I reported it before I saw Spectre’s response. Seeing as there had already been a response, I knew my report would be meaningless. I had two choices: talk to Spectre directly, or get clarification for everyone.
Unfortunately, I was too sure I was right about the rule and thought a public response would be better.
No. I don’t know where people got that idea. I don’t particularly like snark about family. Jokes are more acceptable, but they have to be true jokes.
Again, I thought snark about family was off limits. I know I avoid it, and I know a lot of other people seem to avoid it. I thought it crossed the jerk line, and was pretty sure of myself. But I was wrong.
That may have been what I was thinking of.
May I ask why? Would not an attack on, say, your kids (if you have them) hurt you more than any personal attack? At the very least I would want them in the Pit.
Ugh. This again. I don’t want the place to be hearts and rainbows. I do want it to be consistent. Snark is fine, but sometimes it crosses a line. I think I’ve mostly got a good idea of where everyone draws the line, and, based on the rules I thought were established, I thought this was over it. It is over my personal line.
I post on several message boards where being a jerk is not only allowed but practically encouraged. And, on those, I’m likely to be a bigger jerk that I would be in real life, just to fit in.
One thing about me I’ve always noticed: I tend to take on the characteristics of the group I’m with. I don’t do it intentionally, but it happens nonetheless. I try to honestly be who I am, but that changes on me.
You’ll note that the way I responded to you guys on the Giraffe board was different than the way I respond here. Maybe not that different, since it’s the same people and I’ve not been there often enough, but still different.
BTW I like that board more than you guys know. It actually helped convert me to the idea that knowing that someone can call you out makes you be a better person. The giddiness I see all the time in threads there is amazing. It’s too bad I totally screwed up any chance of appearing there, as I would like that to rub off on me, too.
Forgot something in my previous response. I don’t “tuck my tail…and run,” I just refuse to go back to threads and get angry again once my anger has subsided. I have a quick temper, but it fizzles out pretty quickly. Often one post is enough.
It’s a practical matter. I don’t like staying upset, especially when I’m feeling bad otherwise. Furthermore, I just don’t prioritize going back to threads unless I or someone else has asked a question that I want an answer to. Often I don’t respond because I never even see the response, or at least don’t see it until the thread has moved on, and nothing in it is gratuitous enough to deserve a response.
There seems to be a lot of selection bias on figuring out how I think. This isn’t the first time I’ve explained how I read this board or the Pit in particular.
It’s a message board. Most people wouldn’t care.
In the thread you’re talking about BigT, the OP defended it, then mod addressed the issue. What’s the deal with you?
Hilarious. No one’s trying to “figure out how you think” - no one cares. What they are doing is getting pissed off at your constant moralizing paired with your inability to integrate any subsequent criticism aimed back at you. If you’re so good at chameleonizing into a board culture, why does this behavior of yours repeat itself over and over and over?
Sorry, but it’s not irrelevant. If you have a difficult time dealing with interactions that cause you to become angry, you should stop creating interactions that cause you to become angry. Anything less is highly hypocritical.
But you really didn’t seem all that upset about it, as you did here.
I didn’t realize I was particularly known for feminist posts, but OK. Mostly I just find it bizarre how you’ll go out of your way to chastise people for saying things that could conceivably be mean or even slightly hurtful. Or you’ll give people advice on navigating social situations that are so outside the realm of how people really act. And given that you do have these social issues that you feel comfortable dispensing advice considering that most of the time you don’t really seem to have a good sense of what’s normal social behavior.
[30,000 foot perspective]We have rules (everywhere except the Pit forum) about not insulting another poster. We do NOT have any rules about insults directed at non-posters. Thus, in every forum, it’s fair game to insult politicians, actors, the rude bus driver, etc.
The issue is not whether we hurt someone’s feelings. That’s impossible to judge or enforce. The moderators can’t tell or control how someone thinks. Feelings are invisible and subjective. The issue is whether there is a personal insult directed at another poster; that’s visible and (reasonably) objective.
Another poster’s family, unless they are also posters, would thus be fair game for insults. Example: We have lots of threads about “My mother said…” and other posters reply “Your mother is rude and insensitive.” There could be situations where an insult addressed at a poster’s family is simply a guise for an insult addressed at the poster (“Your whole family must be in-bred to produce such stupid offspring”) but such situations would be the exception.
One does expect a modicum of taste, of course. Gratuitous insults directed at a poster’s family that are not relevant to the thread topic would be thread-defecating at best, and jerkish at worst. And do remember that the definition of “personal insults” varies a bit by forum, stricter in Cafe Society and looser in MPSIMS. [/30,000 foot perspective]
Thread Defecating is “better” than jerkish behavior?
People weren’t attacking you because you’re agoraphobic and/or depressed. They were also pointing it out that you use it as an excuse to be offended. “Oh, why are you picking on me? Can’t you see, I’m DEPRESSED AND AGORAPHOBIC!!! You are bigots against the mentally ill!!!”
Do you know, there was a time when I had linked to photos of some vacation or other, and my family’s pictures were on there. And the snarkers snarked on my family so bad I was almost in tears. And it still didn’t occur to me to do anything but man up and deal with it and understand that they know nothing about my family so whatever they say is by default, wrong.
Besides, just because someone’s family doesn’t automatically mean you love them. I have family members I loathe. My aunt and uncle, for example. He’s a condescending jackass and she’s a psycho hosebeast. (We think she might even be bipolar.)
I have friends I care about far more than I some family members – so why are family the only ones off-limits?
Don’t I know that one. My own mom I’m pretty sure was bipolar.
But this was my aunts, and while they are freaks in their own right, they certainly do love me.
Besides, I love a lot of my family. I just don’t like them.
No, I call people bigots for saying shit against the mentally ill that they woudn’t say against a gay person. It’s double standard. The mentally ill do not choose to be that way any more than any minority does. Not a single gay person on this board, no matter how much they inform people that their homosexuality informs their view of the world, has to face comments about getting AIDS and dying. I, and my fellow mentally ill, have to face people who will say shit about how I should go commit suicide. I tried to get a thread closed for that, and nothing.
Gay men will never see a post like this. “As I said, you probably ran out of time. perhaps you had to go out and fuck a woman.” No matter how mad you get. You don’t have to face posts like “As I said, you probably ran out of time. Perhaps you had a seizure while posting.”
It’s a double standard, and it pisses me off. I expect to be treated with the same deference as everyone else. I only mention my agoraphobia when it’s relevant to the conversation, just like a gay person would, just like someone with an illness would. I can’t help it that you interpret it as an excuse, rather than an explanation for why I got upset. I am not apologizing for my disorder any more than a gay person would for being gay, or someone with a seizure disorder does for having a seizure.
It’s not my fault, seeing as it happened out of my control, and I can’t get a fucking doctor who will do housecalls. I have to figure it all out for myself. Who of you has resolved a serious illness by themselves? Who of you wouldn’t desire sympathy when you go through crap? But I am made fun of for it.
I know you for making posts where you freak out because a guy says something slightly masogynistic. Nobody in real life acts that way, at least in my experience.
In fact, most of you seem to act very different from the people I know. All of my friends are fundamentalist Christians. We say that forgiveness is paramount. If you say it’s sorry, it’s over. Not so around here.
Seeing as I don’t lie, every post I’ve ever written has been from my own experience. I guess it’s fine that you can’t imagine my experiences, but I think it odd that only the way you think people act is right. We just have different experiences of the world.
Yes, you are. Look at this thread alone. People are maligning my motives. My motives are how I think. If it isn’t relevant, why am I being attacked for how I think and therefore post?
And I’m sorry, I see everything I do on this board all the time. If I have mod permission, I’ll name names. But let’s just say there’s one pit thread right now where a guy is saying crap about other people while he does it himself.
I don’t create interactions. I hardly ever start threads, and any time I’m mad I responding to someone else who made me mad. When you post a post that makes me mad I used to call you out directly for it, just like a large number of people on this board. I call you out for it. It isn’t my fault when people choose to go “He’s calling me out. I have to come up with something to be angry at him about that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.” Heck, that’s why I said what I did that got the pit thread. Even if the guy was a full out pedohphile, it was irrelevant to a thread about a guy wanting to effectively rape his daughter.
And, yet, despite all this, I have cut down completely on it outside the Pit. I even called myself a hypocrite in the thread that you guys are dragging back up. I apologized, and yet people are still bringing up old wounds.
Heck, you are taking a thread that was about a moderating decision, and making me defend my behavior that I’ve stopped doing. How am I supposed to take that seriously?
I would consider your friends your family, but you do have a good point for why a rule that I now know does not exist might not be a good idea.
I concede that it was dumb of me to think it was a rule.
I have no memory of this, and I’m pretty sure it never happened. At least not with me.
The deal is that the mod equated calling out the person for the post with making the bad post in the first place. He stopped everyone from posting about it.
Futhermore, my reason for calling him out would have been slightly different. I would have also focused on how he used “special needs” as an insult. No one had called him on that. But one thing that hasn’t been mentioned doesn’t a pit thread make.
I have empathy. I feel bad when other people are treated badly. It makes me angry. It’s not like that’s unusual around here–I just find different things more insulting becasue I have had a different life. I’ve dealt with mental illness, so anything bad about that bugs me more. I’m sure you have these, too.