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When it comes to denying the facts of what KILLED MY MOTHER, I think we're past "being offended" and into "if you said that to my face, you'd get punched in the mouth" territory.
Hit me with a ban and let him continue shit-posting. I don't care at this stage. But he/she/it/they are a fucking liar and I won't eat dogshit and call it chocolate, all in the name of "play nicely, children".
It's almost funny, to see how from the above how I could skirt around a ban on a technicality of "we're not quite sure you're a troll, so we'll keep on letting you shit-post". But on this one topic I am not going to be sweet and calm.
This is about "this thing kills people". I already see young people going back to the notion that tobacco smoking is cool and edgy and trendy. At least some of them will develop a smoking habit, and at least some of them will die from that. And die painful, miserable, awful deaths.
So pardon me if I tread on Sky's toes and their oh-so-edgy "it's all propaganda", while I have a grave of someone who died from not-propaganda to visit.
He is an obvious crank (or troll pretending to be a crank) making terrible arguments, but your response is not a good one. I doubt there is anyone here who finds his arguments convincing, but if there was your post would not be a good reason to think otherwise. There are many people who believe that, for instance, they have lost a family member to the COVID-19 vaccine because he had a stroke months later or something. Many millions of people say they lost a family member to the vaccine if we go by the survey a while back and assume not all of them were people misreading the question (unfortunately I didn't save a link, it might have been posted here or somewhere else like Zvi's blog), implying numbers that are completely insane unless we assume that all the official studies and statistics are outright fake. For that matter, there are plenty of people who will tell you stories like "my father got the vaccine and had a heart-attack days later", something which is biologically plausible to attribute to the vaccine, and yet even then the statistics probably work out such that it is a coincidence most of the time. Their anger at vaccination-supporters for killing people they loved, though based on far weaker evidence, is in many cases just as sincere and wholehearted as yours. Those personal experiences and feelings aren't a convincing argument when they use them, and they don't become a convincing argument just because you are supporting a position that happens to actually be true.
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No, it is not this one topic. You do this on every topic that gets under your skin.
Answer me this: people are posting all the time about how Jews are cancer, the Holocaust is a hoax, blacks are low IQ criminals, trans people are mentally ill degenerates, women should be property, fascism is good, leftists are moral mutants who should be disenfranchised, etc.
Do you believe someone personally affronted by any of those themes (like, say, by being Jewish, or black, or trans, or a leftist) would be justified in throwing fuck yous at the OP and ignoring our discourse rules? Would you yell at me for modding them?
If not, then please explain why it's different for you.
If so, then fine, you would prefer that we just let people curse each other out when they're sufficiently riled. This is a position a number of people have advocated over the years. It's fine to want the Motte to be more of a free for all where we don't enforce civility. Take it up with Zorba; maybe the umpteenth petition will convince him that's how it should be. But right now, that's not how it is.
You want it one way, but it's the other way. You know how it is, so please stop acting the martyr when you very deliberately break the rules.
It's not. Your house, your rules, and I knew what I was getting into when I signed up.
I like The Motte, I like (most of) you, I like the principles behind this place, I like what you are trying to do. And I do believe in free speech, so I'm not asking for bans or demanding this place is run how I want it/like it or, worst of all, issuing ultimatums along the lines of "him or me, choose!"
I've mocked people for flouncing off, so consider this karma or just retribution or what you will. Whether we call it the Wheel of the Law or the Wheel of Fortune, it turns inexorably and inescapably and we are all bound to it.
Yes. See "committed to free speech" above. Sky is perfectly entitled to tell me go fuck myself if offended by what I said to them. I realise the mods don't want this place to degenerate into exchanges of insults, but sometimes "fuck you" is the bon mot.
"Acting the martyr"? Maybe that is indeed what I'm doing. But you, Amadan, said to me that "you don't get to just start cursing people out because you're offended".
I wish to God I was only "offended". That would be so much easier and less painful. I'm not offended, Amadan, I'm flayed raw. It's been ten years since my mother's death, and it still hurts to think of it.
So to hell with it, if I'm playing the martyr, let me play it to the hilt.
She was diagnosed in February and dead by June. She died hard, and fearfully. She said to me "I don't want to die", but what could I say? This was fatal, we all knew it. Over that period of five months, she went from an active woman to a wizened, aged thing that could barely sit upright in a chair. She hated hospitals, so we kept her at home as long as we could.
Morphine patches helped, but when they were sufficient to keep the pain down (not gone, just down), they left her groggy and limp-muscled, and rendered her doubly incontinent because she wasn't able to alert us in time or get out of her bed to use toilet facilities. As you can imagine, this was humiliating for a woman who had always been private and independent.
When we cut back on the medication so she was more with-it, the pain was unbearable. I don't know if you've had to listen to someone moaning and whimpering in pain for hours while you're desperately applying morphine patches and hoping they'll build up fast again in her blood stream, while waiting for the ambulance to come and take her into hospital for the final days she has left.
Oh, and talking of hospitals: because it was so urgent, she was taken in by our shitty local hospital instead of the regional hospital. We were warned about this, but we knew it already: the matron had a reputation for stealing from the patients, so my sister took off my mother's wedding ring and kept it safe.
Imagine that: having to take the wedding ring off a dying woman's finger because the medical staff will rob her corpse.
Well, the end wasn't long after she went in; they had her on pain control, so she was semi-conscious at best, and unaware of where she was, what was happening, and so on. She lasted a day or so and then the end, which by then was a mercy.
Is that enough "playing" for you, Amadan?
So this shit-for-brains comes to piss on my mother's grave, and I yell at him, and you grab me by the elbow to rebuke me. Heaven forfend I use harsh language to someone pissing on my mother's corpse!
I am genuinely sorry not to be able to comply with your requirements, but I also genuinely cannot.
However. Your house, your rules. I don't need to be here, and you don't need me to be here. At the end, I'm here for entertainment and fun. When it stops being fun, time to go. I wish all of you the best and success in your endeavours, guys and gals and those of you what ain't too sure. I'm not flouncing out because I'm too dispirited to flounce, let's say I'm slinking away.
And you are all completely, positively, absolutely entitled to mock me for flouncing/slinking off when I got my knuckles rapped.
Good night, good luck, and good bye to you all. Let's have one for the road, the deoch an dorais.
Look, I'm sorry about your mother, really, and I understand that this subject hit a nerve for you. I don't even blame you for losing it and telling the OP to fuck off. But we can't make exceptions for every person who feels personally aggrieved. You admit yourself that you understand why the rules are the way they are, so basically, you did it knowing it would get you modded. And ffs, all I did was tell you "Stop that."
I do not think this is cause for you to decide you're not wanted here. I, for one, will be sad to see you go. But I'm not going to beg you to stay.
I hope you change your mind, or that you return after you've cooled off.
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I love it how our female commentariat is so easily identifiable.
What an insightful comment, males are truly superior, tell me which group you think is biologically inferior and evil this week? Asians? Jews? Women? Anyone not a white guy? You are very smart and cool
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This reads as nothing more than a low-effort dig - "Haha, women so hysterical, amirite?"
Don't do this.
You're also just plain wrong. I assure you, I get the most outrageous hissy fits thrown at me regularly by male posters indignant about being modded.
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Strongly disagree. Every long-time contributor who flames out and gets a lengthy ban follows a similar arc, male or female. They're fine discussing [X monstrous idea] and [Y monstrous idea] from a cool remove. Then one day, someone brings up [Z monstrous idea], and it hits a little too close to home. Suddenly, themotte.org playing nicey-nice with prevaricating evil is unacceptable.
It's a reaction for which I have negative respect. That said, no one has found my [Z] yet.
Yes, this has nothing to do with the uterus.
But no, I think you've misdiagnosed the issue here. Our resident Irishwoman's threshold for "cool remove" vs. "righteous indignation" is set a bit differently than most of the commentariat. I remember when she pissed off an "enlightened being" to the point he threatened breaking her arm. Point is, if I had to pick one person who wouldn't prevaricate on evil...
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