I hear ya; it’s a false equivalency, and one that tends to ignore the reality that some people here are just not posting because they actually want a ‘stimulating exchange of ideas with other intellectuals.’
I truly think some folks are here to vye for the attention they don’t get IRL, or to vent out their frustrations… or, like I said above, to ‘prove’ how much “better” they are than everyone else.
And while it’s part of the new policy that speculating on other people’s motives without
just cause isn’t kosher, sometimes a person’s intent can seem pretty obvious, simply by observing their consistent behavior…
Mmmmmm, when behavior is attributed to a penis, I wonder more than I used to, because people coming in and making sexist remarks that skirt the rules is… mildly reprehensible? Nah. Worthy of a good natured ribbing, yes more probably that.
If it’s a one off!
We all have off days. I don’t think yesterday was a wonderful one, for instance, for me.
Today’s pretty great tho. Made a new friend and got free Arlo tickets.
Time was this place had a whole lot more Group W Bench vibe. Today is another day. Not bad.
I agree with some of your other points, but not this one. Wait, that’s not right, it’s more like I don’t believe that being polite to a bad faith argument (And I mean the argument, not the person) keeps the forum civil, sometimes it invites even more incivility. A conscientiously deployed eye roll seems to me a pretty measured response to an idiot trying to provoke our ire.
I also don’t believe that being civil should get in the way of being able to communicate disdain, derision or any sort of opposition to a viewpoint. A purposefully ambiguous GIF seems an especially appropriate response to a deliberately provocative argument.
I agree that Sometimes the only winning move is not to play. Yet trollies are playing with different rules than we are, they don’t care if their arguments make sense, only that they provoke a response, in this sense I agree with you that sometimes you just have to ignore some comments.
I do think that there are some comments that should not go unchallenged. The hard part is not getting suckered into an actual discussion. I’ll flag, say that I don’t agree and let it go, even if the comments get eaten it’s sometimes important to say that something is not OK if only for the benefit of other people reading the conversation while it’s still up.
I would argue that a gif, with or without comment, is actual discussion, in that it invites response.
I also don’t believe that being civil should get in the way of being able to communicate disdain, derision or any sort of opposition to a viewpoint. A purposefully ambiguous GIF seems an especially appropriate response to a deliberately provocative argument.
I absolutely agree with this. A gif can be a very aggressive riposte to a post that deserves one.
That said, the BB policy is that we ought not assume the argument is “deliberately provocative” unless the poster makes it explicit in the argument. Obviously there are exceptions, such as obvious dog-whistles or rhetoric cut-and-pasted from Jordan Peterson’s lobster-raising manual, but it would be interesting if everyone here takes the “no unfounded assumptions” policy seriously, and applies it to themselves as well as to others. It would be interesting to see if it really made a difference. My gut feeling from six decades of observing people is that this isn’t going to happen.
This. Seems many posters assume any POV that differs from theirs on one of their hot button subjects is de facto driving trollies and in bad faith. Chasing away anyone who genuinely has a different opinion leads to community being a silo of monolithic thought. No one on earth will agree with you on everything, yet that is rapidly becoming the standard in certain circles and political movements. Is the goal to be exactly like the right wing dittoheads?
I see this in highly competitive people when they dunning-kruger with non-competitive people. As I noted above, making a point is conversational, scoring a point is competitive. If, for example, you were highly competitive (don’t see it in you, fyi) it would be a lot easier to mistake someone disagreeing with your statement as their disagreeing with and insulting your person. Even if only their peace was spoken. That happens here. It’s not pretty. What can we do?
Sometimes the bias is in the observer, sometimes in the speaker. If either one of them is insisting it’s 100% the other one, there’s your problem.
(I agree! But . . . although it often invites a response, it also can function as mere affirmation. Which is also often an actual part of discussions.)
I’ve had EXACTLY that experience here, where disagreeing with someone’s consumer choice was taken as a personal attack. Some people seem incapable of abstraction, of viewing issues without emotion and seeing the inconsistencies. Every problem I’ve run into here is about searching for consistent policy rather than endless special cases.
It’s like asking a question, asking for the missing piece I SEEK to gain a fuller comprehension… opens the door for that to be withheld, in the name of communication?
Not everyone is out to ‘getcha’, many are here to ‘get it’. (getcha, the game people play, not ‘you’)
It amazes me that people think they are communicating when they will make anything BUT an assertion of their full position and seemingly demand to know why you are asking them and who are you to ask, when they are the ones who brought it up for discussion.
