Ah, but the long time community members frequently come back. Sometimes on the DL. Not naming names, but this week I noticed someone posting here that I thought for sure was gone long ago.
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Eyerolling at people like that is fine (by me, anyway). Eyerolling at anyone who disagrees with you even slightly is annoying.
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Far too many of them are driving trollies, however; especially lately when bigots and those with nefarious intent have been emboldened to espouse their malice, âloudly and proudly.â
The problem with civility is that it only works with other civilized people.
Seriously though; there are at least half a dozen long term members who fit that description, if not more; always flirting with the boundaries of whatâs allowed by the CoC, and doing the whole equivalent of âIâm not touching you!â
Yep, itâs like some people have an addiction to trying to create conflict needlessly, or something.
To quote Curtis Blow, âthemâs the breaks.â
Thereâs no âright to not to be annoyedâ; hell, Iâm often annoyed by some people trying to dictate how everyone else âshouldâ communicate⌠yet it still happens all the time, and I either suck it up and just ignore it, or I push back in cases when âjust ignoring itâ is not a feasible optionâŚ
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I read a review of something Cumberbatch was in the other day that quite beautifully described him as âurgent and otteryâ.
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On that note, could .gifs, dismissing, amusing or otherwise, be considered an internet version of body language?
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Personally, I donât see anyone using it here to express âslight disagreement.â
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Echoing @Melz2 and @anon15383236, I think that doesnât happen as often as you seem to indicate. It tends to happen when someone is digging down onto a particular topic, yet again, with the same old tired points that are usually based around some kind of talking points, usually when itâs pretty clear to us that those talking points are being used to avoid conversation. I personally find THAT to be annoying and not conducive to conversation of any depth. YMMV.
This. Weâre not having face to face conversations here. Animated gifs, etc, are one means of employing body language that is for many a natural part of conversation.
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They are, but weâre not about replicating human behaviour here, instead of about having conversations. Body language can indeed be a part of a conversation, of course, but whereas a conversation can be had without words, the opposite is far more cumbersome.
This goes back to what Iâve already stated; an eyeroll gif as a part of a reply is perfectly fine. An eyeroll gif as the entirety of a reply is likely to not be considered as contributing to the conversation. (again, this isnât a new moderation standard).
There are lots of posters who routinely use gifs to communicate thoughts, feelings, and emotion along with their comments. And IMHO we as a community are better for it.
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Word; spamming the exact same talking points with only slight variations on the phrasing is often a tactic for trying to dominate or shut down a conversation.
I canât count the number of times Iâve seen you and other members in good faith go well out of their way to try to engage in meaningful discourse with someone, only for that person to regurgitate flagrant logical fallacies and/or circular reasoning, ad nauseum.
IMO, such endless cycles of repetition do nothing to âadvance the conversationâ either; they only serve to stagnate it.
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And at THAT point, itâs either avoid that conversation or gif it up, baby!
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Good to hear that itâs not a new moderation standard, since it seems to me that this issue is more a matter of taste, and of differing notions of what constitutes effective communication.
And if someone doesnât get what a stand-alone gif is meant to convey, they can always just ask.
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Then flag the comments. But when you opt to engage with the poster with an eyeroll, understand the way it is received by the recipient, and the implications for the kind of responses they provoke and ultimately for the civility of the forum.
Just because someone is behaving like a jackass on the forum, that doesnât provide carte blanche to respond like a jackass, as doing so doesnât move things forward. I think thatâs one of the points @orenwolf is trying to make w/r to this upgrade of BB policy.
Or constantly skirting the rules to get away with acts of driving trollies? But a fucking gif is âaggressiveâ? Really?
I agree that consistent trollies and their posts should be called out, though I think that no-platforming is sometimes invoked a little too quickly nowadays. But yes, I think it is pretty clear that in some cases such gifs are often received as aggressive acts of derision. Perhaps sometimes that is appropriate, but when we do it we need to take ownership of how our response is taken.
The modern/evolved standard is to judge the appropriateness of speech acts by their impact on others, not just on the intent of the maker.
And letâs not forget how many bad faith posters managed to hang around for years, who contributed nothing meaningful to our conversations.
So, in the old days regulars used to go to that hidden thread that no longer exists and have a quick discussion about a poster before deciding that they were an actual trolley meriting being seriously jumped on. I miss that thread, not least because it provided a bit of a safety valve. None of us is infallible when it comes to recognizing when someone is acting in bad faith, and for example I suspect you and I would disagree about the intent of some of the posters in question. (Or possibly you think that I am one of the posters in questionâŚ)
This is part of the point behind my post here that was (rightly!) taken down last night.
Yes, absolutely, and such posters should be flagged away, or responded to aggressively, or both. But, letâs stop the pretense that telling someone theyâre a stupid jackass with a clever gif is somehow more innocuous than doing it with words. It is simply more efficient, and usually more condescending.
(Just to be clear, Iâm not suggesting that you, @Melz2, are engaged in such pretense; I think youâre one of the most upfront people on this forum w/r to how you mean your gifs to be taken.)
Maybe some. But I think this forum is legitimately one of the best places to hang out on the internet.
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I do, actually, thanks. Doesnât mean they canât get a dismissive gif, too.
Again, thatâs incivility compared to people stinking up our boards with unncessary racism/sexism/what have you? Are you really going to suggest that Iâm just as bad as them for deciding to respond in a way that you personally wouldnât?
Wow. Thanks, I guess. Good to know my contributions here are valued.
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Except for all those jack asses posting gifs. /s
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Itâs happened to me more than once, and I do not regurgitate tired conservative talking points. My post history is as public as anyoneâs; Iâll cop to being pedantic, obsessive, and twitchy, but not that.
Itâs not just about conservative talking points. Plenty of people who donât consider themselves politically conservative have posted the same old points that do nothing to move forward the conversation and then keep doubling down. This is particularly common when the issue of gender pops up.
Can you post a specific example where this happened with you? Maybe we can address it more concretely that way?
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I appreciate that, but I donât think that many other people discussing this topic are willfully engaged in such pretense, either.
Rather, I think that the people who rail so vehemently against the use of gifs and memes in online communication are the ones immersed in pretension; that they feel they are somehow âsmarterâ or âbetterâ than others just because they prefer to indulge in posting loquacious walls of bloviating, often self-aggrandizing text to make their points.
Folks like that will always earn a variety of eye-roll gifs from me⌠unless I already donât deign to engage them at all.
I donât disagree; thatâs why Iâm still here, and any passive-aggressive attempts to âchillâ me into posting less, or leaving the forum are a wasted effort.
I am one of those unrepentant âjackasses.â I own it.
Unless it was me that youâre specifically referring to, I canât address why someone else might be inclined to roll their eyes at you, or to be dismissive of your opinion in general.
Of the handful of people on the site that I actively dislike or donât get along with, I donât count you among that number, even though I do often disagree with your POV.
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Yeah, I just donât appreciate being put on the same level of the trollies. Itâs not the same - people may not like it or agree with it, but to insinuate that WEâRE just as responsible for bad engagement on the BBS as various trollies (longstanding or drive by) is a false equivalency at best. Considering that many of us actually DO engage in good faith on a number of issues and topics, that when we donât bring out âA gamesâ to literally every single person, no matter what theyâre saying or doing, just really rubs me the wrong way.
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Iâve been really good and posted nothing in here so far, but boy is my GIF folder tempting me right nowâŚ
Iâll be strong though. Last thing this thread needs is more fuel for the picky types. I canât always be funny.
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