neener
I have a user like that too though, one who so consistently seems obtusely fallacious. (nobody here so far)
So I worked out that if I just never reply to that user, Falcor never bans me.
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No, no… it’s ME, isn’t it, @ActionAbe? Admit it!!! 
why do you have to make it ALL ABOUT YOU, @japhroaig!!!
We have a mute feature right? But it only mutes PMs? Is that right?
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Because I'm special!!!
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People may simply not see your “true intentions” versus the execution… Getting more specific on the narrative may not help so much as changing the initial approach.
Encoding and decoding are equal parts. If lots of people have trouble with one then there is necessarily trouble with the other.
For many people, being able to talk “dispassionately” about gender, sex, etc is a marker of great privilege; ie - that you are an outsider to these issues attempting to discuss things that do not affect you. I’m not saying this is true or not, but that often that is how its read/comes across.
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I don’t disagree! But I do already put quite a bit of thought and effort into what I post, with a few rare wee-hours exceptions. I don’t mind if people disagree with what I say, but when they instead disagree with what they imagine I mean, it seems hopeless. It seems surreal at times, scenarios in which I write pages worth of careful explanation. I take every response as an opportunity to try being yet more clear and specific. Eventually I just stop, because it risks derailing, and I’d rather more people participate.
It seems that people could simply tell me that “I disagree PopoBawa, your muddled, naive, idealistic nonsense doesn’t convince me!”, and move on. But instead people confront me on what seems to be a more personal level.
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Not everyone has a strong internal locus of control, and it shows when they speak on topics they take personally. In topics which they take personally, other people are likely to meet you where they are, rather than where you are - so when they opine about you personally it is very often not at all about you.
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Then perhaps it is not as meticulously objective as intended?
People usually don’t get annoyed with an argument that is so well diagrammed that it is impervious. Heck, they may be annoyed that your form is hampering your substance.
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Or where the argument currently is versus where the poster might want it to be eventually.
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In another lifetime, I taught math. Nominally it was “secondary” math, but I could never last long enough at one school (whole different long story) to get any teaching assignments above the “grunt” level, which is to say, I was nearly always charged with teaching Algebra to kids whose achievement demonstrably proved they were NOT ready for it.
I learned to look for a thing I called “symbol shock.” It was a sort of glazed look in the eyes of my students when I offered instruction that was too abstract for them to take in. It was a sign for me to back off and start giving concrete examples, no matter how badly that interfered with the notional schedule that I, or my administrators, had for that class’ progress.
I wish I had been better at detecting “symbol shock” because after all these years, I can definitively state: Fuck the administrators’ schedules, I’m dealing with real, live, adolescents. But I did not have the necessary moral courage, nor economic alternatives in those days.
Where I’m going with this, PopoBawa, is that I think you often cross into the too-abstract-to-comprehend place. But this being the Internet, rather than live human interaction, you have no way to observe the glazed looks in the eyes of your readers.
My little rumination here does nothing to solve your problem, but it might, possibly inform your reaction to the reaction that (you’ve noted) you sometimes receive.
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That’s the ONLY THING that matters… but tell that to the administrators.
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Oh man, I edited my comment so as not to be so harsh but you quoted it anyways! D’oh!
Encoding and decoding man, equal halves of the equation. If you are consistently and constantly having issues with the outcome of that equation then the problem has to lay with the only common denominator: You.
I have to ask, in all this conversation we’ve had, and you’ve had with others on this topic in this thread, have you noticed that your language can be seen as “shifting the blame” and “blaming others” and sometimes just down right insulting to other commenters? If you don’t see that I would venture that people are reacting to your tone vs. your message. (Which is still an encoding issue and not a decoding issue.)
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I think it’s more that I don’t even believe in blame. I think that blame is a coercive idea, telling people what they should have done. I like to model the whole situation rather than choose camps. So I tend to go for cause and effect instead of blame. But, contrary to what many might suppose, this is in no way license to be shitty to people! I see it as a way for people to audit their decision making processes. “If people do this, then this sort of outcome is more likely than something else.” My trying to understand how the process works is separate from my opinions of whether it is right or wrong, and I suspect that this really angers some people. But, at the same time, I think the method offers more perspective and courses of action than the alternatives. I wouldn’t feel comfortable or effective in emotionally shame-wagging some phenomena which we had not adequately defined and/or understood. I am perfectly ok with a multi-disciplinary approach which seems to lack a strong consensus, because I see the discussion as an evolving social process in itself, rather than only a commentary upon something else, done by others.
As for intentionally insulting people - no, I try not to. When I let myself get a bit snarky, it is usually an attempt at being more humorous. Of letting people know that, despite being wordy and opinionated, that I do not take myself too seriously. But this doesn’t stop people from deciding to feel insulted anyway! I will provide a couple of examples.
People have often been offended at my opinions about homelessness, and activism for the homeless. More or less because my position is not commonly encountered. Nearly all “help the homeless” programs involve helping them to not be homeless, rather than helping them to be homeless more effectively. This seems to be common sense to most people. But I compared it to the propaganda of camps “helping” homosexuals by indoctrinating them out of their homosexuality. My position is that nomadic living is a perfectly valid way to live, and that unjust social structures exist deliberately to pressure people away from this life. To many, this sounds horrific and lacking in compassion. Yet, this position is a result of my experience, which includes years of homelessness. It is easy to get shouted down with remarks to the effect that “no homeless people would ever agree with this”, and that my input was inappropriate. People get angry that my personal values and experience don’t fit the narrative the prefer, and so attack me over it. Often going so far as trying to de-legitimize my homeless experience as fake, or impugn my mental health over what basically amounts to unpopular politics.
Another example, one that nearly got me banned, was trying to discuss my experiences and reactions to sexual assault. There have been relevant topics where people have discussed their experiences, how they have adapted and what they have learned. I approached the topic more from a pragmatic, self-defense perspective - which really rubbed some people the wrong way - people were shouting me down as a being a victim-blamer, sexist, and rape-apologist! Yet nobody seems to consider that, when I am trying to relate my experiences of being sexually assaulted, that I might find those remarks insulting myself! My explanations of how I coped with the experience were offered to be helpful, and were certainly not prescriptive. As I tried explaining (not “mansplaining”!), my posts were getting flagged and deleted like crazy. I remained calm and polite, and tried to keep involved in the discussion. But found myself banned from any topics about sex or gender for several weeks. So, again, it was more an example of people telling me that they were insulted on the basis of my opinions and experience not being welcome.
I don’t like complaining about this, even now. I feel badly for the mods when people (including me) make extra work for them. Why I like the community is that people here tend to be progressive, fun, open-minded, intelligent, and compassionate. So I worry a bit when people feel unable to agree to disagree - or else simply ignore - topical posts which they personally dislike. Not just for my sake, I think it doesn’t help people generally. I think that many people use the emotionally-loaded nature of some topics as a wedge, a way to clarify their position through an us-versus-them split. I think this is natural, and not unexpected, but I am not convinced that it actually helps. I know that inclusiveness has its real risks, but I prefer to draw that line at personal abuse, rather than at unpopular opinions.
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…dude, that is an essay…
I am not reading a litany of how you have been misunderstood here.
Sorry I waded in.
EDIT - fine, I’ll read it, and respond, but later, after work. LOL - ugh such a completist am I!
I’ve wished for an ignore feature on three occasions I can think of. One of those people I’m glad I read some other things they said. The other two I still think it would be more convenient for me if I just didn’t see what they said entirely, but I can scroll past.
But how is this thread, itself, not a huge problem?
That’s less a request for a dislike button or a report function (a report function which already exists right next to the like function), and more a condemnation of a particular person who no one wants to name. Your “trolley” is my favourite person on the boards, and I encourage you to never read another thing they right if it makes you unhappy to read it. But if that’s what going to get downvoted, then I don’t want downvoting.
When people identify this approach, though, gets their antenna up. People say things like, “Well, if you don’t want to have your laptop stolen, don’t leave it in the back seat of your car.” That’s fine advice in a way for an individual, but it leaves out questions about the world we live in, why laptops are ripe for theft, and whether by changing our behaviour to account for the constant possibility of theft we are accepting a world of theft rather than taking a stance to make the world better.
Now, I think you in particular are actually very good at stripping away the kinds of assumptions that lead to these problems. But that doesn’t stop the red flag, because saying, “Well let’s look at how things are and figure out where to go from there” is too often encountered as a preface to “if women and black people would just do what I, the white man, says, then everything would be fine.”
There is something I still haven’t figured out how to talk about in me that I’ve only ever seen outside myself in one of my siblings, John Campbell’s final kickstarter messages, and in your forum posts.But I think I learned early that whatever that thing is it is intolerable to other people. I like reading your posts sometimes because it’s neat to see someone with the guts to actually live as they are when they are so much like me. But when I see the way people respond to your posts, my suspicion that it is intolerable feels confirmed.
When people don’t seem to like you, I see how they wouldn’t like me if they only knew me. I think it really might be you that they don’t like, not your specific opinion on any topic. A person with tetrachromacy who walks around asking others to just see the colours they do is going to be pretty annoying. I’m not assuming I have you all figured out, but for me, I don’t think any level of specificity or care would actually let anyone else understand what I am trying to say unless I pre-filter it through a lens designed for them, and most of the time I don’t know how to do that.
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Is it considered stalking if I follow you around and give you the Golden Girls hug gif and tell you how awesome you are and how much I missed you?
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So, I was going to pull some quotes and talk about them, but then I get mired in the topics you’ve brought up and I get sucked in… again… cuz I was there for some of that… so anyways…
I don’t agree with the commenter that thinks there is something intolerable about you (or the other commenter) but I will say that there is something in your language and word choices that can come across as imperious and insulting, even if you don’t mean it, some commenters maybe more reacting to that than what you say (“choosing to be insulted” as it were), some are reacting to what you say, obviously, but that’s what discussion boards are for; discussions.
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It doesn’t matter whether or not you believe in blame, what matters is that other people do. That’s what I like to call “empathy”. People aren’t emotion-free robots, no matter how much they might try to be.
Flag counts are more the issue. As mentioned earlier.
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Or maybe people simply disagree with you. Why assume other people have extreme reactions to your posts? Look at how you write about other people. You are rational and calm, while they are extremists who attack, impugn, shout down, etc.
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