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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Well, let's look at a [not even slightly] concrete example.

What's the point here? Why make an argument about someone based on a completely different user you for some reason suspect of being him, instead of just looking up him?

I don't like trawling through people's personal profiles but if you really want I guess I can look him up and find arguments I thought were interesting.

What's the point here?

I linked to an example of a particular sort of behavior that I find highly objectionable. My argument is that Darwin engaged in that specific sort of behavior on a regular basis. I'm not trying to get you to agree that this is actually true, and I'm not looking to start a trawl through old posts. I'm trying to communicate why I disagree that Darwin was a valuable contributor: because I remember him posting in that specific style over and over and over again, needling people with passive-aggressive bullshit and then invariably ghosting whenever someone actually engaged with effort and good faith.

I could be wrong, and maybe that's not him. I could be wrong, and Darwin's posts weren't actually like that back in the day. I could be wrong, and maybe that post I linked is actually totally reasonable. You and FD9000 are arguing that he was a valuable contributor; I'm disagreeing, and trying to explain succinctly why.

If I'm not wrong, and that post I linked is bad, and Darwin really did make a habit of posting like that throughout his tenure, I hope you can agree that it's reasonable to object to such behavior.

then invariably ghosting whenever someone actually engaged with effort and good faith.

This isn't a thing. He would have to 'ghost' most people because each of his comments had like 6 replies. 10 comments deep, he would need ((6^10 )/24)/ 365 = 7000 years to respond to all.

because I remember him posting in that specific style over and over and over again

Sure, I remember it differently - same place we were in at the start of this conversation. I'm more than happy to agree to disagree, but you're not going to convince to me by linking to some random comment from somebody else. I don't think that comment is good. There are lots of comments I see here regularly that I don't think are good, or in good faith, but I don't publicly call users out or complain about them the way I see people do for him.

There are lots of comments I see here regularly that I don't think are good, or in good faith, but I don't publicly call users out or complain about them the way I see people do for him.

If there were a user who made a whole lot of bad posts and refused to engage in good faith, to the point that a lot of people trying to engage with them got frustrated to the point of eating a ban, is it reasonable to take note of this and point it out, both to discourage them from doing it and to warn the people who haven't figured out the schtick?

Again, I don't expect to convince you that Darwin is bad. It's enough for me to establish the nature and boundaries of our disagreement: is it that there's no such thing as a bad post, or there is but noticing patterns of bad posting is unproductive, or that some posts are bad and some posters are bad but Darwin wasn't one of the bad ones, or something else. Even if we agree to disagree, it seems useful to me to be clear on what we disagree about.

I’m sorry, I’m not sure what the source of confusion is. We both think making bad posts is bad, but I think his posts were good, so it doesn’t apply.

His input was a genuine loss imo. He made some of the only well argued pieces from points of view we never get here, and people would dogpile him, personally insult him, and bring up everything he ever said that they ideologically disagreed with. If people were regularly as shitty to me as they were to him I’m sure I would get in more verbal scuffles as well. Part of why I don’t have conversations about American culture war issues is because people have been shitty to me the times I tried, here and in DMs, and I have limited patience for that.