Every ounce of energy a person spends watching their back, making sure their fellow man isn’t out to get them, hardening their armor against the thousands of people trying to find a chink, find the one thing they can say that gets them to have a mental breakdown just because they think it’s funny watching them have a mental breakdown, is an ounce of energy they don’t spend creating, caring for each other, making the life of their fellow man just that little bit better, and unapologetically being themselves.
But if you’re so insistent that words on a screen can’t affect you unless you let them, Mr. Forumite, I guess you won’t mind if I end this conversation by telling you to go to the hardware store and buy a rope and a bucket, providing exhaustive instructions for how to tie a noose, and telling you to end your worthless life before you ruin anyone else’s, because your parents clearly never loved you and there’s no way anyone else who’s sane ever will.
So you believe that, since there are a large number of people who can be easily manipulated by words into believing or doing certain things, and there likely always will be, words may as well inherently have power and we should be careful with how we use them, but you simultaneously believe that the solution to this is just to make everyone grow thicker skin?
For the record, though, I don’t believe anyone should kill themselves, or anything that I said about you personally in the second paragraph. Quite the opposite, in fact. I only said that to make the point that “just words on a screen” can do horrible things to the right people, which I’m glad you seem to understand.
If everyone were trying to spread knowledge and understand each other all the time, the world would be a much safer and much better place by most standards.
The fact that this is not the case is why forums need moderation. Very rarely, I find, do people engage in good faith when a more emotionally satisfying alternative is available. People troll. People argue in bad faith. People deliberately try to get each other riled up and post misinformation (by which I mean statements that can be disproved by a single Google search) in the hopes that those who see it will be too lazy to check. People take one of those misinformation posts saying something they already agree with as irrefutable proof that it is true and refuse to listen to reason.
I agree that whether any given post constitutes some of the above is much more often than not a matter of personal opinion, and that therefore people who can be trusted to decide accurately every single time are rare indeed if they truly exist at all. That said, anyone who’s ever browsed 4chan for a while can plainly see that removing nothing does much more harm than good, especially in forums that discuss topics commonly frequented by people who are vulnerable and therefore easy to manipulate (forums discussing trans issues immediately come to mind).
I personally would MUCH rather use a forum moderated by an imperfect human whose heart is in the right place than a forum with no moderators whatsoever. The beautiful thing about the Internet, though, is that we do not all have to agree on which is best. Some forums are moderated, some are not, and we can use one or the other or both as we choose.
I’m just going to throw in a bit at the end of this thread here, as I find the conversation fascinating.
This is how fascism starts. “We have to control speech for your own good” becomes “hateful speech comes from [insert group]” becomes “we have to stop them.”
We are all being weaponized by the internet. Free speech is important. You don’t fight fascism with more fascism, you fight it with better ideas.
Every ounce of energy a person spends watching their back, making sure their fellow man isn’t out to get them, hardening their armor against the thousands of people trying to find a chink, find the one thing they can say that gets them to have a mental breakdown just because they think it’s funny watching them have a mental breakdown, is an ounce of energy they don’t spend creating, caring for each other, making the life of their fellow man just that little bit better, and unapologetically being themselves.
But if you’re so insistent that words on a screen can’t affect you unless you let them, Mr. Forumite, I guess you won’t mind if I end this conversation by telling you to go to the hardware store and buy a rope and a bucket, providing exhaustive instructions for how to tie a noose, and telling you to end your worthless life before you ruin anyone else’s, because your parents clearly never loved you and there’s no way anyone else who’s sane ever will.
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So you believe that, since there are a large number of people who can be easily manipulated by words into believing or doing certain things, and there likely always will be, words may as well inherently have power and we should be careful with how we use them, but you simultaneously believe that the solution to this is just to make everyone grow thicker skin?
For the record, though, I don’t believe anyone should kill themselves, or anything that I said about you personally in the second paragraph. Quite the opposite, in fact. I only said that to make the point that “just words on a screen” can do horrible things to the right people, which I’m glad you seem to understand.
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The fact that this is not the case is why forums need moderation. Very rarely, I find, do people engage in good faith when a more emotionally satisfying alternative is available. People troll. People argue in bad faith. People deliberately try to get each other riled up and post misinformation (by which I mean statements that can be disproved by a single Google search) in the hopes that those who see it will be too lazy to check. People take one of those misinformation posts saying something they already agree with as irrefutable proof that it is true and refuse to listen to reason.
I agree that whether any given post constitutes some of the above is much more often than not a matter of personal opinion, and that therefore people who can be trusted to decide accurately every single time are rare indeed if they truly exist at all. That said, anyone who’s ever browsed 4chan for a while can plainly see that removing nothing does much more harm than good, especially in forums that discuss topics commonly frequented by people who are vulnerable and therefore easy to manipulate (forums discussing trans issues immediately come to mind).
I personally would MUCH rather use a forum moderated by an imperfect human whose heart is in the right place than a forum with no moderators whatsoever. The beautiful thing about the Internet, though, is that we do not all have to agree on which is best. Some forums are moderated, some are not, and we can use one or the other or both as we choose.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
I’m just going to throw in a bit at the end of this thread here, as I find the conversation fascinating.
This is how fascism starts. “We have to control speech for your own good” becomes “hateful speech comes from [insert group]” becomes “we have to stop them.”
We are all being weaponized by the internet. Free speech is important. You don’t fight fascism with more fascism, you fight it with better ideas.