Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
No bio...
User ID: 297
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
11hr ago
Tell me you have no idea what I think about Israel and Zionism.
The people I refer to as "Joo-posters" barely ever mention Palestine, because they don't care about anything but Jews. Yes, there are indeed people who separate Israel from Jews and criticize one independently from the other. Those are not people who go on about Holocaust denial and the Jewish war against white people.
This post earns you a tempban, not because I am a "Zionist," but because personal attacks are not allowed, even against mods. If you'd just written that you think I am a Zionist propagandist and a terrible mod, I'd have told you you're wrong about the first and that's just, like, your opinion man, about the second. But this level of antagonism and vitriol wouldn't be acceptable no matter who you're talking to.
I'm giving you three days, my standard timeout for someone whose previous record was mostly okay but who suddenly loses his shit in an unprovoked flameout.
(Normally I would leave it to another mod to decide how to handle someone who attacks me, but since we were not actually interacting previously, and this is pretty clear-cut and egregious, I'm going ahead and taking action myself. However, if another mod wants to overrule me either to lengthen or shorten the ban, I will not object.)
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
14hr ago
In principle, I agree, though I think tarring and feathering and deportation is a little extreme...
That said, I absolutely believe #killallmen posters are almost entirely performative, whereas Joo-posters are not.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
14hr ago
Sure. But what specifically are you arguing here? I don't want to go back and forth trying to figure out what you are hinting at (or not). Do you think Jewish success is the result of some special advantage they have that they are withholding from gentiles? Do you think it's the result of innate Jewish characteristics? Or do you think it's the result of historical events converging to put them where they are now, for good and for ill? Because the answer to "What should the gentile do?" depends on what you think Jews are doing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
For some it probably is. Otoh I recall some people here insisting we should absolutely take the SJWs tweeting "#killallmen" very seriously even when it was obviously performative.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
That's somewhat fair, though I'd point out that SJWs and feminists don't have a history of actually committing genocide against their outgroup.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
I think you're hiding the ball a little there. Hardly anyone disputes that Jews have an outsized commercial and cultural impact on the world. Just look at their presence compared to their numbers! What the Jew haters contend is that this impact is bad, and even malicious. If you ask me "Assume they are right about that" you're asking me to assume someone's most hostile description of their outgroup is correct. Uh, golly that would be pretty bad if this group you hate really is out to get me and destroy my civilization. Excuse me if I require more substance before I seriously indulge such hypotheticals.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
22hr ago
It sure gets discussed a lot for something you claim you are not allowed to discuss.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I don't know exactly what you've seen, but my guess is you've seen some of the more nuanced moderate Nazi-like posters who dislike Jews and/or Jewish Supremecists but don't call for their death. And are strawmanning/patern-matching them to the more classical Nazis. I think there's a really important distinction, because first and foremost, the rational Nazi does not want you to die. They might dislike, want you to have less power and influence, might want you to leave, but they don't want you to die and if they saw you on the street they would not attack you. Second, the rational Nazi does not necessarily hate you, personally, if you are not yourself a supremecist. They might not even be a bigot at all, in the same way that an anti-woke person is not necessarily a racist.
Eh... one of my gripes about our most dedicated Joo-posters is that, no, they don't literally say "Death to Jews, Hitler did nothing wrong!" (because that would be uncouth, and also against the rules), but when pushed about what solutions they suggest to the Jewish problem that they describe incessantly, they punt, they waffle, they evade.
"So, do you want to kill Jews?"
"How dare you!"
"Okay, so should they be, like, put in camps...?"
"I never said that!"
"According to you, Jews are bad and destroying our society, so should we disenfranchise them? Forcibly deport them? Just ostracize them? Isolate them in ghettos? What?"
"I'm not answering your stupid questions!"
Now, whether our resident neo-Nazis do in fact secretly wish that they could gas all the Jews, or just have a generalized impersonal antipathy towards Jewishness, I don't know. I'm sure in person they probably are capable of being nice to individual Jews, and wouldn't look our Jewish members in the eye and say "You should die." But clearly they think Jews, as a class, are collectively responsible for evil. It's hard to believe their preferred solution wouldn't eventually result in something bad happening to Jews as a class, including Jewish members here and Jews they know personally. I'm sure a lot of Nazis had Jewish friends and maybe even felt a little sad when their Jewish neighbors got put on a train. And yet.
I suppose they might argue that their preferred solution is that Jews renounce their Jewishness and denounce other Jews and "Jewish supremacy," and the "good Jews" who do this could be allowed to keep (some) rights, but the Joo-posters also tend to favor biodeterminism and argue that being insular, conflict-prone, and parasitical is intrinsic to being Jewish, which suggests that really, Jews Are Just Like That, and that hardly leaves a lot of peaceful solutions on the table.
So that's why I think "Dislike you and want you to have less power, but wouldn't literally attack you on the street" isn't really a compelling argument for believing that anti-Semites do not, in fact, want Jews to die. Maybe they wouldn't get their own hands dirty and would like it to happen out of sight (as most Germans did), but they won't object to it happening.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
"There are a lot of arguments around that," yes. And that Jews are biased towards wanting to support Israel is of course pretty obvious. But that is only the tip of the iceberg of "Jewish influence" arguments.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
"Jews being in power" wouldn't mean anything unless you believe they are specifically serving Jewish interests to the detriment of non Jews. Obviously progressives serve progressive interests. The Jew haters have to invent a narrative where all our economic, immigration, and foreign policies are basically an effort by Jews to undermine civilization to explain the "Jewish interests" that Jews are supposedly pursuing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I have moderated forums before this one. You have pretty accurately described the personality types.
I don't want this place to be dominated by snowflakes like so many of my hobby forums, and reddit, and most mainstream forums now, really. I also don't want this place to be kiwifarms or rdrama.
I hear what you are saying about, for example, merely annoying people vs. people motivated by hatred of certain groups, especially a group of which you are a member.
Unsurprisingly, my answer to you will be the same one I usually give to people who think we haven't set the dials and thermostats correctly, which is that I think you are wrong about some things, and that there just isn't a great solution to other things.
We have had annoying (by which I mean outspoken and argumentative) liberals (who got reported and downvoted heavily) who still didn't get banned (or even warned in many cases). They still leave because even if the mods are fair to them, the rest of the forum largely is not, and it's not much fun being extremely leftist and trying to engage in good faith with people who, at best, seethe with barely restrained contempt in their every reply to you. I can think of several normie liberals, a couple of trans-women, at least one black guy, and one or two outspoken unabashed leftie feminists over the years who gave it a shot, made some decent contributions, but haven't been seen in a long time because, I assume, they just got tired of people politely telling them they are despised.
The Joo-posters have been warned when they cross the line -- and I don't want to name names here to avoid this being a "call-out" post or making it about individual personalities, but the most prominent ones you are thinking of have somewhat ratcheted it back after being modded repeatedly, and several others have been banned. (Not for their Joo-posting alone but because they were general pains in the ass.) This, of course, was not taken with good grace and acknowledgment that we were trying to maintain a forum where Jews and Jew-haters could somehow engage in mutually respectful dialog. It was met with indignation, anger, claims that we are trying to suppress certain viewpoints, and accusations of the forum being secretly controlled by Jews.
Are we a locker room culture where we put up with Kenneth and his occasional unfunny rape jokes? I suppose that's not a terrible analogy. And should we become a coed locker where everyone now has to avoid offending the more sensitive members now sharing space with us? A lot of guys might not like Kenneth and his rape jokes, but they're willing to put up with it if they can speak unfiltered and the alternative is being policed by the kind of people who would punish all of them for not exiling Kenneth.
I guess the problem with this analogy (or maybe the point) is by implication women aren't just expected to put up with Kenneth and his rape jokes, but to not even be present, whereas we do allow Jews and blacks and women and trans people and liberals to be here... and listen to what some other people really think of them.
The Motte really was not meant to be a "right-wing" forum, but it has more or less become that by virtue of being one of the only places where right wingers can say right-wing things and not get banned. However, I maintain that we do put up with "libtards." We moderate on tone, not content. That's always been by design and one of our explicit principles that sets us apart from most forums. That means yes, the polite Holocaust denier gets to post about how in a purely hypothetical way, the world would be a better place without Jews, while the annoying shit-stirring leftist gets banned for being a dick. I understand how that may seem like we are favoring Holocaust denial and picking on liberals, but we're not. At least not intentionally.
I dunno. A lot of people (including the mods) think the Motte is ultimately a doomed project and it's just a matter of how long we can keep it going. So far we've lasted longer than most expected. I don't know what to tell you. Speaking for myself, I really do try to apply the same moderation principles to the shit-stirring libtards and the Joo-posters, and unsurprisingly, they both think I am clearly out to get them and run cover for the other guys.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Then you are poor at evaluating evidence or unable to look past your biases. I assert confidently and objectively that you are wrong.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
Maybe a new rule should be "be as polite as possible without being insincere.
Although that is not an official rule, that is encouraged, yes.
As for you, I'm not going to argue with yet another person who comes back from a ban to complain about how unfair their ban was. You know what you're doing.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
I doubt it. I don't report a lot. And in a holistic review I'd wager over ~99% are good reports.
Of course you do. Everyone thinks their reports are valid, and reports about them are not.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
1d ago
We almost never warn people for reports, even reports we think are stupid and frivolous (which is about 80% of them). The only exceptions are when someone is just spamming the queue, or being really obnoxious (like using the report field to abuse the mods, or insult the poster in a way they know would not be allowed as a public post)
I think the people who use the report button in such a way should be warned or otherwise influenced to stop their behavior.
Buddy, I don't think you do. I specifically remember some of your reports which were based on nothing more than you not liking what was said.
Though I would not think it only happens regarding any specific subject, I would not be surprised that it happens a lot on certain topics over others.
If you mean you think peoplecoughJews are "shamelessly" reporting people for anti-Semitism, the reports on Joo-posting are no greater than on any other heated topic, and I'd say Jew-haters and incels are actually much more prone to mash the report and downvote buttons.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Anyone who's spent time working with LLMs know they hallucinate, but it's not just "making up random things." They usually make things up in a very specific way: namely, in response to how they are prompted.
For example, that Tweet in which Grok claims that Elon personally "dialed down its woke filters." This is extremely unlikely for multiple reasons. While I admit I wouldn't put it past Elon to actually write code and push it to production live on X, I still doubt it. LLMs will very often make claims about their ability to "clear their memory," "update themselves," "do a search," or read documents that they are literally incapable of doing, because their inherent "helpfulness" leads them to tell you they can do things they can't because you prompted them with the idea.
Leading to the second point: that prompt change, if real, probably is the culprit, and I'm surprised that even if the goal was to "take off woke filters" that experienced prompt engineers would not foresee the problem. "Politically incorrect" has a specific valence in public discourse of the last couple of generations, and that's how an LLM will associate it- not with "being more interested in the truth than political sensibilities" but with the very specific sort of edgy contrarian who likes to spout "politically incorrect" opinions. Unsurprising that this resulted in making it easier to prompt Grok to spout off about Jews or write Will Stancil-Somali rape-smut.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
How curious. I've mentioned many times that people have a habit of reporting posts just because they don't like the argument being made or the person making it, and that we (mods) wish people would not use the report button for that purpose. If you think it only happens when people are going on about Jews, you are deeply mistaken and have not been paying attention.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
2d ago
Lots of people don't like anti-Semitism. Lots of people report posts they don't like. But you knew that.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
3d ago
Oh, it's you again. Your first few posts weren't so obvious this time - good job upping your game a little.
Now get a life.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
5d ago
Contrary to what @George_E_Hale said, this isn't an odd moment of bluntness for you, it's something you've been warned about before.
Drop this "this is just the way I talk" gimmick. You can say "Blacks aren't smart, but Jews and Chinese are," but phrasing it the way you did just reeks of "I'm an edgy ironic racist, hee hee hee." We've told you this already: being racist isn't prohibited, but you have to figure out how to spray your spittle in a polite manner, and if you find that difficult, that's intentional.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7d ago
I answered you already downthread, but since you've spun into multiple sub-arguments with different people about your grievances with various posters, how we handled Darwin (unfairly, disproportionately, and with great bias, according to you), and alleged personal attacks against you that we have refused to mod, I have a few points to make in addition to those I made here.
First, regarding Darwin aka @guesswho.
Have you noticed, perchance, that @guesswho is not banned? During his last pass, he earned a bunch of warnings, one tempban, and an AAQC. Hardly indicative of unfair treatment, for all that many of our users (and, being honest, half the mods) hated him.
I didn't hate him. I found him annoying and disingenuous, but I agree with you that to some degree, the hatred of Darwin was excessive and ideologically motivated (he was one of the most persistent and antagonistic leftist posters willing to argue a leftist position down to the ground).
But you know what? I also totally understand why he drove so many people absolutely bugfuck crazy. Because that was more or less his entire reason d'être. He had mastered the art of poking people in the eye until they'd rage back at him. I don't think he was a literal troll - i.e., someone engaging in a performance just to piss people off, without really believing the things he argued. I think he really believed the things he argued but I think he argued for the joy of it, the joy of "conquering" his enemies (i.e., driving them bugfuck crazy with his tactics) and he wasn't particularly interested in, you know, accuracy or sincerity or ingenuousness. "Owning the righties" was his game and he played it with prejudice.
You know who drove him away?
Me.
The thread you were already linked to, about J.K. fucking Rowling. Here you go again. The one where I finally lost it with him. But I "lost it," not by going bugfuck crazy, but by deciding I was going to nail his feet to the ground, pound on each and every one of his arguments, and drill him until he either stood and delivered or ran.
Been a year, and we're still waiting for him to get to it "in his queue."
But he's still not banned! He can starting posting again whenever he wants. And while I'm sure if he did, a lot of people (including me) might say "So, about that JK Rowling thread?" - most likely he'd waffle and dismiss it, and go back to his old ways forthwith.
Your thesis that "Darwin was ganged up on and mistreated just because he was a leftist" is mostly bullshit. Sorry.
(@Tree's claim that we bent and made up rules just to go after Darwin is thus 100% bullshit.)
Now about all these other threads you point to as examples of us "Letting righties be mean and not modding them."
@gattsuru has a ton of AAQCs. That gives him a very long leash. This is by design and it's not secret - people who generate a ton of quality comments get away with more. That said, every comment you've linked to as an example of personal attacks? Being aggressive in interrogating you is not a "personal attack." I say this as somone who has been the target of @gattsuru's interrogations more than once and who can hardly be considered a fan of him or his tactics. He's a dedicated hater and I'm on his hatelist. No bias here. Worth noting that at one point we pretty much did issue a "Stop using this particular tactic" rule regarding throwing walls of links to every single past conversation every time someone he hated posted something, because it was obnoxious and degrading to the discourse (and we got some flack and resentment over it). And I mention this, not to continue to persecute @gattsuru (hey buddy, at least I guess we can have civilized conversations about which SF authors suck) but because you think we make up or bend rules just to prosecute our ideological biases, when in fact, if we bend or make up rules at all, it's because someone is being particularly and uniquely obnoxious (a point I already made about @AlexanderTurok) and it's not ideological bias at all, we do it to people who are being particularly obnoxious.
You (and @Tree, and a couple of other people) hammer this argument that we are absolutely seeing for the very first time (that was sarcasm), that the Motte picks on leftists and they get unfairly dogpiled until they get banned, and meanwhile we let MAGAs get away with anything. We've been hearing it since the Motte began. You've all read my "if I had a nickel..." speech about a dozen times now. Because yes, kids, the righties, especially certain categories of righties (the ones who really like talking about Jews, bitches, and fucking children - that's a gerund, not an adjective) insist that we're all ZOG-converged tools or something. Or, from the saner but still angry right wing, that we let leftists in general get away with more. That we practice "leftist affirmative action" and the Darwins and the AlexanderTuroks (whether or not he claims/admits to being on the left) go way too long without being banned even as the mod queue is being flooded with people demanding we ban them. We especially hear it when we ban a rightie for, you know, being particularly and especially obnoxious, whatever his particular hobby horse (even if it's just "hating leftists").
The point of this long screed (besides letting me get some mod frustration off my chest - man, does it get annoying hearing the same tired accusations over and over and fucking over again)? Make a new argument. But not really- you don't have one. None of this is new. Instead- accept that this is how moderation works here, it's by design, and you can nudge us incrementally towards being harsher or laxer with the general feedback that is the overall pattern of complaints and reports, but playing "Why did you mod Johnny and not Suzy?" for the hundredth time is not going to move us. Insisting "You take sides (against my side)" for the hundredth time is not going to move us.
You're wrong. You are observably, factually, and empirically wrong. I say this because I see the mod queue. I say this because I have a pretty good memory of the Motte and its moderation going all the way back to before I became a mod (I wonder if even @naraburns remembers that I was once on the "You're cruising for a banning" list). I say this because I am part of the mod discussions we have. I say this because I have a pretty good mental model of my fellow mods, and of our most prominent posters. Not flawless, I am not perfect and I can sometimes misunderstand people (and I am saying nothing here about the quality of my own arguments - there's a reason my handful of AAQCs are mostly for writing about hobbydrama-type posts), but I have a reputation for having the best spidey sense when it comes to alts and trolls. I could tell you stories, many more stories. A lot of the misapprehension people have about modding is because you really don't see... the stuff you never see. Not your fault.
But a lot of it is because you're just wrong.
@AlexanderTurok got banned because he has been regularly and intentionally obnoxious for weeks now and he's already been warned. Not because we hate his opinions. Not because he's a leftist. (Or a rightist or a whatever-he-calls-himself playing the part of a leftist who claims not to be one.) The one-week ban, specifically, was @netstack's call. I might have only warned him. Or I might have given him three days. Another mod might have actually let it go. We didn't actually discuss this one internally (we do not discuss every ban). But it didn't happen because of ideological biases or unfairness or the Motte hating lefty posters. (A particularly ironic accusation to throw at @netstack, who is the only mod arguably more lefty than me.) It happened because Turok likes to rattle cages and frame arguments in a maximally uncharitable and inflammatory way calculated to be ragebait. He thinks this is entertaining, and if he keeps it up, his next ban will be longer.
Amadan
Enjoying my short-lived victory
7d ago
This seems like a ban based on vibes alone.
Another way of saying vibes" is "tone." Yes, we moderate based on vibes. It's not quite that fuzzy- we try to follow the rubrics we've developed over the years- but yes, when someone is being an obnoxious trolling shitstirrer, and has been posting obnoxious trolling shitstirring threads for a while that so far have been just barely this side of acceptable discourse, eventually we're going to say "Enough, knock it off." @AlexanderTurok has been there for a while, and he's been warned repeatedly. He just got a 1-day slap on the wrist, and so promptly writes a post absolutely dripping with sneering condescension.
Here's a post from a year ago that came from a right-wing that IMO is far worse, and yet it didn't get a ban or even a warning. Here's another post that I also think is pretty bad, but is actually classified as an AAQC!
You know what my least favorite category of bitching about modding is?
"Waaah, you modded Johnny but you didn't mod Suzy, obviously you love Suzy more!"
Playing this kind of game is never productive. Every one of us mods has explained, many times, that while we try to be more or less consistent, we do indeed mod based on "vibes" to some extent, and a lot of those vibes are "How obnoxious is this particular person being right now?" "How annoying has this particular person been recently?" and "Does this particular person have a long record of AAQCs, or a long record of being warned to knock it off?" There is also a lot of subjectivity in whether a particular word or phrase strikes this mod on this day as being over the line.
(Also worth noting that sometimes someone is filling the mod queue with reports, and he'll eventually get banned for one of them. Unless you're absolutely sure that the person you're complaining about didn't get a ban around the same time for some other post, don't assume that whatever post you're linking to is an example of "Mods thoughts this was okay.")
We ban more rightists than leftists. Rightists are more numerous, and thus when someone flies off the handle or starts insulting people or posting about how much he hates his enemies, it's more likely to be a rightist.
This of course has resulted in rightists claiming that we don't ban leftists enough.
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