US Politics Feedback Thread - Page 131

On April 27 2018 17:42 bo1b wrote:
I think the second last time I was banned, when I was discussing the concept of toxic femininity as a counter point to toxic masculinity, I brought up an example of girls literally starving themselves to death to appear more feminine, and was pretty promptly told it was ultimately male actions which caused that.

That was the point at which I realised an awfully large chunk of posters in the U.S politics thread have such a narrow view of the world, and are completely incapable of changing it, or even entertaining alternative views. If you want to know why people that aren't almost stamp cut don't post in that thread anymore, it's because some combination of the following will happen:

a) The post will be banned
b) It will be needlessly picked apart to find the smallest flaw in reason, almost always tangentially related to what is being discussed, and almost always in a manner that's not arguing the argument so to speak
c) Not a single person opposing the idea will actually critically think about what is posted, or rather, they will think about reasons as to why it's wrong from whatever point of view they happen to hold, and stop there.
d) "So you're saying that..."

For a perfect example, check out the exchange between Igne and Aquanim above.

Stealthblue no longer posting an inane barrage of hyperbolic twitter comments from generally left leaning op-ed posters for respected publications such as vox, has done absolutely nothing negative to the quality of thread, nor impacted to a great degree the interaction that was happening there. What it is though is another example of sticking to the rules over a moderation decision so without nuance that being able to post an article which is interesting and worth a read, can no longer be done as the post itself, nor even with a "check out this article".

It's worth noting that while I occasionally find what Greenhorizons posts to be utterly repulsive, I would rather open a thread full of people posting actual real discussion points that can offend my delicate sensitivities, then open it and scroll back 5 pages of people saying the same thing in slightly different words while quoting a talking point which also says the same thing.

On April 27 2018 21:39 tofucake wrote:

We tried this during the 2016 election and the following couple of months. It is untenable.

On April 27 2018 14:55 mozoku wrote:

I don't have much to add but wanted to highlight this because I've felt exactly as described here many a time. It's extremely common that I look back on a few hours I've spent posting and completely regret it for this reason.

This is also a major contributor to why I was strongly put off by the GH ban because he was one of the few posters (Igne deserves a shot out here as well) from whom I could reliably expect an honest attempt to understand and engage the actual substance of my post.

On April 27 2018 11:44 IgnE wrote:


it's definitely not desirable

On April 28 2018 02:26 Howie_Dewitt wrote:
I would argue that, rather than chilling discussion, Stealthblue's ban has almost frozen it. No one here wants a vox article or mother Jones or some garbage op-ed, but when he sent things like npr or nyt articles on lesser-known events they could often start discussion on something I had never heard of before and I would have never thought to ask about. And, as a further benefit, gh's perspective helped me understand the "left vs far-left" on those issues, since he was basically always willing to challenge the normal viewpoint offered by someone like mohdoo or christianS or p6.
Also, p6's sig is perfectly summed up by "obnoxiously obsequious." Thank you to whoever said that, just imagining someone shouting "I HAVE THE HONOR..." gave me a good laugh.

On April 28 2018 02:45 LegalLord wrote:

I think that getting rid of Stealthblue's spam is one of the few unqualified successes of the moderation that we can actually talk about. Because man... the man is non-stop.

On April 28 2018 02:39 Plansix wrote:

It’s from Hamilton, you goober.

On April 27 2018 03:40 GreenHorizons wrote:
As much as I'd love to give my opinion on the thread and various posters and why I think so much of the analysis here is wrong, I'm still just trying to understand why I was banned. (a_flyer had the most accurate read I saw fwiw)

Let me start by acknowledging this is "their house" and they can ban people for any reasons they want, the point is understanding why me, why the duration, why beyond the US politics thread?

Here's the reason I was given by Nixer (who has not responded to my inquiries):


I mean I disagree with the read in the US politics forum but at least that's a dispute I was aware of.

I have literally no idea, and none of the several mods (I was told this query was posted to the mod forum as well) I have asked, including Nixer (the one who banned me) have been able to give me an example of my derailment and general whataboutism "in other threads".

I can't possibly fix my posts in other threads, let alone defend them on the merits, if the mod making the claim doesn't give some idea which posts they are even referring to. So Nixer, other mods, can I get some examples of my 'unacceptable' posts in 'other threads' for which I couldn't be communicated with and instead a 2 week ban was the choice?

On April 27 2018 21:38 Dangermousecatdog wrote:
That's odd, I don't really recall any of that happening when you was talking about "toxic femininity". Mostly there was discussion, some confusion, more discussion over semantics, then the conversation moved onto some guy talking about how manly men fight bears and wolves or whatever and maybe some martyring. Also Drone (I think? One of the mods anyways) posting himself in a pink T-shirt smoking a big spliff.

Perhaps the problem is your perception that your opinion piece should be immune to any criticism and discussion, to be acepted as fact and praised.

On April 28 2018 06:34 LegalLord wrote:

I recommend. Kind of pricey by most standards, but it was worth the cost. Very well-executed play, if somewhat overhyped (not that the play is bad, it's just the hype is insane).


I think I've been the most vocal opponent of tweets here for the longest time. Stealthblue is particularly egregious because while there is an occasional nugget of interesting commentary, wherever he posts his tweets it's just a long chain of inane garbage that adds nothing but certainly makes the thread look like a place for strings of meaningless one-liners. More importantly, he evidently didn't have any sense of "enough is enough" considering that the cited reason for actually getting rid of him was that he didn't respond to requests to come and talk about it.

On April 28 2018 06:54 GreenHorizons wrote:


Let's be real, doodsmack is the handsdown worst when it comes to tweets. Almost all of his posts are tweets and not so witty oneliners.

I haven't commented on stealth hoping I would get a response for which posts got me banned, reasonably confident they don't have any they want to present after weeks of waiting I guess I might as well.

I didn't find it very annoying, but that's probably partially because I usually mostly agree with it. I can understand why it would bother people on the right and I can see how much of a shitfest the thread would be with a conservative/republican version of SB. I think we could bring back Stealth (if he didn't stop because the mods acted so poorly) by just agreeing on some sites we could approve of as a group, the same if some Republican/conservative wanted. Obviously right leaning articles will draw a lot of attention and pushback, but it should be sound resistance, based on substance and with consideration of the argument being made.

My biggest pet peeve as has been mentioned before is (particularly) neolibs disagreeing with positions but doing a piss poor job of substantiating their position and fleeing/throwing out ad homs when that gets exposed.

I think it's clear I don't agree with Danglars or xDaunt on much, but I've seen it happen to them enough that I see it's all too common and a large part of what they are bothered by.