Submitted by Gwen_Isilith in AskRaddle

This question/thought is mainly inspired by the ongoing "dunking" on pro-democracy anarchists (which yes sure they suck) where I don't see as much discussion of more complex/less explored topics.

To pose my own answer to my own question (while still leaving room for other responses):

It seems it is much easier for one to critique others (especially a common enemy) then to critique oneself or others in one's immediate surroundings. In other words, it's easier to dunk on the redditers as others, then to critique other raddle users or even ones own position.

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lettuceLeafer wrote

? More through provoking less discussed topics are talked about a lot on raddle. It is in a bit if a down turn due to the major people I would have nuanced post left discussion with r gone. I think raddle has a good mix.

If you are really concerned you can provoke said discussion and quite a few people will engage u. It's just more difficult to do that so inherently easier discussion to come up with happen more. You can just spew out nuanced hot takes at an industrial pace it takes a lot of energy so it will just happens less.

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Twoeyes wrote

The problem with complex topics is they require complex answers... And I get distracted and forget to post,

then I go back the next day and start writing again, but I can't be bothering writing everything I had before, and I forget to post it again.

And then it's been a few days, and a different conversation is ongoing... And I give up.

I have half an essay I was planning to post sitting in my notes from a few months ago. I should probably finish it and start a new conversation.

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mofongo wrote

Or someone comes and writes what I had in mind but better, so I no longer feel the need to express myself.

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Gwen_Isilith OP wrote

Someone mentioned earlier as well the courage it takes to respond, to put oneself out there, and i think ghiscalso relates to partial answers. Even a partiality can help others continue the conversation and build off it, or at least that's how I see it.

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ziq wrote

Well personally I'm ruthless to raddle users too, including my fellow admin and their almost religious fervour for identity purity and purging infidels, going back years to when they attacked my partner as a "white vegan" and for having "white fragility" (she's not white) and she stopped using the site as a result.

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote (edited )

You can do white vegan things without being white though, pretty easily, often by being from the global north or generally focusing on 'green' issues in a way that doesn't include the wellbeing of exploited peoples.

I'm confused about how you are relating to me right now. I don't think I've purged anybody, and again, you've had plenty time to take issue with my mod decisions, and only done it a couple times, when they've been about people you like. You seemed to understand just fine at the time why I said what I said about your partner, so either you were being conflict averse, which is annoying given how you're acting now, or what?

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ziq wrote (edited )

well if you're gonna say i've never spoken up about things you've done in the past that i didn't agree with and told you so in very clear terms in private, i'm gonna mention those things in public because it feels like you're just being evasive and trying to make me think i didn't call you out on things i know i called you out on.

and that was just one example. it was only the first time you drove her away even - the other time 2 years later, she came back to try again with a different account, talked about her rape and you attacked her for it, causing her to leave again. there's no way you don't remember how pissed i was about that.

there have been plenty of other times where i've vocally opposed things you've done, another example was when you effectively sabotaged the chaptraphouse migration on day one by telling them not to say 'that's dumb' in a super aggressive way (and told them you don't even want them here) that just made them all immediately turn on raddle and drove them into the hands of the tankies and their entryist propaganda.

and there's the whole bloodrose thing very recently where you were super toxic to her and i told you how much it upset me

or the earliest example which I've repeatedly told you how hurt I was about is how I felt you threw me under the bus with the whole defasher thing, painted me as a pariah for more than a year, even though you repeatedly asked me to use my attack dog alts to drive off the brocialists and tankies that were ganging up on you (edit) before and after i left

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

Thanks for laying it out.

I vaguely remember the first time what I did sent your partner off the site. I genuinely don't remember the attacking her for talking about her rape, though I remember you telling me about it a little while ago. I don't even remember how that was resolved, but presumably I tried to address the harms you raised?

My general opinion of chapotraphouse is that as a whole they don't have anything to offer and they would never have lasted here anyway, so nothing has changed there. If you wanted to keep the ToS, whether I came at them for ableism then or later wouldn't have made any difference.
Also I'm pretty sure I asked about as mildly as a human being could when I asked them to stop being ableist. We didn't lose chapotraphouse because they were never on the cards.

If you hadn't resolved your feelings about the bloodrose situation despite her accepting my apology and me going carefully through an accountability process, then you should have done more then.

I didn't throw you under the bus with the defasher thing, I asked you to come clean about all the drama you manufactured where you were having two or more of your own alts making huge fights with each other that were wearing out all the regular users and doubly so for people who cared about the site like me. That's accountability, not throwing someone under a bus. As I said many times, my issue is not with people having alts, it's the intense manufactured drama that was making the site shit to use. Nobody asked you to fake apologise or to rake yourself over coals, I just said you should come clean and deal with the way you affected people, because you hurt people and stressed us out.
That's completely different from using attack alts on actual brocialists on the site, which is fine, and which I do in my own way when I have energy, often in a simple way.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I genuinely don't remember the attacking her for talking about her rape, though

Havent read whole comment cuz driving but u attacked her cuz she said "dude" in the comment and u just ignored that she was opening up about the rape for the first time ever in painful detail and just attacked her for calling u (?) dude even tho she clearly didnt intend to gender u (?)

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

That's bad. Did I apologise?

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ziq wrote

no, she deleted her account and u never spoke to her again

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

I'm going to go through your stuff and respond when I have time and energy. Starting here.

Could you please pass on an apology from me, for the completely insensitive way that I responded to your partner?

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[deleted] wrote

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

My apology, your response, and ziq's response are no longer there, but I distinctly remember each existing, in part because I remember some of the content of mine and that I insisted (to ziq if I recall correctly) that they respond directly to my message, and distinctly that you responded in a way that made clear the situation had been resolved for you. I don't know why they are not there, and am surprised that you don't remember. I just did a quick search through all of my comments from that period and can't find anything. It is possible that someone deleted an earlier comment up the chain and then all of them were lost. I don't know if there is any way to retrieve them.

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[deleted] wrote

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

You're right, I was confusing it. I'm pretty seriously confused. Thanks for clarifying. Will try to work on this further if I can build capacity. It seems my brain shuts down engaging this.

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ziq wrote (edited )

If you wanted to keep the ToS, whether I came at them for ableism then or later wouldn't have made any difference.

The ToS was never meant to be interpreted in the way you're interpreting it. 'That's dumb' is in no way comparable to the ableism the tos was written to combat.

Also I'm pretty sure I asked about as mildly as a human being could when I asked them to stop being ableist.

That's not how I remember it at all.

they don't have anything to offer

Of course not. they're babies. we're the ones who have something to offer them, but not if we self sabotage so they won't even give us a chance. you reacted to someone's casual (and very minor) ableism, i reacted to a certain user who was claiming to be an anarchist while spitefully demeaning anyone who didn't sing china's praises. both incidents were used to paint the site as authoritarian, anti-gen z and unwelcoming.

If you hadn't resolved your feelings about the bloodrose situation despite her accepting my apology and me going carefully through an accountability process, then you should have done more then.

idk what this means. i said the situation upset me. what more am i supposed to do? her accepting your apology doesn't erase me being upset when it happened.

I just said you should come clean and deal with the way you affected people

i'm not talking about that, i'm talking about the aftermath

That's completely different from using attack alts on actual brocialists on the site, which is fine

you know my defasher vs chomskyist posts were also about combating toxic users on the site (specifically the transhumanists and tankies who were always striving to paint anticivs as subhuman reactionaries).

you also know i used those accounts in that manner so i could avoid directly arguing with the transhumanists and tankies (dale, gnu, shiningwing) that were recreating toxic reddit leftist culture here.

I didn't want to run them off raddle by arguing with them using my admin account, so my solution was to use my alt to say what i wanted to say to them but without actually saying it to them, so they wouldn't feel personally attacked.

that meant using 1 alt that just directly copy/pasted toxic transhumanist (chomskyist) or tankie (spock) comments from reddit and 1 alt (defasher) to respond to those toxic comments.

like I've said so many times before, my goal was to respond to their toxic rhetoric in a way that wouldn't create a power imbalance (an admin arguing with a non-admin) or make them brand the site as 'primmie' and abandon it

so there's really little difference between me using an alt to directly attack a brocialist like I did for you so many times, and using an alt to poke holes in all the arguments of another alt who was simply being used to copy/paste reddit comments 80% of the time that said all the same things those transhumanists and tankies on raddle were saying about the anticivs on raddle.

i started doing it because anticivs and post-leftists were deleting their accounts in protest at the growth and influence of the transhumanist/tankie clique

i wasn't simply 'manufacturing drama', i was trying to steer the culture away from the 'primmies are ableist transphobe tree fascists' culture that was being directly transplanted from reddit to this new site that was supposed to be better than that.

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ziq wrote

My general opinion of chapotraphouse is that as a whole they don't have anything to offer and they would never have lasted here anyway, so nothing has changed there. If you wanted to keep the ToS, whether I came at them for ableism then or later wouldn't have made any difference.

that's just shortsighted imo. look how hexbear did it - they waited for them to get comfortable and emotionally invested in that site for a few weeks before they started imposing their authoritarian laws and left-unity policies on them, at which point they were too invested to leave. and now they're all thoroughly indoctrinated into Dengism when before they were a mix of impressionable ancoms and demsocs with just a handful of MLs amongst them.

I consider that a personal failure. we both let 2 or 3 tankies use our outbursts (yours on day 1, mine weeks later) as propaganda to paint raddle as authoritarian and sectarian so they could fool thousands of gen z baby anarchists to follow them to that fash entryist shithole where they could be thoroughly indoctrinated into the cult.

these are kids we're talking about. they're all like 16-20. their culture could absolutely be changed and hexbear proved that by successfully turning them all into red fascists when raddle met them with immediate hostility and demands they stop talking like the american teenagers they are.

expecting american milquetoast socialists to come in fully understanding why the word dumbass or the word dude or the word nerd or the word neckbeard is oppressive and that they should be outcast for using it isn't at all reasonable.

you can't expect people who haven't been completely drenched in the politics of social justice and anti-authority for years to not push back against being told they're bigots or gross or shitty people for using seemingly harmless words that them and everyone around them use every day of their lives.

i've said this 100 times on raddle - these aren't words that the culture has recognized as being oppressive, like the n slur, the r slur, the f slur, the t slur, the m slur or the c slur

words like dumb and dude and stupid: these are words that are still in polite usage in every social circle in their country - in their media, in their entertainment, in their classrooms.

you can explain to people why a common word like stupid is oppressive, you can try to shift the culture through education, but you can't threaten to punish people for using common words unless the culture has shifted to the point where it's accepted as an oppressive term. but it hasn't. not even in the most insular anarchist circles (like raddle).

regulars on this site still casually use all those words everyday, including on the site, but when chapos or shoplifters or another perceived invader uses them, suddenly they're treated like pariahs and everyone tries to purge them for being 'bigots'.

it's a huge double standard and toxic af. if long time anarchists are still using those words, why would anyone expect illegalists, baby ancoms or demsocs to not use them?

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

Alright, I accept your general sentiment and argument and I've adopted this approach. Only now had the energy to respond here among a few other of your comments I've had sitting in my inbox for a few months.

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

My other comment in response to this is not to justify anything I did, it's just to explain my headspace/reasoning, with the hope that we can use understanding of our different spaces towards building one in common.

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ziq wrote (edited )

i mean look at what you wrote:

if you've been feeling this way about me for a while without shooting straight with me, then that's your failure as a friend. I've given you plenty of opportunities to voice grievances with me.

don't you see how toxic that is to say to someone who is trying to communicate their grievances with you? calling me a failure as a friend for voicing my upset? and pretending i've never spoke up when you upset me in the past? how am i supposed to respond to that? it's like it's designed to shut me down completely and make me into the villain, yet again

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

I've been asking you for months to talk with me about what's going on with you and me, though, so why haven't you? Why did it need to be a post on raddle instead of us dealing with things straightforwardly in our chat?

You respond by saying, ok, let's talk about it all and resolve it, can you meet me in matrix?

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ziq wrote (edited )

there's nothing going on with you and me. i said i didn't want to talk about the bad stuff that happened in my life. it has nothing to do with you and i don't want to talk about it with anyone

the only thing happening with you and me is that i tell u when u do something i don't like and ur pretending i dont

im not even angry at u. it's just frustrating being accused of something i know isn't true

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Tequilx_Wolf wrote

That's very confusing, because you clearly have plenty issues with me that you still hold over my head.

If you don't want to talk about the bad stuff that's happened to you in your life, that's fine, but at least there was a time where I thought you were a friend to me, so aren't you interested in that remaining the case? Because you're not acting like you are interested, especially when you're lashing out at me and others when you're dealing with bad shit. So are we friends or not, and if we are, how does that make sense for you considering the laundry list of issues you have with me. I still care about you so it's very frustrating trying to get clarity on what's appropriate in terms of how I should relate to you.

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ziq wrote (edited )

i'm not holding anything over your head. you said something that upset me (calling me gross for thinking someone is being stupid) so i told you so. then you accused me of not telling you when u upset me so i listed some of the times i've directly told you that you upset me. that's not holding something over your head, it's trying to defend myself against an untrue allegation

Because you're not acting like you are interested

idk what made you think i have any ability to maintain relationships. i have no friends, i've said it countless times.

the reason i stopped talking to you on matrix is because it makes me deeply uncomfortable to share unpleasant details about my life with you or anyone, and it feels like you take that as a slight against you, when it has nothing to do with you. i don't want to have to articulate into words horrible things that i'm trying to not even think about and every time you ask me to talk about my life it makes me deeply uncomfortable, so i stop checking matrix as the whole app has become triggering to me. i don't want to explain how i feel to people or even have to think about it.

So are we friends or not

our relationship is whatever it's always been. me withdrawing from social interaction even more than usual is not a judgement on you, it's an inability to manage social interaction

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kin wrote (edited )

Well you came too late for the "Cheese Stealers" case and the AntiVaxx Anarchist showdown

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lettuceLeafer wrote

No one n ede to know about the anti vaxx showdown. I had some cringe at takes at the beginning of covid that I don't want the internet to see.

Now cheese stealers aim proud of what I said on that issue.

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Gwen_Isilith OP wrote

Tbh I find the antivax debate to be similarly banal, perhaps others are still interested on questions of responsibility though. I'm completely unaware of "Cheese Stealers"

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mofongo wrote

Most people are in agreement in lots of things, so the only point of contention is the banal.

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Gwen_Isilith OP wrote

Perhaps others have different values but I hardly agree with my self from yesterday, if there truly is such a homogeneous position here I would be curious as to why or how? Has everyone already answered all of the problems and questions of one's life? Because I feel like I've learned a lot and am still only getting started.

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mofongo wrote

Not necessarily homogenous but the most divisive positions in other sites are a given here. You won't find people defending states, police, military, x or y religion, etc. Which usually are the drivers of many conversations elsewhere.

What I'm trying to say is that most high level topics hardly get much traction. It's the specialized topics that usually get traction (and tankies), but the expertise required to participate also doesn't always allow everyone to be able to. Yet they're fun to read.

Anyways, you could check the most commented and most active threads to see what has driven discussion before.

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Exlurker wrote

You have to accept that when you talk about less discussed topics you are going to open wounds. Nobody stays on this site long without being hurt and growing a thick skin. Discussions are won, not by being right but by which side refuses to give an inch.

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RatifyGuy1776 wrote

Because that's how a bell curve do. Half of humanity is so unintelligent that they have to work hard on that level of discourse, and they're very proud of it. This is also why people are very gullible, and thus easily accept narratives that blame other powerless people for their troubles.

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Gwen_Isilith OP wrote

And I am sure you have firmly situated yourself among the freethinkers and not the sheeple?

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RatifyGuy1776 wrote

No, I'm wrong about shit all the time.

Dumb people need human rights, too. My comment wasn't "people suck" it was "the masses are brutally victimized, and can't be blamed for misunderstanding how it happens."

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Gwen_Isilith OP wrote

Ah okay, your comment come off much more as "people suck". I don't agree with this idea of a bell curve or that "intelligence" limits one from discourse or ideas, but nevertheless I do understand your point.

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[deleted] wrote

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RatifyGuy1776 wrote

It really isn't, but I'm not going to claim I'm being anything but sloppy about how statistics work. Really the reason you see more stupid things than smart things is probably that most smart people seem to think of stupid people as problems more than as people. So, they don't talk to the intellectual have-nots except to manipulate them once they get too "smart" for ethics. Partisanship is like that.

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[deleted] wrote

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RatifyGuy1776 wrote (edited )

I'm not saying that IQ is a hard fact; we aren't that good at measuring anything. Further, it should be obvious to anyone that whenever the establishment sorts people on any axis, they do terrible and stupid things with that data. People should only be sorting themselves. What I'm saying is that it's at least an honest attempt to measure something that does exist. People have different limitations.

To reject the concepts of intelligence or even that genetics can have an effect on it seems to me to be a mistake; these ideas lead to eugenics only because that's what eugenicists already wanted to do, and oversimplifying this topic in a way that satisfies the privileged is unfortunately pretty easy. I'm not an expert on either topic, or indeed on any topic, but I know enough about genetics to know that eugenics is stupid: there are few genes that directly encode traits without side effects, especially when it comes to the brain. Biodiversity is always the winning strategy.

Meanwhile, a proper understanding of intelligence must include that regardless of whatever a person's genetic limitations might be, cognitive development and function are profoundly affected by environmental factors. We know that financial stress impairs it, for example, and compulsory schooling under the Prussian model is designed to make the kids sorted into the lower bin stupider. With automation on the rise, the public school systems are basically being re-tuned to make all students dumber by the time they get out, so that the common people can be maximally exploited by the prison-industrial complex. This wouldn't work if intelligence weren't real, however good or bad we are at measuring it.

On a deeper philosophical level, it should also be obvious to anyone that a lack of raw processing power does not hide the most important things about life from anyone. We all experience consciousness and connection, and develop insight from that experience that doesn't have anything to do with how good you are at rotating shapes in your head. That kind of knowledge is what makes life worth protecting, and you don't need to have wetware nearly as fancy as any human's to have that.

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