New account but I've been using burner accounts and lurking since the sub got banned. I've been seeing all the standard liberal brainworms again for the first time since reddit-logo and everytime it's an account from another federation. I was tepidly against federation at first but this has been entertaining, like the old days of pigpoop people who wandered into the sub.

I gotta imagine this will only last another week before everyone defederates us, but let's enjoy it for now.

  • stillwater@lemm.ee
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Not scientific but we also haven't been in this weird new internet era long enough for there to be that much science.

    I firmly believe GamerGate only happened because things like ShitRedditSays and bullying culture raised the emotional intensity of discourse, which of course caused wilder swings in the other direction.

    Many people who jumped on board with GG originally weren't people trying to harass women, they were people upset with all the condescension and derision they got from what were labelled "SJWs".

    (NOTE: I am extremely anti-GG so any sensitivity to this is because I want to avoid another far right incel neckbeard movement, but this time with more political violence).

    I don't have a horse in this race. All of the discourse in these communities (including lemmygrad and hexbear) don't really concern me. I don't feel made fun of or attacked by anything I see going one way or the other. But the tone of the posts I see from these instances really reminds me of the highly hostile groups of old like SRS and KIA.

    Like I think a lot of it is being done ironically? I hope so anyway. But eventually irony turns into sincerity.

    The adage "you catch more flies with honey than vinegar" has been around for good reason. So far, these communities that have reached the main pages in other federations haven't exactly put forth a welcoming or informative attitude. Especially when so many people are trying to figure out how federations even work, it's not easy to go and find the more educational and informative parts behind the bullying, dunking culture posts that do seem to make it to the top.

    I honestly have zero clue what these federations are trying to be. It seems fun but there's also an element that seems weirdly serious and intense about being mean. I'm just confused by what the actual tone is supposed to be.

    I hope my posting these thoughts here instead of complaining on other federations signals that this is just a genuine observation for the purposes of promoting healthy and quality discourse and maybe to foster some thoughts about how to treat others who aren't trying to cause fights (and, hey, if someone is being a troll, then I'm pro loosing a can of ass kicking). I'm not here to piss on anyone's parade but merely to suggest that second and third order consequences from large groups like these adopting certain attitudes are real, and have happened before.

    • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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      1 year ago

      Many people who jumped on board with GG originally weren't people trying to harass women, they were people upset with all the condescension and derision they got from what were labelled "SJWs".

      This is revisionist as fuck. Just like modern complaints about "woke" and "cancel culture", most of people's feeling about these things being real come from reactionaries telling them that it's omnipresent and seeing a handful of exceptional cases. GG has a recorded history of being an impressively-orchestrated 4chan (etc) op, maybe the most successful that they ever had.

      • stillwater@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        I'd say you're being more revisionist than I am. You know it was well orchestrated but you're totally missing what the methods and mechanisms to convince the "middle" were. It didn't become a movement almost literally overnight because the extremists all went mask off.

        Were you even there when it grew and happened? It sounds like you missed it entirely and only know about it from after-the-fact recordings that can't possibly capture the actual contemporary phenomena as it gripped communities in front of us.

        Also, the nature of the replies to my comment are more in line with how GGers responded than it isn't. Please go back and reconsider how my comment was actually about how bad behaviour fosters more bad behaviour.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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          1 year ago

          I was around for it, yes, but I also read research on it because the basic nature of the movement is an illusion created by enculturation, as I already indicated

          • stillwater@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            And that's the only thing you got out of it? The size and speed of the movement cannot simply be attributed to just a 4chan initiative.

            • GarbageShoot [he/him]
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              1 year ago

              I'm not saying there wasn't already a popular base for right wing aggrievement politics

              • stillwater@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                Oh totally. It's how they ensnared more people that aren't actually all that right wing initially that concerns me.

    • Awoo [she/her]
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      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I firmly believe GamerGate only happened because things like ShitRedditSays and bullying culture raised the emotional intensity of discourse, which of course caused wilder swings in the other direction.

      Holy fucking shit you're blaming SRS for Gamergate are you out of your fucking mind? It was an intentional fascist op.

      And how the fuck can you act like SRS was ineffective? Reddit was a reactionary shithole (more so than today) back then. Gamers said "HAHA I RAPED YOU", redditors all said there were no women on the internet and quoted the rules that rule 34 comes from unironically. r/jailbait was defended by them as freespeech and Violentacrez was "thrown under a bus" by the admins, according to redditors at that time. Do you remember what being trans on reddit was like back then? Any idea? Because I do. EVERYWHERE on reddit was like r/conservative is today. All the liberals were exactly like that. Utterly hostile to trans people.

      Judging by how much has changed the methods utilised by the left on reddit (by which I mean us) were VERY effective at changing all of these things. And it was achieved by being radical, not kowtowing to that shit. By creating different cultural spaces and taking an utterly hostile stance to them.

      The problem with liberals with closed minds is that you have to make them uncomfortable first before they'll open them. Only after they've had some really negative experiences do they eventually prefer to have a positive one and open up to actually engaging in good faith. Then they actually fucking learn something. Until you kick that door down all your sugar instead of vinegar is meaningless.

      • stillwater@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        No, I'm not blaming SRS for GamerGate. Nor did I say SRS was ineffective either. You've misunderstood what I actually said and, consequently, this does not feel like you're actually responding to me but to some other sentiment you've detected in the past and have falsely ascribed back to me.

        My focus is on how bad behaviour leads to bad behaviour. In fact the last time I experienced multiple people purposefully misinterpreting what I said in order to get mad at me was... GamerGaters.

        • Awoo [she/her]
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          1 year ago

          It's not bad behaviour that creates the escalatory reaction. It's being effective.

          • stillwater@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            There are different ways to be effective and the very real downside of the bad behaviour method is that it pushes people the other way and creates overcompensation if the receiver of the behaviour cannot figure out what the problem is.

            Like I get it when applied to someone who is being a troll on purpose but if it's someone who just went the wrong direction a bit, it can push them further down that path.

            That's why there are so many people now who wonder how fell for it but still to this day have a reservation about social justice and feminism. They still harbour resentment from the bullying.

            • Awoo [she/her]
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              1 year ago

              Nah man. You're doing what the white moderates did to the civil rights activists, and you're doing what the liberals did to the lgbt activists.

              You're claiming that we'd be more effective if we toned it down, dialed it back a bit, only pursued things in a lukewarm way.

              You are devoted more to order instead of justice.

              The best approach is the one that works, the one that motivates a movement, the one that creates something. That's what we did, and I regret absolutely none of it. You should absolutely read MLK's letter from a birmingham jail, it's quite relevant here.

              You won't like this comparison, but I say it is extremely apt to compare you to the white moderate, people who are sympathetic in the abstract but judgmental of the tactics deployed in actual campaigns.

              • stillwater@lemm.ee
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                1 year ago

                No, I'm not saying to tone it down. I'm saying pick the targets better. It leads to the wrong results to treat everyone like they're the enemy.

                Is the goal to push people away and create a small community of coordinated bullies, or is it to bring as many people as possible on board with a message?

                The white liberals asked the Civil Rights movement to stop by basically suggesting they had nothing to protest about. I don't know how to be clearer that I recognize there is a lot to protest about and more people should get in on it.

                My goal here is to maximize the amount of people who understand the plight, not to ask you all to stop. I simply believe there are better ways than just getting mad at the first sign of a disagreement and dogpiling on that person with memes and anger.

                • Awoo [she/her]
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                  1 year ago

                  The goal is not to bring as many people on board at all. This is a complete misunderstanding of the tactics of these radical pushes.

                  The goal is to make libs uncomfortable. Because it is the only thing that causes them to move their position.

                  Their entire thing is "uphold the status quo". This is the position of pretty much every single politically illiterate liberal who really doesn't understand what any ideology actually is. They change their shape in order to fit themselves into whatever the existing social paradigm is.

                  This is why LGBT people got absolutely nowhere with liberals until they literally bullied them with riots and pride parades saying a big visible fuck you to everyone that ever tried to make them invisible. They could not be asked to change they had to be bullied and forced. Once the social paradigm is changed they then accept it.

                  This is why anger and cancelling on twitter became a thing. It bullies liberals into new social paradigms.

                  This is why it works for dirtbag leftists.

                  And this is why they picked up guns and shot at whoever the nazis told them to shoot at. Not because they were true believers. But because mussolini or hitler and every other fascist simply bullies them into a new social paradigm... and once the paradigm is changed they accept it.

                  Liberals are absorbomorphs. Their ideology is absorbomorphism.

                  This is the tactic that you're against, the only tactic that works - make them uncomfortable so that they then shift their position in order to find a new comfort-zone. Because that's all they want, to find a comfortable space to exist in to live and not really think about anything. If they're comfortable currently they WILL NOT MOVE until you first make them uncomfortable.

                  They will not bother with attempting to understand anything until you have first made them uncomfortable, because they're lazy. They are comfortable and lazy and do not want to learn shit unless they must, and they only feel like they must after you have first made them uncomfortable.