quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: [QB] Please, go back through this very thread and see who started the personal attacks, it was not me; sorry for failing at my goal of not resonding to them. /QB]
Mal, In your very first post in this thread you said "It was fun for a while but the self proclaimed open minded can be so intolerable of people from the other side."
Perhaps you aren't aware of this, but that was a personal attack.
We have many posters here who are libertarian conservatives who have been accepted members of the community for years. Your perception that you are poorly received because of the content of your posts rather than your rude and inconsiderate posting style is inaccurate.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I think the percieved offences are amplified by the written format. I've had emails misinterpreted on numerous occasions. I truly enjoy a good debate and have socio/political polar opposite freinds I look forward to having conversations with. The impersonal format sterotypes the other person as the US vs Them but sitting at a table we could nicely discuss the issues.
Not to dismiss the rudeness of society. We live in a "gotcha" society. This D was arrested for this or that R is being investigated for that. You call yourself A but your daughter did B. Whatever. Your party did this 50 years ago, your religion did that 200 years ago, etc. No person or group of people are perfect but past offenses do not invalidate the current situation, the individual or the group. We've become a society of tactics over substance.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I'm well aware that my opinions are not in line with the Hatrack group as a whole and am well aware that the opinion of a Libertarian Conservative is very unwelcome here. Hense my point, Hatrack circle jerk.
The use of the term 'circle jerk' has rarely been more pointlessly bandied about than now. A circle jerk is a community that agrees with itself constantly and only bites back against outsiders to the powwow. If hatrack was a circlejerk, you would not have this thread.
Basically, when you came into this thread, you worked very hard (and very unintentionally) to prove several other people's theories, both about the forum and about you.
You do not understand why. This much is a given. You don't understand why acting the way you are and responding the way you did was pretty much a pitch-perfect harmonization of Tom's assessment of you. You could not have proved him more right about you if you had tried.
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quote:Originally posted by rivka: Limbaugh has been vile for at least 20 years.
And over that 20 years, American civility has been on a steady decline. The impact of someone like Limbaugh isn't instantaneous. Initially rudeness is shocking, but the longer it is tolerated the more it become part of the norm.
You can see a similar pattern with Richard Dawkins and rude athiests. Dawkins has been around for decades as well, but the longer he is around and the more widely read he becomes, the more other athiests embrace the idea that its OK maybe even necessary to be rude to religious people. And like Limbaugh, Dawkins followers tend to be less eloquent, less witty and well just ruder and more spiteful than the original.
And Maybe the trend has nothing to do with the behavior of any famous individuals, perhaps their fame is just a reflection of the trend. Perhaps people listen to Limbaugh or Dawkins because they are tired of being polite and tolerant and crave rudeness.
It seems that to many Americans polite behavior of one form or another is viewed as oppressive. Depending on which side of the cultural divide you sit on, one may find it oppressive to be politically correct or to avoid vile or profane language, or may be oppressed by following some other rule of manners. Its a really pity because polite behavior makes a community so much more livable.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: I'm well aware that my opinions are not in line with the Hatrack group as a whole and am well aware that the opinion of a Libertarian Conservative is very unwelcome here. Hense my point, Hatrack circle jerk.
The use of the term 'circle jerk' has rarely been more pointlessly bandied about than now. A circle jerk is a community that agrees with itself constantly and only bites back against outsiders to the powwow. If hatrack was a circlejerk, you would not have this thread.
Basically, when you came into this thread, you worked very hard (and very unintentionally) to prove several other people's theories, both about the forum and about you.
You do not understand why. This much is a given. You don't understand why acting the way you are and responding the way you did was pretty much a pitch-perfect harmonization of Tom's assessment of you. You could not have proved him more right about you if you had tried.
I'm not dismissing that you have disagreements amongst yourselves but you certainly know when to circle the wagons. Not much has changed here, this really isn't a "forum" beyond the usual players. The few of you should maybe start twittering instead or this place will die on the vine. When I was more active here at Hatrack, my posts consistently dominated the pages. "I" didn't dominate but the group knows when to pounce and keep the post at the top, evidence of your group think. If I changed my name, came in here with some touchy feely liberal topic it would be buried at the bottom.
I enjoy the debates. If I was seeking affirmation of my own beliefs I wouldn't be here. Your big tent has an even bigger ring of constantina wire around it.
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quote:I'm not dismissing that you have disagreements amongst yourselves
Then you don't know what a 'circlejerk' really means. You're just using the term reflexively because you felt like an oppressed outsider and you mistakenly believe that you are a person who did not in any way behave in a hostile or negative manner that would have ever precipitated this response among a 'reasonable' or 'accepting' group.
This here alone proves how much you don't understand how much your own tone matters to how you were received. You're calling the forum a circlejerk.Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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As I said earlier: "While people can nicely disagree around the edges when their cores are mostly overlapping the hordes will pile upon someone who takes a completely different stand"
Civil disagreements on the edges. The rest is a search for self affirmation and an obvious attempt of many to prove how smart they are.
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quote:"While people can nicely disagree around the edges when their cores are mostly overlapping the hordes will pile upon someone who takes a completely different stand"
Mal, You have been a member of hatrack for less than 4 months. You are demonstrating that you know little of this forum or its ways.
The ideas you have posted here are not completely different from stands taken by many long term well accepted members of the community. I'm sure it is much easier to believe that you were piled on because of your ideology rather than because you were rude and abrasive but the later is the actual truth.
I suspect you are accustomed either on other forms or in real life to a community where a rude and abrasive style it the norm and so is more readily accepted. If you want to be accepted here, try modulating your tone and see if you don't get a different response.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: As I said earlier: "While people can nicely disagree around the edges when their cores are mostly overlapping the hordes will pile upon someone who takes a completely different stand"
And as I noted earlier, this isn't the case here and your dismissal of the forum as a circlejerk is both unnecessarily abrasive and typifying of someone who earns a hostile response by being hostile and then pawns off the reception of their own behavior as a failing of the "masses."
Repeating bogus interpretations will not grant them sudden and new validity.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: Hense my point, Hatrack circle jerk.
Thanks for making it so easy to ignore you.
It has very little to do with your ideas, and everything to do with your attitude towards other people who don't agree with you.
BTW, I'd hardly claim your posts, or threads, dominated anything. After the first 3-4 threads, most of Hatrack simply refused to even enter one of your threads. Not because they were worried that you would sway them, but because they preferred to avoid someone with such an obvious ax to grind.
But I doubt this will change anything for you, so I won;t mention it again.
If you truly liked debate, you would be better at it, less abrasive, and more open to actual discussion with people who disagree with you.
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Actually, a "circle jerk" has another, more insluting meaning. Your use of that term pretty much excludes any sort of rational discussion.
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I remember a time when using a term like "circle jerk" was clearly understood as an insult. I remember a time when people who used terms like "circle jerk" weren't under the delusion that they were engaging in respectful debate. I remember a time when people who used terms like "circle jerk", weren't welcomed at hatrack.
I guess that last part hasn't changed.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I remember a time when using a term like "circle jerk" was clearly understood as an insult.
That time is "the present day." Circlejerk is a nonambiguous insult of a forum environment.
Evidently not everyone understands that or mal wouldn't have used in his first post in weeks and then claimed he wasn't the one who started the attacks.
I'm just saying, some people don't seem to understand when they are being rude.
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I am not venting. I am not engaging in hyperbole in order to blow off steam. My words aren't intended to not be taken seriously - I meant every syllable of it.
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Venting doesn't automatically equate to hyperbole, nor does it mean that it doesn't contain truths.
Mind you, I am not saying that your ARE venting. Just that some of this thread is exactly that, and it is not necessarily a bad thing.
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I think venting is a bad thing, when it is directed against that which you are venting against. If you are going to tell someone and say in their hearing how angry you are with them, then venting - implying that you are "just" venting - is a very selfish way of doing it. It's like saying that you are taking a break from considering the other person and talking for your own benefit. Which would be fine, if you were talking to yourself. It isn't fine when it is in the other person's hearing and they are just supposed to forgive the horrible things being said because you (the generic you) wanted to vent. I think it's very selfish.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Actually, a "circle jerk" has another, more insluting meaning. Your use of that term pretty much excludes any sort of rational discussion.
quote:If you are going to tell someone and say in their hearing how angry you are with them, then venting - implying that you are "just" venting - is a very selfish way of doing it.
Katie, isn't that exactly what you were doing, though? Did you expect KoM or Lisa to change their behavior to something you'd consider appropriate because you specifically cited them as posters whose behavior you considered problematic? What would be the point of those posts, if not to vent?
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Ah. That's not my definition of venting. Venting has nothing to do with the reaction you think you should expect from the other party, and rather about your own motivations. If you're complaining because the act of complaining makes you feel better, and not because you expect a change to result from the complaint, that's my definition of "venting."
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That's exactly why I think venting is by nature selfish. Since there ARE consequences to it when it is done where the other person can hear, doing it anyway without regard to the consequences is a big "I don't care about anyone but me." sign. Which I suppose in some cases is true, and I suppose knowing that makes it easier to avoid them.
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I'm not sure I understand the distinction, then, between what you were doing and what you're calling venting. Were there consequences here that you were prepared to accept that someone else might not have been?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: I think venting is a bad thing, when it is directed against that which you are venting against. If you are going to tell someone and say in their hearing how angry you are with them, then venting - implying that you are "just" venting - is a very selfish way of doing it. It's like saying that you are taking a break from considering the other person and talking for your own benefit. Which would be fine, if you were talking to yourself. It isn't fine when it is in the other person's hearing and they are just supposed to forgive the horrible things being said because you (the generic you) wanted to vent. I think it's very selfish.
Ahhhh....I understand now. The way I was looking at it was as a release of pent up emotions, not just as venting for venting's sake.
I think, just like anything else, sometimes it can be a good thing....but a lot of people act like idiots then claim it's "only because I needed to vent".
That is a poor excuse to me. You can vent in a constructive way, and get both the emotional release needed AND a positive result, at least some of the time.
I see this thread as venting, but when I say that I don't mean to belittle anyone or imply that they are just being overly dramatic. It has a lot of emotion, because people care about this place, and a lot of these feelings have been pent up inside some posters, mostly because of a lack of a mode of expression.
These types of threads CAN be great for clearing the air. if it WILL be remains to be seen.....but I have hopes.
It was a matter of definition, I think. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I apologize for the use of the term circle jerk and you are correct, I haven't been here for long. Let me clarify. It doesn't take very long to realize the dominant group of common players and their fairly unified views. It seems to me, many of the transients or infrequent posters are the most polite and less defensive. The most abrasive and hostile posters are the ones in the most common group who seem to have laid claim to Hatrack. I doubt I'm the only one who gets the impression he sat at the wrong table in high school. Beleagured and Shinob had views mostly in line with mine and they received similar treatment from the dominant Hatrack cool guys club. As I recall, you were all convinced we were the same person posing as multiples. As if there could only be one person in the world with Malanthrop's viewpoint. You were quite good at driving them out of your big tent of openminded discussion.
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... And over that 20 years, American civility has been on a steady decline. The impact of someone like Limbaugh isn't instantaneous. Initially rudeness is shocking, but the longer it is tolerated the more it become part of the norm. ...
I don't know, I think it has much to do with your perspective.
Anecdotally, it has been my perception that Canadian society over the last twenty years has gotten a lot *more* polite, even annoyingly so if you compare to a society that is more static. Due in part due to the spread of political correctness, people are a lot more careful about what they say and it has been a lot easier to be a Chinese person in Canada today than it was 20 years ago and a hell of a lot easier than in the 70s when my parents first came over.
If anything, I would say that we've traded truly rude and accepted offensiveness on both a systemic and casual level for a more superficial rudeness based upon the higher use of four-letter words and the like.
I think the situation is not entirely different for non-religious people and in general, I think I like it here now (as opposed to 20 years ago or more).
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Malanthrop, the "same person" fear is something that is born of prior experience on this forum, with one person creating multiple personas that defended one another.
As to the content of your posts, I really can't speak to them as I haven't really noticed you (until your somewhat harsh entrance into this thread). As I've said, I've been mostly avoiding the "heavier" threads these days because they've become more about confrontation than discourse.
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quote: It doesn't take very long to realize the dominant group of common players and their fairly unified views.
The thing is, while there are certainly dominant posters, they really don't have fairly unified views. There is a wide range of political opinions among the regular posters here, including ones that are quite similar to yours. You may not have noticed because 1) like you said, you haven't been here long, and 2) the way you came in, your posts quickly dominated the threads. That wasn't because they were so different from other people's, but because your style was grating. Even people who agreed with you disagreed with how you presented your viewpoints.
You enjoy debate, so you just jumped right in. Which is fine, but that doesn't make you the best judge of what the other opinions on the forum are like, because you mostly encountered them reacting to you.
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Can we all agree that being right isn't important? That understanding and being understood are much more important? And that if our actions change for the better, that's the most important of all?
Hatrack has changed me a lot through the years. Mainly in that it's now possible for someone to be wrong on the internet, and me not feel responsible for setting them right. I still laugh when I think of that XKCD comic when the girl says "Are you coming to bed?" and the guy answers "I can't now. Someone is WRONG on the internet."
But more than that, I've been moved by many of the passionate people on the board through the years. sndrake's postings, to cite one example, caused me to completely rethink my ideas about assisted suicide and realize the double-standard we have for estimating the value of disabled people's lives. Going back further than that, I converted to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, something I never dreamed was possible, because of some of the awesome people I met on this board, and noticing that it seemed more than coincidence that so many great people were Mormon. I decided the church must be doing something right, so I started wanting to learn more about it. That, in turn, led to my whole life being transformed for the better, when I learned about the restored gospel.
I've been exposed to a lot of funny, interesting books and ideas here over the years, as well. And I've made some absolutely amazing friends.
I do deplore the rudeness and invective that seem so prevalent now in all the serious threads. I tried my best to make things better. I wasn't able to help much, I'm afraid. Eventually I decided to just stay out of those threads. They're just too unpleasant to follow, and there are so many more important things I can accomplish with that time.
It's certainly true that people don't realize how rude they're being. I don't know if this is just the new way our society has to be, or if it's a phase that will pass (I hope). I think President Obama is setting a higher standard, and hopefully that will help.
I hope that everyone will continue to strive to lift the tenor of our conversation upward. It's something that we have to keep working on. It doesn't just happen of its own accord. Hatrack has so much that's worthwhile. It's worth saving, I think.
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quote:Originally posted by malanthrop: It doesn't take very long to realize the dominant group of common players and their fairly unified views.
...unified views? There are several strong factions here, but I really can't think of any that holds hegemonic sway over the forum at large.
Over individual threads, yes.
There's an interesting Balkanizing phenomenon at Hatrack which I haven't experienced in quite the same way anywhere else, where adherents to one ideology will hold sway in Thread A and adherents to an opposing ideology will play in Thread B. That actually tends to work pretty well, so long as a firebrand from the second group doesn't start flaming people in the first thread.
If you think there's one particular approach dominating here... maybe try reading some more threads.
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As FlyingCow stated, there was a fairly major issue in the forums many many years back regarding a single person espousing supporting views through many distinct screennames, and since that time I don't think trust has been granted to new members as quickly. When one sees the rather similar views that you, beleaguered, and Oshki all had, and notices that you all joined within just over a week, suspicion did indeed rear its head for many. I posted this thread long before you arrived, due to a similar situation. My point is that because of past hurts (fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me) it takes longer for some to extend that trust, not necessarily because of anything you may or may not do.
quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Can we all agree that being right isn't important? That understanding and being understood are much more important?
I don't know that I can agree with the first half of that, Tatiana; I have less problem with the second half, but I'd still probably need caveats to agree, and I'm not even sure what those would be. I think I'd take out the word "much" first. Maybe even replace "much more" with "also" (considering "just as," but I'm really not sure where the two would balance -- depends on how one defines "being right" I guess).
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quote:Originally posted by Tatiana: Can we all agree that being right isn't important?
For me the answer is an unequivocal no. Maybe it's not always important to prove that you're right, but I think it's absolutely essential to be right.
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quote: As FlyingCow stated, there was a fairly major issue in the forums many many years back regarding a single person espousing supporting views through many distinct screennames, and since that time I don't think trust has been granted to new members as quickly.
The nerve of some people. Posts: 1800 | Registered: Apr 2000
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quote:Can we all agree that being right isn't important?
Absolutely not. But perhaps I can rephrase: It's not so important to correct other people's errors. Which is just as well, since it's very rarely possible to do so short of demographics.
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quote: ... And over that 20 years, American civility has been on a steady decline. The impact of someone like Limbaugh isn't instantaneous. Initially rudeness is shocking, but the longer it is tolerated the more it become part of the norm. ...
I think people like Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, Kidd Chris are an AU ruder and cruder than Limbaugh.
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How dare you say that about Opie! He is a nice boy. Andy and Aunt Bea would never let him be rude.
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