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, youāre 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.
1 Like
MD is an ultra elite poster and Iām really glad heās here. If we can get Fly and DVaut1 weāll be cooking with gas
4 Likes
Chesspainās post did not bother me, I donāt 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 wouldnāt be well received and this isnāt much different regardless of the degree to which you think the government should regulate landlording.
1 Like
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 arenāt.
I think I agree with what I think is your underlying point ā that abolishing landlords would reduce housing supply, but itās still not like banning doctors in healthcare.
I am interested in @Sabo and othersā who want to abolish landlords thoughts on the impact on housing supply.
I didnāt 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?
1 Like
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 shouldnāt piss their pants when someone calls them a communist.
10 Likes
Anyone is isnāt 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)ā¦ itās just us.
Let me say a few things about my own personal āintended directionā and āpurposeā. One: Iām not trying to do some kinda half-ass online activism here. I havenāt repeated this on this site yet, but: I love you folks just like you are, donāt ever change !!!1!. Seriously, Iām not trying to change peopleās 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 derailedā¦ and hereās the important part folks seem to be missingā¦ in general. To elaborate, IDK about being ādistractedā regarding whatever I was babbling on about in these threads (and I am certainly not actually distracted in the slightest), as my āpurposeā isnāt to change peepās minds. IDK at all about this trivial, and somewhat comical, attempt to derail. Iām sure this fool had -zero- malicious intentions, is a generally excellent poster, and this was just a trivial, understandable, and forgettable faux pax. Iāve 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 āRā 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. Itās much more hilarious than contentious to be retro red-baiting here in the 2020s. Itās like thisā¦ 1978 called, itād like itās propaganda backā¦
Just put Zap on his ignore list, I did and my posting improved overnight.
Zapās 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 youāre losing me is that I donāt 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 doesnāt 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 thatās taste.
1 Like
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.
2 Likes
I think my point stands. People like making jokes and most people arenāt very good at it. Threads donāt get derailed when someone makes some dumb joke. They get derailed when someone reacts to it.
2 Likes
Conversations, like trains, donāt 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 āRā 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 styleā¦
2 Likes
Thereās 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 canāt 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.
1 Like
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 (Iām not).
1 Like
Easier to ignore her posts than fight the urge to respond to them.
3 Likes