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On October 10 2025 05:16 Dan HH wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 00:00 ChristianS wrote:
I think there’s a fair number of people who despise GH’s posting style and are choosing not to engage with him, who are then frustrated when someone else who likes his posts more (e.g. me) engages with him and it takes over the thread anyway. Funny you should say that, the moment I started mostly skipping his posts was after the November election when he successfully shamed you for not joining socialist LARP-ing club. And I distinctly remember that after you conceded he said people are dying because of the way people like you vote (lol). I found that disgusting, he seems to pick as targets the kindest people that are most likely to care about his criticism and second guess themselves and be hurt ( like you or DPB). I don't think the point of "purity testing" is to test someone's ideological purity, I think it's to get pleasure from causing someone to feel bad about themselves. There's no point for them engaging with ideological adversaries because those don't give a shit what they think, so it's all friendly fire, friendliest fire even.
I have kind of a lot of thoughts about this actually, but I don’t have time to write them right now and they’re probably better suited to a blog anyway. But I wanted to say I’m immensely flattered by the bolded bit. Thanks for caring about me! Without getting into my personal life too much, that especially means a lot to me right now.
@Neb, extremely flattered by that too.
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Northern Ireland25851 Posts
On October 10 2025 06:15 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 05:16 Dan HH wrote:On October 10 2025 00:00 ChristianS wrote:
I think there’s a fair number of people who despise GH’s posting style and are choosing not to engage with him, who are then frustrated when someone else who likes his posts more (e.g. me) engages with him and it takes over the thread anyway. Funny you should say that, the moment I started mostly skipping his posts was after the November election when he successfully shamed you for not joining socialist LARP-ing club. And I distinctly remember that after you conceded he said people are dying because of the way people like you vote (lol). I found that disgusting, he seems to pick as targets the kindest people that are most likely to care about his criticism and second guess themselves and be hurt ( like you or DPB). I don't think the point of "purity testing" is to test someone's ideological purity, I think it's to get pleasure from causing someone to feel bad about themselves. There's no point for them engaging with ideological adversaries because those don't give a shit what they think, so it's all friendly fire, friendliest fire even. I have kind of a lot of thoughts about this actually, but I don’t have time to write them right now and they’re probably better suited to a blog anyway. But I wanted to say I’m immensely flattered by the bolded bit. Thanks for caring about me! Without getting into my personal life too much, that especially means a lot to me right now. @Neb, extremely flattered by that too.
Can concur, hope you’re navigating whatever is tough in your life OK!
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Hmm, might have made that sound way more ominous by being oblique about it. Didn’t mean to worry anyone.
Okay, how’s this: I’ve been varying levels of depressed most of this year (not related to politics, although I mean, it doesn’t help). Doing okay with it, I’m getting treatment, but there’s ups and downs and this week has been a little down. Anyway academically I know there’s other people out there who would genuinely care about a stranger on the internet feeling bad, but actually seeing it still brightened my day more than I was expecting. I figured if someone else’s kindness affected me that much I should let them know and thank them. Incidentally, Wombat, you’re good people too!
Alright, I’ll stop over-sharing now, as you were.
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United Kingdom13777 Posts
I have to say, it's impressive just how long this thread has been focused on the conduct of just one user. Upon a quick scan, the last time there was serious discussion about anything else was before JimmiC left the scene. And it was not an insignificant topic beforehand either.
Ultimately, within this entire discussion chain, the staff post I appreciated most was this one:
+ Show Spoiler +On July 10 2024 18:34 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I think Kwark is being dumb as fuck in all of this tbh. Attacking GH for being a revolutionary yet to start a socialist revolution is like attacking people who believe in electoralism but who think Trump and Biden are terrible choices for not running for (or even becoming) president.
Now, being annoyed at GH for reiterating the same point/making the same post a triple digit+ number of times is fair game, but trying to prove how annoying that is through reiterating the same point/making the same post a triple digit+ number of times is stupid. The characterization of a good forum is one where people make their point and move on. Reply to clarify and elaborate as needed.
As far as the moderation discussion is concerned, there are two separate points as far as 'kwark is a mod' is concerned. He really doesn't have a history of banning people for disagreeing with him/for being rude towards him (and people are generally given a lot of leeway when responding to Kwark, or even for moderating any of the political threads (even if you can point to a couple instances of this happening over several years of foruming). But it's definitely true that a non-moderator posting in a similar manner would on some occasions be actioned. Pretending otherwise would be totally dishonest.
That said we're a pretty small tightly knit community and we all have our established personalities and ways of being. Kwark is frequently overly aggressive and has a real issue with not walking away from a discussion. He's also very knowledgeable, smart and witty and sometimes contributes with posts/insight that he is the only forumer capable of contributing with. I'm happy to take the bad with the good. But as a moderator I can also chime in to say that yeah his posting can rub me the wrong way and I'd be delighted if he sometimes went 'hm maybe I should just be happy having made my point' and not go on. His previous tangent about 'you are pepsi kendall not lenin' is the type of thing that he could have written in one post and I guess it'd be a fair attempt at being funny, but he then goes on to repeat it in 5 more posts after.
Not a position I fully endorse - the perspective seems altogether a dubious use of "this is our house" to protect someone who frequently causes trouble - but an honest one. All these posts along the lines of "are you sure he ever made a post that should be actionable?" quite frankly come off as gaslighting. Even if we can argue about this-or-that post in particular, a perfectly innocent poster would not be the recurring topic of this thread, called out by well over a dozen others, for years on end. It would be nice if we could acknowledge at least that much.
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Ngl that could be applied to more than a few people in the thread.
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I think “without evaluating their arguments for x, the fact that lots have people have argued for x over the years means we should believe x” is bad reasoning though. Maybe there’s something about Kwark that pisses people off, that doesn’t mean he’s actually doing something wrong. Kwark Derangement Syndrome is a tragedy and the afflicted should be treated with empathy and compassion, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
Not to say I actually think Kwark is a “perfectly innocent poster” (whatever that means) but the fact everybody hates furries doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with being a furry, you know?
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United Kingdom13777 Posts
On October 10 2025 10:28 ChristianS wrote:
I think “without evaluating their arguments for x, the fact that lots have people have argued for x over the years means we should believe x” is bad reasoning though. Maybe there’s something about Kwark that pisses people off, that doesn’t mean he’s actually doing something wrong. Kwark Derangement Syndrome is a tragedy and the afflicted should be treated with empathy and compassion, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
Not to say I actually think Kwark is a “perfectly innocent poster” (whatever that means) but the fact everybody hates furries doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with being a furry, you know?
You'll have to forgive me for not really being inclined to put together a case "beyond a reasonable doubt" for behavior worthy of being actioned. It's not really my place, and, frankly, I don't really want to get more involved in the topic than to make a handful of comments in passing. I also get more of a sense from you of wanting to be catty about the topic than genuinely believing that no such case exists (fair enough, we all do that sometimes).
Let's be real: we've all been here quite a few years, long enough to have seen quite a few of these discussions play out. It's not something that you or I or anyone else just isn't aware of. And although we may disagree on specific instances, I think any reasonable person among the long-timers would conclude that anyone posting like Kwark does without the special circumstances (namely, being an old Starcraft buddy of the staff who has moderator status for historical reasons) would have been actioned quite a few times over the years. It is special treatment, rather than a lack of wrongdoing, that explains the lack of such action.
Even if nothing changes, I think it would do us some good to be honest about the "why." The topic keeps cropping up every few months for years on end, after all.
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On October 10 2025 12:30 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 10:28 ChristianS wrote:
I think “without evaluating their arguments for x, the fact that lots have people have argued for x over the years means we should believe x” is bad reasoning though. Maybe there’s something about Kwark that pisses people off, that doesn’t mean he’s actually doing something wrong. Kwark Derangement Syndrome is a tragedy and the afflicted should be treated with empathy and compassion, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
Not to say I actually think Kwark is a “perfectly innocent poster” (whatever that means) but the fact everybody hates furries doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with being a furry, you know? You'll have to forgive me for not really being inclined to put together a case "beyond a reasonable doubt" for behavior worthy of being actioned. It's not really my place, and, frankly, I don't really want to get more involved in the topic than to make a handful of comments in passing. I also get more of a sense from you of wanting to be catty about the topic than genuinely believing that no such case exists (fair enough, we all do that sometimes). Let's be real: we've all been here quite a few years, long enough to have seen quite a few of these discussions play out. It's not something that you or I or anyone else just isn't aware of. And although we may disagree on specific instances, I think any reasonable person among the long-timers would conclude that anyone posting like Kwark does without the special circumstances (namely, being an old Starcraft buddy of the staff who has moderator status for historical reasons) would have been actioned quite a few times over the years. It is special treatment, rather than a lack of wrongdoing, that explains the lack of such action. Even if nothing changes, I think it would do us some good to be honest about the "why." The topic keeps cropping up every few months for years on end, after all.
Lol’d at “catty.”
I mean, my honest thoughts are that Kwark is kind of a dick who has a bit of a “seeing red” problem when he gets in arguments. Not the first or last person to get his blood up in a political discussion, certainly, but it does mean when he’s being a dick and people he thinks are wrong about something complain that he’s being a dick, he tends to double down. Even if he wasn’t crossing a line before, maybe he does by the end of the discussion. I don’t know if the line he crosses is “banworthiness” but it’s at least, like, pretty unnecessarily dickish and sometimes pretty disproportionate to the provocation. To brag a little, I think I have a decent success rate at talking him down in those discussions, but the fact I feel the need to try is certainly a recognition that I’m thinking “oh boy, here he goes again, let’s try to take the temperature down a little.”
But I mean, yes, obviously, somebody with an extremely long history with the website who’s contributed a lot over the years is going to get a lot more leeway than some rando who just showed up. The first post I read in USPMT that made me decide to stick around was a Kwark post about economic imperialism. It was brief, entertaining, it made me think critically about the subject in ways multiple college courses had failed to do. And yes, it was a bit disrespectful to the poster he was replying to. But especially these days, trying to tone police discussions of US politics like that feels absolutely absurd. If your skin is thin enough you can’t tolerate Kwark saying he thinks you’re stupid I’m not sure you should be trying to follow our politics right now.
Admittedly I might be “cattier” than normal about this because I recall a number of those historical discussions about banning Kwark being initiated by, well, you! And I remember finding a number of your arguments unpersuasive. So yes, that makes me inclined to view this new angle (“remember all those arguments we had about this? Sure were a lot of them, must mean there’s something to it, right?”) uncharitably.
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On October 10 2025 10:28 ChristianS wrote:
I think “without evaluating their arguments for x, the fact that lots have people have argued for x over the years means we should believe x” is bad reasoning though. Maybe there’s something about Kwark that pisses people off, that doesn’t mean he’s actually doing something wrong. Kwark Derangement Syndrome is a tragedy and the afflicted should be treated with empathy and compassion, but that doesn’t mean they’re right.
Not to say I actually think Kwark is a “perfectly innocent poster” (whatever that means) but the fact everybody hates furries doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with being a furry, you know?
Ok sure, then lets apply the same reasoning to GH, oBlade, and many others: just because lots of people have argued that they're bad posters doesn't mean it's true. What if they're not bad and people are wrong?
You gotta be consistent with this reasoning, and I don't think you want to go down that particular route. There can be certain valid arguments in defense of KwarK, and this is not one of them.
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EPT
