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As of this time @HlynkaCG has been permabanned. I'm posting this message at the top of the thread, because its not really for Hlynka, its for the community to know. There were a few different posts I could have chosen in the modqueue, and many of them were too buried to be visible. The mod team has given him repeated warnings and bans. And I personally reached out to him last ban to warn him that a permaban was likely coming if this behavior continued.
I mostly do not feel this is a good thing, but it is a necessary thing. Hlynka had quite a few quality contributions, and I don't think I was alone in appreciating his often unique (for themotte) perspective. But he repeatedly did it in a way that just wasn't acceptable for the rules around here.
I would like people to have a few takeaways:
Please keep any discussion civil.
Good.
Not good. But I'd have to say necessary evil.
I have to be honest, I never really understood what you folks saw in that guy. Even aside from his personal antagonism (which I found very trying) his comments just seemed to be the same three or four points repeated ad nauseum.
The Leviathan-shaped hole. HBD is a normative belief, not an empirical belief. Democrats are the real racists. Liberals think that's air they're breathing now. Mix and match as necessary, throw in some stories that don't go anywhere and you've got the full package.
He brought a unique voice to the forum. One can of course doubt any story on the internet, but I recall a SSS thread where I asked how many marriageable partners each poster had a shot with over the course of their life. Of course various personal narratives of how each poster met their partner were part of many responses. Hlynka's was unique in that he reported marrying the girl he accidentally knocked up. It was simply a very different vibe.
I've had frustrating philosophical disagreement with him. I think he discounts the degree to which political affiliation is something born into rather than chosen, and find his Trump support baffling. But I also thought he fought the good fight in many cases.
I ultimately find the weird mommy issues of the posters who just can't obey the rules to be so interesting. This is at the end of the day a clubhouse, no one makes money off it, no one pays to play. The desire to rebel seems so cheap in the context, like it comes from a thwarted desire to do so with a real authority figure.
Something like this.
Would you say a majority of people find the linked image amusing, or sad?
I gotta say the cat at the end really bummed me out. Poor little chap
It's that "shit rolls downhill" meme, isn't it? Or that saying was around before memes. I haven't seen the one with the crying cat at the end, but in reality it would probably be the cat killing a mouse or small bird.
Boss unloads on employee, who can't talk back without losing his job. Employee goes home and unloads on wife for small error which is only the excuse for him to blow off steam. Wife does same to kid. Kid does same to cat. Everyone takes it out on the less powerful person because they're unable to stand up to the more powerful person, and this is life, and this is what people are like, and be aware of this the next time you want to blow up in somebody's face after someone unloaded on you and you weren't able to defend yourself.
But the only thing "being aware" lets you do is choose between blowing up in somebody's face anyway... or refraining from doing so and making yourself the ultimate receptor of all the shit.
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I find it sad but also amusing in a dark humor way. And for me, dark humor is a pretty good defense mechanism against things like actually letting myself feel the depth of emotions that I am capable of, and have some reason to feel, but which might consume me for days on end if I allowed myself to truly feel them. The picture of that particular cat with crying-seeming eyes is a very common one used in Internet memes, so it's not like using that picture actually hurts that real cat. I don't know why the cat in the original source of the image looked like that to begin with, maybe some eye infection. I think, having known a number of cats and witnessed to some extent the depths of their various emotions, that cats are probably capable of feeling sadness, but I somewhat doubt that they express it through watery eyes like humans often do. In any case, I don't feel like I am hurting any being by finding the use of the picture amusing.
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I'd imagine most people find it funny. It comes down to identification. If you see the characters as people you dislike, it's funny: impotent loser is yelling at me because he doesn't have the stones to yell at his boss. If you identify with the characters you see what you're doing.
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Darkly amusing. There's a comic effect to the aesthetic, but it mostly evokes the tidal wave of nastiness that comes from treating people badly.
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I certainly find it sad.
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