seeing as continuity is problematic when it's someone you have a beef with, i'm gonna leave people to figure out what i'm talking about when i ask when seebs converted to judaism, because i was under the impression they were hard christian?
She didn't convert to Judaism. The posts about hitler and nazis and a jewish woman were about a reaction image that was not understood in the context it was made.
I am having a lot of trouble understanding this post, and I feel like you're asking us to make assumptions and draw specific conclusions? I am unclear on what you're trying to do.
OK, here's an analogy: I think Seebs is like someone who speaks only American English, and then regards anyone trying to speak to them in Spanish as "failing at speaking English" rather than speaking another language. You can explain individual words of Spanish to them, but you can't teach them the whole language. And their response to people not understanding English is to say exactly the same thing again, just louder (and, in this case, wordier). I don't know of a way to teach people metaphorical Spanish. I was in extensive social skills therapy in elementary school, and so I have the bedrock assumptions of social almost as deep as the neurotypicals have them. And every time I was uncertain about what was happening, I asked questions and did research. The former isn't happening because Seebs is not a child, and the latter isn't happening because Seebs seems to not feel the kind of uncertainty that I felt about social situations.
well, that has some disturbing implications. i think i'm gonna go to bed now i was very confused is what i was. my question was "why is someone referring to seebs as being jewish?" but lissa explained
the beginning part is because people will yell at me if i quote who i am responding to for context, so anyone reading the post has to figure out who i'm responding to on their own, and i thought it would make things less frustratingly confusing if i informed anyone reading the post that this is the case
An input from my personal perspective: The "clout" thing may also refer to the fact that in a conversation with multiple people seebs regularly and reliably picks the wordiest/most elaborate statements to respond to, especially when multiple people make a similar point. This is likely not a thing done on purpose, but that, the fact that wordy and elaborate posts seem to be primarily a style thing certain users show (which makes it look like seebs is more likely to respond to certain users for [?????] reasons -> my brain concludes there is a certain status conferred by certain posting style since in that context the social interaction makes the most sense in the framework of seeing the forum as a sort of Versaillian court interaction) coupled with the tendency to not acknowledge any of the other posters who made that same point, gives the definite impression that Our Benevolent Dictator will not acknowledge points unless they come from their Favorites, a category that is fluctuating and obscure, and can only be guessed at usually. I logically know that this makes no sense with the internal self-reports from @seebs taken into consideration, however I learned elaborate social dynamics from LARP and it's hard to switch the Court Drama protocol off once it's on. And you reliably trip the switch on again and again every time I manage to get that part of my brain to shut up, seebs, and I am sure other people have similar-but-different reactions to the way you continuously signal status (accidentally) (A thing which you still have not acknowledged and which multiple people have pointed out). I'm aware that you, according to self-report, do not have the instincts that tell you this kind of thing. What I'm telling you is that it would be kind and considerate if you could at least try to remember to acknowledge even points you have no elaborate response to, even if those points come in the form of a single snappy, possibly impolite or reductive sentence. It would also help if you considered asking for clarifications on definitions/word choice first before accusing someone of lying. The accusation of "lying" carries the implication of malicious intend. It is specifically immediately aggressive and argumentative, somethign that comes off in poor taste when the "lie" (misunderstanding/unfortunate word choice/competing definition problem) is in a post asking you to leave someone alone. I would like to have this post explicitly and publicly acknowledged as having been read. [Look Ma I'm using my words like a real adult instead of shitposting]
Okay, the responses from seebs and the follow-up responses from others have helped me put my finger on a thing. For people who only see you in the forum in passing (me, I don't seem to hang in the threads where you post often), there is no way to know who has changed your mind and who hasn't except your behavior. You experience every discussion you get into; for many people, it's exhausting following all that. So people who, say, follow your Tumblr in passing see arguments that get very drawn out with relative strangers, and things with people you are more familiar with dropped more quickly. I don't know whether this is because they have already proven themselves capable of engaging in the way you do so they know what to say to quickly end the discussion or what, but it does comes off like you care more about what those people say and their comfort than others - thus, clout/status signaling. Spoiler: recent example Recently, BPDAnon and roach (not pinging bc I don't want to bring her into an argument/discussion) got into kind of a kerfuffle over a misunderstanding about fictional Nazis. You made (that I saw) one post about this, after which I believe roach disengaged. This is in sharp contrast to the replies after replies to people that you are, to my knowledge, unfamiliar with that happen all over your blog. Also, I have seen you, multiple times, engage with an argument or discussion when people have said they don't want to or aren't comfortable speaking with you. As @swirlingflight said, this gives the impression that you don't fear the (mostly social) consequences for doing so - that you are wielding your social status as a weapon because even if you make people uncomfortable, other people will still engage with you. (Again, I'm not saying you're doing any of this. I haven't seen enough to make up my mind one way or another. I'm speaking strictly of impressions you give.)
I've usually understood saying you don't want to engage to include an implicit request of 'so please stop engaging with me.' If a conversation is stressing me out, the least stressful parts are when I'm talking, and the most stressful parts are when I'm watching the other person respond to my words. Especially when the conversation is happening in someone else's personal vent thread, I think expecting them to withdraw from that conversation while you continue to post at high volume is nnnot the best general policy. If a conversation is already contentious, expecting just them to stop answering you while you continue to answer to them.... hmm, metaphor. If you were in a physical fight with someone and they were like 'stop, I don't want to fight' and you were like 'okay, you're not going to punch me, but I'm going to keep punching you. wait, when I punch you, why are you punching back?? that's really annoying.' In a personal vent thread, especially after we've had some major conversations about how people are supposed to be able to have that as their space, when you're directly taking the thread owner's words and disagreeing with them at length, from the outside that reads more like you're thinking 'yes, they don't want to engage, but I still want to engage, so.... I'm going to engage.' I get that wasn't your thought process, but it really reads that way.
I'm calmer than I was, so I'm going to try to state what specifically was frustrating for me in this interaction. -Initial and fairly minor annoyance at Seebs jumping in with textwalls after I have expressed in thread that I 1) don't like or trust Seebs, 2) can't do textwalls. -I feel that a lot of Seebs'arguments involve nitpicking at word usage and demands that already frustrated people rephrase and reword their arguments to suit her before she will engage with the feeling behind the argument, which leads to further frustration. -I am pretty pissed at having my post quoted in my thread in order to criticize my word choice, and having that later followed by Seebs saying she was annoyed that I responded, because apparently she was quoting my post in my thread to criticize my words in the hopes that other people and not me would respond. -I am also pissed that the criticism of my word choice came with a mistranslation of my statement ("local troublemaker thinks all Seebs cares about is popularity" rather than "local troublemaker thinks Seebs is more likely to be swayed by facts coming from some people than others, and is more likely to consider those valid facts to begin with") and an assertion that I am a liar. -Am REALLY pissed that a relatively civil discussion was cut off for the night because Seebs couldn't bugger off until half a dozen people told her to (which also increases my belief that she places more value on what some people say than others.) Edit: Also, while Seebs likely wasn't aware of this, please don't refer to me with "dude" or other masculine terms. Edit edit: I'm curious as to why this is in Brainbent and not Argument Island, because it seems like it's exactly the proper content for Argument Island.
This is actually very close to my current best model for the thing... except that I have the roles reversed. I'm totally aware that there's people who can't speak my language, and that it's a disability on my end to not speak theirs. But every so often I run into people who appear to intellectually absorb the information that I'm speaking English, but every time I say gift they say [in German] "see, seebs is talking about poison", because they can't stop treating everything I say as having been said in another language. So I do in fact ask questions and do research, and I know some of what happens... But there's some specific things I just can't process without actually getting explicit words instead of implied signals, and some people can't do that.
I tend to respond to longer posts because they tend to have more explicit connection of assumptions/evidence to conclusions, which makes them easier for me to engage with productively. And I tend not to respond to near-identical points repeatedly because it seems pointless or spammy. And of course, the "fluctuating and obscure" comes from the fact that "favorites" isn't really the thing, even though there are some users who are quite likely to present things in ways I can engage with. Ohhhh. That would totally fit with Kathy's observations, too. ... And of course I've also gotten the advice of not responding to things unless I'm going to engage significantly with them, because why would you do that except to intimidate people. Part of the problem with social protocols, from my perspective, is that there's a lot of them and they contradict each other.
I have a lot of reservations about the "vent thread" thing, and they are significantly amplified by the information that a thread not labeled "vent thread" and which contained what appeared to be substantive discussion might actually secretly be "a vent thread" people can get yelled at for talking in. This, plus the frequent pattern of "saying nasty shit about people in a thread, yelling if they respond or even acknowledge that in any way", is making me really, really, dislike the concept of vent threads. And I sort of see the analogy, but of course, that presupposes that commenting on things and trying to understand them or ask questions about them is Inherently Violent, and I'm not comfortable with that. I am sore tempted to just make the forum's first actual rule which is "the forum is for discussion, period, full stop, there is no such thing as a thread in which you cannot discuss what people say". Because wow, that sets off every red flag in my cognitive processing of communication. EDIT: Yes, I know that's a bad idea. It's a stunningly bad idea. It's not a thing I plan to do or think would be a good idea. I'm just really annoyed. I am very much disturbed by the idea of people declaring a thing "their space" and using that to stifle or prevent discussion, especially because we've had a lot of problems resulting from people using vent threads to say unambiguously false things about other people and use "but it's my vent thread, how dare" as retaliation for any response, in or out of thread, to those claims.
I think there's something going on there, but I'm not sure what. My first guess would be that if I don't successfully communicate with people, I don't tend to continue engaging with them in the long term, so the "people I am more familiar with" set is pretty much heavily preselected for "people with whom I can have effective communications". The obvious counterpoint would be random anons writing in, because a significant number of those have presented arguments or evidence that changed my mind on topics, and obviously that's not "familiarity". Oh, interesting. So this is the counterpart to a thing that I have noticed in professional life. When I was much younger, I was regarded as unreasonably arrogant. Now I am often regarded as atypically and laudably humble. What changed? Expectations. I will argue with anyone. When I was young and I was arguing with famous people, that was arrogance. When I'm famousish myself and I'm arguing with junior devs, that's humble, because the expected behavior is that I tell them to shut up and stop bothering me. And on forums, it goes the other way. If I have power, it seems arrogant and pushy, while if I do the exact same thing when other people have power, it seems "brave" or someuthing. I still have really big reservations about the "not comfortable speaking with you" thing when talking about public postings; I have seen "I don't want to argue" used a whole lot as a way to protect dangerous or abusive things from criticism, and even though I recognize that there's probably quite often genuine discomfort involved, I don't think ideas should ever be immune to criticism.
Seebs dude, that would be the stupidest most reactionary rule you could make on a forum I'll of mentally ill people. I'm in the waiting room for the doctor, otherwise I would explain further, but this is the shit people are wary about and why you come off the way you do. That is completely 'fuck you I don't like this so I'm taking the toys away'. That is an implicit threat no matter if you meant it that way
The problem with this idea is that you have now preselected people who will engage in discussion or criticism in the forum either to people who agree with you, people who have the spoons to take on a discussion with you, which has been mentioned by multiple people to be difficult, or people who are so tired of the environment this fosters that they explode because they no longer care about consequences. Ideas may not be above criticism, but a discussion of an idea can continue without a specific person. No one is obligated to explain themselves to you or anyone else. If they don't and you draw the wrong conclusions, that's on them, but they are still not obligated, especially if continuing to engage is bad for them. That's what I understood as the purpose of vent threads, as a 'let me be emotional and irrational without defending every single word choice'.
To my understand "vent threads" are pretty obviously vent threads when they have a title referring to yelling and are in the Holler Closet subforum.
This is at least partially true, but: Personal favor is not necessary to change my mind. Anons and even people I dislike do so fairly often. Personal favor is not sufficient to change my mind. It increases the likelihood of me listening to you, it doesn't mean I'll assume you're right. Personal favor in the sense of liking someone is a separate flag from "I trust this person's judgment". There are plenty of people I like but who don't rate noticably above baseline for credibility-of-criticism, and a few people I specifically dislike but whose judgment I respect a lot. And yet, random anons have managed to overcome this by writing a clear objection in the first place. Within the size of a single ask. That's what offends me about this, the implication that it is always necessary for it to be a huge production. It's not! A clear, well-stated, objection will frequently get my attention right away. This is a good point, but I think it has an unstated assumption, which is that I haven't spent significant hunks of the last thirty years trying to find ways to engage with people. I've dramatically expanded the pool of people I can usefully engage with, but I'm about at my limits here. On the first one: The specific problem I have is the people who won't allow clarifications. Whether they call it "nitpicking" or declare that it's a "boundary" that they need to defend that they will never, ever, clarify a thing, doesn't matter much; if someone will not clarify, then I can't do anything. Game over, man. The second one: Yes. There's a fair number of people I can't engage with productively. There's a very small subset who have very similar complaints and very similar problems with the engagement that look like a sub-pattern. That doesn't mean that the many other people I have trouble engaging with are in the same boat. I think the problem here is the thing where I made a very specific claim and a number of people seem to have understood it to be intended much more broadly. The third one: I think that's basically reasonable, but in at least some cases, I have pretty solid evidence that the specific person is, in general, causing conflict and misunderstanding. There's "a few people sometimes don't get along with X", and there's "I've seen at least two or three entire forums disintegrate after X showed up". (No one who is, yet, here.)
i have the same issues with how this is going on, because this is atill happening to me, but it wasn't the case about what was happening this time. lt may have been venting about the forum culture at large, but they were legitimately using the vent thread for its intended purpose. there was nothing underhanded or shit-stirring going on, though their beliefs might be unpopular. it makes sense to be able engage with the things someone has said elsewhere however, because the idea that someone can say questionable things and deny people the right to put the things they said under scrutiny is very worrisome to me. i think there might be the need to find some manner of middle-ground
