Too busy moderating people who object.
A few mods chimed in and said specifically that they didn’t consider “illegals” to be hate speech.
A few of them are gone and been replaced, and we have better info now as to who prefers the term and why.
It’s four years later, and I think it’s worth reopening the topic. Misogyny didn’t get moderated on the first try, either; it took several ATMB threads over several years before enough mods were like, “Y’know what? You’re right, that’s some gross bullshit that we don’t need here.”
I agree it’s worth reopening the topic – I still think the mods were wrong then.
From what I gather, the term “illegal immigrant” and “illegal immigration” isn’t considered to be a slur or hate speech. The CATO Institute was mentioned earlier, and I see that they use that language at times themselves. (The term “undocumented” is usually considered to be more civil, but the other is also used without much controversy.)
But the term “illegals” itself, I think the reason that’s a slur is because it implies that the person’s existence is illegal. And I think the offensiveness of “invader” should be self-evident.
Right – I think “illegals” is different than “illegal immigrant”. The former is dehumanizing.
I forgot to add my cite here:
https://www.cato.org/commentary/illegal-immigration-isnt-invasion
Now, the author is making it clear that it is his personal opinion, but I think the fact that it is published on their web site and written by the Associate Director on Immigration Studies should have some weight.
The same Cato Institute that’s funded by the Kochs?
Maybe not the best arbiter of bias with respect to undocumented persons.
Polite request?
I agree that a long talk about how we (well, not WE but you get my drift) lump together all non-visa’d immigration (temporary or otherwise) is worthy of a long talk both here and IRL. But, whether or not it’s in ATMB, maybe not in this thread? I think it’s a great thread idea even in great debates, and much more so than the thread the troll spawned.
That’s a fair point. It would be good to drop this line of discussion in this particular thread.
(Not moderating, only suggesting.)
What forum would you suggest we use for this discussion, if any?
Maybe IMHO?
So back to jackass (the troll who created the thread) - since they quite literally only created an account to create the one thread (1 post read, the topic created, and less than a minute reading) and haven’t returned in the 18 hours since creating the bait, is there any actual reason to consider them anything other than a troll in terms of moderation?
I vote that at most the mods give them 24 hours (total) and then cornfield the crap, because it’s just that blatant. There is no effort to be a part of the community, just some crazed gate-crasher (if not a trock) who showed up at our party, screamed while shitting in the pool, and then ran off.
And we’re cleaning up the shit.
If you still want to swim in the pool, you gotta.
But troll? Unquestionably one. Trock? I’d be surprised if they weren’t.
Sorry, I won’t have time for this until later.
Every troll is like a connect the dots. There’s nothing to see if you don’t put pen to paper (or hand to keyboard, as it were). It takes two to troll: one to troll, another to be trolled.
Why are so many of us willing to be trolled?
Yeah, I almost contributed, I would have had the third post. Then I stopped and asked myself, what the fuck am I doing, and what is this going to accomplish. I deleted my draft and checked out of that thread.
Is “don’t feed the trolls” the new form of trolling? Everyone already knows it yet no one (collectively) abides by it, so posting it accomplishes nothing other than pissing people off and creating a new argument.
This has been Deep Thoughts, by Troutman.
It’s trolling all the way down.