Sure, I agree mostly, but do we require the same for responding to, to take the extreme case, fascists then? The difficulty is in enforcing what you're proposing, unfortunately, because I think we all shouldn't be expected to respond seriously every time a Lemmy fascist shows up, but should respond seriously to comrades instead of dismissals and name-calling. But that line is super difficult to implement in practical terms. We could just always require full engagement, but unfortunately fascists know how to use such principles to waste our time and recruit others with sealioning and shit. How should we deal with that?

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As I said, there are three options: Conversation (for where you believe there is something productive to discuss), meta-conversation (for when you believe there is a more fundamental problem with their mindset), and disengagement (for when talking to them is useless). I think that the vast, vast majority of the time, you can summarize it with these three. You absolutely don't need to sit their and talk to someone just because they disagreed with you, but that isn't the same as a license to devolve into name-calling and other childish behaviors like that. If someone is so hopelessly bad faith and persistent that none of these are appropriate, then just ban them (which may involve letting mods handle meta-conversation in cases where they aren't just throwing out gamer words or something).

[–] MLRL_Commie@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I agree with these in cases of good faith, but the bad faith case is exactly where I think it's more difficult. And that because I think there is some real value in getting to mock someone who is sealioning or being a reactionary. It's kinda why this place first populated (as a subreddit), because it's genuinely relieving to have a place where you do that. Not just a perfect safe space where nobody ever comes with shitty opinions, but one where you send a PPB to someone who deserves it instead of having it deleted. I think it's also valuable to the person being mocked to see that they just aren't taken seriously. It makes some people investigate for themselves when they are just dismissed and laughed at openly instead of having their opinion hidden behind a ban. But maybe this is what you see as asshole behavior that you want gone too?

So, if we take that as something we should be able to do, we create a contradiction at the border between comrades disagreeing and someone deserving the dunk. It becomes ver difficult to handle.

If we intend on not doing the dunking, then I'm fully in agreement that your proposed model works!

I have no real strong opinion on this, just trying to discuss with you how it works and learn from your position

[–] purpleworm@hexbear.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Again, I think it's pretty simple: The schoolyard behavior of the subreddit was always a coping mechanism and maybe a means of advertising. Like most coping mechanisms, it can get you a certain result, but it ultimately is not a way to fix a problem, and the advertising angle is irrelevant because we're a very insular group now.

The PPB-philia is just wishful thinking. People mostly don't respond to schoolyard taunts with "gee, maybe I should care what these children think of me," they write you off as children and understandably so. I've been the object of derision in this community many times, and never once has it positively changed my opinion on something, it's just further convinced me that a huge portion of the community are philistines. The only times my mind has been changed by this community were from looking at actual discussions and expositions, though even then it can be pretty weak (see my original comment that you replied to).*

If there is rhetorical merit in combating something, refute it (this can be as simple as linking to an FAQ entry). If there is not, ban them and move on. The schoolyard rituals are a useless affectation from people desperate to live in a little power fantasy.

If that leaves you wondering why I'm even here, yeah, me too. The short answer is that there's nowhere in the world where I feel at home, but at least here I can usually talk in a spontaneous way and be understood on a basic level, rather than need to continuously calibrate my speech to both be understood and not completely derail every interaction. Well, I need to calibrate it here too, but it's just a matter of simple self-censorship, so I don't mind it, compared to the counterfactual and theoretically-gutted frame that I need to speak to most people in . . .

[–] MLRL_Commie@hexbear.net 1 points 1 week ago

Totally sympathetic, I think we mostly agree and I feel very similarly about hexbear now how it affects me and how I relate to it. I'm glad you feel more at home here than elsewhere, and improving that is maybe a goal we should have for the site. Have you thought of making a bigger post for this? I think maybe you'll get the conversation started and maybe result in some changes, there are at least a good amount of hexbear users that would definitely support it. I'd even argue for it with you, despite my points against it named here. That because I don't think we really have any influence on many people outside of hexbear, so the positive effect I name below is lessened.

But I do know that for me, a cis-white-neurotypical-man, the dunking was part of the reason that I started searching on my own for "what the fuck do these ignorant people believe to be so convinced of their dunks?". And that led to me researching with a very different goal than just "looking for arguments". Arguments were something I understood as only for the goal of winning a debate and nothing to do with truth, so the dunks got me to start thinking about what the truth was and looking on my own. That comes from my history growing up in a very reactionary environment, where any argument didn't have to be correct as long as you got to hold you position at the end. It felt like a game. Meanwhile, dunking seemed to be like "you're not just gonna lose an argument, you're wrong and we don't care to argue it", which is interested me because it felt like a truth claim.