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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   32320 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 17, 2023

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To be honest, I didn’t realize the extent to which people find the guy frustrating, nor the extent to which you and others might feel that his behavior reflects on my “side”. I feel like I and the vast majority of the DR posters here conduct ourselves admirably to the best of our abilities and well within the standards and expectations of this sub. Having one weirdo who spams bad/questionable content seems like a bad reflection on him specifically, but I don’t really “identify” with him. It shouldn’t be surprising to me that others who are already ill-disposed toward my views would readily seek to tar me with the same brush as the weakman they can point to - and to be clear, rightists are equally guilty of doing so when it flatters their interests - so perhaps that’s on me for not taking the issue seriously enough.

We’re trying to have a ceasefire here, one of yours keeps shooting, and you refuse to rein him in. Think of him as your antifa, the unacknowledged presence of a defector destroys the trust in that faction. So if your opponents retaliate by either their own astroturfing or censorship, I’ll have to wash my hands of your woes.

Who, pray tell, is the “we” here? Which faction do you imagine yourself to be affiliated with here? I’m personally not thinking of the state of the sub in terms of some war, alternating between hot and cold, between certain factions. I do come to the defense of certain users with whom I perceive myself as sharing a common cause, but you are correct that I’ve never seen my job as “reining in” some of the shittier DR (or “DR-presenting”) users on the sub. If you’re now at the point where you feel comfortable threatening censorship or psyops of your own, that does certainly present a concerning opportunity for escalating acrimony. I would like to think that most people here don’t perceive the purpose of the sub in terms of “he started it, gotta win this war against the other guys, if this tactic is good enough for them it should be good enough for us”, but maybe that’s naivety on my part.

There’s always a war in the war room. I don’t think of my side as a party in this fight originally (I don’t like your ideology, but I don’t want it censored either). I’m in favour of niceness community and civilization, free speech and all good things. But just because I want everyone to cooperate doesn’t mean I cooperate with defectors. If you cooperate with him and refuse to eject him, your side looks like it’s defecting, polluting the commons. In that case, defecting against your side would be justified.

Civility is great, niceness I'm suspicious of.

If you cooperate with him and refuse to eject him

I’m not a mod. I have no power to eject anybody. Do you mean that I should be responding to each and every one of his posts with some variant of “this is a bad post”? In this particular case, he posted a link to an article by an author I like very much, and which I think is very interesting and makes for great discussion. And, lo and behold, a good discussion is in fact happening below the post. If you believe that it would have been better for me to refrain from interacting with the post and its replies in any way, you’re welcome to that take, but I disagree. To do so would have been to allow the only replies to the post to be ones that are in disagreement with it, and by extension with my own views.

Is it your contention that even if he was bad faith through and through, you should still pretend that he wasn’t, because the mods didn’t do anything, or because the discussion is ‘good’ ?

You don’t need mod powers to call him out. ‘bad actor ‘,’ ignore the troll’ etc. work. Yes, I expect you to do this, out of basic fairness. I understand that your views may therefore be less represented, and your favourite authors less discussed. It’s irrelevant. Through his illegitimate posting, everyone else’s views are less discussed.

The only reason why he isn’t banned more quickly is because you and the others treat him with the respect he clearly isn’t deserving of.

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