I see that I bolded the wrong line. Let me fix that. Now watch as you try, yet again, to redirect the conversation.
let me know if this should be moved, but: In response to your recent post in your TCHGB thread with Kathy, Athol: What you are describing is not magical thinking. Magical thinking refers to a specific type of thought pattern commonly associated with OCD and anxiety, in which a special, repeatedly performed action is thought to have an effect, in an almost magical way, on a different, unrelated other thing. It's a distortion of cause and effect in a specific way. An example: Maria Bamford explained her magical thinking (in song) as "if I keep the ice cube trays filled, no one will die" Again: what you are describing is not magical thinking. Using that phrase is confusing and misleading. What you are describing is an attempt to maliciously manipulate someone else into doing what you want. ETA: through graphic threats. Shouldn't have forgotten that the first time, cause it's, yknow, an extremely important part of this.
So, what if she can't apologize adequately? Unless this is all just a nasty manipulative con, what we've seen is consistent with a person who doesn't have the introspection, cognitive empathy, memory, or attention skills to achieve (or, for that matter, fake) an apology that the wronged parties would accept. There have been lots of good instructions in this thread, but it may be that it would take a lot of work for her to learn the skills she needs to learn the skills she needs to start to understand the instructions for how to apologize. I'm not sure that's the situation here, but it's looking likely. And if so... What then? Is there someone here willing and able to do that much work with her? I'm sure not, not for free. We don't want to ban her, we definitely don't want to let her behavior slide... Do we just keep arguing in this thread forever?
Freeze things here, I'm begging the mods above. Take time to reflect. In school, we had something called isolation... it was a chair in the corner fashioned out of a refrigerator box. (And a sign with the rules, just like timeout, but the teacher couldn't enforce looking at them.) It was for when time-out wasn't enough, and the sequence was isolation(10)-timeout(5). If there was too much tantruming, back into isolation or timeout.
@Athol Magarac, reports don't work as a good way to ask mods questions about your posts. Once a user submits a report, a mod can't send a reply without resolving or rejecting the report, and whatever reply they may choose to send doesn't show up on our end of the interface. Virtually any other method of asking questions will be easier to respond to.
One thing I'll point out: there is literally nothing stopping you from taking time to reflect before you post. Sometimes things will keep moving, but that's okay. It's better to have a response you've thought through than 5 responses that communicate very little and not what you mean them to.
Honest question: do you consider this a good solution? Because I want to remind you this thread literally started because you claimed the mods were silencing you. How would being put in timeout not be literally even worse than just post mod for this?
this relatively short-lived set of interactions has seemed to take up a huge amount of time, energy, and forumspace for the folx in the forum in the past few months. people can dictate their own roles in siphoning this amount of personal energy into trying to fix another person's serious communication and addiction difficulties, but I have been increasingly dismayed by the amount of work people are putting into this situation without any real change. we don't do things as a forum as a whole- we aren't One Individual Mind, and I know the largest goal of this forum is to provide assistance and not ban people, and any choices remain up to mods/seebs/our overlords. I just want to caution people to carefully consider the amount of time and energy they are budgeting for these many many threads and conflicts, as they likely will continue.
Oh boy there's a lot to unpack here and I'm just gonna say that uh. Hey I haven't been threatening anyone, thanks. To start
Jump-time to the TCHB to compare our definitions of threats. From context, warning someone if they do a thing, there will be a thing they don't like... that's a threat. Or... Maybe more accurate, warning someone that they did a thing that will result in a thing they don't like unless they come up with a good counter to prevent it... that's also a threat.
Warning someone that a course of action has a logical consequence and that it might be bad is not threat. Just because you can't follow the logic doesn't mean it isn't there. It just means you can't discern it, so you interpret the warning as a threat.
What do you mean by " telegraphed criticism"? Here's what those words usually mean: Telegraphed: Informal . to divulge or indicate unwittingly (one's intention, next offensive move, etc.), as to anopponent or to an audience; broadcast: 'The fighter telegraphed his punch and his opponent was able to parry it.' Criticism: The expression of disapproval of someone or something on the basis of perceived faults or mistakes: ‘he received a lot of criticism’ From your wording, it seems as if you were hinting at a criticism, expecting someone to pick up on it, and somehow, magically, through no fault of your own, it was read as a threat.
I'm at a lovely dinner, but talking about the fight with the serial numbers scrubbed off doesn't do any good when it's still pretty clearly about it. I've said numerous times that I don't want you to twist the fight into a different light and drag it behind my back, Athol. Fucking stop. For everyone else: This is what 'telegraphed criticism' is.
Well that made things clear as mud. ETA: other than Etansel trying to help clarify, I am the only one responding to you right now @Athol Magarac. Is answering a simple question of "please clarify what you mean by this" really so overwhelming that, judging by the video response, you feel as if you've had a section of forest dropped on you? You keep saying we're not making an effort to understand you. Here is me making an effort.
Okay, there was this thing about how things like me should be fed things in splinters or toothpicks. I suggested that I should be confronted in typical wood-burning stove type logs, I keep being deluged quarter-acres in 40-year-old oaks. Yeah, the crazy starts here. I'm guessing most of you have not haved to toss a winterload of oak-logs from the parking-area to the wood-pile queue.
Yeah I'll jump to the TCHGB thread in a minute but first I need to unpack all of the stuff you decided to throw into the thread and in particular my way while I was sleeping so let's do that. Nobody is demonizing you for taking care of your own emotional health. Trying to coerce us into basically coddling you and making your emotional health our problem with the threat of not actually reading our posts - a thing you know many of us are exhausted with at this point - is abusive. I am uncomfortable and displeased with the characterization of my telling you about cause and effect, helping with communication debugging, and telling you the implications of things you say as 'threats'. Informing you that your thought patterns are toxic and refusing to allow abuse to be swept under the rug in favour of progressing the conversation is not threatening you. I am glad to know I'm helping, though. I will be quite upfront about being manipulative in my interactions with you - I have to be almost performatively compassionate for you to recognize that it is happening, for instance - but I am doing it to help you. I am glad you recognize that not allowing the thread to progress past important things is a good strategy to ensure you actually process and understand what the problem is. I take issue with the characterization of pronoun trouble as "petty BS", for the same reasons prismaticvoid laid out for you. It is one of the things we will need to discuss. For being a golden child - you are essentially elevating me to the status of a pet, or favourite. You are threatening to withhold things - engagement with posts, empathy, intellectual labor - unless others meet the standard you believe I have set. This also threatens me by making it clear what the consequences will be if I cease to engage with you like I have been: that I can expect to be treated with the same level of cruelty, dismissal and emotional violence that you've been directing at others. Whether you are doing this accidentally or not does not matter, it is what you are doing. Please cite what you mean when you accuse the mods of 'wielding their power recklessly'. Here, after emphasizing how important I have been, you also attempt to convey that I am disposable. Given that pretty much everyone else posting in this thread is on the edge of their rope with you and I have explained the reasons I'm willing and able to engage still with you except when you are being relentlessly abusive, I don't think you're going to find a Replacement right now and honestly I would super advise others not try to get involved. I can handle the manipulative tactics you are using and they do not work on me. That does not mean they are okay or acceptable to use in the first place. Case in point. After announcing your refusal to engage unless people meet the same standards you are trying to hold me too, any criticism of how you have treated me gets dismissed as an attack. By the way I really appreciate everyone pointing out the toxic manner in which you were treating me while I wasn't around to do it myself. So, with that all said. Your response in the TCHGB thread was missing responses to several of the things I asked for. Please address them. As a reminder for the thing with Jove - you insultingly ranked respecting pronouns as less important than household chores while actively receiving aid and understanding from a trans person who was going to great lengths to help you. This hurt Jove.
I have and can follow your metaphor but remind you not to dehumanize yourself when engaging with us in a public thread.