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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 24, 2025

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Although there is variation in the opinions of individual mods, my impression of them as a group is that they certainly have no interest in enforcing an “HBD consensus” (in either direction).

Tequila didn't say the mods enforced the hbd consensus he said unofficially hlynka got banned for breaking with the hbd consensus. Despite his contrariness he was still a member of this community and despite his cynicism it seems he couldn't tolerate the community converging on something he found so immoral. It was the reason he decided it wasn't worth playing by the rules to whatever extent he had been before.

My opinion (which I think I shared at the time) was that he got banned for a combination of "breaking with the HBD consensus" in the form of wrangling with many/most of the actual neo-Nazis around here, and being a bit of a cantankerous fuck who posts a lot -- which (the latter) provided lots of opportunity for said Nazis to report him for technically correct but minor rule violations which would have otherwise flown under the radar.

The reports-volume-based moderation strategy is fundamentally flawed when it comes to high-volume cantankerous posters, and I say this as somebody who was banned more than once by Hlynka for cantankerous wrangling, and kind of pissed off about it in the moment.

Yeah that's pretty much how I see it too, and those technically correct objections feel like the trap snapping shut when you are particularly aggravated - otherwise why not a more substantial response (autism just feels like another cop out when you are in that frame of mind) - and if you don't recognise that (hell, sometimes even if you do) you can break out the big guns and sink yourself further.

Lol I should probably also say, in case anyone thinks I'm trying to rewrite history and jump on a bandwagon, that hlynka and I didn't start off well at all either, he called me the worst poster on the mod more than once and I think I told him that I wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire at one point. And I have no idea if his opinion of me ever changed, but I also don't care. I grew to like him as a user, I think the demodding changed his perspective and sharpened his skill at argument, and I don't need reciprocation.