This OP says “this may be the saddest thing I have ever seen”. It’s clearly not just about the artistic merits of the photography, which would be a valid restriction for a Cafe Society thread.
This is a board where we talk about things. This photo is about the horror of the aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki. What exactly are you saying the constraints are? What is it okay and not okay to talk about? Just because the OP centers on a photo rather than only words, I don’t see how that implies that you can reasonably constrain discussion of the aftermath of a terrible event, caused by human beings, to just comments along the lines of “gosh isn’t that awful” and not allow reflection and debate on what led to that heartbreaking image.
I think that if a thread is about the horrific aftermath of the bombing of Nagasaki, whether it contains words or a photo, it is not reasonable to limit the scope of discussion in some poorly-defined way. This thread does not belong in Cafe Society.
If the mods disagree and think it should stay in Cafe Society, please explain more clearly exactly what we are allowed to say - i.e. what the purpose of the thread is other than comments like “gosh isn’t that awful”.
I agree. Its long been the tradition here that the OP does not get to control the content of their thread. The photo shared has clear political meaning besides being a sad and tragic picture. The OP posted the thread in Cafe Society. S/He must consider it art. Art is open to discussion and interpretation. S/He could have posted it to Mundane Pointless thread where there is less debate about artistic merit and more agreement about the emotion the pic evinces.
Clearly what Cafe Society is not about, in general, is politics and history. So in that sense, the OP does control the general topic of the thread by putting it in that forum. A moderator could choose to move it to something like Great Debates if it seemed that the OP had put it in the wrong forum. But the OP is not talking about the background of the conflict or the use of atomic weapons. The OP is talking about a simple human moment of great sadness, depicted in a photograph. The background could have been something else, like a plague or a natural disaster, and been just as moving.
If I open a thread in CA about the painting The Gleaners with comments about how moving I find it, that is not an invitation to argue about the rural class system of 19th century France.
Sure, of course I understand what Cafe Society is about. It’s quite natural to have a conversation about the artistic merit and emotional impact of The Gleaners or of a natural disaster in a manner that’s suitable for that forum. Or I could imagine a better specified OP more generally discussing in broader terms the film, anime, art, photography of and about Japan during the war and the post-war period. That’s perfectly reasonable.
So I’m not objecting to the limits of the Cafe Society forum, I’m saying that OP should have been moved somewhere else.
That OP is about a tragic and highly controversial event, caused deliberately by people. Even the OP’s own title is an inherently controversial and political statement: that this is the saddest thing that the OP has seen. That almost invites the response that much worse things happened in that war. So if we can’t discuss that - do we qualify a response for the Cafe Society forum by posting photos of Japanese war crimes that are far more horrific, and challenge the OP’s view in a “debate by photograph”?
I just don’t think an OP that’s centered on the aftermath of such a horrific and controversial event qualifies for Cafe Society (and the concomitant constraints on discussion) just because it contains a photograph. It’s inherently political, and it’s just not reasonable to constrain the natural flow of discussion that’s going to flow from an OP like that to a discussion that’s suitable for the limits of Cafe Society. You can’t talk about the emotional impact of that photograph in isolation from the human actions that caused the event.
It’s about one specific little boy, who’s doing the one thing left that he can do for his brother, and trying to be brave about it.
It could arguably be about the horrors of war as a whole.
But what on earth is controversial about that child’s grief? Are you seriously claiming that it’s wrong to sympathize with a child’s grief because you think that the people who caused it were the ones who were supposed to be on his side?
Don’t be ridiculous. I’m saying that it’s unreasonable to start a thread with a hearbreaking image of the aftermath of a horrific event for which humans were directly and actively responsible (as opposed to a natural disaster) and then to be butthurt that the perfectly natural flow of discussion is to talk about how and why that horrific thing happened.
FWIW, I didn’t start the political discussion in that thread. I though the OP was framed in a dubious (too inherently controversial) manner for that forum, but it initially seemed to be going toward a discussion of anime about that period, so I just moved on. But others obviously felt that it led naturally to a discussion of the background and political circumstances, that’s where it went, and then I participated in that discussion. And I thought it was a perfectly reasonable and natural discussion following that OP.
I think there’s a very significant difference between the way this OP was framed and (say) starting a Cafe Society thread about (in general terms) moving photographs of the tragedy of war.
By analogy, if someone started a Cafe Society thread about the most joyful photographs they knew, and one contribution was two men kissing at their wedding ceremony - it would obviously be an inappropriate hijack to start discussing the politics of SSM. But if someone put up and OP “I think this is the most joyful thing I have ever seen”, just one photo of two men kissing, and commentary like “they are standing proud because after their long struggle…”, and a description that this was the first SSM in a certain state, etc., it would be kind of unreasonable to post this in Cafe Society, just on the grounds that it contains a photo rather than just words, and say that any discussion of SSM is out of bounds, and we just have to talk about the joy.
ETA: that thread is objectively a trainwreck where half the comments are meta-comments about what we should and should not be talking about. And not because anyone is being a jerk or anything like that.
So there’s obviously some kind of issue here about what does and does not reasonably belong in Cafe Society.
The thing about categories is, the world doesn’t always fit neatly into them. That thread isn’t exactly the type specimen of a Cafe Society thread, but then, it’s also not for any of the other forums here. It’s an edge case. Those happen sometimes.
Since my earlier post I have read further in the thread. The OP was very clear what s/he was interested in, by bringing the photo to our attention. And none of that was about war guilt or anything like that.
As has been said innumerable times in similar situations, if folks wanted to have that conversation and debate, they could easily do so by starting another thread referencing the CS thread.
If it was “very clear”, why was it that the many subsequent posts written by the OP in that thread (after the first two) were all just criticizing people for responding incorrectly to the OP, rather than adding anything substantive? The OP was clear, and everyone else is just clueless?
Only if it’s off-topic, and that’s the the moot point. I don’t think it was off-topic, I think it was an inevitable and natural flow of discussion stemming from the way the OP was framed, and OP does not have the right to control what points of view are expressed when they are relevant to the OP.
The OP is not responsible for other posters’ inability to comprehend plain English, or to separate their political obsessions from their human feelings. Neither am I, for that matter.
Neither of us is convincing the other; I’ve said what I have to say.
OK, the photo was brought to our attention. Now what? How was the thread supposed to continue? CS is a discussion forum, and what’s there to discuss about the photo other than its context?
You can’t possibly, in one-quarter of a second each, be considering each of those photos, comparing it to the one in the OP, and deciding that you find each of them sadder. You’re just throwing a batch of them at the OP.
Do you not know how Google Image Search works? It doesn’t just present you with one photo at a time. I posted one link there, but that GIS showed me plenty more than that, all on one page. Most of which, yes, much sadder. Immediately.