Only someone who is not good at posting would let a snarky comment such as this derail them from their intended direction in an online conversation.
Ignore it. To the extent that you allow it to distract you from the actual discussion, you’re allowing it to serve its purpose.
I thought it was a good post actually. But then again, I believe capitalism with strong controls is the best system out of a bunch of really bad systems.
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MD is an ultra elite poster and I’m really glad he’s here. If we can get Fly and DVaut1 we’ll be cooking with gas
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Chesspain’s post did not bother me, I don’t much mind derails anyway, and it was kind of a joke, but of course Sabo is right and it was a cheap shot-red baiting-derailing-joke. If there were a thread about universal health care and someone suggested renaming it the commie-pinko thread, they wouldn’t be well received and this isn’t much different regardless of the degree to which you think the government should regulate landlording.
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But we can have universal health care without being commie-pinkos. A lot of the ideas in that thread cannot be done in a capitalist society.
And @Sabo is also right about who does what. In the housing world construction workers are the doctors; landlords aren’t.
I think I agree with what I think is your underlying point – that abolishing landlords would reduce housing supply, but it’s still not like banning doctors in healthcare.
I am interested in @Sabo and others’ who want to abolish landlords thoughts on the impact on housing supply.
I didn’t actually notice many ideas about what to do instead. I did suggest some communal home building that happens in Spain, which is a capitalist society.
Ok, and people did mention that large amount of nice public housing in Austria - a capitalist society and the government owns a lot of the housing in Singapore - a capitalist society.
Health care can be socialized without ending all capitalism, why not rental housing?
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I assume that people familiar with my posting history know I am a Bernie supporter and have pretty progressive views.
However, when people present a thesis that literally calls for the elimination of private property, they shouldn’t piss their pants when someone calls them a communist.
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Anyone is isn’t interested in Meta-Shiz can happily skip this post, and rest of this entire discussion for that matter.
OK (and assuming that there exists other Unstuckers who are actually interested in Meta-Shiz)… it’s just us.
Let me say a few things about my own personal “intended direction” and “purpose”. One: I’m not trying to do some kinda half-ass online activism here. I haven’t repeated this on this site yet, but: I love you folks just like you are, don’t ever change !!!1!. Seriously, I’m not trying to change people’s minds, and I still feel a little bad about that one time I slipped up and actively did try (sorry again @geewhysee).
OTOH, one thing I do find of interest, is the Meta-issues surrounding how these kinda online conversations end up getting derailed… and here’s the important part folks seem to be missing… in general. To elaborate, IDK about being “distracted” regarding whatever I was babbling on about in these threads (and I am certainly not actually distracted in the slightest), as my “purpose” isn’t to change peep’s minds. IDK at all about this trivial, and somewhat comical, attempt to derail. I’m sure this fool had -zero- malicious intentions, is a generally excellent poster, and this was just a trivial, understandable, and forgettable faux pax. I’ve already forgotten it. My Q has -zero- to do about me personally, and has -zero- to do with this fool personally. OK folks?
As I mentioned, this is just a canonical example of a common kind of derailment technique. Usually these examples, for what I hope are obvious reasons, revolve around highly contentious topics (for us, typically the “R” word). Obviously, highly contentious topics make really poor examples to to use when discuss general issues.
But here, we got a blast from the 1970s. It’s much more hilarious than contentious to be retro red-baiting here in the 2020s. It’s like this… 1978 called, it’d like it’s propaganda back…
Just put Zap on his ignore list, I did and my posting improved overnight.
Zap’s may bring a unique view into the forum but also uses that as the lens through which they criticize arguments and derail threads. I have zero common ground with her circumstances and am not interested in my actions being judged or critiqued by someone who has no common ground with mine.
Sabo is a good example of how, contrary to popular opinion, anarchists are very organized - self-organizing.
Me? Not so much.
I guess where you’re losing me is that I don’t know what the conversation is supposed to look like without what you consider derailment. In other words, where are the rails?
I think it is more interesting when a thread has many tangents and doesn’t continually go over the same territory. I am more in favor of a postmodern playfulness which denies that any thread should have a narrative which must be strictly hewn to.
Yeah, like not to go all Discourse Bro, but her primary mode of engagement seems to be expressing incredulity that disagreement exists. Not exactly Huxley-Wilberforce stuff. Far from ignore-worthy, imo, but that’s taste.
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Whats the point of telling everyone that you put someone on ignore? Is it just a way to throw a final jab at someone? I doubt anyone cares about the thought process you used to come up with your decision.
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I think my point stands. People like making jokes and most people aren’t very good at it. Threads don’t get derailed when someone makes some dumb joke. They get derailed when someone reacts to it.
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Conversations, like trains, don’t need a purpose to be derailed. There is nothing Post-Modern about changing the subject.
Let me give another canonical example of this same general derailment technique:
Poster F: Gee, segregated lunch counters sound kinda bad.
Poster N: There you go again being all PC and bringing “R” into everything.
What poster N is doing here is this: He is attempting to derail the conversation by changing the subject away from segregation and onto how the PC Police are running amok again.
But without that hilarious 1970s style…
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There’s nothing inherently wrong with changing the subject. A thread should be able to handle multiple conversations running side-by-side. Honestly, some of the whining about derails feels like it comes from people who can’t handle the information overload of several streams coalesced into one.
The example you give is someone just flat-out being wrong. Political correctness is awesome, we should have more of it, and we should be allowed to punch people in the face when they are politically incorrect.
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Whoever NotBruceZ used to be in the old country, he got a spanking from MD at some point, bet that. Might narrow the list of candidates for those especially interested in who he was (I’m not).
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Easier to ignore her posts than fight the urge to respond to them.
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