I will use my daily post itt to say that this was well stated and contains a great deal of insight.
3 Likes
This might be the fundamental disagreement between the two sides. My own view of Sabo’s posting is almost entirely based on his posting style.
3 Likes
I don’t think Sabo is really a big part of the forum drama. He just latched himsef on an existing drama for maximum effect.
3 Likes
None of us can get into sabo’s secret inner heart but I might buy Flynn’s argument if it wasn’t for two things,
-
Our coauthored thread where he does the exact same thing and there was literally zero actual political discussion. He trolled his own thread about changing the discourse here. I am glad our PMs became public about that because I literally begged him to self-moderate the tiniest bit and he just refused to acknowledge he ever did anything wrong.
-
the use of my name, and ongoing use of other forum members names, at his new site.
Those two things are simply pure trolling meant only to create division and fights.
I won’t be debating this point with anyone as it’s not something that can be resolved. I am utterly convinced he doesn’t believe a word he types and only wants to create chaos. Nobody will convince me otherwise and I won’t convince them. I just couldn’t let the record stand that people don’t like sabo cause he is an anarchist. That is just plain silly. Micro is an anachist. Nobody reacts to him the same.
Also the vote was meaningless to answer the question Flynn claims. Many of the no votes could be people opposed to all permabans, a very common belief here.
1 Like
Would you feel any better if Sabo offered Maoism or whatever (I don’t know his personal leanings)? My guess is no. My point being that you know perfectly well what the alternative is, you just aren’t comfortable with it for xyz reasons, which I’m sure you’d be happy to share. By being vague he avoids that unproductive step
3 Likes
This.
Ok last post ever for me itt. Life is too short.
The thread below, which I had muted but I can now see it went on for a while without me, is a perfect example of how sabo drags the forum down. Bit by bit these kinds of threads erode the enjoyment of the forum and run off good posters. I will give him credit for actually trying to state a position here a few times, between the stream of insults. I had completely forgotten about this thread.
The thread began from a post I made in the LC thread, not directed at anyone, making fun of a failed libertopia in New Hampshire. I made one off-hand comment about how I thought alternative govt systems could be great for small communities but break down in large groups - precisely because of bad actors like in bear-topia. (This forum is becoming another example of how a few bad actors can wreck a small community imo.)
Sabo went on the attack, out of the blue and completely out-of-line compared to the tone and content of what I posted:
And then of course all hell broke loose and the LC thread descended into name-calling and rancor until it was excised to it’s own thread. Completely unnecessary. Instigated by Sabo, as usual.
Somehow I still manage to defend my points later in the thread without calling anyone ignorant or otherwise insulting them.
But it looks like once Sabo once again editing one of my posts in another thread to mischaracterize my meaning and make me look worse:
When I really said:
That’s some Andy Ngo-level propaganda BS there.
And ending with this condescending petulant post made long after I had left the thread, still pulling in posts of mine from other threads:
This repeated pattern of immature antagonistic behavior is a huge net negative to the community imo. Microbet and MysteryConman both manage to make their points in that thread in a completely non-offensive way. But it’s easy when your goal is to actually engage in discussion, as opposed to just pissing all over the forum to mark your territory.
9 Likes
The posts from jmakin that you screen grabbed are MUCH worse than the posts from Sabo. And you do have a habit of straw manning the left while making no effort to learn about what they’re advocating. See, for example, all of the times you say things like “oh I’m not for murdering all landlords so that means I’m a terrible conservative according to the lefty posters” or whatever.
Edit: this is in reply to suzzer.
7 Likes
My first bizarre experience with Sabo is when he started a thread asking for me to be banned because I had referred to him as a communist in the landlord thread.
I knew then he was a cowardly troll.
I had written a post in the 4-hour cooldown period, I won’t post most of it because it’s laboring the point, but it contained this:
You can’t “argue against” Sabo because he is never actually prepared to argue for anything. Suzzer’s post is not exactly arguing against the proposition that capitalism is a cause of climate change, it’s pointing out that while it looks like Sabo is arguing this, he is actually not.
Snap.
Man I really like your posts, but this is hands down the worst one you have ever made. What is annoying about Sabo is that he pretends to be willing to have a discussion about something, but if you try to engage you discover that what he’s actually planning to do is ignore everything you write, post the same thing over and over and adopt a supercilious “you just don’t get it, do you” tone while doing it.
The problem here is not actually that the community has a line over which posters are deemed a detriment to the forum, it’s that you disagree with where it has been placed. You’re wrapping yourself in the cloth of “defending the community” here but the actual reason you have spent hours writing legalistic guidelines and even more hours arguing about how they are applied is to attempt constrain moderators into moderating the forum in the manner you think it should be done. You will not accept that different people have different and equally valid ideas on how moderation should work. This characterisation of not banning people as some sort of moral imperative, like it’s a transgression of their human rights, is another attempt to position your opinion on how moderation should work as the only valid one.
Like PocketChads is the one who banned Sabo and he shares this view of yours that the community is important to a lot of people, I know this because he said so in the PM megathread. So while I’m fully aware the paragraph above is going to piss you off, I think you’re being arrogant in casting a difference of opinion as a moral failing on the part of the rest of the forum.
17 Likes
When you’re getting ratio’ed, maybe it it is you who is wrong, or maybe it is the kids who are wrong!
This is a legitimately good idea. I realize that the misuse of “gaslighting” as a synonym for “lying” has suddenly become common, but irl it at least still seems to maintain it’s gendered inter-personal context. For dudes to be using this on an internet forum is unseemly and weird. Also irritating.
2 Likes
The difference between plain old lying and gas lighting is that the liar knows the person they are lying to knows it’s a lie and is seeking to coerce the person being lied to into treating the lie as fact.
It’s the right word for what is going on here.
1 Like
I am not convinced that gaslighting is occurring on either side. Without the original PMs being accessible to all (and it’s not like most people would cite them if they were accessible), people are relying on memory to refer to what was contained. Memory is unreliable. People reconstruct the past mentally, so they “remember” things in a way that makes facts fit into pre-existing schemas of knowledge. Many people have strongly preconceived notions about people on the other side. Their memory of past posts is strongly influenced by a desire to avoid the cognitive dissonance of what they think happened not matching up with what they expected to happen.
People might not even be lying.
2 Likes
Sabo (short for sabotage I now assume) is full of irony and other vitamins.
This dude telling me Fidget didn’t actually say what he very clearly wrote is textbook gaslighting.
3 Likes
Except Johnny does accept that! Moderate away in the main forum! Bans for all, Oprah-style. Johnny just wants a subforum that is moderated in a different way.
5 Likes
Based on his past posts, I don’t think Johnny accepts the “equally valid” part. He has said things to the effect that “adults” would have certain views, with the implication being the people who don’t have those views are children or toddlers. But I will let Johnny speak for himself if he wishes to do so.
Well my bad, I mean you were posting in the Sabo ban thread criticising moderation, so I naturally assumed you were opposed to the ban. It’s a fucking full time job trying to keep up with who is for what and I frankly have no idea, so you’re right, I’m probably off base on a lot of this. Look at it from my perspective, though. You drew up the rules governing moderation, you were active in About Unstuck, you quit in a huff for reasons I still don’t really understand, you’re back here after “quitting” to argue about moderation in multiple threads. Am I wrong at the very least to conclude you’re a central force in the continuation of this entire drama?
To lay my cards on the table, I don’t really give a fuck if Sabo is banned or not. IDK if you saw it or not but 6ix and I had a conversation in another thread about whether watevs is a good poster (his view) or the most chronically under-moderated poster in the forum (my view). These views are irreconcilable. I don’t really care, my entire effort to enforce my views has been a solitary PM to Wookie quoting a watevs post and being like “how is this guy a thing”. What I want more than anything is for everyone to shut the fuck up about moderation. As I posted upthread, I have met microbet a couple times, he is a chill guy, yet he was driven to insanity by About Unstuck. The cause of this was not any particular ideas on moderation, it was the endless argument and second-guessing around moderation. I’m on the side of anyone with a plan to make people shut the fuck up about all of this. I don’t give the slightest shit who is banned and who isn’t, because as far as I can tell all the bans have at least a reasonable argument on their side.
“We need another forum where my moderation views will hold sway” is the very soul of not accepting that other views are equally valid. I know you’ll be like “no don’t you see, we can all live under our own desired moderation” but this splintering of the forum will not be the end of it. It’ll just happen all over again.
4 Likes
We literally had no moderation for over a year. It changed because most people got fed up with the nonstop feuds and personal attacks. Some people’s causation of all the drama is completely backwards.
1 Like
Seems like the feuding and personal attacks got worse after adopting the 22 style of moderation and mods, no?
3 Likes