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I haven't answered lots of replies, there's way too many! Just doing a quick check there has been >40 replies to me in 9 hours. I have a busy life with work and my kids and this is just something I'm going to check and reply to casually if there's too many going on.
But sure I'll answer yours
I don't think it's much of a culture war situation because basically no one has been on the side of "police should just make up their mind based off the first person they talk to and police should ignore a stabbing victim's pleas by assuming they're just a druggie or hallucinating or whatever the police assumed there". I haven't seen anyone argue that it is good for police to do that.
For a culture war, certainly there must be a war element to it. Some sort of disagreement on if this behavior was responsible policing or something. But nope doesn't seem to be much, pretty much everyone left and right wing I know seems to agree, police should actually check instead of just assuming it's nonsense.
There it is, the Darwin tell:
@ArjinFerman, just in case you were unaware, you are talking to one of Darwin's alts. (The last one was called @guesswho.)
I have an alternate theory, that Darwin runs a school of rhetoric and we're seeing some of his students.
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By this definition you are a Dean Alt.
It might shock you but not everyone here is a no-lifer who's primary hobby is arguing on the internet. You are kinda telling on yourself, go touch grass. Furthermore when you take a stance that is opposite to the Motte's consensus you tend to get a lot of shit. Not everyone is worth responding to and not getting to someone is not indicative to being an alt.
Just cuz you and MKC got into it in another thread doesn't mean you need to follow them to hear to start shit again.
EDIT: after reading this new thread you both need to get modded, holy shit.
Yeah, no. You're in the wrong here.
In your other comment, you say:
... and then here, you say:
You're reusing the exact antagonistic, insulting language magicalkittycat was using against FtttG, while simultaneously pretending to be some kind of enlightened neutral party going "hey guys, you both need to calm down".
You obviously don't want to calm things down, or get anyone to "cool their jets"; you're just shit-stirring. Like when you called the dead man a "retard".
If you sincerely want people to cool their jets, maybe don't deliberately be as antagonistic as possible.
Apparently not. Maybe you should update your priors about what constitutes good behavior in this place and what is not. They were clearly both rage posting at each other personally, which is frowned upon.
I think its far clear you are pissed that I have a disagreeable opinion, that dares to disagree with you in another thread. As such you feel the need to follow me around and make low effort snipes.
I don't feel the need to shit-stir online, I can do it in person to a far more enjoyable degree. I express my honest 100% opinion. It is always weird to me that there exists a class of people who essentially assume any opinion not agreeing with their own is a troll. And then comes to a debate forum filled with heterodox thinkers.
Congrats, of course, on completely ignoring the point of my comment: if you were trying to calm things down, why did you deliberately use the exact same insulting phrases as mkc?
Based on... literally nothing? That's not what "apparently" means.
No, thanks. I know that it's poor behaviour to call an innocent murdered man a "retard"; or to pretend to be cooling a conflict, while deliberately fanning the flames by insulting one party, using the exact words their opponent was using to try and piss them off.
Dude, I don't know or care what your object-level opinion is on this stuff. I remember that you called the dead guy a "retard", which I thought was extremely poor taste. But imagining that I'm following you around (in a thread in which I'm heavily active) is narcissistic and paranoid. Am I following you around now, for replying to a comment you posed directly to me?
See, most people don't feel the need to shit-stir at all.
Yes, that does seem weird. Are you pretending I'm in that class of people? That would be pretty weird, seeing as (1) I don't know what your opinions are, and I really don't care if you disagree with me, and (2) I haven't called you a troll.
Obviously you know all this, and don't actually care. I don't know why you'd come to a forum of heterodox thinkers, and try to antagonise people by making shit up about them. What's the point?
Considering both people in this thread were given mod warnings, I was right. They both deserved and did get modded. You thinking that was wrong is provably incorrect.
It's not poor behavior here. This place has different rules. I can civility express an opinion to matter how distasteful you feel it is, and that constitutes normal behavior here. Go back to reddit where shaming of opinions based on content is the norm or grow up.
"Following around" on a forum means dragging the content of one thread into another. This thread has nothing to do with my opinion on the Digwa vs Nowak Murder. This thread is about the interpersonal drama between FttG and MKC, and the slap fight they are having. You bringing up my opinion from another thread constitutes "following around". Not really sure why I need to explain internet forum etiquette to you, it should be known and understood by this point.
No... because I am responding to you on this topic... Honestly you even saying it makes me think you don't understand forum norms.
You are definitely acting like it. You've directly stated that you think I am deliberately shit-stirring. That is definitional troll behavior.
Something something commonly used and colloquial language for a response on why someone spend too much time online. It's almost like colloquial phrases in language get applied to the same situation by different people because they are colloquial phrases. It's not nefarious or malevolent, its just common language.
True.
This forum runs on a reputation economy. People can remember the things you say, and use sequences of statements to build a working model of your behavior and goals, and steer their interactions with you thereby.
Yes Agreed. I think that is as it should be. If you(EDIT: royal) think my history and sequences of statements is that of a troll/shit-stirrer then I recommend for your own sanity and mine that you block or just ignore me. I'm here to express my opinion, develop ideas, and maybe one day make posts testing them.
I do think my posting these days is tilted towards topics that get my goat rather than topics I think deeply about. And that mistakenly gives people the wrong impression of my belief system. But that's my fault and the only remedy is to post more. But I doubt people care about the internal thought process/belief system of one more Autistic Classical Liberal.
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What?
How am I telling on myself?
You are essentially pissed at MKC for that other thread around finding a white perpetrator and a minority victim. You are following them around to start shit with them. You both need to cool jets. You are accusing them of being an alt because they used the same sentence as someone else...
By your accusation, Dean has also accused them of being a darwin alt and followed them around to start shit. Ergo your logic makes you a dean alt. (its shit logic) Pot meet Kettle.
No, I'm pissed at him for moving the goalposts then accusing me of doing the same thing.
Multiple people have independently expressed the opinion to me that MKC is an alt account. Initially, I didn't believe it. However, on multiple occasions @guesswho wrote a very long and poorly argued comment for which he received a great deal of pushback, most of which he didn't bother replying to, airily announcing that he's too busy to because of his job and family. (Strange how his professional and familial obligations only ever seem to spring up when people are criticising his specious reasoning.) And that pattern of behaviour is so specific that when MKC used exactly the same line in the same circumstances, that clinched it for me: there's no longer any doubt in my mind. I replied to that specific comment because that specific comment was a dead giveaway: I am not "following him around" picking fights on every comment he leaves.
I think using alt accounts is fundamentally opposed to the ethos of this space: you should know who you're arguing with. Creating a new account so you can express the exact same opinions but without the baggage of the old account hardly seems like arguing in good faith. Although the mods have banned sockpuppets before, they don't seem to think that alt accounts in general are bad, but that's their prerogative. But I think there's no harm in people being aware of who they're interacting with.
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I swear to god.
Kindly stop with the melodramatic callouts. Perhaps you missed the last round. If you really think Arjin is missing key information, send him a DM.
And you, @magicalkittycat. I know you were paying attention. Falling back on personal attacks does no one any favors.
The closest thing to it was saying that I have a job and a busy life and that it's not unique to do so, and thus assuming that it is so unique or strange to fit the category of "employed with family" that giving it as a response to a question as why I don't reply to every comment is not indicative or whatever weird conspiracy theory he has in his head.
Now I don't know why it comes off as so unique to him. Maybe he's currently unemployed. Maybe he's a NEET and most people in his life are also unemployed.
I don't care, I'm not passing judgement. I have an aunt who lives off social security because she's disabled and hasn't worked for almost two decades. That's fine.
It's just a very strange thing to assume "job with kids makes me busy" is unique. It's not, it's normal and common.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear.
Do not respond to accusations with personal attacks. Block them, address the substance, I don’t care, but do not take the opportunity to speculate on your interlocutor’s life story. Especially do not respond to a warning about personal attacks by making more guesses about what’s going on in his head.
One day ban.
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As I've made ABUNDANTLY clear to you, I never claimed the fact that you have a job and a family is remarkable in and of itself. I was pointing out the specific pattern of behaviour in which you 1) write a lengthy comment in which you employ some extremely specious reasoning 2) multiple people push back on it 3) you airily announce that you don't have time to reply to all the comments because you have a job and a family (and, in a staggering coincidence, the only times your professional and familial obligations present an obstacle to you posting here is when people are criticising your specious reasoning). This was a very specific thing that @guesswho did on multiple occasions, so it would strike me as a massive coincidence if you are not the same person as @guesswho.
You know something else @guesswho did a great deal? Pretending not to understand something which has been repeatedly explained to him in exhaustive detail, as you're doing now. Something else? Denying that he's engaging personal attacks while engaging in personal attacks. You think you're so clever ("Maybe he's currently unemployed. Maybe he's a NEET and most people in his life are also unemployed. I don't care, I'm not passing judgement...").
I'm not unemployed. I have a good job. Most people in my life also have good jobs.
Seriously, mods – if accusing me and everyone I know of being unemployed losers with no prospects (with the fig leaf of "I'm not passing judgement" wink wink) doesn't qualify as "antagonistic, uncharitable or unkind" behaviour, what the hell does?
It does.
That said, you don’t have to take the bait.
You're right.
I want to sincerely apologise for getting so worked up. For my own sake, I won't be interacting with MKC anymore in any capacity. No more mod warnings will be required.
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Aka "reasoning you don't agree with" right?
So what if multiple people disagree with me? It would be really weird if everyone did agree.
I replied to a substantial portion, and the reply that I can't do it to everyone was specifically when asked why I didn't reply to a specific one.
Look I don't know why you continue to insist that
Q: "Why don't you answer every single question?"
A: "I don't have time for every single one cause I have a life so I answer some of them"
is something suspicious.
It's not suspicious, it's an incredible normal reason. This is a "Hitler also breathed air" tier argument. I'm trying to be good faith and assume you genuinely find the reason I gave as something shocking for some reason, instead of you acting maliciously.
Well good for you. Why can't you understand it as something other people like me also have?
Says the person throwing out completely spurious accusations based off evidence like "You answer that you can't reply to everyone because you have a job and family when asked that specific question" and "I think your views have a logic I disagree with". So do most people in the world!
Would you PLEASE, for the LOVE OF GOD, STOP pretending like I ever said the fact that you have a job is in and of itself worthy of comment.
I never said that. I never said anything like it. You know exactly why I brought it up. You know exactly what you're doing. Stop playing dumb.
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You're right, I should have DM'd him, I apologise.
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Wow incredible! I have a job and family and other hobbies and don't prioritize replying to every single comment here.
I feel like you're telling on yourself, and what you think of the userbase, really hard here if you think being a well adjusted individual with an active life is an odd thing. No offense but you might really need some grass touching dude.
This convinces approximately no one, by the way.
No offence (as, apparently, those are magic words that allow you to cause offence), but trying to smear FtttG like this is pathetic.
Well either having a job and family and other hobbies and being busy with them most of the day is a weird thing to do on this site like he claims, or it's not a weird thing and his accusation (that me saying those things is proof I'm some other user who also says those things) doesn't make sense.
It's like if I said
"Sorry, I eat sandwiches for lunch" and he went "you knew who else ate sandwiches? Joe"
Like ok? Tons of people eat sandwiches. That doesn't make sense unless he doesn't eat sandwiches and doesn't think other people do.
That would make sense if me and Joe were the odd guys out for eating sandwiches. It would be wrong, tons of people eat sandwiches but it would make sense as an accusation if that's what he believed.
Like that's fine, I don't judge people who don't eat sandwiches (don't spend lots of their time doing other things and come on here in between stuff on various days (like right now it's decently early before work gets really heavy and sometimes spend days without checking at all.)) He could be a NEET for all I know and care.
But it's still weird to use "you eat sandwiches" as some sort of accusation. That is just telling on yourself.
I wasn't commenting on FtttG's claim that you're a Darwin alt; I don't really care.
I was pointing out that your attempted smear reflected on your character, not his.
What smear? He's the one who seems to find me answering "sorry I didn't reply to your comment because I'm busy and I'm busy because job and family and responsibilities" as some uncommon reason.
That's normal. Lots of people have families and jobs and other responsibilities. If he find it strange for some reason for me to have those things, then he's abnormal. Not abnormal (pejorative) but abnormal (descriptive).
You're so busy with your job and family that you have time to... tell us all how busy with your job and family and that's why you can't reply to comments even though you are replying to a comment at that exact moment?
Come off it. This is Timmy going "Mom, Billy is being mean to me! I'm just sitting here watching TV!" behaviour when conveniently Timmy leaves out that Billy was already watching the TV, he grabbed the remote from Billy and changed it to a different show, and when Billy tried to grab it back then Timmy called in Mom about how he was watching the TV all along and mean old Billy was trying to change it on him.
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sigh
You might get better results if you stopped thinking other people are stupid.
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I am a well-adjusted individual with an active life. I was pointing out that you and @guesswho (if we're still maintaining the pretense that you are separate individuals) have an eerily similar tic where you have seemingly limitless time to expound on your opinions (seriously dude, you post an average of 2.5 comments per day here, you're in no position to throw stones), but the second you get any significant amount of pushback, you instantly claim to be far too busy with your other responsibilities to reply to them. I'm not criticising you for not replying to every comment (I routinely have more important things to do than to be posting here). I'm pointing out that the pattern of behaviour is so uncannily similar that I would be flabbergasted if you aren't yet another Darwin alt/sockpuppet. And I really, truthfully, do not understand this weird urge you feel to periodically flounce off, only to reappear some time later under a new username. It's just such phenomenally strange behaviour. I wonder what your next username will be.
Damn are you me too then?
I also regularly go days without posting too and when I do post it's generally in bursts centered together.
Woah, you are a Darwin alt. Your pattern of behavior claiming you have other things to do is just what he did! Holy shit.
Poor reading comprehension in addition to being obnoxious (yet another thing you have in common with @guesswho – what a coincidence!). Go through my entire comment history and you will never, not once, find an instance in which I claimed the reason I could not reply to someone's comment was because I was too busy with my job and family. There have been times in which I was so occupied, but I never announced it in the sneering tone of dismissive condescension which is your favourite. That specific tic is a dead giveaway. So too is your defensive shit-slinging when you realise your subterfuge wasn't quite as convincing as you thought it was.
I don't do that either, except in the specific situation where someone asked me why I don't reply to everything like their comment.
If I asked you why you didn't reply to a specific comment or question among many, what would your answer be?
Maybe you would say
Or
As your response to that question.
"I don't do that thing either, except on those occasions when I do."
Thanks for spelling that out for me dude, really appreciate it.
Ok let's check.
Why do you sometimes not reply to every comment?
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I remain skeptical that he's Darwin. I understand what you're getting at, I recognize the similarity, but I maintain there are also differences in their styles.
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There's still an important part of this question you're not answering for some reason.
George Floyd? It should be obvious he is because people were actually arguing about it. There was a war element to his death.
Some people said police shouldn't kneel on a man's neck for 9 minutes as the man pleads that he is struggling to breath, and others think it is an acceptable restraining method.
There is an actual disagreement over police behavior.
Just adding my 2c, without necessarily disagreeing with you.
The George Floyd saga has permanently warped how people process crimes along racial lines, even if racial motives are marginal or non-existent in the actual facts of a case, both sides now instinctively torture the evidence to cram it into their preferred meta-narrative. The right has been hunting for its own George Floyd (a galvanising martyrdom moment) ever since 2020 to mobilise society against the liberal scolds and their holy cows, who have been hectoring an entire generation of young white men with moral screeds about racism and sexism since childhood, and permanently demolish Floyd's status as a modern day saint.
But there is crucial context that most analysts tend to overlook, BLM 2020 was a 3-standard deviation phenomenon. The scale of the explosion had less to do with the specifics of Floyd’s death or even the popular narrative (unarmed black man murdered by racist white cop) and far more to do with the timing. It detonated in the middle of the COVID lockdowns, when mass boredom, economic despair, social atomisation, and psychological fragility had already pushed people to extremism. Those conditions created ideal kindling for nationwide (and global) hysteria. The racial angle provided the perfect pretext for the rioters to engage in violent acts with total impunity (because only a racist would criticise the so-called resistance). This was also the time when Andrew Tate became the most googled guy. We’re unlikely to see anything on that scale ever again, including from BLM itself. 6 years on, it seems even the kids are joking about it.
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Was there? I'm honestly not seeing one, unless I apply a completely different standard between that case and this. No one was saying the police should never be allowed to restrain a suspect, or on the other side, that they should be allowed to arbitrarily murder black people.
Not really. What I recall from the conversations here was a reaction that was essentially identical to yours: "Its a sad situation but nothing here seems unique or even too particularly culture war". It wasn't until the toxicology report came out that people started making the argument that the method of restraint he used had nothing to do with Floyd's death, and therefore was essentially fine. Progressives never really disagreed with that statement either, they just didn't address it.
So where's the war?
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