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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026

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Blocking people certainly isn't petty if they consistently resort to ad hominems. Attacking the speaker rather than their arguments ought to result in a mod action unless there are exceptional circumstances IMO since it almost always degenerates to heat > light, but that's not really enforced here. I wish there was something like Twitter's mute functionality as that's what I'd prefer over full blocking, but if blocking is the only thing I have then that's what I'll use.

But you're right, I should probably have just ignored this. Fruit from a rotten tree.

but that's not really enforced here

Yes it is. We just don't always agree with you what constitutes an attack. Many people are maximally sensitive to anything said to them, and want maximum charity when interpreting anything said by them.

If you consider your behavior in posts like these to be fine, then I would not consider you to have a very good definition of what constitutes an ad hominem

Sometimes I think you just read posts, decide who's expressing the "conservative" (bad) position, and reflexively argue the opposite.

you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll

you are either being astoundingly clueless or just flat out disingenuous.

You have actually spouted a ton of bullshit

Transparent straw man. Stop this kind of disingenuous whining.

That selective edit is interesting. Here is the full context:

You know man, you get reported a lot and even the other mods have a hard time with you because a lot of people think you are and always have been a bad faith borderline troll who just says things to get under people's skin, without regard to truth or accuracy. And I have always leaned towards leniency, maybe because I'm a quokka and too willing to assume people actually believe the things they are saying and are sincere in their argumentation, even if they're really annoying. But I have frequently argued against banning you because it's too easy to find things you say that are moddable when most of the forum is trying to get you banned.

When you pull a stunt like that, literally chopping a piece out of a sentence to imply I said something quite different than what I did, it's hardly worth addressing the rest, but yes, I stand by everything I said in that post, and I have applied the same judgment to others. When you are arguing with someone, you are allowed to criticize, even harshly, the things they actually say.

Very bad form, and the way you slipped it in with the other quotes makes it clear that was calculated and intentional.