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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28920 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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The dark old days when we still had users who actually had different opinions.

And they're free to post here and now. Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions that they ragequit.

Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions

This is perhaps ironic on a thread where the OP is still frustrated years later by hearing a single user disagree with the dominant narrative here.

I've got a long memory on a lot of posters, and point out that he was far from the only user to have a different opinion on that topic. And, uh, the previous poster was asking about things that happened three years ago; by necessity any honest discussion will necessarily be about people saying things years ago.

My frustration with Darwin wasn't that I disagreed with him. In no small number of cases, I actually don't -- and almost all of those made it tempting to respond "stop helping me". Whether I agreed or disagreed with his object-level position, he'd argued it primarily and sometimes solely through strawmen, insults, insistence that clear facts weren't proven or unknown matters must have happened in the most convenient way, standards of behavior or evidence evolved and deployed and denied and recreated within the context of single arguments, outright falsehoods, so on and so forth. He'd call basic legal terms deceptive rhetoric, could not imagine what Jim Crow looked like, and made random claims that couldn't fit a basic timeline.

That wasn't universal, and there were rare times where he could make decent arguments and I'd point out that out well before his actual permaban. But given that one of his biggest 'contributions' ever was slamming people over not commenting on the Smollett hate crime, it's hard to comment about BLM support without mentioning him, and also not fair to the BLM supporters here to use him as the first example.

You're not the problem Gatt, you're a quality and civil contributor. But neither is this isolated - just the previous week I saw you call out someone for being the lone poster to defend Ibram Kendi's book. I genuinely don't think this kind of pubic shaming of people who dared to buck the majority even years ago is conducive to having non-echo chamber debates here.

But like I said to FC, my parent comment to yours was lighthearted, not a declaration of conflict. I don't care all that much or I would have left.

But neither is this isolated - just the previous week I saw you call out someone for being the lone poster to defend Ibram Kendi's book.

I don't think that's an accurate summary of this post, which as far as I can remember is the last time I've discussed Kendi.

((To be explicit: I don't think that gemmaem position was shameful, nor do I think she's the only one to promote Kendi before his disgrace.))

Fair, maybe I interpreted it in an overly negative way.

Reading through the thread, I have no idea which post you are attempting to reference.

The comment mine is responding to, gattsuru’s on darwin

Ah.

Unless they feel such unbearable mental pain from seeing other posters' contrary opinions

This is perhaps ironic on a thread where the OP is still frustrated years later by hearing a single user disagree with the dominant narrative here.

Darwin was quite notable both for his prodigious and sustained output and his dedication to dishonesty and bad-faith interaction at every possible opportunity. Describing him as a "single user" "disagreeing" is disingenuous in the extreme. He burned more charity alone than any ten other posters you could name.

Further, the entire point of that quote is that he wasn't the only one, which is in fact the truth. Unironic support for BLM was not rare, even when the rioting was in full swing. Even less rare was "BLM is bad, but less bad than every observed response to the rioting".

The point stands. Darwin is still free to post here, as are any of the others who think BLM is a good idea. The fact that the history of their previous positions and the observed results places them squarely in the center of a rhetorical kill-zone is their own fault.

It’s a stain on our free speech record to have banned him. Even as a skilled devil’s advocate, if we assumed he never believed anything consistently, he was valuable.

Darwin was banned on the subreddit only after a very, very long history of infractions and escalating series of warnings and bans.

As far as I know, he's never posted here, but if he wanted to, he could do so without needing an alt, since he's (obviously) not been banned since the move.

Darwin was banned on the subreddit only after a very, very long history of infractions and escalating series of warnings and bans.

yeah yeah I know how that goes :)

First they came for Darwin....

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Well, let's look at a concrete example. Does this sort of post seem valuable to you? Because if that's not Darwin, it's someone doing a very, very good impression of him.

Leaving aside the questions of whether that is Darwin and whether Darwin actually posted like that in the past, would you agree that someone who habitually posts in that fashion is optimizing for heat, not light? @Soriek, same question.

Given his extensive participation in our sub, why do you have to pick an unknown alt as an example of his worst behaviour?

That alt reads more like impassionata to me. But no, that’s not very valuable. Although as you know, I’m pretty free speechy, so not being as valuable as darwin, and antagonizing people, is still not enough for a ban in my book.

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Well, let's look at a [not even slightly] concrete example.

What's the point here? Why make an argument about someone based on a completely different user you for some reason suspect of being him, instead of just looking up him?

I don't like trawling through people's personal profiles but if you really want I guess I can look him up and find arguments I thought were interesting.

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Darwin was quite notable both for his prodigious and sustained output and his dedication to dishonesty and bad-faith interaction at every possible opportunity.

I disagree. He often made quality arguments and was willing to buck the status quo here from an underrepresented angle, something we should want more. He was no more inflammatory or bad faith than plenty of others here, but people reacted absolutely viscerally against him at a level disproportionate to his behavior.

The point stands. Darwin is still free to post here, as are any of the others who think BLM is a good idea. The fact that the history of their previous positions and the observed results places them squarely in the center of a rhetorical kill-zone is their own fault.

Imo that too easily absolves us as a community for failing to create the kind of debate space we set out to build. People get bitter and hostile in response to users who have actually tried to buck majority opinion here. I experienced this kind of thing enough from the times I tried to engage in actual culture war issues that I'm pretty unwilling to do it anymore, and I'm a very long time contributor.

Either way it doesn't matter much anymore, we are what we are here and my reply to gatt was meant to be light hearted, not a declaration of conflict or something.

Imo that too easily absolves us as a community for failing to create the kind of debate space we set out to build.

Whenever someone tries to make that argument, I always have the same question: can you name a community that does more than us in this regard. Particularly, do you know a progressive community that is as open to conservative opinions that is at least as open as we are to progressive ones?

I always have the same question: can you name a community that does more than us in this regard.

No, for our faults we're probably still the best forum you're gonna get on the internet. That may say more about the rest of the internet than us, but we still deserve a little credit.

Wait, are you talking about this guy? https://old.reddit.com/user/darwin2500/

Isn't he obviously just an obnoxious troll who posts in whatever community he can get a rise out of? If he came here and posted like that he'd be banned right away for good reason.

I'm not gonna look through his reddit profile cause I've always found that thing kinda weird, but pretty much everyone here assuredly (hopefully) sounds different on the non-motte subs they visit. While he was here he was a long-time familiar face on the quality contributions page.

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