This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
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+1. While there's an obvious element of trolling for reactions from the crowd, a lot of stuff would slide right by if it didn't get reactions from the crowd. Target this level of vitriol at a group that isn't here or that the denizens don't identify with and it's a normal day ((though most of those posters don't hang around))
If you think he's worth keeping around, do you think you can actually defend his argument? Your comment makes it sound more like you know he's a troll, and you want him to keep trolling people you don't like.
I could steelman it, but I don't particularly agree with it so I'm not sure I particularly want to at length. It's a meaner variant of the Great Sort hypothesis offered by a Murray or a Lee Kuan Yew in the past. That first worlders have been "sorted" successfully into the smart and the dumb by various mechanisms, such that those "still" poor are the absolute worst, the hard cases, the genetic dregs. LKY talks about this when discussing the professionalization of union organizers in Singapore: in the early days there were many smart workers in the union, but today any intelligent Singaporeans end up in white collar jobs, so if you continued to draw union chiefs from the shop floor you would get people too dumb to function as good union chiefs.
My problem with banning him has less to do with people I like vs people I dislike as with wanting to avoid calcifying the userbase of the motte. Near as I can tell, this is being banned for jimmy-rustling, rather than for any content problems. Certainly we see similar posts about groups that are primarily out-groups to mottizens, the "bioleninists." A similarly structured argument about Palestinians, negroes, women, gays, illegal immigrants, etc would be skated by. ((Though I will note again that those posters who get obsessed with that kind of posting do tend to eventually catch bans anyway)) I'm positing that if we label it banworthy to offend the userbase of the motte, then at that moment we set the userbase in stone and preclude any changes in the future, because anyone who wants to join will find offensive material targeted at them to be common, and that turnabout is not fair play. That is akin to announcing official forum positions: one can, but is not required, to believe that blacks or arabs are inferior; one cannot believe that working class whites are inferior.
Those whose jimmies have been rustled can simply choose not to participate.
I should note that I recently complained about the Count in another comment, for his use of a minced oath, which I find to be annoying behavior.
That's the thing though, I didn't mean "come up with a defensible version of what he said" I meant "defend what he actually said". I don't mind someone having and promoting his point of view, I'd love to have a conversation with someone who actually believes it, and I'd have a hundred questions for them that I'd love to ask. The thing is it's the kind of questions that quickly point out various issues with the worldview, and so, from past experience, they tend to go unanswered. Which in turn leads me to believe he doesn't actually hold any of these views, and is not willing to debate them, he's just looking for a reaction from the resident chuds.
That's what rustles my jimmies, not his views. Yeah, people shouldn't take the bait, but it will always be easier for a single troll to throw a granade and delight in the ensuing chaos, than it will be for a group of people to maintain discipline and not respond.
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I've personally got a long history of banning people for sarcasm/satire. Back on the old forum I pulled the trigger on a long ish term ban on user lazygradstudent(?) for writing a long satire post that imitated the form of the most famous satire "the Irish should eat their babies".
I'm not currently involved in the mod discussions with @Amadan and others, because I'm on vacation. I feel like a routinely see the worst crap on this forum popping up when I'm on vacation. Or maybe it's just when I read here more often.
I think I recently spoke against giving burdensome a permanent ban because I thought he had been better lately. Not even a week later he responds to one of my comments with obvious culture war race war stuff and I give him a two day ban on the spot.
@BurdensomeCount comes back and his takeaway is that I just wanted him to spend more effort on his culture/race war posts.
So fucking frustrating. No dude, wtf is your problem? My whole point is don't just write stuff to kick off the culture/race war on this forum.
I don't do enough modding these days to be all that helpful. Other mods are way better in most ways. But it's moments like these that make me think I should step away completely.
I have a three year old and a five year old. The five year old seemingly has a better ability to behave and understand rules than some people on this forum. The three year old is worse behaved. So this seems like a skill that is learned between 4 and 5 years old.
I'm pretty sure I remember being more patient with misbehaving forum participants before I had toddlers to compare them against.
Two week ban is my recommendation. Which is basically my cutoff point where I start thinking of you as a toddler with the inability or aggressive unwillingness to control your behavior.
The whole Internet is available for trolling, and waging the race/culture war. Start a sub stack, post on Twitter, post on Facebook, go crazy. Just stop bringing it here.
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