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We have a solution for this around these parts, and it's called making a bet.
Now I doubt there's a prediction market for Haitian shenanigans, but surely we can come up with a level of evidence that would satisfy both sides and a time frame for it appearing.
Let's say if a police report/bodycam or local newspaper reports on physical evidence of someone poaching local birds or pets within Springfield within the next three months?
@Skibboleth, @SteveKirk are you guys willing to get some skin in the game? No pun intended. Come on guys, if it's obvious, it's free money.
Absolutely not, because I remember this exact same scenario playing out at least three times, and in two of those cases a bet would never have been adjudicated fairly.
First and most obviously, Jussie Smollett. It was like pulling teeth, but eventually the people defending him shifted their counter-attacks to "why are you so obsessed with hoaxes when they're so rare?"
IMO the only reason that one might have settled is that the main representative for the losing side was so overwhelmingly disliked he had no social cover. Already unpopular people facing social consequences isn't great evidence for fair and impartial systems.
Second, the Virginia school bathroom rape case. To my knowledge nobody on team "there were no gender neutral bathrooms, ok but you can't prove there was actually a rape, ok but he wasn't really gender fluid, anyway it's super rare why are you so obsessed TERF" ever admitted wrongdoing. And I'm pretty sure that one catholic girl was banned for pressing them on it at least once.
Third and most recently, the Sam Brinton case where it took three arrests for stealing women's clothing for the people litigating it to go from pretending it was a right wing conspiracy to pretending they'd never heard of the guy.
Who's going to judge the bet? Some of the mods are the people from those other cases.
Even if we do get the absolutely overwhelming evidence we got in those other cases (and I admit we might not see the same Haitian guy arrested three times with a skinned cat in a sack each time), the bets will do nothing.
And you'd better believe the media will be pulling out all the stops to play the exact same "no evidence acknowledged by Reliable Sources" game they played in all those cases, until everyone's internalized that it was just another case of Republicans Pouncing.
Really? Bets were made and stakes were put on the table? I don't remember this. People throw "Want to make a bet on it?" a lot, but I don't recall anyone ever trying to set up a formal wager.
I wish she were still around to react to being called "that one catholic girl."
I don't know which specific ban you are talking about, but her repeated bans were never because she was saying things mods disagreed with or against someone who enjoyed the mods' favor, but because she had a problem saying things without being an antagonistic and personally insulting about it.
Who? Name names and post links.
I wish she were still around too, but I feel, if you observe this comment of yours carefully, you'll realize that if she were around her resultant comment would probably again get her a mod warning, or worse. This is just my observation.
Probably. That was the problem. She could be a good contributor, but she could not control her temper and she thought being offended was a license to shit on people.
Many such cases.
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Ah, going through my post history?
Nope, happened to see this belatedly while going through the mod queue.
So, are you going to actually back up anything you claimed?
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If you are willing to bet enough I'll fly out there and check. Flights aren't that expensive. I should be able to tell if there are 20k extra people from Haiti eating birds and whatnot. No one ever puts their money where their mouth is. Many people talk a lot, few are up for the moment. Round trip is only 200 bucks!
I may be able to save you a flight.
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Where's 2010 era field journalists when you need them. You'd think local kids in Springfield and around would be picking up the clout that's on the table for doing very simple field work of filming in and around the area and interviewing locals about what they think of the controversy uncut.
Though to be fair, the whole controversy seems to stem from people posting on local subreddits about this happening in the first place.
At least one of them is in fact doing just that.
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