actually-mindkilled kind. That's an accusation of moral turpitude and irrationality; levelling those without the best of grounding is literally against several rules of theMotte and extremely likely to incense people. And, well, I can't say I've read all his posts, but searching his posts for "India" only shows up a note that it has lower QoL than the West and thus its inhabitants have less to lose and more to gain from gambles like AI than he does as a Westerner. Your post there is the kind of post that people get modded for.

Now, it is true that theMotte does prohibit returning flaming in kind, so this doesn't mean @iprayiam3 is fully off the hook. But for you, Amadan, to flame someone and then personally ban him for responding less escalatorily than you did, while walking off scot-free? Yeah, that's not good modding. If I saw a mod I didn't trust pull that trick, I'd immediately categorise it as entrapment. I do trust you enough to take at face value that this wasn't a deliberate trap, but you've got to realise that a lot of people on this board don't, and acting with unclean hands like this is a really-good way to reinforce their suspicions.

NB: I'm not accusing @self_made_human of anything here. I don't think he did anything especially wrong and rated his response Neutral.

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