darq @ darq @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

You are hiding the problem from yourself, which makes your individual experience better. But the problem still exists as part of the community.

Think about how it plays out in practice. A bigot joins your community and starts posting their nonsense, but is not removed. Instead, some people block them. So now the people who see the bigoted takes are people who maybe agree with the bigot, and newcomers.

So if I'm a new potential member, I check out the community, what do I see? Well I see bigotry that isn't challenged or dealt with, that might even be boosted because the people who would reduce it have blocked the source. So I assume the community tolerates that kind of rhetoric, and I leave.

You have to actually take the trash out. Not just ignore it.

I have never met a self-described centrist who was doing any critical thinking. And I say that as a former centrist who was not engaging in critical thinking.

It's almost always "there are two sides to this issue, and because there are two sides there must be some merit to both, so thinking that one side is right or wrong is bad, and so anybody holding particularly strong convictions one way or another must not be thinking critically". Which if you noticed, is a line of reasoning that doesn't actually engage with reality or the nuances of the situation at all. It's just a thought-terminating cliche that leads to not thinking about an issue, but then concluding that one is more enlightened than people who hold strong beliefs.

The second I actually started getting informed and thinking critically, I shifted drastically in my politics.

No, I don't believe just letting bigotry stand is the answer.

Just "shunning" them only works if they are actually removed by the admins. Which is the best answer, but it doesn't happen often enough. If one enter a community and sees bigotry ignored, a common assumption is that the community tolerates that bigotry, which will cause many people interested in valuable contribution to leave, leaving a higher proportion of bigots.

Every time someone opens their mouths to spout bigoted nonsense, it should be an unpleasant experience for them. If the admin isn't going to take the trash out, the community should make damn sure that they don't abide the trash themselves.

It can be argued if that is best accomplished by meeting the bigot with "civil" pity as you suggest, or outright hostility. I'm not interested in tone policing. But just letting bigotry stand unchallenged isn't the solution.

Responding politely in opposition does indeed challenge the stance, and indeed such challenge is necessary in natural discourse. Like what we're doing here.

Because this is something we can, to some extent, disagree politely on. Bigotry is not the same.

Letting things get heated, however, persuades no one.

You have mistaken my intention. I'm not trying to convince the bigots. I'm trying to tell them to piss off. I'm trying to show that those sorts of opinions are disgusting and not welcome. I'm trying to show that space will not be made for them, and to hold space for the people that they are trying to marginalise.

I could not care less about persuading bigots online.

I'm not complaining about having different kinds of opposed checks. I like that there are lots of different things to target, in fact I wish different kinds of checks were more accessible so that combat was more varied.

I just find it weird that they have different game mechanics. Like, attacking has the player rolling against a defender's static DC. Except actually sometimes the defender rolls to save against an attacker's static DC? And Dex saves are actually represented twice, once as an actual save to dodge things, and once as AC. Precisely because there are those two overlapping systems at play.

But what does getting heated about it on a Lemmy thread do? How does it improve the status quo?

It challenges the stance. Which helps set the tone for the space, and prevents the normalisation and mainstreaming of that stance. Which has value.

For example, aggressively challenging bigoted political takes will show that those sorts of takes aren't well received, and aren't popular. This prevents those sorts of takes from becoming more common in the space, and more generally. It also shows the people who are the targets of that bigotry that the space is welcoming towards them.

A lot of people, and a lot of instances, think that genocidal rhetoric is A-okay as long as it is expressed with an air of "civility". Just blocking is merely tolerating that rhetoric.

Sometimes hostility is justified.

I don't find 5e bloated exactly. But I do think it has a few too many systems in place, sometimes with overlapping use-cases.

Like attacks, skill checks, saves... They're all basically the same thing, an opposed check, but they have slightly different rules. Sometimes the player is rolling against a target, but sometimes the target is rolling to save against? It's a little strange, and adds a bit of extra complexity where I don't really think it's necessary.

A lot of it is just legacy systems that are kept because it wouldn't be D&D without them.

But of course, they won't. They're leaning right in both economic and social policy. It's awful.

When we were talking about characters that we wanted to make, he suggested an evil female yuan-ti (snakeperson). Starts detailing all these things about the character going further and further. It wasn’t until the combination of “won medals during a chariot race but then ran over someone with their chariot” that I realized he was making Caitlyn Jenner an evil snake person in DnD. Snaiklyn Runnyr.

Pure gold.

I tend to think of the Progress flag as a product of the times, not as a replacement for the rainbow Pride flag. We added these additional signifiers specifically because those groups were under-represented or under particular attack, not because they aren't included in the Pride rainbow.

Denying children healthcare is child abuse. That is what you are supporting.

It's not even important if it can actually be enforced. Just the spectre of it maybe being enforced is enough to change people's behaviour.

This whole "letting the citizens sue other citizens" loophole that the Rs have started to use as a means to circumvent proper lawmaking processes has to be closed.

Well, would you be willing to do what they’re doing in the name of “winning”?

Not in the name of "winning" no. But in the name of helping people that the conservatives are trying to hurt, absolutely.

That’s the real dilemma. How exactly do you maintain your own morality against an amoral adversary? Is it possible? It’s the old trope of “becoming as evil as the evil you’re fighting”.

It's not a dilemma at all. Conservatives aren't evil because they are willing to use underhanded to accomplish their goals. They are evil because their goals are evil. Fighting back against them is not even remotely the same.

While it is true that the ends don't justify the means, there has been this moderate liberal overcorrection where people only concern themselves with the "means" and think that it is wrong to ever focus on the "ends". But it's not, the ends matter. The process of government, the "means", isn't actually meaningful in-and-of-itself, it's a tool to manage disputes in a non-violent manner. But it is also a contract, and it only works when all parties agree to it and abide by it.

If the conservatives break the contract, and are hurting people, then upholding the "means" and allowing those people to keep getting hurt rather than putting a stop to it, is complacency and it's own sort of evil.

The sheer brazenness with which they will lie to your face when they say stuff like this is stunning.

But what is kind of terrifying is that I personally think that, in the moment that they are saying it, they genuinely fool themselves into believing it. They simultaneously know their true intentions and that the argument they are making is complete nonsense, but in the moment that they are making it, they convince themselves of it fully. That is a dangerous thing to get into the habit of.

As it turns out, "winning the moral victory" is still just losing.

They hate libraries for the same reason they hate public schooling, and every other public service. Because it's money they pay to help people who are not them.

Terrible... And of course security gates were closed and locked, so people couldn't get out. That's terrifying.

Nibling is a great word. But we need a neutral version of aunt or uncle.

I think some people might read this comment and think you are describing some satirical hyperbolic scenario. But given what we have seen from conservatives over the last few years, It's not just possible, it's their normal.