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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 Ireland26185 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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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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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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Northern Ireland26185 Posts
Petition to rename the thread ‘Kwark Kattiness Korner’.
Being more serious yeah I think our resident Lord of Legality does rather have a point on something of a double standard at times.
On the flipside, as I’ve said, it’s not like the threads are heavily modded in general, and Kwark is a particular exception. I think mayhaps re-evaluating the general laxity and including Kwark within that would be how I’d look at it.
Others may disagree on that of course! I’m really not talking about swinging ban hammers, but the odd interjection via post, maybe a few more warnings.
I’ve never copped a mod action that I felt was unjustified meself. I think myself and JimmiC going at it for multiple pages in (IIRC) the Palestine thread was trash posting from both of us and a deserved timeout. I’m pretty confident JimmyC would agree.
Equally, and as to LegalLord’s point I really, really don’t see how that’s any different to Kwark and whoever going at it. I’m not going to sleep crying about it, but that does appear rather a double standard.
As per ChristianS’ point, I’m OK with a bit of leeway, not necessarily for veteran/other status, but for people with a track record of excellent posting. And Kwark does supply plenty of that too, high effort posts, frequently in areas he and few other thread denizens know much about.
But I think it should be the ‘regular’ TL leeway afforded to veterans, quality posters, community figures etc. ‘Tis fine by me, provided some extra category isn’t floating above us and reserved solely for Kwark.
Anyhoof, I think many regulars have given their half a dollar, and things haven’t solely degenerated into people airing inter-user grievances, some good food for thought here.
Would be nice to have the mods chip in with a penny for their thoughts at some stage too
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Northern Ireland26185 Posts
On October 10 2025 07:12 ChristianS wrote:
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.
Merci! Ah it’s safely within the remits of appropriate sharing I say. Sad to hear you’re struggling with that, glad to hear you’re getting some help.
Feel free to hit me up sometime with a PM if shit is rough. I’m rather an expert on depression, although specifically more being depressed than dealing with it well :p I’m also not the best at checking my PMs and replying, but I do eventually get round to it haha
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?
Might have to throw hands on this one mind…
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Tbh I always thought the problems arise from people who can't have an argument without wanting to get the other guy banned.
You shouldn't want that and I don't know why anyone would.
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On October 10 2025 20:55 Jockmcplop wrote:
Tbh I always thought the problems arise from people who can't have an argument without wanting to get the other guy banned.
You shouldn't want that and I don't know why anyone would.
Well, sometimes you don't want an argument, you just want the other side to stop spewing utter trash. Case in point, JJR coming in, apropos of nothing, and claiming in a one-liner post that fiat currency is a scam. That isn't an argument. It's a hot take, and the correct response is to shut that shit down asap.
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It is too bad that this got brought up again, I thought the optimistic way it paused with people being nice to Christian and Christian appreciating would have been a good conclusion. The non grudge holding rule would be a great one if it could be fairly enforced, but unlikely.
If this has taught us anything it is that moderation isn't going to happen, which to Jocks point should be seen as a positive. So we should all just try to post to the good post (as ChristianS said) and do our best to let past transgressions go. It should make it pretty obvious who the actual problems are compared to those who just get caught up in it. And if the bad posts are ignored they will be much less annoying as well. To Acro's point sometimes a shut down is needed, but maybe just let who ever did it first have the moment and not pile on.
I don't know. It seems like fixable problems when the community is so small and consistent.
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Northern Ireland26185 Posts
On October 10 2025 23:27 Billyboy wrote:
It is too bad that this got brought up again, I thought the optimistic way it paused with people being nice to Christian and Christian appreciating would have been a good conclusion. The non grudge holding rule would be a great one if it could be fairly enforced, but unlikely.
If this has taught us anything it is that moderation isn't going to happen, which to Jocks point should be seen as a positive. So we should all just try to post to the good post (as ChristianS said) and do our best to let past transgressions go. It should make it pretty obvious who the actual problems are compared to those who just get caught up in it. And if the bad posts are ignored they will be much less annoying as well. To Acro's point sometimes a shut down is needed, but maybe just let who ever did it first have the moment and not pile on.
I don't know. It seems like fixable problems when the community is so small and consistent.
I mean this assumes that the prospect of slightly more involved moderation either won’t, or cannot happen, and I disagree on that.
It wouldn’t take a huge shift to mod such threads in a slightly more active sense.
If mods are unwilling to do this for whatever reason, and state it, well not much I can argue with, but as yet we haven’t got an answer on that question.
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Northern Ireland26185 Posts
That’s why mods are mods and I’ve given my case and await their response.
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United States43319 Posts
On October 10 2025 16:17 Magic Powers wrote:
What if they're not bad and people are wrong?
That’s when you literally just read the posts in question. The alternative to taking everyone’s word that someone is posting in bad faith is not doubting everything, it is looking for yourself.
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First of all I dont want Kwark to get banned, or taken mod away.
He is kind of a relic of internet past, where people weren't afraid to be honest with their opinions, whether somebody would get offended by them or not.
On October 08 2025 19:23 Magic Powers wrote:
I've been comparing the level of antagonism by right and left in the US thread. Toxicity comes overwhelmingly from left-wingers. oBlade, Razyda, Introvert, etc. are all being relatively civil.
Thank you. I dont fully deserve it as i can get snappy every now and again. Also I would rephrase your second sentence to: "Toxicity comes overwhelmingly from minority of left-wingers."
On October 08 2025 16:14 Magic Powers wrote:
BJ called him out before, and surprise surprise BJ is now gone after calling the culture around here "a cesspool". I disagreed with BJ on that, but perhaps that's because my views are more in line with the people who are acting out lately. You know, BJ never struck me as thin-skinned, quite the opposite. Lets maybe let that sink in for a second. What could've happened lately that made BJ leave?
If I were to guess, I would say that BJ hiatus is caused rather by disappointment in overall state of humanity in the thread, rather than any particular poster. Thats guess though so I may be wrong.
On October 08 2025 23:19 KwarK wrote:Razyda is a bit more complicated because I think he's basically the definition of a useful idiot. Emphasis on the idiot part. Some of you may recall his first entry to debate where he declared that Britain was weird because of the way Britain celebrates and honours Guy Fawkes even though he tried to blow up Parliament. That makes it harder to really blame him for what he posts because he's just not working with a full toolkit. But, at the end of the day, he's still an adult and is still responsible for preventing his own online radicalization, something he has wholly failed to do. He relies upon Twitter posts from the GOP for information and then gets upset about them. https://tl.net/forum/general/532255-us-politics-mega-thread?page=5264#105266It's tough because a lot of people who are a lot smarter than he is have invested a lot of time and money into making him think what he does. He's been put into an algorithmic box and is fed content that is curated to his specific level of naivety and broader worldview. But at the end of the day that can't remove personal responsibility from him. I can sometimes be insulting but I want to make it clear that I'm not saying this about Razyda as an attempt at a gotcha or to be mean or whatever. I'm not using idiot as an insult here. There exists a very real bell curve of intelligence and people fall on different places on it. With his posts Razyda has given us a window into his understanding of the world and the thought process he uses to draw his conclusions. Based upon observation I have reached the same conclusion that I suspect most other people who have spent time with him have also reached.
You do realise that there is no such thing as useful idiot? useful is someone who when asked would vote Trump. Idiot is someone who would got buildings wrong and enroll himself into army, or got buildings right but tick box wrong.
So I failed to prevent my online radicalization? Thats you though?
On September 06 2025 03:41 KwarK wrote:
My position isn’t that the fight is over, it’s buy guns and learn how commercially available chemicals interact. In a video game.
On September 13 2025 02:58 KwarK wrote:
Best I can do is ramp up the partisan rhetoric against the enemy.
This seems more radical than anything I ever stated on this forum.
Was the information from GoP twitter account not factual? Did Google not admit to censorship? You also seem rather bad at reading people, I wasnt mad, I was happy.
"It's tough because a lot of people who are a lot smarter than he is have invested a lot of time and money into making him think what he does. He's been put into an algorithmic box and is fed content that is curated to his specific level of naivety and broader worldview. But at the end of the day that can't remove personal responsibility from him."
This reads very much like projection? You seem to believe I spend a lot of time online let alone social media, this is incorrect, I simply dont have time for that. To be frank I spend more time on TL than on social media and I dont spend that much time here either. Algorithm must be devilishly clever if it somehow convinced me to go on this site, and to know that content here is curated for my " specific level of naivety and broader worldview".
"I can sometimes be insulting but I want to make it clear that I'm not saying this about Razyda as an attempt at a gotcha or to be mean or whatever. I'm not using idiot as an insult here. There exists a very real bell curve of intelligence and people fall on different places on it. With his posts Razyda has given us a window into his understanding of the world and the thought process he uses to draw his conclusions. Based upon observation I have reached the same conclusion that I suspect most other people who have spent time with him have also reached."
Considering that you never meet me, and that it is unlikely that you ever spoke about me with anyone that I meet, your expertise on the topic is appreciated...
You also seem to be assuming that I have certain allegiances, which I dont.
See issue you have, is that you are somewhat intelligent, decently smart and you are aware of it. Thats where arrogance comes from. This arrogance prevent you from accepting the fact that you were essentially conned by people stupider than you. You are in favour of escalation (judging from posts quoted above), leading to conflict you literally cannot win, without realising that this is the only way you can loose.
It is like watching good swimmer caught in river's current, but instead of trying to get a shore, he decided to propel forward, confusing sound of waterfall with thunderous applause.
For what it's worth though, regarding bell curve, I would put you on the right side between middle and bottom part of the main body, not in the outliers though.
On October 10 2025 07:12 ChristianS wrote:
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.
Glad you getting better.
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On October 10 2025 23:03 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On October 10 2025 20:55 Jockmcplop wrote:
Tbh I always thought the problems arise from people who can't have an argument without wanting to get the other guy banned.
You shouldn't want that and I don't know why anyone would. Well, sometimes you don't want an argument, you just want the other side to stop spewing utter trash. Case in point, JJR coming in, apropos of nothing, and claiming in a one-liner post that fiat currency is a scam. That isn't an argument. It's a hot take, and the correct response is to shut that shit down asap.
I think ignoring it (after anyone points out how stupid it was) and discussing basically anything else (it's not like there's not far more interesting things happening in US politics) would be a lot more effective at "shutting it down" than whatever you all have been doing for the last several pages.
Light's 3rd shitpost/troll/joke/insult in response probably should have been the end of it.
On October 10 2025 00:48 LightSpectra wrote:
"Why don't you just ask the chatbot that hallucinates 40% of its answers about my conspiracy theories?"
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EPT
