Glad to have you comrade, thanks for speaking some reason
Apparently, there’s a large contingent of (don’t misinterpret this, but mostly white, cis, male) users that feels so oppressed by tempbans (against fellow cis white men) that they call mods cops. Seriously. A WOC, Cass, who actually has faced police brutality in DC, which has one of the most brutal PDs in the world, was harassed off this site, and you describe the tempban of the man who cursed her out as cop behavior.
Chew on that.
Yep. Not even the first WOC bullied off this site for not having the right attitude/takes. Cass is one of the best posters this site has ever seen, but more importantly one of the most caring and enthusiastic comrades I've ever met. Her loss is devastating.
Gonna take some time and compile my related takes and thoughts on the matter, I've been posting practically all day and a lot of it on this general sphere of topics:
If you're a cis/het neurotypical white guy (or some such combination) please read this.
When the vast majority of the site is cis/het white american males, expecting anything other than reactionary brainworms being common to the point of invisibility (to said majority) is silly
No one knows anything until they learn it, and that goes double when it comes to unlearning propaganda ingrained in us from birth, which is why we have to face that reality clearheadedly and annihilate our liberalism through criticism, reflection, and giving more of a damn about each other than we do about ‘being right’ (aka not even considering you could be wrong)
I'm sure most of us read this and nod along "Of course!" but the problem is that these reactionary tendencies don't usually operate at the conscious level. You won't notice your reactionary behavior (which you don't know about) by looking, anymore than a libs awareness that propaganda exists will get them to question any of their assumptions.
Lots of people say they want this site to be a causal place for sharing leftist memes and discussion. Well I’d say that ‘casual’ is is different for each person too, that’s one of the bigger problems I think.
Something that could be really hurtful or painful or otherwise entirely not casual funtimes for a marginalized person could sneak right past a group of ‘average’ chacha posters, because they don’t notice or understand. That’s a problem with casual spaces when the space is intended as being a space for all, especially marginalized groups, but is dominated by a majority group like cis/het white american males. Y’know what I mean?
And now I'm going to copy over an exchange I had with Cass in her last post:
Cass:
one of the more personal reasons I’m leaving is that I notice the same thing [a lack of speaking up for oppressed people] and it creates a duty for me to speak up, enmeshing me in too many pointless arguments with people who have no intention to reflect or hear criticism.
Me:
It’s like being forced to be the fun killer, like being the parent that has to actually discipline the kids while the ‘fun’ parent comes out smelling like roses, you end up covered in shit with several angry children yelling at you for doing the right thing.
Even worse in this case, because ‘having to speak up’ in the first place is difficult and not many people want to, can, or will stick their necks out that far. And then eventually those that do get worn down until they stop speaking up, and then the very real problem can be quietly ignored.
This isn’t necessarily an intentional process, but choosing to be blind to it is.
ever wonder why I don’t speak up about ableism in the community anymore? This shit right here.
Cass:
I wish you’d speak up about the ableism, friend. it’s a subject I’m just not well enough informed on yet.
Me:
I wish I felt comfortable doing so anymore /:
I usually can’t handle it. It’s hard enough to put words to my thoughts without having to try and fail to make it so people can’t take what I say in bad faith or get upset at me
But like you said, trying to explain, teach or even just point out the existence or flaws of something gets you enmeshed in pointless arguments with people who aren’t arguing in good faith, but solely because they don’t want to self crit, especially when the thing in question doesn’t usually affect cis/het white people, even more especially when it’s a result of that groups behavior directly
Sorry it's so long and not particularly well organized, they're mostly comments I posted elsewhere strung together
i wish i had more to say other than this is a Good Comment. like it takes so much mental energy to engage with problematic posts and comments that i just don't. i don't feel like it's worth arguing when someone is wrong bc i know people won't have any self crit, and that's the kind of attitude makes the site hard to use for minorities. i will mourn the loss of cass :/
it takes so much mental energy to engage with problematic posts and comments that i just don’t
Yeah it's rough, especially when it's the same damn thing over and over
I desperately don't want to give up on this place, but I feel what you're saying strongly. The thought that I should leave occurred to me for the first time when cass left, but I'm not giving up yet, especially not when the nickel club is trying to get people to leave
We have work to do comrades, let's get to it :unity:
Absolutely.
I do not want to leave yet because I still have hope and love my comrades. There are some thread which I do not click because I know I will not like the comment there. If I do click I will not be able to stop myself from feeling that it is my duty to educate. This is not healthy and when I do it it makes me feel burnt out. If comrades stop trying to make their post an argument and do not seek talking point or post simply to fight or cause trouble things will be better. Then such comment will be a simple friendly comment if a user has the wrong perspective to try to explain, and I will not be strained by it.
I want to make this place friendly and beautiful <3
我爱我的同志们 :heart-sickle:
I unfortunately can't read chinese characters. (I really should learn, I hate being a shitty american sometimes. Oh, I know french, that's cool right?! Eye roll)
Anyway, what I'm actually getting at is that you're beautiful, and I hope you keep posting! I'd love to read your thoughts on things!!
Tu es camarade dans tous les langages. Continues de poster aussi, il le faut. Merci d’être présent.
I mean, obviously I wasn't the only one who was like "hmmm, maybe this place is actually irredeemable" when cass left, but it's good to see it in print (on an internet screen, is that really print?!?) I'm going to try to hang around a little longer, in the hopes that shit will get better, because fucking hell, I want chapo to be good!!! Let's do this, comrade. I pledge to call out transphobia, racism, sexism, and ableism whenever I see it. (While acknowledging that I may miss some racism and ableism, because those aren't things I have to deal with in my day-to-day life, since I'm white, able-bodied, and more or less neurotypical.) Let's do this, right?
It's lookin' mighty clean in here. Hope you stick around, friend. :)
Great post @confabulously.
As a Trans woman being a Dev here has been taxing. The team and Admin / Mods are great. But this kind of shit has been infuriating, I participate and help develop for the site because I truly believe in the ability of federated software to help foster Left movements. but I never cease to be disgusted by how toxic people on here can be when asked to do even a slight bit of self-crit.
Yo, dirtbags! when we call you out on shit and ask to you not be shit to other people?
THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE ANSWER IS "YES MOTHER I'LL BE BETTER"
It’s a good thing downvotes were abolished because I just had a visceral gut reaction to smash the downvote button
DOWNVOTES DISABLED
DOWNVOTES DISABLED
DOWNVOTES DISABLED(also that feels vaguely like I am proclaiming I am ableist? Pls change message to DOWNVOTES are for wreckers)
Yeah, there's been a subtle but ongoing change in tone. I think the anger and blackpilling in the political sphere is spilling over into behaviour here, and the Stupidpol types are stirring more shit up. I guess it's not been so subtle for our trans comrades.
Cis White Guys, I know you have Very Important Counterarguments sometimes, but you (and Karens like myself) need to just shut the fuck up in threads on these topics, listen to our marginalised friends, and punch the TERFs/Racists/Wreckers wherever they are. We are playing into the raiders hands.
There will be time for 40 page screeds on why this half completed beer stained note in the Grundrisse proves that OP is a revisionist in your own thread.
Mods, I've said it before and I'll say it again, purge more. Purge me if you have to.
I definitely agree that there has been a significant uptick recently in antagonistic (see: reddit brain) behavio and behavior that makes the space less comfortable for any non cis male.
This site should have a ton of potential as an organizational tool for the left, but it feels like it's just falling into being reddit with less users.
Quick Edit: I had a first sentence as a tongue-in-cheek joke, but after rereading it, it didn't land at all. Lol.
In what world?
In this world? It's a site full of people who are incredibly alienated and full of hatred for capitalism? The best way to get over that is to work it's overthrowing it.
There (at least used) to be posts every week of people wanting orgs to be able to join and/or work with.
The problem is that the culture of the website has shifted, and it's something the mods/admins are know are working on getting back to a place where people can find proper outlets for their alienation.
it’s a website. You are on reddit, you can pretend this is slightly better, and it only is by comparison.
It's not. Maybe you missed what you typed into your browser, but it's a different website both organized and operated differently. If you want reddit, go there and keep that junk on that hellsite.
No it didn’t lol, and if it fundamentally did, it’s because that change was encouraged by the website itself instead of a group of bad users that decided to be assholes one day.
Maybe? Maybe not? Maybe one day we'll get an academic study showing what caused the shift but until that point it's all conjecture. Until that time, though, were left here guessing. Either way, I'm sure it's the mods first time running a website/forum so mistakes will be made and shits gonna have to get worked through.
How the fuck would any new person know about this? Where do you find this information on here if this is supposedly a pipeline for disaffected Bernie babies? Why would people focus on these posts when the highest up-voted content is the most easily digestible and the content that the most reactionary parts of our community can interact with? Do you expect everyone on here to click on every thread with 2 upvotes and 1 comment?
It used to not be burried, they used to end up as top posts with tons of interaction and discussion. They'd happen, as I said, frequently, so people would be able to catch them when they were on.
I have to log off for the night so I don't have time to continue any of this, but by and large, since this is created from scratch I think there's real opportunity for this not to just be "a website" and can be something useful for funneling funds and people into anti-capitalist and mutual aid organizations (on top of like food/life/whatever tips). If you want a place to only shit post and have your opinions validated there's reddit and twitter for that. They exist and have this own space. My hope is that this can be more than something to pass the time before the world is destroyed.
I hear you, but we need these toxic men to stan for juche land and China. We need their hard headed passion to combat the libs.
she's spot on with everything here. if i didn't mod the trans comm, i'd have also left without a word.
also lol @ the people proving her point in the comments by creating some evil admin conspiracy to downvote them while not engaging with her post at all.
I am once again respectfully asking anyone who analogizes posting/upvotes to political activity to listen to the Adam Curtis chapo episode.
As a massive lib I've always been a bit cautious about how a revolutionary vanguard would play out but even the little experiment with chapo.chat suggests how absolutely critical it is
So this wasn't even my issue with the calls for election, but it also makes sense. (For the record, my issue was: how do we know it's honest to god chapos (and not wreckers) who are voting? That seems difficult to impossible to ensure.)
The work you're doing for PSL is probably too important to have a lot psychic bandwidth diverted by trolls on shitposting sites. :stalin-smokin:
At one of the old companies I worked at, there was a big problem with older people clicking on phishing email links.
So our IT folks decided to intentionally set up a fake email phishing "honeypot." They sent out a bunch of clearly spam phishing emails from a spoofed addresses with a link to click on to "send account details."
This link actually sent them to an educational link that explained what phishing emails were and why not to click on them. This was repeated a few weeks later, but this time repeat offenders were logged and reported to management.
It actually ended up being a pretty effective teaching moment.
I'm not active enough on here to see or understand what the hell warrants all the posts like this, but I support and trust efforts to make the site less shit 👍
I remember the pronoun shit though - not sure if entirely related - that was wack and I expect better from us.
This is heartbreaking to read. As someone who has been actively reading the site since day one but rarely commenting, I completely agree with your conclusion. I feel complicit having seen much of this without actively pointing it out, and having fallen for some of it myself.
I understand it can be hard to recognize your own prejudice, but that is exactly what many of us, myself included need to do if we are to have any chance of preserving the good parts of this community.
Thank you for taking the time to spell out the issue for people like me, who don't experience the transphobia/racism firsthand. I had been getting a bad feeling about the events on the site in the last few weeks, but having it complied the way you did finally made me realize the severity of the situation. :trans-heart:
Mods: increase the bans. Start banning people who complain about the bans. Start IP bans. Do like SA and require a few bucks for new accounts to discourage sockpuppets. Anything you can think of, fucking go ham.
I'm tired of the drama, tired of seeing good people leave because of the drama. Normally on reddit I just point and chuckle at the drama but this is different. Reddit is basically a sewer full of assholes and I think it's funny when they turn on each other; I like to bait and instigate some of it myself when possible. This site is the opposite, it's a good place with good comrades, we can't tolerate the bullshit and wrecking anymore.
I know we're all dirtbags and contrarians and normally we all take pride in being a pain in the ass and a lot of us have learned to enjoy conflict, but we need to get the actual assholes under control, and if that means aggressively enforcing our standards then so be it. Fucking purge time. Keep on banning and don't stop until we've achieved full posters communism. Once the conflict is won decisively and moderation is reduced to a strictly administrative task, then the moderation can wither away. Until then it's fucking cultural revolution time.
90% of online drama originates from bans. Every new ban is an opportunity to litigate whether or not it was justified or it was mod abuse or whatever. Bans are all well and good but let's not pretend they'll end the drama.
no reason to be a coward about it when new accounts are so easy to make
It's also very handy when for I want to get yelled at by @Kirbyoto_Sockpuppet or libbed at by @Prince_KropotkinSock
This might be the only way, I have no problem with making other white leftists a little uncomfortable via bans etc. if it means we can have a truly inclusive space for our marginalized comrades. :cat-trans:
Good post.
I agree that things can feel extremely personally attacking when things go certain ways around here. I've brought it up myself, I think it probably affected some of my activity but I couldn't say for sure.
I think one of the major factors in how personal it can feel around here is also that you genuinely fall in love with the place. This then results in it really fucking hurting when it feels like a place you love is lashing out at you and hard.
I use a lot of social media and I've never felt as negative as I have done in those few incidents where I felt personally attacked by a large number of people on a place I love.
I don't know how to solve this particular problem but wanted to say I agree. Disagreements and struggle sessions feel and turn that way particularly often.
thanks for this beautiful, elegant post connie. bookmarked, this is definitely where i'm going to send the r*dditor population to next time instead of engaging.
