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Notes -
I think it says a lot about The Motte that this comment--which is obviously leaning super hard into deliberately poking emotional buttons--was met with multiple dispassionate responses that take the position offered seriously. And I think they were correct to do so!
This comment showed up on my "volunteer mod" list, and I seriously considered both the "warning" and "AAQC" options. Went with "neutral."
This kind of comment with deliberate shock value in an obvious attempt to cause an extreme emotional response to create a sort of "ad absurdum" proof (i.e. implicit message being "according to your stated values, this EXTREME and OBSCENE thing happening to YOU would be allowed; your stated values don't look so good now, does it?") happens every once in a while in this forum, and though I've often found it amusing, I've also started to find it frustrating. Because when they inevitably get the types of responses that this one got, (i.e. "Yes, that'd be fully allowed. And?"), there never seems to be any follow-up to continue the conversation. And that's a shame, because I feel like there's potentially an interesting conversation here. It's legit fascinating to me that some pixels arranged to look like a photograph of oneself doing XYZ could be offensive to one based on how offensive XYZ are, and not only that, that it's so obviously offensive that it's used as an "ad absurdum" endpoint to use as a "gotcha" against someone's values.
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