I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.
I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven't trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on "food for thought" things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren't downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.
I foolishly upvoted this comment as a "food for thought" comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.
I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I'm really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.
explanation (not excuse) for those who care to understand why
I live in Ohio, which is immersed in the kind of chud culture that comment was talking about – I see my formerly borderline leftist little brother slipping into it, and it kills me. it's a point of view I remember seeing a lot when I was in DSA and not liking then, but I lack the information and wisdom to effectively articulate my problems with it. I very much want to understand what to do about it and how to talk about this stuff with people who believe it, but I get why it was offensive and shitty to mark it for myself in a way that would default mean "this is good" to others instead of pushing back on it at all or just opening it in a new tab to look at later. I'm very sorry about doing that.
I didn't open it in a new tab because I'm pushing triple digits of tabs open and knew it would be easy to find later because the Amber bot was inflating the comment activity. I keep forgetting to be judicious with my upvotes because I'm AuDHD and unlearning a decade of reddit habits is hard.
you didn't know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I'm just really, really sorry.
as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don't feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I'm sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn't that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.
I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.
I'm very, very, very sorry.
please heap your scorn and excoriation here.
Problems caused by difference of ability can be subtle until they're very suddenly not. Being left handed causes a wide variety of difficulties that are usually mild, but they're constant. I suffered a considerable amount of trouble and some distress in school because left handed scissors were not provided and I was unable to cut paper for projects using the right handed scissors. As you've mentioned; being left handed when writing in a language that is written from left to write means your writing in ink, marker, or lead is going to become smeared. It was, again, a constant problem that caused me a great deal of grief before computers became small enough to carry everywhere. And, as we're currently discussing, I have constant, usually minor, issues with software that was written for right handed people in ways that make it easy to misclick, or even difficult to access UI and controls, while operating it with my left hand. Hell, I have trouble with my headset because the microphone boom is on the left side of the headset to benefit right handed users.
I didn't realize how bad a problem it was until I bought my kid (then a kindergartner) some left-handed scissors because he needed them, and then tried to use them myself
jfc
using wrong-handed tools is awful
my respect and empathy for left-handers went up dramatically after that incident. you all are playing on much worse field.
It's a great example of a the social model of disability and "difference of ability". There's nothing inherently disabling about left handedness, it only becomes a challenge within the context of our culture of tools and machines. It's honestly helped me build compassion and understanding for other differences of ability, especially ones that aren't highly visible or considered "valid" by society at large. If I have these quirky or unexpected problems, I can relate that to how other people encounter "normal" situations in different ways from how I do.
One place where it does offer a distinct edge-case advantage; Sword fighting! When two right handed people face each other their swords are diagonal relative to each other and all training and defense is based on that. Since there are so many more right handed people than left handed people they get very little practice attacking and defending a left handed fighter. Meanwhile, the left handed fighter gets a great deal of practice against right handed fighters. In that one very very specific scenario right handedness becomes a disadvantage due to the left handed fighter's relatively greater experience!
Oh damn, another oddity is skateboarding, I'm left footed but regular which makes my tech game and switch/nollie stuff easier and I can't actually think of a downside there. It's just peculiar.
Never got the issue with scissors, if one hole was bigger than the other I'd just flip them over. Working in kitchens people who'd try to train me on knife stuff early on would get frustrated because they don't really understand that mirroring what someone else is doing isn't that simple, I'm amazing with knives now but I just had to figure out my own way. Playing drums for me is really weird cause hand wise I generally play right handed style but am somewhat ambidextrous, I can switch my snare and cymbal hand mid beat even and stay on time, but I vastly prefer my left foot for a kick pedal if using a single pedal, I can do double kick and I can do kick with my left foot but single kick right foot is no good and I have to re-arrange the kit very strangely where I'm sitting way over to one side, it works but playing a show with one kit that everyone shares can be a thing. Also as a work thing doing line cooking people will naturally go to your leftt side in tight quarters and I have to remind them that's elbow bumpin time. For a while we oddly had a left hand majority kitchen so we got to feel the power for once. It's 10% of the population and industrial accidents lead to a 10 year lower average life span for lefties. My grandma was forced via corporal punishment to be right handed and she was born in 42. So yeah it's not nothing