He has been pretty mercilessly and skillfully trolled for a long time now. He hit his breaking point I guess. I get it. I mean, that kind of thing certainly doesn’t bother me in the same way because it’s a lol internet forum, and a 24 hour temp ban (which I pm’d micro about and told him was fine, no hard feelings) but then, I also wasn’t pouring my heart and soul out in the weeks leading up to the election to try to help the democrats only to be relentlessly attacked and trolled when I posted about it.
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Unfortunately, it’s difficult for me to have sympathy for Cuse, since on more than one occasion he’s justified his extreme reactions by saying “It’s just who I am,” while still expecting others to change their own behavior.
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Even if he is a victim of bullying/trolling or whatever, he clearly has a role in this that he could have easily minimized into nothing if he just let it go.
I’m not saying that anyone should tolerate others being cruel to them, but I honestly haven’t really seen the extent of what you just described. What I’ve seen are two sides that clearly hate each other that both refuse to give an inch. If I were him, and it was really that bad, I would either ignore them and find a way to cope, or leave the site entirely. He’s not even doing that, he’s expecting the community to rally behind him and vanquish his foes when he could just be the adult in the room and let it go - rather than posting 600 word diatribes about how jalfrezi is going to destroy the forum, which only fuels the feud. I am speaking as someone who is VERY easily riled up, and very easily trolled, and I could have gone down similar rabbitholes of clusterfuckery with a few posters here, but I let things go and I’m actually on fairly good terms with one of them now.
And to show I’m truly impartial here, jalfrezi has been acting like an asshole to more than a few people as well, and I am not disputing that. I like all posters involved so I just see it mostly as a “all sides are at fault in some way” thing.
Anyway I don’t wish to re-re-re-re-litigate this, I am just saying that this all seems hopelessly silly to me.
Btw the ■■■■ argument and this drama are very much intertwined, in case no one else sees it.
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Meant to include this in my first post as well, but I guess slow mode prevents edits:
I honestly have a problem keeping a beef up with posters mostly because I don’t even remember it. It’s hard to keep most posters straight. It’s hard to remember usernames and icons unless the poster posts a lot, or has been posting for 15 years back on 2+2. I was legit shocked when micro posted that he thought I hated him. I have no memory of whatever spat led him to believe that. I think most posters here are like that, there are only a small few who keep “track” of the people they are pissed at and keep needling because of years old grudges or whatever.
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So I gotta be honest here… the only word to describe the behavior of this community wrt moderation is cowardly and I’m probably headed out the door not too far behind cuse. This place is turning into one of those places where toxic people never face any consequences at all so they just systematically drive out the people who actually add value. It’s like a job where nobody ever gets fired, which leads to the good people being forced to pick up the slack from the lousy people, their morale plummeting, and them quitting.
I think every single person cuse has gotten into it with (except zara but I mostly think that’s just an example of two people from very different places, times, and frames of reference not mixing well) was in the wrong. He won’t let shit go, and that’s a personal weakness of his, but it doesn’t change the fact that on the facts he’s right, and given the high quality level and insane volume of his posting I think that should be more than enough to justify moderating the people he’s getting into fights with pretty heavy handedly. He’s just worth more to the rest of us than they are to such a degree that to express it correctly I’d need to use exponents.
This place is a small scale demonstration of why I’m falling out love with Democracy. I’m becoming increasingly aware that it’s not possible to create something of high quality while keeping absolutely everyone happy. It is what it is, but I’m pretty over it.
The common denominator in a lot of this forum drama are a few specific posters. Cuse is basically never the only person any of these people have beef with. The fact that he has beef with all the problem children is not evidence that he’s done anything wrong IMO. Telling him that he needs to be the bigger person when he’s in the right, a more valuable member of the community than the aggressor, and not wired like that on a personality level is not a workable solution. Banning the shit out of Jal and his friends is.
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This is part of the problem with so much political debate and ties to the issues we are having here.
A democracy doesn’t mean everyone is happy. It explicitly means some people will be unhappy some of the time.
We are a group of people who have real differences of opinion. That is a feature, not a bug. We need to accept we will win sometimes and lose sometimes. We will be in the majority sometimes and the minority sometimes.
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I don’t know all the specifics of the beef here because I usually keep my posting limited to topics that interest me and that I won’t have to deal with bozos insulting me. But that said, one thing I’ve learned in a long internet life of posting on forums, heavily contributing, trying to make them better, is: They don’t really give a damn about me, or you, or any individual. In the end, they’ll dispose of anybody to keep the self-image the forum has going. The way you describe your experience is very similar to several I’ve had in the past, which is why the only communities I really feel like I’m a part of online are much smaller ones I’ve often started myself or played a major role in building, where I can be confident the community is based on mutual respect and where its members do have each other’s back, rather than forums built on the idea of the forum itself as a wonderful place and where people who don’t find it so are swept under the rug.
Maybe leaving is right for you; I don’t know. In my experience, I stopped caring about forums when I realized they would never care about me. Maybe you just need to find the people who do value you and treat you with respect, if you don’t think you have that here. I wish there was a better answer, but in my experience fighting the tide at places like 4 and others (and oh, boy, do I have some stories on the others), it can’t be fought, and even having a handful of people privately sympathetic to you won’t change anything.
This is going to take time to manifest even if he believes he will get what he’s asking for. He has every right to say as things stand, he does not feel safe or comfortable posting here and may or may not reassess compatibility at a later date.
I hope he does. I’m interested in us making this an inclusive place for him too.
Why are you saying it like this? No one can offer objective proof we care about you, and your purity tests on all manner of subjects dehumanizes everyone you demand satisfy such a test.
The manner in which you choose to express yourself and seek your goals when in conflict here is objectively abusive and is subjectively having an abusive impact.
I am going out on a limb here to say I believe you know your actions are abusive and you are doing so to get the perma-ban you want.
Speaking as a fellow poster, please explore a new form of discourse for conflict resolution at Unstuck Politics. I am sincere when I say if you are one day willing and able to do so, me and many others are interested in exploring a productive and mutually satisfying path forward.
That path forward will not include your consistently abusive posting.
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This place is eating itself alive and I dont think it can survive another month or two like this. We have multiple decent posters saying they are or will post/visit less because of this. Yet, the culprits keep doubling down. They should be absolutely ashamed that they are destroying a community they are apart of over nothing.
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This x100.
Except it’s an internet forum not a political system and the idea of one person one vote is stupid. Not everyone here is producing at the same level, and the fact that we’re somehow not weighing that at all is pretty ridiculous.
We just drove off the second best poster on the site to preserve the so called rights of trolls to ruin other people’s forum experience. If that sounds idiotic it’s because it is. Honestly this whole situation is making me really notice how many people who post here really aren’t contributing to what makes it special on any way… And those people are why we can’t have nice things.
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Pretty much. It would be better for my mental health if I muted everything but the covid thread. I should probably start with the c-word thread
You have to realize those or value judgments. The other side thinks the same. They see their discussions as valuable too.
This is not a both sides thing either. As I said, I was on his side until the last couple days. His behaviour has been atrocious itt and he is losing allies.
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Yeah we have the ability to track likes here. They are clearly heavily outnumbered and given the fact that I read 0.0 posts by those people I’m sure you can guess how much I care about what they value.
Dude this isn’t a both sides spot. And he’s melting down and quitting the site. He wants to be accorded the respect that the quality of his content deserves, and honestly it’s us that need to justify him using this place as an outlet not the other way around.
If I was him I’d have quit 3 rounds ago. I almost quit over people treating Nunnehi as an equal citizen of the site instead of an idiot who probably has NPD which was just insanely triggering for me. The only reason jal doesn’t bother me is that I haven’t read his posts since… well really ever. He was one of the first people to go on the ignore list and every time he’s accidentally resurfaced because of ignore timeouts he’s usually found his way back in 24 hours or less.
Clovis you’re a good poster, but you’re being a coward about this for reasons I honestly can’t understand. There’s a right side and a wrong side if you put any effort into actually watching what’s going on and evaluating the big picture causes and effects. This isn’t an ideals situation this is an operational call that should prioritize what keeps the content quality high and the site viable.
We’re going to lose me, CaffeineNeeded, Cuse, Jmakin, whosnext, and others to preserve the experience of a group of shitty posters who nobody else likes all that much. This kind of bad decision making based on the way people want the world to be instead of the way the world is explains why every utopia fails spectacularly.
You know what I think should be an absolutely bannable offense? Consistently shitty posting. I’m not sorry that I think that either. Those people can read the content still, but they don’t have a right to ruin the whole thing… which is exactly what’s happening now.
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Pretty offense insult. Calling someone a coward is not to cool either.
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If I was lord ruler of the site there would be much more modding, much of it focussed on that group. But I’ve chosen to be a member of a community that wants light modding. I have to accept that is a condition of being here. I am outnumbered so it is up to me to manage the site to best fit my desired output (ignore feature, not reading certain threads etc) or choose to not be part of the community.
Again, I’ll state for the record I’m no fan of a couple of the euros and was fully on Commons side until the last 24 hours. However, as has been stated several times they were being modded.
He won. I don’t know how else to say that. He won. Were they being modded EXACTLY as he would like? No but I point out again we are a community and simply won’t get exactly what we want every time.
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I mean I fundamentally agree with some of this. I just learned my lesson when only 35% of the site wanted nun contained (not even permaed)that it wasn’t worth my time and effort to continue fighting those battles. Was that personally shocking to me at the time, yes. Especially given the voluminous evidence I apparantly wasted time collecting. So I understand what cw is going through. I did take some time after that to be introspective about what I could fix in my own behavior as that’s all I could do.
That being said what sense does it make for me to hop in and go to bat here? The forum has already spoken that much worse posting/behavior than what we have seen here is fine? I don’t want any of you to leave, but me beating my head against a wall and stirring up more drama does what exactly?
This place is never going to be perfect but it does seem like we have a lot of people who want to try and make it better. I would encourage you to see that small positive in this whole negative mess.
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I’m sorry, with all due respect this is ridiculous.
You earn respect by the way you treat people more than the content of your posts. You say you skip past posts of people you don’t agree with, how many people do you think are skipping past Cuse’s wall-o-text rants?
We get it, you don’t want to put up with people you don’t like, you just want people you agree with to summarize the politics of the day to fit your bias and everyone else can fuck off.
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I wasnt trying to be like “fix this shit or I’ll leave” kind of thing. I just find this all incredibly tiring and I find myself skimming past huge swaths of posts so often that I wonder why I’m even wasting my time. During the last few weeks I barely browsed this site and when I came back this shit was STILL raging.
I just want to say again that this entire thing was avoidable, can still be defused, but all parties involved need to suck it up a little bit and realize they’re not going to get every tiny thing they want.
After the events of the last few weeks I’ve never been more certain that pure democracy doesn’t work. I applaud the mods and what microbet is doing here. Thanks.
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