I would say the BB BBS is definitely a left leaning bubble, although a rather big one. But I don’t get my news from Boing Boing. I know people who literally only get any of their information about what’s going on in the world from Facebook. Now, that’s not Facebook’s fault, but the reality is these people are getting a massively skewed view of the world because they are only seeing things their like minded friends post. I’m aware Reddit works differently, but I’m not sure it’s any better. And a leftist Reddit may not be leftist only, but how many honest, serious conservatives do you think will visit that site for thoughtful, calm discussions with people of a different ideology? My guess is a number sufficiently close to zero as to be indistinguishable from it.
TBH I found Reddit’s problem is mostly MRA scum and blathering Randroids showing up to post their idiocy in unrelated subs and not really a Left wing/ Right wing split.
On the other hand, if every r/The_Donald regular was put on a cruise ship that’s then sunk in the middle of the Pacific the world would become a better place.
I said this elsewhere, but I may as well say it again:
BB is only left from within the frame of pre-Trump pseudodemocratic American politics. The liberals of the Democratic Party are not left wing, and never have been. Liberalism is a center-right ideology; if you are a capitalist, you are not left wing.
On a less distorted political scale, BB is decidedly centrist. Cory seems to be the leftmost edge of the hosts, and he appears to be a fairly mild DemSoc.
There are a spattering of anarchists and socialists amongst the commentariat, but most range from SocDem to Conservative (by which I mean actual Conservatives, not GOP reactionaries).
We used to have a few more radical types, but a lot of those have dropped off the web to concentrate on the street.
Fine, it’s a centrist bubble. That wasn’t my point, and not the point of the discussion.
Alternately, it may imply that Reddit’s not the problem.
I guess, that’s an open enough speculation as to be meaningless without further elaboration.
Internet terms of service are framed as defining the rights and responsibilities of sites as well as users. It is not at all unusual for them to be exceedingly vague, unreasonable, unlawful, unenforceable - as well as capriciously or otherwise inconsistently enforced. And coupled with these problems, large populations use these sites and services despite claiming to have reservations or even outright disagreements with those terms. Assuming that anybody bothered to read and parse their legalese.
The saying goes that walking down the street is the most basic political act. If online sites and services desire to co-opt public space for discourse, we need to find ways to deal with the fact that our conversations are and will be to some degree, political.
From what I’ve seen, they were actively harassing people and planning harassment. If true, sounds like they were the problem.
But are “they” the people who organized these groups, or who were posting in them?
People also seem to often lack consensus about what constitutes harassment. For example, one user who has left BB was complaining some time back about being unable to get their police department to act upon his reports of anti-Semitic threats. So I suggested that he get more confrontational with his local police department. Even to the point of dropping in on them at home. This user was horrified, and loudly decried me as being a terribly unethical person. But as I pointed out to them, being an “officer” is not merely a job, it is a full-time role. Just like how a mayor or CEO don’t cease to hold those offices when the walk out the door at work Friday afternoon. And besides, don’t police often drop in upon people at their homes, in the course of their duties? Why the double-standard? Sometimes there is arguably a duty to confront public figure about their actions - it helps them to see the immediacy of their accountability, instead of smugly thumbing their noses at their constituents from behind a barrier of self-serving false propriety.
Because that would have gotten them thrown in jail or possibly worse, that’s why they were horrified.
Reddit is for sure a hive of scum and villainy but for all of the awful Trumpian/MRA/racist/sexist/Nazi loving/far-right groups that are there, there’s plenty of counter examples. There’s also numerous wonderful and completely apolitical communities to participate in.
Fine, I acknowledged that they had every right to disregard my advice, and feel however they chose about it. But I also argued that they did not have the right to go the further step of literally vilifying me, assaulting my character, and hinting at deep ethical problems which they then declined to elaborate upon. Apparently they felt justified in reenforcing a double-standard with regards to accountability and public office, but they never explicated the details, nor allowed any clarification on my end. I was suggesting a method, but they were getting intensely personal.
I at least give people some benefit of doubt that they have real motivations and bases for making their decisions in life, and not presuming what they may be, rather than pulling the plug on discussions as soon as they get outside of my comfort zone. Because most people don’t and aren’t obliged to know what those boundaries are. That’s something that, if were honest, we would need to negotiate explicitly - or else risk the easier option of projecting our assumptions or preferences upon others.
I think they were getting personal (whether they should have or not) because you were suggesting a solution which was unrealistic and could result in their death. I’m sure you didn’t mean it in that way, but that sort of thing comes off as at best tone deaf and at worst showing a complete lack of care for another human being.
Yeah, that’s because that’s terrible advice, and the behavior of a crazy person.
Do you suppose that you feel that way based upon actual events, or is it that somebody being a cop is an intimidating role? Seriously - have you ever heard of a police shooting based upon somebody visiting their home? How could police have anything resembling a normal life if they just killed anybody who arrived there? That itself doesn’t sound realistic to me.
How does that compare against the risk of being killed generally? Is it callous recommending somebody to do door-to-door sales or surveys, because somebody might randomly kill you? I mean, of course it is a remote possibility, by why assume it is probable? Of course these factors are worth considering, but I guess I am skeptical about what actual risk assessment is being done here.
Why assume that individualist ethics trump collectivist ethics? Aren’t those both valid ways to live and interact with people? Do I need to guess “the right one” when talking with somebody, lest I get labelled “unreasonable”? Being more concerned with the health and safety of a community or societal institutions than one’s personal health and safety can indeed be a sound motivation for action, a legitimate reason. So one could just as easily assert that letting your police or government do whatever they like, even breaking their own rules, is irresponsible. I can respect if a person prefers to pursue what they perceive to be their own self-interests, but I am not obliged to assume that this the only feasible default for how people can or should live.
I respect that others may not all see things the same way, it would be nice if others could appreciate our differences without instantly resorting to presumption and personal judgements. Not everybody shares your values, and that does not automatically make them a bad person.
This really isn’t the place to make personal remarks about people. Onus is upon you to explain why you think it might be a maladaptive strategy. Is it “crazy” for police to knock on your door to bother you? Am I obliged to cut them the slack of a double standard? Frankly, if you don’t know what a person is doing or why, then you have no business calling them crazy. The public at large are not obliged to live in accordance with whatever unstated norms you subscribe to.
What? cops regularly shoot people and get away with it. ALL.THE.DAMN.TIME. And if you showed up at their house making demands of them, how do you think they’re going to react? Invite you in for tea and crumpets? Or do you think that they’re going to react angrily when you’re there, while they are at home with their family, making demands of them. What’s not realistic is expecting people to go outside the social norms, especially regarding going against the police, a group of people we all know can act pretty much unilaterally with regards to life and death with literally no real world consequences.
I have literally no idea. How am I supposed to know something like that?
That isn’t what we’re talking about. Apples and oranges.
Because we live in the United States is why. Yes, plenty of us have more collectivist ideas about society, but NOT EVERYONE DOES. The people who are in positions of power especially. That is the ideological framework we are operating under and NOT acknowledging that is incredibly naive and can be down right dangerous.
I never said other wise. But individual safety does matter as well. Just because you don’t feel like getting shot by a pissed off cop is a big deal doesn’t mean we all feel that way.
I have done nothing here but engage you politely and with respect. Yet you are entirely unwilling to admit that you could very well be wrong.
Yes! I appreciate that, and try to do likewise. In some ways I think our views are very similar, and in other ways very different. You almost always offer articulate perspectives which get me to think and question my own. I am grateful to often learn a few things from your posts.
I know I could have inaccurate assessments of things, and clearly say so. But others are often starting from very different fundamental assumptions, which makes mapping their interpretations onto mine quite difficult. And vice-versa, it appears. I approach society from a more ethnomethodological perspective, where it is implicit that groups do what they do for their own self-consistent reasons, which are valid from the framing of that group’s own contexts, and the benchmarks of one group have no equivalence in another. That might be an infuriating degree of relativism for some, where whether a given model seems realistic or not all depends upon what we are trying to achieve with it.
It might be more accurate to say that I doubt if anybody could be right.
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