Right, but at the same time, just today, Keed made what I thought were some thoughtful and sincere posts, and you accused him of “nuance trolling.” That’s the kind of immediate hostility I’m talking about that I just don’t think will ever be reconciled because there’s too much bad blood to get past.
But again, my point is that it’s not “one group.” It’s both of them (of course “group” here is defined pretty loosely, but you know what I mean). For every time, for example, jalfrezi posts something out of line, I can find something out of line directed toward him that seems to be excused, like zara calling him an alcoholic. You find someone on one side defending the use of the c-word, I find someone on the other side mocking the idea that women’s stories of sexual assault should be taken seriously. For every person who ended up leaving and who comes back and posts something confrontational (or just posting, honestly), I can find someone engaging with them for no reason but to inflame and antagonize them. “For every Jbro, a jman,” if you will.
And personally, I have been disappointed by some of the overarching decisions. I thought Chad was correct in his dispute with Wookie over ikes (I don’t know if this is the case but it felt like scant few other people felt that way), and I was disappointed by Wookie’s stance. I think it sends the message that the feelings of a white guy who’s said bigoted things in the past are more important than the feelings of the people who were targets of that bigotry. I don’t think that’s the message you want to send unless you want this to be a place of white guys with reactionary streaks; I thought the whole point of splitting this off from 2p2 was so it wouldn’t be that.
So, I’m generally not invested because I don’t have a lot of affection for 2p2 and its spinoff communities from the way I was repeatedly treated on there, and because I’ve seen some of that carry over here immediately, and I’m done trying to force a community to accommodate me if they don’t want to. I have communities where I genuinely feel like I belong, and where I don’t, I don’t participate or only participate insofar as I get something from it.
I’ve been told that my own grievances with how certain people have treated me here aren’t actually how it happened or how they are. I think all we are is our actions, so that doesn’t jive with me and it seems like a way to excuse behavior from certain people for whatever reason. In that sense I do get where the people who left are coming from, even if I think they often cause or exacerbate the problems with their own behavior, and by and large they would be better off just leaving and letting it go because they’re not going to get what they want from this place.
In general, I think there’s been poor behavior on both “sides” of this argument and I think there’s too much bad history to ever resolve it. If you do want to resolve it and try to hold this place together, it’s going to take a lot of honest self-reflection all around, probably some period of reconciliation, a lot of apologies. And as of today I don’t see much inclination from anyone to do any of those things.