Even less sure where to put this

I can go find exact words if that would help, but I do have stuff to do today so no promises on timeliness.

 

Seebs, I see your strawman of a insincerely proposed rule, and yeah, that would limit this problem by creating several others.

Someone saying untrue things in a vent thread for the purpose of riling people up is a stupid asshole.

There is no rule against being a stupid asshole, just the ways people react to it. I'm bewildered by your insistence on correcting the untrue statements, in the same thread, as I think you undermined confidence and trust in you by doing so.

I've got my vent thread's policy as "people can interact with me and each other in it, but if I say a topic needs to move to a new thread, people better fucking move."

My purpose for vent threads is as threads in which op controls the content, a delineated space in which to throw cutlery where bystanders can come by, potentially to offer advice and sympathies but at risk of collateral damage.

You're expressing concern about the present and potential uses of these threads, and thinking aloud how to mitigate the problems of them. The main concern I'm hearing is about people using vent threads as a safe base to say anything about anyone in a way that they're immune to being contradicted. That's something people have brought up, and I think this is the first time where I really see it in action; some of us have been testing whether posting in separate threads to respond to each other is a viable way to correct perceived falsehoods and wrongs. Results still pending, biased by a number of people whining that they want to say or do something but they just can't because... then they would get yelled at. Because getting yelled at is so much worse than leaving the needed thing unsaid. I don't get it.


Eta ugh ninjad twice in the course of writing this.

 

I feel like part of the disconnection here is that Seebs doesn't feel like LT saying that they didn't want to talk to Seebs was grounds for Seebs leaving their thread, and that the topic was an open invitation for discussion.

My problem with that is that when someone's repeatedly insistent that they don't want to speak to you, makes allusions to how the thread has been made all about you since your arrival and their discontentment about having you in there, and other people are also chiming in that continuing that discussion there is a bad idea...I feel like it becomes quickly evident that the thread needs a divergence, because at the very least after the first page or two of the Seebs entrance, I personally think it was very clear that the discussion Seebs wanted there was not the purpose of the thread.

Usually when things like that happen we make thread divisions. Obviously that has happened here, but I do think that it was a mistake to keep pounding away at the topic for so long before agreeing to a split just because there wasn't an implicit request for one. I feel like the repeated communications of "and this is now all about Seebs" and the like were enough to hint that this was not a Seebs invitation kind of deal, but the usual vent thread deal of "respond elsewhere if bothered."

 

but i'm not talking about changing your mind, i'm talking about you listening to people and considering what they are saying without writing huge walls of text at them

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.[/QUOTE]
a clear objection might work for simpler concerns, but topics like this are too complicated for a single ask. this does not make them any less important. and even then, simple issues can still become complicated if you have enough trouble understanding the issue someone has with you over them, and you don't always understand the issue even when it is clearly stated.

it is not always necessary for it to be a huge production, but it is necessary often enough. furthermore, not everyone is capable of writing a clear objection, and sometimes someone can write an objection that is clear to other people, but not to you. for people you regularly have trouble communicating with, this is not an available solution.

you could spend an eternity trying to find ways to engage with the people you have trouble engaging with and still fail to find a way on your own. that doesn't mean that it's impossible, especially with the help of others. in fact, part of the problem might have to do with the very fact that you have spent such an incredibly long time refining a fundamentally flawed or limited method of engaging with people, narrowing your options.

this still doesn't mean that you should run with your assumptions, especially when this usually involves people you have difficulty understanding in the first place.

furthermore, if someone isn't willing to clarify, they probably aren't comfortable with talking to you in the first place, which makes sense, considering your method of trying to understand the things you don't understand can be quite personally intrusive. a certain finesse is required sometimes when trying to engage with people who have trauma and brainweird, and you are incredibly forward, direct, blunt, and to the point.

you have a point. taking this into consideration, you need to learn to better differentiate when the source of the misunderstanding stems from your approach, or from the nature of the person in question.

 

Some further clarification: that thread is partially-vent, partially-discussion. Several people openly disagreed with me there, stated that I'm a dick, opened conversation. I never objected to any of that. I don't mind discussion; I am not currently interested in discussion with Seebs, both because I can't read textwalls and because I don't trust her and tend to perceive her as being disingenuous.
I found Seeb's initial response in the thread annoying, but only on the basis of the fact that I really don't like or trust her. I didn't consider that any kind of line crossed. I DO consider it a line crossed when I say

by which I meant "I am not interested in a conversation with you, please lay off." When you respond to that by quoting my posts in my thread discussing my words, I consider that a push for me to engage further. I have a hard time believing that your response to my use of the word "clout" was intended for other users and not me, and if it was, I resent the implication that other people have more place discussing the meaning of my words than I do.

 

I've spent a few minutes trying to articulate a response, but I think that my divide boils down to me having been an outsider to the initial conflict and coming in not being riled or personally badmouthed, which I think naturally lets people look at things from another perspective. I apologize if it came across like I was trying to slam you, @seebs.

From my point of view, the amount of people pushing back at your presence made it clear they didn't want you there much earlier than when you found that to be the case. You don't see it that way. I honestly don't know how to reconcile our viewpoints, and when I think about it, I just feel like I have a headache.

I apologize for sounding harsh if I did. I'm guessing that I came across like that because of comments like you needing to be a mind-reader or me presuming something out of autistic people, which was not at all my intent. I'm also not happy with how you said 'trick' and I'm going to figure that I riled that out of you by unintentionally being an asshole. I don't think anyone was trying to trick you, nor do I think anyone is or honestly has.

I'm going to back off before I feel like I get any more bad faith than I already have.

 

That's a very unkind assumption of intent seebs, and it would help a lot if you could stay consistent. If you are not a mind reader, like you just now reminded everyone again, don't try to read minds.

You seem to be very hung up on intent from the way you are arguing. The thing is even if you qualify your intent again and again, it does not make people magically more comfortable with your actions just because you didn't mean to threaten/signal status/make someone uncomfortable. This makes things very frustrating because your continued arguing by propping up the way you didn't MEAN to do this thing, you meant to communicate something ELSE reads very similar to 'Your emotions are wrong, stop having them'. It is generally considered conducive to communication to acknowledge someone's distress, and apologize for causing it, rather than double down on 'didn't mean to cause distress on purpose'.

This is apart from my petty frustrations about your non compliance with organically emerged forum ettiquette but I am aware that I cannot argue that properly due to the fact that there are no proper ways to enforce that ettiquette except yelling. However I find it interesting that people are messaging you about somethign which has, according to the last discussion on that topic, been deemed entirely permissable. Things in the Brainbent Subforum are as far as I know implicitly disclaimered as "Not necessarily thought out, kind, truthful or logical". That kind of thing happens with emotionally laden content.

 

because if people are yelling at me that means i'm doing the wrong thing, and i want to be doing the right thing because i don't want everyone to hate me, even if i don't actually believe it should be wrong of me to do the thing

 

Huh. I'm closer to getting it now than I was, thank you.