banned
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1mo ago
Nine times out of ten, they are not a "newcomer."
User has been banned. Username made obvious troll obvious.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
LOL, sure! But first see my reply to FCfromSSC at https://www.themotte.org/post/1860/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/323011?context=8#context
And see my reply to that reply. You claimed that holding things I wanted was theft on your part. I asked you for 10k dollars, you said "other people asked first, sorry". I observe that other people almost certainly didn't ask first in any strict sense of the phrase, and that you are still holding the 10k dollars that you've said I'm entitled to, because people who want things should have them. I've accused you of theft for having 10k I want and not handing it over. If you have an explanation for how that's not actually theft, I will use that explanation also when you ask me for my money.
I really need the money, too. Maybe even more than you do. So, where does that leave us?
I mentioned in the other reply that you made no mention of a "line" that I needed to wait in to "share" your assets. Likewise, you made no mention of a possessor's claim of "need" countering the claim put forward by another who wants what they have. By claiming that there is a line, and that requests to "share" should be judged according to "need", you are already 9/10s of the way back to capitalism.
More to the point, what do you think your comment actually demonstrates? I don't see anything much of merit.
I think it demonstrates that you are making assertions about how we should think about things, without even attempting to account for the obvious consequences of thinking about things in this way. Doing this is a good way to make yourself appear absurd, and if that is your intention, I am pleased to assist.
In fact, there wasn't a single argument in my post.
I too have seen the Argument Clinic sketch.
Where did I present an argument? Quote please.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This is an argument. You are described a philosophical position and claimed that it is substantively correct.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it.
This is an argument.
Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative.
This is an argument.
Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
This is an argument.
Every post you've made in this thread has contained what appear at least to be attempts at "a coherent series of reasons, statements, or facts intended to support or establish a point of view".
We have a rule here: speak plainly. It seems to me that in this post, you are pretty clearly violating it. Still, I'm involved in the discussion, and will thus keep my mod hat off. You've already drawn the attention of @Amadan, who has not involved himself in the discussion and is already issuing warnings. You should read the rules and attempt to comply with them, or you will likely be banned in short order. If you would like to discuss further while speaking plainly, either your original topic or the rules here, I can try to offer my assistance, but my own assumption at this point is that Amadan is correct and you are trolling.
Reddit has a taken a turn. Racism is now leaking into mainstream subs. I kept Sailer-posting in /r/Europe and getting banned by mods and evading and got myself an IP ban in.. '19 I think. It was apparently lifted, I made a new account and signed in with the same email address that once got banned.
Might be worth looking at the terms & conditions now.
The current state of online politics discourse seems pretty dire to me. Here are forums I'm aware of:
TheMotte - often a bit too "assume that social conservatism is correct" and wordily show-offy for my taste, but it's a good forum, you can speak your mind without being banned.
X.com - engagement bait grifters, engagement bait grifters, engagement bait grifters... and the occasional rare actual worthwhile discussion.
/r/moderatepolitics - good, very surprisingly good for average Reddit censorship norms, but a bit slow.
/r/politicaldiscussion - used to be decent like 5 years ago but now has been overrun by typical Reddit TDS ("Drumpf will end all elections", etc...)
4chan /pol/ - basically useless, 95% literally mentally ill people, trolls, and maybe bots. Might as well engage with flat Earthers about astrophysics as engage with these people about politics.
Astral Codex Ten comments - can be interesting sometimes, but isn't mainly politics focused and the politics discussion seems to be be dominated by the same few people.
rDrama.net - is usually directionally right about politics, in my view, by the simple expedient of assuming that anyone who is very demonstratively committed to a given political ideology is likely worthy of ridicule, but of course not a forum for discussing policy in any depth, most of the time, and also unsurprisingly given the origin of the site, is as focused on trolling as on political analysis, lol.
/r/politics - TDS central, orange man bad 24/7.
/r/centrist - seems ok, but pretty TDS leaning.
/r/stupidpol, /r/redscarepod, etc... Dirtbag left, good for criticizing the establishment but also they tend to be Hamas apologists etc... basically mostly people who are still at the I hate America so anyone who fights America must be awesome stage.
debatepolitics.com - people yelling at each other, very slight step up from 4chan /pol/.
Like, there have to be some good forums I've missed, right? Billions of people are online, including hundreds of millions of Anglophones (I largely have no idea what the state of non-Anglophone political discussion is like). Is it really possible that only like 0.00001% of them are capable of having relatively moderate and rational (not that I've always been) political discussion?
I've been searching for good politics discussion forums for years. You'd think there would be more. What the fuck is going on?
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1mo ago
Knock it off. You are also accumulating a history of anklebiting mods every time someone you agree with gets modded (but curiously, never when someone you disagree with gets modded for the same behavior).
People who post low effort comments that are nothing more than "boo" posts get modded. This has been true since we were still on reddit. People who do this repeatedly and refuse to alter their behavior eventually get escalated responses from warnings to tempbans.
You have a lengthy history of whining, sneering, bad-faith griping, and claiming any mod action you don't like is politically biased. Your history is basically terrible in every way. Not a single AAQC, not a single thoughtful or intelligent argument, just posts like this and a long, long string of warnings and temp bans.
If you want to substantively discuss moderation and why you think someone made a mistake, there are acceptable ways to do this. You are allowed to criticize the moderation here. You are even allowed to accuse mods of being biased. But you need to present it articulately and reasonably. There are several (leftist!) posters recently who've made a habit of writing lengthy complaints, mostly directed at myself but sometimes other mods, about how bad our moderation is and how we let righties get away with anything. I did not like those posts, I did not agree with their complaints, and I found it frustrating to engage with them and explain why I thought they were mistaken. But I did not tell them to stop making such complaints, as aggravating as I find their constant griping, because at least they were being civil and putting forward a sincere case for why they think we suck.
You just hawk and spit.
Stop it or you will be banned.
dr_analog
razorboy
1mo ago
Yeah I agree with this. I see these banned books week posters at my library. My ten seconds of thinking reaction is: good old librarians, defending free speech.
Then I think about it for a few minutes and wonder how books actually could be banned, and that that looks like, Also what happens if they don't take any particular stand on banning books, like marking it as BANNED in the online catalog, but instead reduce copies in stock to zero.
My local library doesn't stock The Bell Curve by Murray. That's odd. It's a best seller in psychology that sold more than a million copies. It never even shows up in the online catalog, period. You would never know it existed.
Did the librarians deliberately disappear it? Do they say "look even though we have a five story building downtown in a blue town in a blue state that allocates significant revenue to this library we have limited funds and cannot stock every book"? How would I even begin to contest this.
I assume the ideal librarian chooses books to stock based on some standard like popularity but also public good value but I realize it's probably much more arbitrary than this. And a lot more inscrutable for outsiders.
I note they do have eight copies of Gender Queer, 4 currently loaned out.
HereAndGone
1mo ago
Yeah, I think it's the age-appropriate as well as every thing else. There's not going to be much middle ground between parents who don't want their kids exposed to this kind of material in school, without their parental consent, and without them introducing (or not) such topics on their own schedule, and school teachers/staff/administration who want to show off how liberal and open-minded and "We don't censor books here" they are.
I think it would be a safe bet that such "we don't censor books here" types, who like to participate in Banned Books Day sorry, it's now an entire Week, wouldn't stock a copy of, say, The Secret of the Rosary because separation of church and state! non-establishment of religion! no preferring one faith over another! and so forth. Nobody would bravely stand up for "if kids want to know about such prayers, we can't stop them exploring their spirituality and we shouldn't try".
TheLoser
1mo ago
You are afraid I'd be okay with exposing children to bestiality; I am afraid you'd like to censor anything that would raise a maiden aunt's eyebrows in 1890. You're right that this is where the battlefield is, however much I personally find Gender Queer offputting (and inappropriate for pre-teens).
I actually agree with you on this. It seems that, if I'm interpreting @BreakerofHorsesandMen correctly, anything outside of the most saccharine, banal works would be banned. Does description of child abuse warrant censure? How about descriptions of warfare or violence? Where does the line stop exactly? It seems that trying to ban things based off on their "appropriateness" to different age ranges is an inherently moral/political question.
Likewise, your arguments are toothless to me, because I don't know anyone who turned into a degenerate because they read spicy genre fiction as a kid.
However, I have to disagree with you here. It's well documented that watching too much porn can induce transsexuality or autogynephilia at least. I'd also argue that in terms of how well slippery-scope applies, sexuality is one context in which it best applies. Reading spicy genre fiction can easily lead to reading more hardcore fiction, which can in turn lead to joining adjacent online circles/forums/tumblrs that if not encourage, at least implicitly validate non-standard sexual behaviors and identities. Just see cracking-the-egg in trans spaces, or the public and shameless speculation on and encouragement for identifying as gay for anyone who even seems to be gay; see the anger when it comes to "queer-baiting".
Really, I believe the above is the crux of the argument. On one side, you have people who rightly believe that these works of art encourage or at least lower the activation energy of acceptance, so to speak, for sexual identities and behaviors that they perceive to be disordered or morally incorrect. On the other side, you have people who believe that not only are those sexual identifies and behaviors not disordered or morally incorrect, but should actively be accepted and encouraged in society; so, those works of art that can help to either cause people to tolerate those sexual identities or incorporate them into their person should be, in their view, not only permitted, but disseminated.
In Thomas Sowell terms, it's a conflict of visions.
I'd argue that you could actually make an empirical decision on which specific sexual identities are disordered or not based on empirical material outcomes, but that's beyond the scope of this comment.
cjet79
1mo ago
To clear up some things:
You are not getting any form of special leniency.
What I was trying to say is that there is a law of large numbers effect going on. If user A and user B both have about a 1% rate of a rule breaking post. But user A writes 1000 posts and user B only writes 10 posts then user A is way more likely to get in trouble and get banned. We don't want this outcome, so we will try and get a sense of the rate of violation (that 1% number).
Having upsetting beliefs is allowed, because to do otherwise creates a failure mode for all discussions.
There are often times where someone comes in and makes a post with clearly upsetting beliefs. Sometimes that person is a Nazi, one time that person was someone that believed child molestation should be allowed, most times it's just a belief that your political opponents should suffer (and some of those political opponents are on this discussion board).
What then happens is someone makes it personal or attacks them "you are a Nazi scumbag" or "you should be castrated". They then get banned. It looks like we allowed trolls to bait a response and get someone kicked out.
The simple alternative to this is topic bans of anything that might upset a bunch of users. This is the alternative that most of the leftist web embraced in the mid 2010's. The leftists then weaponized this, and got most topics that they didn't like banned from their spaces.
We don't do topic bans. We've tried to find another approach where we don't ban any topics but we try to find etiquette rules where people don't write the original post in the most inflammatory way possible.
We do not like permabans. They are an option of last resort.
I think we average like one, maybe two permabans a year for power users. They are rare. They are often proceeded by a dozen or more warnings and tempbans and usually a complete lack of quality contributions. The mods usually have multi day long discussions and usually we have full consensus before we carry it out.
A one day ban like this would not sway anything in regards to a permaban decision.
You are not my enemy, and neither are most users. Some users choose to be our enemies.
They mostly are not a good fit for this forum and they want us to do things differently. Usually not enforce rules against them or their allies, or enforce extra rules against their other enemies. Their method to get changes to happen is often to badger us and annoy us anytime we do our standard duties. And undermine anything we do. Their feedback is always "this ban is bad", and thus their feedback is useless as a comparative barometer.
The most mature of users who don't fit do not become our enemies, instead they voluntarily leave. Sometimes they will ask us for a permaban that we will grant to them.
Those that stay and cause trouble like to be rules lawyers and twist everything we say against us. It's exhausting and annoying, which is their exact goal. The more annoying it is for us to conduct moderation the less we will do of it. I have no doubt that I will regret writing some part of this open view into moderation here. Maybe I'll tag you when it happens to show you what I mean.
I don't want to multiquote because that's usually the failure mode of long discussions here that are contentious but there are a lot of questions here which I'll assume are not rhetorical. I want to make clear that I've mostly been talking about WhiningCoil and Steve just stems from that. This is a thing I've seen many times and it's probably why I've come to believe that the mods can never admit they're wrong and it's that someone new or unknown to me insults an active poster and they completely get away with, no warning, no ban nothing. The active poster insults them back and they get banned. And If I argue that this is unfair the mods will come out and tell me that I am wrong, and stupid. Both of which I accept and know but I also feel it's kind of a bad look to just break the rules in this way but I'm actually not in favor of banning anyone for anything except spammers and trolls who are specifically trying to disrupt conversations so I think it's just something I need to get used to or along with.
I don't know why you think I am your enemy or am acting as such but my disagreement does not represent that nor is my idea that you should admit that WhiningCoil's ban was made in haste and basically guilt by association with a post that shaped its meaning showing up after and appearing next to it related to owning the mods or anything like that. I think it's incredibly bad moderation to do something like this because it changes the rules to be more than they are stated. If you want the rules to be different there's a sidebar, I mean there's no explicit rule about calls to violence at all or "fedposting" if that's what rule Capital Room and WhiningCoil were banned for. But there's certainly no rule that says even if not explicitly stating a call for violence if it looks adjacent to it then you will also be banned. As I've said in another comment I believe that he was actually controlling his rage and bile when making that comment and if you wanted to ding it for being low-effort, sure, but somehow it's about breaking a rule that doesn't exist if you interpret what was written uncharitably. And if the end result was simply this single day ban I would not care because I generally don't care about bans that happen that aren't about users personally insulting other users. But I meant what I said that this ban will be used as reasoning for a longer ban in the future, so it absolutely does matter because long bans are one of the big reasons why people choose to never come back. The "never admitting wrong" is about this.
I get that you feel that Steve needs to be banned for breaking that command. But when a ban like this happens it's like something designed to get Steve banned. Like how apparently, I, because I don't post enough, am allowed to insult other people, but if someone insulted me back they'd get banned and I would not even get a warning. If what I'm doing right now would get me banned save for the fact that I mostly lurk then by all means ban me, I actually am extremely uncomfortable making posts in the first place and would prefer to be warned off or sever the possibility. I end up making comments like this because I am incensed and severely wish that I hadn't in the ensuing replies.
What are you supposed to do when people violate rules over and over? It depends on a lot of things. I think letting it go is the most optimal situation since I generally don't care if someone violates rules that do not impact the level of discourse here. At the end of a comment chain when people get jokey, no I don't think they should all be banned for low effort, but if they start conversations that way it needs to be curbed. Steve being mean to you guys may affect how other users respect you, sure, and you've gave him a specific rule about it. But to me the context actually matters. Just like you give lurkers or newbies leeway that you don't for regular users it might make sense to give leeway based on the context of the situation. You banned someone for a rule that doesn't exist which they may or may not have violated depending on how uncharitably you take their post. Steve breaks his rule. I get it you have to punish him because you've tied your hands but 30 days when I've seen nothing to suggest from any mod that WhiningCoil actually broke a rule except for the initial ban post that just seems to say "well, i feel like i should ban you too because this is a little too close to the other post that actually broke the rules," which again I'll point out that this annoys me but wouldn't get me out of scrolling if it didn't mean that it's another step toward that user being gone forever because in a year this will be part of an incompletely cited list of situations in which WhiningCoil has broken rules in a specific direction leading to a long ban. And that's why I think it's not a 1 day ban that doesn't matter. If this place operated differently then I would believe differently and not respond like this.
I don't think that you should ban people forever because you hate their opinions but luckily, I'm not Steve so I don't have to pretend that this should reflect on what I think. And I should make clear again as well because of the implications in your post you're not my enemy. My opinions are not really that aligned with Steve or WhiningCoil or the people that think you mainly target right wing posters and are trying to get them off the site. I think that it's more reflective of the fact that Steve and WhiningCoil (or from the other side who just got banned token_progressive) are very emotional about their beliefs and for some reason being emotional about beliefs gets you banned. I hate to use Dase again but if he unemotionally calls a poster an idiot or despicable, or Trump a retard, it barely registers amongst the other AI content because he genuinely seems to not care about whether he's insulted you or broken any other rules. But if you care and say the same things, god help you. How do you deal with it? Just moderate with the same charity and context you're apparently giving me because I don't post often enough. Or with the same leniency and blind eye given if someone isn't that invested in the rule they've broken. I can't ask you to be anything more than fair and I don't want you to be harsher and I'm not going to change the system or rules so that's where we are.
Or simply do what you're going to do anyway, my incensed reaction is completely impotent. It's easy to comment from the sideline, I know, but that's the only view I have and like your tough shit comment about me not seeing the sausage getting made for a myriad of reasons, I think it goes the other way as well, if you're reversing bans or removing things from people's record and not telling people then you can't expect them to take that into account when judging the situation.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1mo ago
I asked @ZorbaTHut, and apparently that is how it works currently. He might change it so that mods can't be blocked, but for now, that's how it is.
So if Whining gets banned because he ignored my warning... ¯_(ツ)_/¯.
(No, blocking does not make you immune to banning.)
yofuckreddit
1mo ago
There's already visual tweaks mods out there to do exactly what's being mentioned here.
Of course if they bury gender labels as a feature they'll be banned from Nexus within minutes, so don't rely on them but...
plural
1mo ago
The charity I was referring to was to WhiningCoil. But I can see, as usual, you guys can never, ever admit you were wrong or made any kind of mistake in moderation. It's not a small ban that is basically nothing because it's the reason why Steve was just banned. Every modhat is one step closer to a permaban unless you are a mod or someone like Dase who gets to show up like TrannyPorno every month and insult a bunch of people and get a warning for one of the five insults and the others are ignored and each one of those ignored posts and the warning would be a ban for someone like Steve or WhiningCoil because even if you guys can't see it it's pretty obvious to me there is a bias against a certain type of poster that comes down to not liking how they post and never the actual content because I've seen "fedposting" like WhiningCoils about once a week here without any even warning. But the point is Steve just got banned for thirty days for an accumulation, if this ban means nothing about WhiningCoil then it surely wouldn't be used against him in the future for a 30 day ban, right? I've never seen that to be true.
And I'm not advocating for banning Dase (I don't even think TrannyPorno should have been banned) but I do think direct insults toward other users is actually the worst thing to allow to slide in a forum. But even moreso than not giving charity to WhiningCoil, that maybe he didn't actually fedpost because you have to assume things to make that true, but that absence of charity becomes even more absent when this will get used as a accumulation of infractions that gets him further banned for an increasing amount of time. I've said it before but if you want people to not actually post something then actually make the consequences matter because saying "this doesn't really matter but don't do it, 1 day ban" is always going to lead a permaban and at this point that pretty much feels like its the point because I've been pointing this out for years and years.
cjet79
1mo ago
We've extended a great deal of charity to Steve. We've asked him to stop making these sorts of comments. He chose not to.
He has also been warned many times for antagonistic behavior, both on this account and the previous account. He was very close to earning a permanent ban with his previous account's behavior. We made a note to ourselves to not completely ignore his previous account's bad behavior, but we mostly did and proceeded to be lenient with him as if he was a newish user.
Other people's bad behavior, even if it is a mod's bad behavior, is not an excuse for bad behavior.
If we specifically ask any user not to do a specific thing. We mean it and we will take note of it. If Netstack had broken every rule we have and gotten de-modded for his comment I still would have banned Steve for his comment. This is a 'fuck around and find out" moment. We literally only have two punishments in our toolbox, the first is asking people to stop doing a thing, and the second is bans.
I clearly said in my comment that no one else has been asked to not provide feedback. Only Steve, and only those types of comments.
I personally think netstack's ban of @WhiningCoil was fine. Its only that he should have been harsher with @Capital_Room. 5 days at least for capital room for clear fedposting. And just one day for whining coil cuz it sorta looked like fedposting.
As far as I am concerned fedposting is one of the few existential threats that this board faces. The other two are zorba kicking the bucket and a democrat party crackdown on free speech on the web.
One day bans are minor and basically nothing. That is us saying "yes really, this is a rule we will enforce, don't do it". For anything resembling fed posting I'm also willing to hand out bans like candy. Don't fucking do it. We can choose to be lenient when it is just the rules we care about enforcing. But this is a rule that the world will enforce upon us if we don't self police. Be annoyingly verbose and add a bunch of disclaimers if you insist on doing it. We still might ban you, because again we aren't really the ones making the rule on this. Sorry it sucks, I don't like it anymore than you do.
plural
1mo ago
Well, then I'm not sure what your response is supposed to mean. FC didn't call for violence, neither did WhiningCoil. How do you get around this unwritten rule that means if you post something short you will be interpreted as uncharitably as possible? I guess words, words, words works in the way it always does for every rule here but WhiningCoil didn't break the rule, at least not the one they're blaming him for. And your suggestion seems more like a "how do you get away with writing bullshit on your homework? just write nonsense for a few pages they never actually read it." than a real suggestion of how someone should conduct themselves.
And I should note that FC was warned for that post, just not banned. So, even your acceptable version of how to express oneself in that situation is not a pure example of the right way to post.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1mo ago
GiveSendGo hosted Rittenhouse's fundraiser; it was GoFundMe which banned it. They ended the ban after the acquittal, pretending the issue was that they never allowed money to be raised for defense of alleged violent crime.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1mo ago
You’ve banned many people who did not deserve it.
If I've banned "many people who didn't deserve it", it should be pretty easy for you to point to examples. There's a search bar at the top of the page, syntax would be "author:FCfromSSC banned", feel free to provide examples.
You‘ve even banned what you called a major influence, a friend.
I presume this is a reference to HlynkaCG? Hlynka himself was quite clear that he understood that he was breaking the rules, and would not stop doing so. Leaving aside that I am not in fact the one who banned him; I certainly think it was the proper action for a mod to take, and would ask what you think we should have done, given a long and increasingly frequent history of him breaking the forum's rules?
Then judas gave a tearful eulogy. It was the most craven, two-faced, pathetic display of regret I ever saw.
Are you under the impression that Hlynka expected to not get banned, or that he resented his ban or considered it unfair or unwarranted?
You have invented a caricature in your own mind that has no relation to reality. I fundamentally believe that this forum is built on unsustainable contradictions. I see my job as a mod to be to try to help keep it running as long as possible. If you think I or the other mods are doing it wrong, we're open to arguments for how we can do it better. Sadly, most of the arguments we receive are based on the sorts of caricatures you're deploying here.
Tree
1mo ago
You’ve banned many people who did not deserve it. Of all stripes. Censorship trespasses against your fellow man, and it harms you. I suppose it’s common enough in the new internet, people don’t have the right to express themselves anymore. But I still hold a grudge.
You‘ve even banned what you called a major influence, a friend. Then judas gave a tearful eulogy. It was the most craven, two-faced, pathetic display of regret I ever saw.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1mo ago
After seeing Scott’s suggestion, I was thinking along similar lines.
Consider the bill of attainder. The English occasionally used these to strip rebel lords of their lands and legal protections. When we rebelled, we specifically banned Congress from doing anything of the sort. Clearly, the Constitution didn’t want a few dozen (or, today, a few hundred) people to hold such a power.
How would a smaller group be any better?
I don’t think the outlaw status is compatible with a system founded on “certain unalienable rights.” At least not our particular set. We haven’t drifted so far from the founding ethos that we’d throw that away for one edge case.
whoops, the law doesn't say you're allowed to abuse your social lessers according to a nebulous and ever-shifting social pecking order, you're all criminals
Japan runs on this kind of targeted ostracism. It’s only very recently that ‘power harassment’ i.e. the shaming and harassment of disliked employees by assigning them to ‘work’ in an empty room by themselves until they quit was banned, and the penalties are still very slight because in a society where ties of loyalty between company and employee are very tight it’s one of the few levers employees have for correcting people.
One can over-egg this of course but whereas from an outside view America goes all-in on the invisible hand (adversarial relationships creating a desirable equilibrium in toto), Japan emphasises consensus and harmony. Everyone has their own private thoughts of course but publicly people are expected to sort of jostle each other into a consensus position without anything so ugly as actual disagreement. This basically people to be able to exert sublegal pressure on each other until they fall in line, mediated by the pecking order.
urquan
Blessings crown the head of the righteous, but violence overwhelms the mouth of the wicked.
1mo ago
· Edited 1mo ago
I'm glad it resonated!
If you're the sort of person who wears your heart on your sleeve (as I am), then it can be very easy and tempting to pour yourself out in the environments you find yourself, like the internet. That can be incredibly useful, and powerful, and there have been times when exposing some of my most intense concerns to internet discussion has made my life better. But there have also been many times where it's made it worse.
I always like to remember the parable of Jesus where he says "where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." If your treasure is in internet respect, then internet disrespect will be like wounds to the heart. And the more you invest yourself in internet discussions, the more of yourself you share, the more you're putting your treasure there.
While sometimes I enjoy internet discussions and even arguments, I've come to realize they're incredibly limited, and need to be entered into and continued carefully. I've started and chosen not to post more posts than I've ever published, because I realized the post would be fruitless, or lead to unnecessary dispute, or was excessively disagreeable, or simply would expose a vulnerability that shouldn't be exposed to the internet.
I think older nettizens find it easy to create a barrier between the internet and real life, understanding the boundaries appropriate to both. In particular, the old-school attitude of the net (which the motte participates in in some ways) was always that disagreeableness was inevitable and everything was under debate rules.
And under that framework, you shouldn't expose a weakness in your worldview any more than your defense attorney should make an argument for the prosecution. In part this represented the initial population of the internet -- male, educated, systems-oriented, academic. And in part it represents the reality that the internet is simply a cacophony of strangers. I don't know you. You don't know me. We have no relationship, no ties, I could insult you and swear death and devastation on you, and unless I crossed a legal boundary so severely that it got the real police involved, this would have no impact at all on my life outside of the net. I might get banned, but what is a ban? Nothing.
I'm not sure how old you are. I'm fairly young. Young enough that the internet has been real life for about as long as I've been active on it. But old enough to find online dating new-fangled, fr fr. (Did I use that correctly?) I think younger generations are having to re-learn the wisdom that the net is volatile and operates under debate rules. It's an important lesson. And like the law -- anything you say can and will be used against you, and the consequences for the misuse of that power are minimal.
Like everything, the internet is about risk vs reward. That's different for everyone. But hopefully, from the discomfort of seeing just how freely personal attacks flow on the internet, you can help yourself judge where the risk-benefit line stands for you. It obviously varies by context. But my personal view is that the places where discussing important aspects of your worldview, especially ones you're not sure about, has benefit outweighing risk is almost 0. But that's for you to decide. And I wish the best for you in deciding it.
Tree
2mo ago
I mean, mollie the mare has 200 comments, it's not a dormant troll. And two accounts posting within 2 minutes of each other is well within the realm of innocent events. The worst troll here, post-nazi-insider-spat-and-delete-guy, uses new accounts that date from the time his last one was banned, so if he ever used them, he's out of prime dormants.
stolen_brawnze
I am the way Sia says "batteries" in that one song.
2mo ago
Many troll accounts that have already been banned were dormant usernames that were registered in September of 2022. There's no need for a conspiracy.
I take it I was being a dick.
Well, if he‘s really not interested in debate, let him leave, don‘t ban him(or threaten to ban him). Call it keeping the moral high ground. I don‘t see anything wrong with ‚starting an argument‘.
But bottom line, I think millard or hlynka are reasonable people, who should not be banned for their overconfident tone.
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