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The thing is, I'm getting rapped over the knuckles for being sarcastic.
Okay, yes, sarcasm there a-plenty.
However, it was "laughing to keep from crying". I preferred to react with mockery of a similar viewpoint from the past, rather than engage in serious angry cursing of the person who wished for the misfortune of others.
Since it seems satire is out but rancour is fine, shrugging at nonsense will get a scolding but hoping for a disaster is neutral, then let me say: I don't hope, wish or dream of a disaster that will befall those I disagree with or my ideological enemies, not even those I come close to having contempt for. I can wish bad things, but I know wishing for bad things is wrong and I should not do it. It's the immediate gut reaction of reading an appalling story in the news and wishing the abominable bitch gets tortured to death. (As for the spineless fuckstick dad who apparently was fine with her beating the shit out of the kid so long as she opened her legs for him on a regular basis, tell me again about strong male-led households, please!)
Not a good state of mind for the individual, not a good state of mind for society.
So I react with ridicule of an old piece of nonsense rather than screaming anger where I detonate in a fireball not seen since the Tunguska Incident (please forgive me, it's the phosphates, you know! Medical science has proven it!)
But since, as I said, the preference is for disaster hoping, then shentlemens: may you all experience the likes of that Pap test conducted by a male consultant gynaecologist which was the second and last time I had it done. The last, since I would bloody well prefer to run the risk of cervical cancer than go through that experience again. To add insult to injury, the guy wasn't even able to collect a proper sample so no results could be obtained, as the letter I got back from the testing lab informed me.
Hoping for bad things to happen to those you disagree with is fine and will not get me into trouble, just so long as I avoid sarcasm, see Amadan's mod decision. So if I really want bad things to happen to the men on here, expressing that wish is not going to evoke any pushback. But if I indulge in hyperbolic scoffing where the target is beyond any ill-wish of mine, that is bad and results in a scolding.
Nice to have that clear.
If only a third option existed! Oh woe unto us!
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On a tangent, has anyone tried a version of The Motte that aspires to remove personal feelings from the debate in a more wholesale way a la scientific journals, where the first-person is discouraged? It would obviously be a somewhat idealistic standard, but it might help further 'optimise for light rather than heat'. As HereAndGone notes, some people here do express their own satisfaction about some outgroup's misfortune pretty frequently and while it's neither sarcasm nor mockery, whether they want (let's say) women to be enslaved is not actually germane whatsoever to any debate, other than as one tiny and discouraging data point about one anonymous poster's emotional stance.
Having written a few scientific papers in my time, and read an awful lot more, I strongly disagree that this approach will yield good results. Third-person passive writing effectively acts as consensus building by default - it is designed to ape a full objective perspective that by definition cannot be achieved. "It is well-understood that rents are too high and women are over-educated" just leads to constant passive aggressive arguing about what it means to be well-understood and what citations are acceptable etc. etc. where two people have essentially a personal disagreement using sock puppets, whereas first-person "I think that..." encourages clear demarcation between one's own personal feelings and expectations, and claims made about the broader world.
I can't disagree when it comes to much academic writing and yet phrases like 'it is well understood' are just falling foul of what could be another strongly enforced rule against passive phrasing and the smuggling in of contested facts. My hypothetical version of the Motte would discourage such shady thinking just as strongly as it would discourage emoting.
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