I resent the downvote. I made an observation and this guy comes and randomly jumps to a political conclusion about what I observed. He was absolutely and completely wrong and I didn't need to waste more than a word in response.
Let me get this straight.
You have the right to make an observation but nobody has the right can suggest otherwise (as I did)?
And if anybody dares to suggest a different theory than yours, people must take your words that he is "completely and absolutely wrong", with no argumentation provided whatsoever?
>Speculation based on first-order observations. That may not be slightly off-topic, but it's completely different from second-order politically-motivated speculation about my observations.
For one, I never said anything about your observations or you. I never characterized you anything.
I merely suggested an alternative theory of what happened to your one.
Now, can you explain this BS about "first-order observations" (as if nobody besides you can be a first-order observer of the same phenomenon)? We are all on the same social news site. He can all observe the same first-order things.
That I commented after you told us your observation and theory, doesn't make me a "second-order observer". Even eye-witnesses can have alternate stories and contradict one another. Much less here, where what was under discussion wasn't the observation itself (the facts), but the explanation of why they happened (the "exegesis").
>coldtea used my comment as his soapbox even though he didn't have the first clue what he was talking about.
And this statement is based on what? Or should the mere fact that you didn't like my comment suffice to show that "I don't have a clue what I'm talking about"?
>I should also point out that since he responded to me I couldn't downvote him.
Oh, the humanity. Somebody did the next best thing though, he went and downvoted my last pageful of comments in a very clumsy way (all N last comments down one point, which never happens -- must be someone's idea of "internet revenge"). Well, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but still...
>The thing I found particularly irritating is that hellbanning someone can not make you a psychopath in the way that wishing rape and death upon people does (because that is what I observed). I don't need people assuming I'm some kind of male-guilt feminist crusader just because I'm not a member all-manners-are-just-a-form-of-political-correctness-because-social-skills-are-beneath-me set.
Hell-banning is an exercise of power and censorship. Those might be needed at times, but those are very much negative aspects of society, and far more dangerous (because they have more reach and they are more serious) than some idle bullying by immature people over the internet.
Let me put it this way: wishing rape/death on the net is 4-chan, hi-school bully level shit. Censorship on the other hand is actual dictatorship level shit. Censorship has been historically associated with the very worst in societies and regimes. Immature threats from anonymous cowards on the other hand, have not.
Note also how you to others what you say you don't like for yourself: suddenly, being opposed to hell-banning is being "a member all-manners-are-just-a-form-of-political-correctness-because-social-skills-are-beneath-me set".
Fair point. What I should have said was that the hellbanned comments I saw could not have been interpreted the way you did.
> Let me put it this way: wishing rape/death on the net is 4-chan, hi-school bully level shit. Censorship on the other hand is actual dictatorship level shit. Censorship has been historically associated with the very worst in societies and regimes. Immature threats from anonymous cowards on the other hand, have not.
Here's where you and I disagree. It's not for men to say that wishing rape and death on women is just high-school-level shit, just like it's not for white people to say that black people need to lighten up about the whole race thing. You just don't have any moral basis to make light of those things, regardless of how correct you might be about the ultimate effects of a given attitude.
Hellbanning would be dictatorship-level if it somehow extended beyond a single private internet site. But the thing is, hellbanning, cruel though it may seem, is entirely proportional to the problem of internet trolling which is extremely intractable via more "humane" methods due to disposable nature of online identity.
Yes, here is were we actually disagree. I thing it's equally valid for a man or a woman to say that those things are just "high-school-level shit".
Why? Because if we strive for equality, we cannot grant unequal rights to any party. What you suggest amounts, for me, to saying "women are too precious to deal with these things" so they have a right to be upset about them, but men don't get to have a say. Which perpetuates the kind of distinction we want to avoid.
>It's not for men to say that wishing rape and death on women is just high-school-level shit, just like it's not for white people to say that black people need to lighten up about the whole race thing. You just don't have any moral basis to make light of those things, regardless of how correct you might be about the ultimate effects of a given attitude.
I don't think you need a moral basis if you aren't doing the bad things yourself. It's par for the course for living in a society, to get to have a say in all issues.
But you have a point about active/ongoing injustices. Just that some times, even though the injustice is real, people use it for hypocritical reasons (playing the victim).
> I noticed an uptick in hellbanned after the baked-goods incident. It seems several otherwise rational individuals turned into violently cupcake and confectionery haters during that whole debacle.
I'm not saying that's the case here (I haven't looked), [...]
And it would carry about the same meaning. "Here is an event that happened, which I admit I have no idea if it applies to this other event, but here is some speculation linking the two events together.
Note: I didn't downvote you, but I can see why people are. Plus if you only have one word to say about a subject, a downvote is a better choice.
The thing I found particularly irritating is that hellbanning someone can not make you a psychopath in the way that wishing rape and death upon people does (because that is what I observed). I don't need people assuming I'm some kind of male-guilt feminist crusader just because I'm not a member all-manners-are-just-a-form-of-political-correctness-because-social-skills-are-beneath-me set.
I was favourably inclined to your original post ("I noticed an uptick..."), and disfavourably inclined against coldtea's ("violently politically correct"; anyone who says "politically correct" gets dismissal from me!). But everything you said after that was somewhere in the set {unproductive, confrontationally unproductive, paranoid}.
You made an observation about patterns, and proposed an explanation. He proposed an alternate explanation for the same observation. They're equally epistemologically privileged, and your nonsense about "first-order observations" doesn't hold water. His reply added to the conversation (marginally... ugh). Your "incorrect" added zero to the conversation, it was simple static, so it deserves downvotes. I didn't bother to downvote it -- as I usually don't -- but I understand why other people did.
You then complained about the downvotes. Obvious straightforward infraction of site guidelines, and now you retroactively deserve even more downvotes.
And then you went on a paranoid screed about him attacking you personally. It becomes clear that YOU were talking about why YOU hellbanned people (I guess?), and thus you interpret coldtea's alternate theory as being about YOU, but no reasonable person reading the original comments would have read either of those posts that way.
The only problem here is you.
Oh, and one more thing: just as hellbanning isn't really psychopathy, neither is uttering childish threats on the internet, even if I happen to agree with you that the latter is a more serious offense. So when you use "psychopaths" metaphorically, it licenses people who respond to you to use the same metaphor. When you start the hyperbole, you should put up with its continuance.