This is just an opinion, but… Three isn’t really excessive. Any more, and, yeah, that starts to look obsessive. But these three are just barely diverse enough in nature to be okay. Lord knows, we have established, long-time members who have tunnel vision and idees-fixee. FWIW, I’d say the guy hasn’t tumbled off the cliff yet, although he’s ridin’ mighty close. (Cue closing credits to Quick-Draw McGraw.)
Well, I see some daylight between them. And if you disagree with a poster the proper response is to debate a poster.
As for how similar they are? As I said, they may stem from the same basic premise, but all have different flavors. Enough, at least, for me to be willing to let them live their separate lives.
The real question is why the poster is still allowed to post after the first thread. I stayed out simply because I expected the poster to be gone in a few days.
And, no, the proper response to bigotry is not to debate it. It would be to ban it, but the mods somehow think allowing it somehow stops it, despite it never having happened.
I strongly disagree. You can’t stop bigotry with bannings, that leads to an echo chamber and interesting people leaving. What you can do is expose bigotry to the light of day, where it tends to shrivel and die. Hopefully you can fight some ignorance along the way.
I hate to admit it, but I have identified as an MRA in the past. Then I started reading and participating in a feminism thread in GD. Seeing people make logical arguments and exposing the hate that was in that movement really opened my eyes. The end result was that I no longer identify as a MRA. (It helped that I was a misanthrope, not a misogynist.) None of that growth would have been possible without people arguing against a bigot.
Try and look at it this way. Most threads have far more views than replies. Even if you know you’ll never convince the person you are debating, think about all those invisible lurkers reading the thread. Some of them can probably be convinced, and if everyone refuses to debate bigots, all they read is what the bigot says. Is that what you want?
Even beyond what the extremely well spoken Mith (can I call you Mith?) said up there…do you really want us deciding what can and can’t be debated and discussed as cavalierly as that? What about if we choose something you think is reasonable to ban as a topic?
Really? Wow. I didn’t know that any good came out of those threads. Thank you for posting this.
A good point.
I don’t envy the Mods the job of balancing different idealogical positions, as well as keeping debate civil. At times there is a very fine line between hate speech and a legitimate discussion.
There’s a difference? :dubious:
(I really want to somehow reference the Fawlty Towers’ Major Gowen on Indians vs West Indians joke, but the brunt of the joke is the racist not really the racism . . . so I can’t make it work. But, we should be honored that the Major’s ghost posts on our board!)
I . . . um I mean they, they care about everything!
(BTW Why haven’t you fixed that drippy faucet yet? ;))