I tend of assume someone being off thousands of orders of magnitude about something is using hyperbole. You didn't even mention the possibility. Seeing one example of an incorrect ratio and leaping clear to being torn between deciding if the person who said it is a complete idiot or some insidious evil force manipulating folks is enough to qualify you to wear a cape.
Man... I remember a few decades back when global warming seemed like some big scary possible thing. After living through living and events and news and happenings since then the cleansing, purifying flames are starting to sound more peaceful and serene than scary.
We can consume the wealthy and abdicate them of the responsibility of carrying on and also demand change. Especially if we consume them while they're still alive, as a mob, and do it with dull forks.
You don't seem to understand. I was reaching for an example to explain the visceral disgust I feel at merely considering myself doing that. Yes, cannibalism is an extreme example. I had to choose an extreme example, because that's what honestly reflect how that thought makes me feel. Had I said "It seems kinda icky" it would be been downplaying it and lying to you.
Why do you care so much that other humans in the world feel that strongly against things you support? Aren't your morals/values/personal beliefs the things you care most about following? Would it make sense to you to have someone who believes it's good to do a thing that you genuinely have an uncontrollable disgust reflex at even considering doing get upset at you for that? It's just your natural response to a thing. It would be like someone getting upset that you get super happy when you see a cat or terrified if you wake up with spiders crawling on your face.
I'm not being moralizing and judgemental. I'm honestly communicating about my own feelings on a big part of that core self, the things that genuinely matter to you in life. You don't have to agree with me or adhere to those things. They're not your things. Other humans living by what means the most to them personally isn't an insult towards you.
I'm completely aware that different people have different beliefs. I've already said that I can only live true to mine as best as I can and couldn't force others to adhere to them. I never once said anyone else had to or should live by my personal values and morals.
Long copy/paste since it's the same point. Not everyone will like or agree with everyone or the things they hold most dear. Me openly communicating about my own feelings on issues isn't attacking anyone else.
"The problem you’re having isn’t with any normativity, it’s with tribalism. There’s an awful part of being human that makes us want to be part of a social group and shun the outsider. To decide that those who aren’t with or like us in our beliefs and norms are evil and bad and to be hated. And even worse, when we feel socially and morally justified in hating someone it feels good to vent that anger and hate at them.
It’s two combined evolutionary relics from millions of years of what eventually became humanity. First, through almost all of that time the outsider was dangerous. Food was often scarce, survival was always questionable, and medical care didn’t exist. A group of people you didn’t know could easily become a fight for resources, and even a single clearly friendly unarmed stranger could bring disease and wipe your entire group out.
The second is the social pressure of fitting in. Through almost all of that time being kicked out of your group was likely a death sentence. We can’t seem to shake that inner terror we’re rarely even conscious of about not fitting in. It pushes us to agree with the people we want to be close to or be liked by and to try to emulate the group we’re with.
Combined, those things are awful. People anywhere will always notice someone who seems dramatically different from the area norm, but someone can stand out in a rural region when the only distinction is a slightly different accent. The drive to shun the outsider and to drive to fit in with your known group work together to make it likely that whatever the difference is, the group is likely to treat that different person or group terribly.
Once someone begins it and no one steps up to stop it, it starts to feel acceptable and even right to do it. Pressure to fit in becomes pressure to join in, and the smaller and tighter knit the group is the more difficult it is to deny that and deviate from what now seems to be the norm of our group.
If you hear someone else from your nation make a racist comment to an immigrant it’s not too difficult to step in and say something against it. If they respond back with some angry tirade about how you’re siding with “them” there are good odds you’ll leave it at that and move on, but perhaps you’d become adamant and insist it stop.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re spending a day with your closest friends and one of them makes a racist comment to an immigrant it’s much harder to deal with, and even more so if it’s said privately between the group or other members of the group looked entertained or uncaring when it happened. It’s so hard to even bring it up that people typically decide to let it go or debate whether to say anything internally. That pressure makes it really easy to join in with those acts, even when they’re things you really believed were wrong.
The world has over 8 billion people spread among something like 17,000 distinct ethnic groups and cultures, all with varying histories, religions, moralities, and social norms. Aspects of normal behavior to one group is very often considered immoral to another, and at times there are complete contradictions to the point where doing something is immoral and illegal in one place but not doing that same thing is immoral and illegal in another.
When someone sees your beliefs or acts as immoral it’s easy to define that as them being hateful of you. If it’s a group of people it’s easy for them to become hateful of you. And because of that, you’re likely to hate them in return. And you both spew hate at one another, and you both feel good doing it, because you can both tell yourselves that you’re justified and the other person is in the wrong.
You’ll never beat normativity. Macrosociology and cultural evolution show that moral norms such as monogamy or polyamory fail to unify across a population once it grows into the millions of people. And our actual social strata doesn’t extend nearly that far in reality. The highest number of people typically considered able to maintain a cohesive cultural group before they naturally begin to differentiate is only 150. Since people constantly grow and change the norms of any group and culture are always in flux, they’re always going to be there and always changing.
The best solution is simply doing our best to understand that people who have completely different beliefs and morals than us aren’t evil. That it’s great to do our best to live up to our own morals and values, but that it’s not right for us to try to force them onto others. It sounds easy, but in also means not judging others based on our own morals… so it’s extremely difficult.
There are people in the world who consider dog meat part of a normal winter meal. It’s very hard for me to not consider them evil, horrible people. Dogs are furry bundles of pure love who want nothing other than to be near their person and enjoy life together. They don’t see them that way. Seeing that as a cultural difference and not them being evil is tough.
That’s just pets. It’s way harder when it’s something deeply personal to our own life and self. Your example is clearly one of those. It’s likely the biggest and most common. Not just the mononormativity and platonic amatonormativity aspects, but the entirety of who it is and is not considered moral to have sex with and under what conditions. It seems very likely that it’s one of the things the moral differences that so much of humanity feels so strongly about even though there are many different accepted norms around the world is a third evolutionary relic. Survival of the group/society/culture/species is the primary evolutionary imperative, so it makes sense that the acts associated with human reproduction are the ones that so many people have a hard time accepting norms on that are completely unlike their own.
All we can do is try to live up to our own personal beliefs and morals, and struggle to not see those whose norms and morals don’t align with ours as evil. Maybe one day we’ll all be able to succeed in that. But we can at least understand it and keep it in mind so that we can keep ourselves from acting hateful towards those people and hopefully become more willing to try to stop our closest friends from acting hateful as well."
I'm not saying they're not idiots, but very few people if any can be said to understand most medical realities other than the most simple completely. There are plenty of people in the world that don't understand germ theory who don't say that they don't believe it.
They're not using the word believe as in having a religious belief. Their using it in the very common, normal usage in which saying "I don't believe X" is synonymous with saying "I don't believe in the accuracy of X."
Taylor Swift's jets alone cancel out any benefit all of your steps might have for a few million or hundreds of millions of people.
It's wonderful to want to try to do something about this, but the only real way we have to do something about it is to stop the people and corporations who are the actual biggest contributors to the issue.
I'm thinking less along the lines of voting and more along the lines of stabbing.
The problem you're having isn't with any normativity, it's with tribalism. There’s an awful part of being human that makes us want to be part of a social group and shun the outsider. To decide that those who aren’t with or like us in our beliefs and norms are evil and bad and to be hated. And even worse, when we feel socially and morally justified in hating someone it feels good to vent that anger and hate at them.
It's two combined evolutionary relics from millions of years of what eventually became humanity. First, through almost all of that time the outsider was dangerous. Food was often scarce, survival was always questionable, and medical care didn't exist. A group of people you didn't know could easily become a fight for resources, and even a single clearly friendly unarmed stranger could bring disease and wipe your entire group out.
The second is the social pressure of fitting in. Through almost all of that time being kicked out of your group was likely a death sentence. We can't seem to shake that inner terror we're rarely even conscious of about not fitting in. It pushes us to agree with the people we want to be close to or be liked by and to try to emulate the group we're with.
Combined, those things are awful. People anywhere will always notice someone who seems dramatically different from the area norm, but someone can stand out in a rural region when the only distinction is a slightly different accent. The drive to shun the outsider and to drive to fit in with your known group work together to make it likely that whatever the difference is, the group is likely to treat that different person or group terribly.
Once someone begins it and no one steps up to stop it, it starts to feel acceptable and even right to do it. Pressure to fit in becomes pressure to join in, and the smaller and tighter knit the group is the more difficult it is to deny that and deviate from what now seems to be the norm of our group.
If you hear someone else from your nation make a racist comment to an immigrant it's not too difficult to step in and say something against it. If they respond back with some angry tirade about how you're siding with "them" there are good odds you'll leave it at that and move on, but perhaps you'd become adamant and insist it stop.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you're spending a day with your closest friends and one of them makes a racist comment to an immigrant it's much harder to deal with, and even more so if it's said privately between the group or other members of the group looked entertained or uncaring when it happened. It's so hard to even bring it up that people typically decide to let it go or debate whether to say anything internally. That pressure makes it really easy to join in with those acts, even when they're things you really believed were wrong.
The world has over 8 billion people spread among something like 17,000 distinct ethnic groups and cultures, all with varying histories, religions, moralities, and social norms. Aspects of normal behavior to one group is very often considered immoral to another, and at times there are complete contradictions to the point where doing something is immoral and illegal in one place but not doing that same thing is immoral and illegal in another.
When someone sees your beliefs or acts as immoral it’s easy to define that as them being hateful of you. If it's a group of people it's easy for them to become hateful of you. And because of that, you're likely to hate them in return. And you both spew hate at one another, and you both feel good doing it, because you can both tell yourselves that you're justified and the other person is in the wrong.
You'll never beat normativity. Macrosociology and cultural evolution show that moral norms such as monogamy or polyamory fail to unify across a population once it grows into the millions of people. And our actual social strata doesn't extend nearly that far in reality. The highest number of people typically considered able to maintain a cohesive cultural group before they naturally begin to differentiate is only 150. Since people constantly grow and change the norms of any group and culture are always in flux, they're always going to be there and always changing.
The best solution is simply doing our best to understand that people who have completely different beliefs and morals than us aren't evil. That it's great to do our best to live up to our own morals and values, but that it's not right for us to try to force them onto others. It sounds easy, but in also means not judging others based on our own morals.... so it's extremely difficult.
There are people in the world who consider dog meat part of a normal winter meal. It's very hard for me to not consider them evil, horrible people. Dogs are furry bundles of pure love who want nothing other than to be near their person and enjoy life together. They don't see them that way. Seeing that as a cultural difference and not them being evil is tough.
That's just pets. It's way harder when it's something deeply personal to our own life and self. Your example is clearly one of those. It's likely the biggest and most common. Not just the mononormativity and platonic amatonormativity aspects, but the entirety of who it is and is not considered moral to have sex with and under what conditions. It seems very likely that it's one of the things the moral differences that so much of humanity feels so strongly about even though there are many different accepted norms around the world is a third evolutionary relic. Survival of the group/society/culture/species is the primary evolutionary imperative, so it makes sense that the acts associated with human reproduction are the ones that so many people have a hard time accepting norms on that are completely unlike their own.
All we can do is try to live up to our own personal beliefs and morals, and struggle to not see those whose norms and morals don't align with ours as evil. Maybe one day we'll all be able to succeed in that. But we can at least understand it and keep it in mind so that we can keep ourselves from acting hateful towards those people and hopefully become more willing to try to stop our closest friends from acting hateful as well.
You're misrepresenting this entire thing to again try to make yourselves and the moderator in question seem noble and just. The scenario where "someone is unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here" and that is why they end up banned never happened. The person posted a meme that the majority of humanity would be very unlikely to call racist, that deals with a situation that was in no way race based and was banned with zero communication. No one tried to explain why that wasn't welcome before the person was banned. They didn't fail to adjust their perceptions or actions in any way prior to being banned.
After being banned they complained that it wasn't right to call them racist. That they didn't mind if people didn't like some content or decide to delete the content from their community, but that it was wrong to judge the character of a person and call them racist. They said that the same image was up elsewhere with thousands of views, and correctly pointed out that very clearly not everyone interprets it in some sort of racist way. Which given the realities of everything in and around Ceuta makes complete since, as for the 20th time race and racism was in no way involved.
This situation is simple. A moderator banned a user for posting an image that isn't actually racist. The moderator, and apparently you, have the instances where large numbers of people crossing a border into another place is something that involves two distinct races and the times those instances have been used by racists to try to increase the fear and distrust of the outsider so firmly on your minds that simply seeing a situation where a lot of people crossed a border causes you to assume they were of varying races and assume a post likening it to an invading horde was a racist dog whistle.
But neither of those assumptions are correct. There is nothing at all racist about the image, and the situation (awful as it is) makes even considering that to be laughable. This isn't a pattern of a user insisting on posting racist content and being "unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here."
This is an example of moderators and administrators not bothering to take the time to understand a situation and/or communicate with a user before banning them. Then when called out on it, you refuse to accept your interpretation might be incorrect, refuse to admit anyone in charge ever did anything wrong, blame the person who was banned for a LotR meme with no warning, blame them again for trying to seek help on being called racist for said meme, and then while never saying any official response was incorrect and always being sure to blame the user explain how very many different instances and communities there are for them to move to if they were (never wrongfully) banned from one.
Are you interested in a job working in PR? With your willingness to and experience in ignoring any presented logic and factual evidence by those trying to explain why an officer's interpretation of a person's actions as a crime was incorrect, misrepresenting the nature of the entire event in question to best describe the citizen corpse as a repeat offender who refused to listen or learn to officers trying to teach them how to do better multiple times before being put down and the people with the masks and guns as being the noble champions of justice who only did what they did to protect themselves and others from harm the facts you've been presented with show was entirely imaginary I think ICE might be willing to offer you quite a nice income.
The two things I seem to agree with you on is that racism is bad and self-reflection is good. I had five years of nothing but self-reflection, thought, and reading. You're willing to criticize others for presumed lack of self-reflection, but it doesn't seem likely you've put a lot of genuine time into it for yourself. Hopefully one day you're willing to change that. But as you've still never once bothered to acknowledge or interact in any way with the basic facts on Ceuta I presented to show you that there was nothing racist about the meme that led to the banning, I'm simply going to block you now.
That last reply from me got fucked up and sent while moving things around, so you probably read a garbled version.
tl'dr:
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn’t ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they’re banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn’t there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn’t even one I would consider. You’re thinking you’re being noble and just while you’re punching down.
And for your little "Doing apologia for racist material, and wanting moderators to go real easy on people who post it is an odd stance to take"...
I spent 5 years in a state prison for something I genuinely had zero involvement in because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time while being black. Not everyone willing to take their time actually putting thought and reason into understanding someone that seems to be wrongfully accused of something is doing it because they're guilty of that thing. And we both know you absolutely intended the implication that that I was defending this guy because I'm a racist.
I've tried to show that racism might not have been the reason for anything the OP has done or said and that all of their actions make complete sense for much different reasons, spending a great deal of time and effort to try showing it's wrong to judge a user so quickly and harshly. In response you've been brief, condescending, dismissive, didatic, and insulting towards me multiple time.
Cheering on the very likely punching down on a DD user trying to contribute to a near dead platform and convincing yourself you're a moral champion for doing it wasn't enough to make you feel like a big man? You can go fuck yourself Mr Instance Admin.
I never said killing someone. I said eating a dead human. Like eating the body of a dead human, getting into a relationship with another person after having been married is a thing that doesn't physically harm anyone in any way but that I find to be completely wrong and morally repugnant.
That's not a false equivalence, it's just an actual equivalence that you don't like hearing.
No, I can't see that link. From how you've described that conversation it seems that I can see his end on his user message history, but can't open the post so I'm assuming they deleted the it.
Yes, the Zuckerberg thing was racist, but it's also what I'd consider an example of some of the tamest and most common racist jokes. It's very common to hear from people of all skin tones, and before the last 10 years or so it was extremely common. Most people I know would just roll their eyes at it, some being a bit hurt or annoyed inside and some not. It sucks, but that one has become extremely normalized to the point where plenty of black people would post it as a dumb meme joke. It's the type of thing a lot of people would need to have pointed out as racist, with genuine effort put into explaining and educating and not just insulting and assuming they're an awful person.
Going to the official support community to complain about being called racist... people do that when they feel wronged and are looking for support. A racist getting firmly told that shit isn't welcome and then complaining to the same crowd of people would just be opening themselves up to more insults. They're herd animals. They're comfortable vomiting up their bullshit to one another because it's safe and they know it's welcome. When they test the water in a new group and get smacked down most of them would react by putting back on the same face the huge majority of racists we deal with in public every day are wearing.
You also didn't quote his full message in your last comment. It was "I’m not arguing everyone has to like the memes. I’m objecting to the leap from “this post violates our rules” to “you’re racist.” Those are two very different claims. If the content isn’t welcome in that community, that’s the moderators’ call. But labeling someone’s character based on a single meme is a much more serious accusation, and I don’t think that’s justified.""
It bothers him so much people are thinking that way about him that he went to post for support.
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn't ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they're banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn't there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn't even one I would consider. You're thinking you're being noble and just while you're punching down.
"They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist."
I have to admit that made me laugh a bit. No insult intended, but I hope you're willing to have some self-reflection.
I don't really see anything like that, and pretty much all their moderation history was them posting something that had been posted recently. Unless you mean there were other accounts that has grumpy in the name and you think they're the same person?
Not sure what access instance admins have here, but maybe one of them could check and see if this OP and older "grumpy" banned accounts could be tied together via IP, email, or browser/device fingerprinting. But given the very little amount of moderation over so very many posts is anything other than it being a recent repost, I wouldn't assume a person with former banned accounts.
For your first point, you're talking about someone who checking shows has an absolutely insane 1.85K posts in 3 months. Through all of them 3 have been questioned on racism. One of those also called him a bot, which doesn't seem true since he messaged me when I first commented here asking if he was banned, and I don't know the situation there. Since that happened on another community, I'd assume the mod in question wouldn't know it either.
They'd likely know about the other that took place in this community, that I agree was definitely something I'd call racist. But one single instance post isn't really a "history of racist posting." Again, I've never seen that scene used as anything racist. I'm not new to the internet, so I'm sure there are plenty of other people who haven't. You don't know it wasn't some random LOTR fan being misconstrued. You don't know that OP didn't feel like a jackass for posting the shitty racist meme and wasn't actively trying to do his best to follow the rules. Did anyone bother to ask? Was there a conversation about any of it? It can be difficult for anyone to read sarcasm in text or silly memes these days, so asking what someone meant by a thing and how they saw it is important.
For the Ceuta issue, I do understand what racist dog whistles are and the asshat strategies to get people to see those with other skin tones or backgrounds as evil. Mostly, anyone who actually looks into it will see the event we're talking about had absolutely nothing to do with race in the first place. The Kingdom of Morocco directly borders the city of Ceuta. You can less than one meter and move from one to the other. This isn't some situation where migrants from a very different culture with a very different skin tone are traveling a long way that racists can use to scare people who don't pay attention. Everyone on all sides shares pretty much the same skin tones.
This is like if the people of Jersey City, NJ swarmed into New York City, NY... except 20x more people than Jersey City even has. Anyone trying to make that an issue of race or ethnicity would look like a complete fucking moron. The only way it could even be considered a racist dog whistle is not knowing that.
I also understand what an invasion horde is. We're not talking about a relative handful of refuges trying to get into a large country that can support them. Wikipedia lists Ceuta's entire population at 83,567, and reports are saying this event included over 60,000 Moroccans.
There's no way in hell you wouldn't feel invaded if a group of people almost matching the entire population of your city started swarming in, even if they were from whatever nation you live in. That's not something someone 'equates' to an invasion horde, it is a literal invasion horde.
It seems more like the mod didn't know the geographical, racial, and ethnic realities of area around Ceuta. Not a big deal, most people wouldn't. They saw a meme of an invasion horde swarming a place, possibly read "migrants" and/or "African" and decided it must be racism and deleted it and banned the user based on that. That's not great. This place doesn't move nearly fast enough for that to be necessary.
And you proudly proclaimed that you as an instance admin would have given a permanent ban instead. Hopefully you'd have bothered to research more before actually pressing the ban button than you did before replying, since as I've tried my best to make as clear as I can the entire situation has nothing to do with race and knowing anything about it more than "migrants, africa" it makes no sense at all to consider the image a racist dog whistle even if it did show an image of a scene from a movie you've seen used that way before.
It's a commonly referenced scene of a commonly referenced movie. Even if you know that many people have been stabbed with pencils and pens over the years it wouldn't make sense to assume everyone you see with one has that intent, because pencils are common.
One of the reasons this response is so long was the second paragraph of yours. Patronizing, condescending dismissal by simply acting like you assumed I was uneducated instead of bothering to engaging with the bulk of what I'd said is childish bad behavior in general, but worse from an instance admin to a new user you're aware hasn't even known how to see someone's moderation history here yet. I imagine you're aware of that.
The first image I definitely agree on. That's fucked up and anyone should know it. This one I definitely don't agree on. It's based entirely on guess and assumption. Nothing about it is inherently racist.
I've honestly never even seen that movie scene used for racist shit. It's a scene tons of people around the world are likely to know, because it's sort of a popular book and movie series. It seems likely to randomly punish innocent nerds who don't have experience with whatever racist image distribution networks you've joined.
First, I didn't say I wanted to criminalize people having another relationship if a spouse dies. It seems completely wrong and awful to me, however I understand that not all people are going to hold the same views and values. I can only live by mine to the best of my ability, I don't try to impose them on others. But yes, me doing that would very literally would make a lot of the things I've said in the past lies.
Again, we're polar opposites on this. I'm not making a false equivalence. I'm trying to explain my level of revulsion on this issue as it's not something you'd understand. It's something I find to be completely and absolutely immoral.
It changes the primary focus and most important aspect from the bond of love and dedication between two people, to not having to be lonely and go without fucking someone. It seems base, and degrading to anything that should hold true meaning and value.
It definitely does to me. It would very literally make many of the things I said lies. Yes, most humans would consider doing that acceptable and understandable, but that honestly makes it worse to me, not better. It seems like the bulk of humanity values their own personal comfort, the happiness or pleasure of the now, and not being stuck alone more than they value the honesty and integrity of words and promises they made that at the time felt like the most important a thing could be.
It changes the primary focus and most important aspect from the bond of love and dedication between two people, to not having to be lonely and go without fucking someone. It seems base, and degrading to anything that should hold true meaning and value.
I tend of assume someone being off thousands of orders of magnitude about something is using hyperbole. You didn't even mention the possibility. Seeing one example of an incorrect ratio and leaping clear to being torn between deciding if the person who said it is a complete idiot or some insidious evil force manipulating folks is enough to qualify you to wear a cape.
Man... I remember a few decades back when global warming seemed like some big scary possible thing. After living through living and events and news and happenings since then the cleansing, purifying flames are starting to sound more peaceful and serene than scary.
Damn, that pictures almost old enough to stop being a prime target for the IDF and Donald Trump.
We can consume the wealthy and abdicate them of the responsibility of carrying on and also demand change. Especially if we consume them while they're still alive, as a mob, and do it with dull forks.
The survivors will be far more willing to listen.
You don't seem to understand. I was reaching for an example to explain the visceral disgust I feel at merely considering myself doing that. Yes, cannibalism is an extreme example. I had to choose an extreme example, because that's what honestly reflect how that thought makes me feel. Had I said "It seems kinda icky" it would be been downplaying it and lying to you.
Why do you care so much that other humans in the world feel that strongly against things you support? Aren't your morals/values/personal beliefs the things you care most about following? Would it make sense to you to have someone who believes it's good to do a thing that you genuinely have an uncontrollable disgust reflex at even considering doing get upset at you for that? It's just your natural response to a thing. It would be like someone getting upset that you get super happy when you see a cat or terrified if you wake up with spiders crawling on your face.
I'm not being moralizing and judgemental. I'm honestly communicating about my own feelings on a big part of that core self, the things that genuinely matter to you in life. You don't have to agree with me or adhere to those things. They're not your things. Other humans living by what means the most to them personally isn't an insult towards you.
I'm completely aware that different people have different beliefs. I've already said that I can only live true to mine as best as I can and couldn't force others to adhere to them. I never once said anyone else had to or should live by my personal values and morals.
Long copy/paste since it's the same point. Not everyone will like or agree with everyone or the things they hold most dear. Me openly communicating about my own feelings on issues isn't attacking anyone else.
"The problem you’re having isn’t with any normativity, it’s with tribalism. There’s an awful part of being human that makes us want to be part of a social group and shun the outsider. To decide that those who aren’t with or like us in our beliefs and norms are evil and bad and to be hated. And even worse, when we feel socially and morally justified in hating someone it feels good to vent that anger and hate at them.
It’s two combined evolutionary relics from millions of years of what eventually became humanity. First, through almost all of that time the outsider was dangerous. Food was often scarce, survival was always questionable, and medical care didn’t exist. A group of people you didn’t know could easily become a fight for resources, and even a single clearly friendly unarmed stranger could bring disease and wipe your entire group out.
The second is the social pressure of fitting in. Through almost all of that time being kicked out of your group was likely a death sentence. We can’t seem to shake that inner terror we’re rarely even conscious of about not fitting in. It pushes us to agree with the people we want to be close to or be liked by and to try to emulate the group we’re with.
Combined, those things are awful. People anywhere will always notice someone who seems dramatically different from the area norm, but someone can stand out in a rural region when the only distinction is a slightly different accent. The drive to shun the outsider and to drive to fit in with your known group work together to make it likely that whatever the difference is, the group is likely to treat that different person or group terribly.
Once someone begins it and no one steps up to stop it, it starts to feel acceptable and even right to do it. Pressure to fit in becomes pressure to join in, and the smaller and tighter knit the group is the more difficult it is to deny that and deviate from what now seems to be the norm of our group.
If you hear someone else from your nation make a racist comment to an immigrant it’s not too difficult to step in and say something against it. If they respond back with some angry tirade about how you’re siding with “them” there are good odds you’ll leave it at that and move on, but perhaps you’d become adamant and insist it stop.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you’re spending a day with your closest friends and one of them makes a racist comment to an immigrant it’s much harder to deal with, and even more so if it’s said privately between the group or other members of the group looked entertained or uncaring when it happened. It’s so hard to even bring it up that people typically decide to let it go or debate whether to say anything internally. That pressure makes it really easy to join in with those acts, even when they’re things you really believed were wrong.
The world has over 8 billion people spread among something like 17,000 distinct ethnic groups and cultures, all with varying histories, religions, moralities, and social norms. Aspects of normal behavior to one group is very often considered immoral to another, and at times there are complete contradictions to the point where doing something is immoral and illegal in one place but not doing that same thing is immoral and illegal in another.
When someone sees your beliefs or acts as immoral it’s easy to define that as them being hateful of you. If it’s a group of people it’s easy for them to become hateful of you. And because of that, you’re likely to hate them in return. And you both spew hate at one another, and you both feel good doing it, because you can both tell yourselves that you’re justified and the other person is in the wrong.
You’ll never beat normativity. Macrosociology and cultural evolution show that moral norms such as monogamy or polyamory fail to unify across a population once it grows into the millions of people. And our actual social strata doesn’t extend nearly that far in reality. The highest number of people typically considered able to maintain a cohesive cultural group before they naturally begin to differentiate is only 150. Since people constantly grow and change the norms of any group and culture are always in flux, they’re always going to be there and always changing.
The best solution is simply doing our best to understand that people who have completely different beliefs and morals than us aren’t evil. That it’s great to do our best to live up to our own morals and values, but that it’s not right for us to try to force them onto others. It sounds easy, but in also means not judging others based on our own morals… so it’s extremely difficult.
There are people in the world who consider dog meat part of a normal winter meal. It’s very hard for me to not consider them evil, horrible people. Dogs are furry bundles of pure love who want nothing other than to be near their person and enjoy life together. They don’t see them that way. Seeing that as a cultural difference and not them being evil is tough.
That’s just pets. It’s way harder when it’s something deeply personal to our own life and self. Your example is clearly one of those. It’s likely the biggest and most common. Not just the mononormativity and platonic amatonormativity aspects, but the entirety of who it is and is not considered moral to have sex with and under what conditions. It seems very likely that it’s one of the things the moral differences that so much of humanity feels so strongly about even though there are many different accepted norms around the world is a third evolutionary relic. Survival of the group/society/culture/species is the primary evolutionary imperative, so it makes sense that the acts associated with human reproduction are the ones that so many people have a hard time accepting norms on that are completely unlike their own.
All we can do is try to live up to our own personal beliefs and morals, and struggle to not see those whose norms and morals don’t align with ours as evil. Maybe one day we’ll all be able to succeed in that. But we can at least understand it and keep it in mind so that we can keep ourselves from acting hateful towards those people and hopefully become more willing to try to stop our closest friends from acting hateful as well."
No. You're preaching a philosophical ideology as if it were a factual reality everyone agreed upon.
I'm not saying they're not idiots, but very few people if any can be said to understand most medical realities other than the most simple completely. There are plenty of people in the world that don't understand germ theory who don't say that they don't believe it.
They're not using the word believe as in having a religious belief. Their using it in the very common, normal usage in which saying "I don't believe X" is synonymous with saying "I don't believe in the accuracy of X."
Taylor Swift's jets alone cancel out any benefit all of your steps might have for a few million or hundreds of millions of people.
It's wonderful to want to try to do something about this, but the only real way we have to do something about it is to stop the people and corporations who are the actual biggest contributors to the issue.
I'm thinking less along the lines of voting and more along the lines of stabbing.
The problem you're having isn't with any normativity, it's with tribalism. There’s an awful part of being human that makes us want to be part of a social group and shun the outsider. To decide that those who aren’t with or like us in our beliefs and norms are evil and bad and to be hated. And even worse, when we feel socially and morally justified in hating someone it feels good to vent that anger and hate at them.
It's two combined evolutionary relics from millions of years of what eventually became humanity. First, through almost all of that time the outsider was dangerous. Food was often scarce, survival was always questionable, and medical care didn't exist. A group of people you didn't know could easily become a fight for resources, and even a single clearly friendly unarmed stranger could bring disease and wipe your entire group out.
The second is the social pressure of fitting in. Through almost all of that time being kicked out of your group was likely a death sentence. We can't seem to shake that inner terror we're rarely even conscious of about not fitting in. It pushes us to agree with the people we want to be close to or be liked by and to try to emulate the group we're with.
Combined, those things are awful. People anywhere will always notice someone who seems dramatically different from the area norm, but someone can stand out in a rural region when the only distinction is a slightly different accent. The drive to shun the outsider and to drive to fit in with your known group work together to make it likely that whatever the difference is, the group is likely to treat that different person or group terribly.
Once someone begins it and no one steps up to stop it, it starts to feel acceptable and even right to do it. Pressure to fit in becomes pressure to join in, and the smaller and tighter knit the group is the more difficult it is to deny that and deviate from what now seems to be the norm of our group.
If you hear someone else from your nation make a racist comment to an immigrant it's not too difficult to step in and say something against it. If they respond back with some angry tirade about how you're siding with "them" there are good odds you'll leave it at that and move on, but perhaps you'd become adamant and insist it stop.
On the other end of the spectrum, if you're spending a day with your closest friends and one of them makes a racist comment to an immigrant it's much harder to deal with, and even more so if it's said privately between the group or other members of the group looked entertained or uncaring when it happened. It's so hard to even bring it up that people typically decide to let it go or debate whether to say anything internally. That pressure makes it really easy to join in with those acts, even when they're things you really believed were wrong.
The world has over 8 billion people spread among something like 17,000 distinct ethnic groups and cultures, all with varying histories, religions, moralities, and social norms. Aspects of normal behavior to one group is very often considered immoral to another, and at times there are complete contradictions to the point where doing something is immoral and illegal in one place but not doing that same thing is immoral and illegal in another.
When someone sees your beliefs or acts as immoral it’s easy to define that as them being hateful of you. If it's a group of people it's easy for them to become hateful of you. And because of that, you're likely to hate them in return. And you both spew hate at one another, and you both feel good doing it, because you can both tell yourselves that you're justified and the other person is in the wrong.
You'll never beat normativity. Macrosociology and cultural evolution show that moral norms such as monogamy or polyamory fail to unify across a population once it grows into the millions of people. And our actual social strata doesn't extend nearly that far in reality. The highest number of people typically considered able to maintain a cohesive cultural group before they naturally begin to differentiate is only 150. Since people constantly grow and change the norms of any group and culture are always in flux, they're always going to be there and always changing.
The best solution is simply doing our best to understand that people who have completely different beliefs and morals than us aren't evil. That it's great to do our best to live up to our own morals and values, but that it's not right for us to try to force them onto others. It sounds easy, but in also means not judging others based on our own morals.... so it's extremely difficult.
There are people in the world who consider dog meat part of a normal winter meal. It's very hard for me to not consider them evil, horrible people. Dogs are furry bundles of pure love who want nothing other than to be near their person and enjoy life together. They don't see them that way. Seeing that as a cultural difference and not them being evil is tough.
That's just pets. It's way harder when it's something deeply personal to our own life and self. Your example is clearly one of those. It's likely the biggest and most common. Not just the mononormativity and platonic amatonormativity aspects, but the entirety of who it is and is not considered moral to have sex with and under what conditions. It seems very likely that it's one of the things the moral differences that so much of humanity feels so strongly about even though there are many different accepted norms around the world is a third evolutionary relic. Survival of the group/society/culture/species is the primary evolutionary imperative, so it makes sense that the acts associated with human reproduction are the ones that so many people have a hard time accepting norms on that are completely unlike their own.
All we can do is try to live up to our own personal beliefs and morals, and struggle to not see those whose norms and morals don't align with ours as evil. Maybe one day we'll all be able to succeed in that. But we can at least understand it and keep it in mind so that we can keep ourselves from acting hateful towards those people and hopefully become more willing to try to stop our closest friends from acting hateful as well.
You're misrepresenting this entire thing to again try to make yourselves and the moderator in question seem noble and just. The scenario where "someone is unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here" and that is why they end up banned never happened. The person posted a meme that the majority of humanity would be very unlikely to call racist, that deals with a situation that was in no way race based and was banned with zero communication. No one tried to explain why that wasn't welcome before the person was banned. They didn't fail to adjust their perceptions or actions in any way prior to being banned.
After being banned they complained that it wasn't right to call them racist. That they didn't mind if people didn't like some content or decide to delete the content from their community, but that it was wrong to judge the character of a person and call them racist. They said that the same image was up elsewhere with thousands of views, and correctly pointed out that very clearly not everyone interprets it in some sort of racist way. Which given the realities of everything in and around Ceuta makes complete since, as for the 20th time race and racism was in no way involved.
This situation is simple. A moderator banned a user for posting an image that isn't actually racist. The moderator, and apparently you, have the instances where large numbers of people crossing a border into another place is something that involves two distinct races and the times those instances have been used by racists to try to increase the fear and distrust of the outsider so firmly on your minds that simply seeing a situation where a lot of people crossed a border causes you to assume they were of varying races and assume a post likening it to an invading horde was a racist dog whistle.
But neither of those assumptions are correct. There is nothing at all racist about the image, and the situation (awful as it is) makes even considering that to be laughable. This isn't a pattern of a user insisting on posting racist content and being "unwilling to adjust their perception of that content even if the community tries to inform them why it’s not welcome to post it here."
This is an example of moderators and administrators not bothering to take the time to understand a situation and/or communicate with a user before banning them. Then when called out on it, you refuse to accept your interpretation might be incorrect, refuse to admit anyone in charge ever did anything wrong, blame the person who was banned for a LotR meme with no warning, blame them again for trying to seek help on being called racist for said meme, and then while never saying any official response was incorrect and always being sure to blame the user explain how very many different instances and communities there are for them to move to if they were (never wrongfully) banned from one.
Are you interested in a job working in PR? With your willingness to and experience in ignoring any presented logic and factual evidence by those trying to explain why an officer's interpretation of a person's actions as a crime was incorrect, misrepresenting the nature of the entire event in question to best describe the citizen corpse as a repeat offender who refused to listen or learn to officers trying to teach them how to do better multiple times before being put down and the people with the masks and guns as being the noble champions of justice who only did what they did to protect themselves and others from harm the facts you've been presented with show was entirely imaginary I think ICE might be willing to offer you quite a nice income.
The two things I seem to agree with you on is that racism is bad and self-reflection is good. I had five years of nothing but self-reflection, thought, and reading. You're willing to criticize others for presumed lack of self-reflection, but it doesn't seem likely you've put a lot of genuine time into it for yourself. Hopefully one day you're willing to change that. But as you've still never once bothered to acknowledge or interact in any way with the basic facts on Ceuta I presented to show you that there was nothing racist about the meme that led to the banning, I'm simply going to block you now.
That last reply from me got fucked up and sent while moving things around, so you probably read a garbled version.
tl'dr:
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn’t ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they’re banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn’t there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn’t even one I would consider. You’re thinking you’re being noble and just while you’re punching down.
And for your little "Doing apologia for racist material, and wanting moderators to go real easy on people who post it is an odd stance to take"...
I spent 5 years in a state prison for something I genuinely had zero involvement in because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time while being black. Not everyone willing to take their time actually putting thought and reason into understanding someone that seems to be wrongfully accused of something is doing it because they're guilty of that thing. And we both know you absolutely intended the implication that that I was defending this guy because I'm a racist.
I've tried to show that racism might not have been the reason for anything the OP has done or said and that all of their actions make complete sense for much different reasons, spending a great deal of time and effort to try showing it's wrong to judge a user so quickly and harshly. In response you've been brief, condescending, dismissive, didatic, and insulting towards me multiple time.
Cheering on the very likely punching down on a DD user trying to contribute to a near dead platform and convincing yourself you're a moral champion for doing it wasn't enough to make you feel like a big man? You can go fuck yourself Mr Instance Admin.
I never said killing someone. I said eating a dead human. Like eating the body of a dead human, getting into a relationship with another person after having been married is a thing that doesn't physically harm anyone in any way but that I find to be completely wrong and morally repugnant.
That's not a false equivalence, it's just an actual equivalence that you don't like hearing.
No, I can't see that link. From how you've described that conversation it seems that I can see his end on his user message history, but can't open the post so I'm assuming they deleted the it.
Yes, the Zuckerberg thing was racist, but it's also what I'd consider an example of some of the tamest and most common racist jokes. It's very common to hear from people of all skin tones, and before the last 10 years or so it was extremely common. Most people I know would just roll their eyes at it, some being a bit hurt or annoyed inside and some not. It sucks, but that one has become extremely normalized to the point where plenty of black people would post it as a dumb meme joke. It's the type of thing a lot of people would need to have pointed out as racist, with genuine effort put into explaining and educating and not just insulting and assuming they're an awful person.
Going to the official support community to complain about being called racist... people do that when they feel wronged and are looking for support. A racist getting firmly told that shit isn't welcome and then complaining to the same crowd of people would just be opening themselves up to more insults. They're herd animals. They're comfortable vomiting up their bullshit to one another because it's safe and they know it's welcome. When they test the water in a new group and get smacked down most of them would react by putting back on the same face the huge majority of racists we deal with in public every day are wearing.
You also didn't quote his full message in your last comment. It was "I’m not arguing everyone has to like the memes. I’m objecting to the leap from “this post violates our rules” to “you’re racist.” Those are two very different claims. If the content isn’t welcome in that community, that’s the moderators’ call. But labeling someone’s character based on a single meme is a much more serious accusation, and I don’t think that’s justified.""
It bothers him so much people are thinking that way about him that he went to post for support.
There are a lot of genuine conditions that could lead to a person to spend so much time between Reddit and here they have 2k posts in 3 months, also have little interest or comfort in conversation so a lot less message history, not have the best grammar and typing, not understand why the first meme they found on Reddit wasn't ok but also not argue when only the post was deleted, but on the second instance when they're banned with the reason being racism to start looking for help and support with their entire focus being on it being wrong to call them racist, and fail to understand in that conversation how a meme from a popular post they saw on Reddit with lots of up votes could possibly be racist since it wasn't there.
That cause being that that person is racist isn't even one I would consider. You're thinking you're being noble and just while you're punching down.
"They are showing zero ability for self-reflection and refuse to acknowledge the memes were racist."
I have to admit that made me laugh a bit. No insult intended, but I hope you're willing to have some self-reflection.
I don't really see anything like that, and pretty much all their moderation history was them posting something that had been posted recently. Unless you mean there were other accounts that has grumpy in the name and you think they're the same person?
Not sure what access instance admins have here, but maybe one of them could check and see if this OP and older "grumpy" banned accounts could be tied together via IP, email, or browser/device fingerprinting. But given the very little amount of moderation over so very many posts is anything other than it being a recent repost, I wouldn't assume a person with former banned accounts.
For your first point, you're talking about someone who checking shows has an absolutely insane 1.85K posts in 3 months. Through all of them 3 have been questioned on racism. One of those also called him a bot, which doesn't seem true since he messaged me when I first commented here asking if he was banned, and I don't know the situation there. Since that happened on another community, I'd assume the mod in question wouldn't know it either.
They'd likely know about the other that took place in this community, that I agree was definitely something I'd call racist. But one single instance post isn't really a "history of racist posting." Again, I've never seen that scene used as anything racist. I'm not new to the internet, so I'm sure there are plenty of other people who haven't. You don't know it wasn't some random LOTR fan being misconstrued. You don't know that OP didn't feel like a jackass for posting the shitty racist meme and wasn't actively trying to do his best to follow the rules. Did anyone bother to ask? Was there a conversation about any of it? It can be difficult for anyone to read sarcasm in text or silly memes these days, so asking what someone meant by a thing and how they saw it is important.
For the Ceuta issue, I do understand what racist dog whistles are and the asshat strategies to get people to see those with other skin tones or backgrounds as evil. Mostly, anyone who actually looks into it will see the event we're talking about had absolutely nothing to do with race in the first place. The Kingdom of Morocco directly borders the city of Ceuta. You can less than one meter and move from one to the other. This isn't some situation where migrants from a very different culture with a very different skin tone are traveling a long way that racists can use to scare people who don't pay attention. Everyone on all sides shares pretty much the same skin tones.
This is like if the people of Jersey City, NJ swarmed into New York City, NY... except 20x more people than Jersey City even has. Anyone trying to make that an issue of race or ethnicity would look like a complete fucking moron. The only way it could even be considered a racist dog whistle is not knowing that.
I also understand what an invasion horde is. We're not talking about a relative handful of refuges trying to get into a large country that can support them. Wikipedia lists Ceuta's entire population at 83,567, and reports are saying this event included over 60,000 Moroccans.
There's no way in hell you wouldn't feel invaded if a group of people almost matching the entire population of your city started swarming in, even if they were from whatever nation you live in. That's not something someone 'equates' to an invasion horde, it is a literal invasion horde.
It seems more like the mod didn't know the geographical, racial, and ethnic realities of area around Ceuta. Not a big deal, most people wouldn't. They saw a meme of an invasion horde swarming a place, possibly read "migrants" and/or "African" and decided it must be racism and deleted it and banned the user based on that. That's not great. This place doesn't move nearly fast enough for that to be necessary.
And you proudly proclaimed that you as an instance admin would have given a permanent ban instead. Hopefully you'd have bothered to research more before actually pressing the ban button than you did before replying, since as I've tried my best to make as clear as I can the entire situation has nothing to do with race and knowing anything about it more than "migrants, africa" it makes no sense at all to consider the image a racist dog whistle even if it did show an image of a scene from a movie you've seen used that way before.
It's a commonly referenced scene of a commonly referenced movie. Even if you know that many people have been stabbed with pencils and pens over the years it wouldn't make sense to assume everyone you see with one has that intent, because pencils are common.
One of the reasons this response is so long was the second paragraph of yours. Patronizing, condescending dismissal by simply acting like you assumed I was uneducated instead of bothering to engaging with the bulk of what I'd said is childish bad behavior in general, but worse from an instance admin to a new user you're aware hasn't even known how to see someone's moderation history here yet. I imagine you're aware of that.
The first image I definitely agree on. That's fucked up and anyone should know it. This one I definitely don't agree on. It's based entirely on guess and assumption. Nothing about it is inherently racist.
I've honestly never even seen that movie scene used for racist shit. It's a scene tons of people around the world are likely to know, because it's sort of a popular book and movie series. It seems likely to randomly punish innocent nerds who don't have experience with whatever racist image distribution networks you've joined.
First, I didn't say I wanted to criminalize people having another relationship if a spouse dies. It seems completely wrong and awful to me, however I understand that not all people are going to hold the same views and values. I can only live by mine to the best of my ability, I don't try to impose them on others. But yes, me doing that would very literally would make a lot of the things I've said in the past lies.
Again, we're polar opposites on this. I'm not making a false equivalence. I'm trying to explain my level of revulsion on this issue as it's not something you'd understand. It's something I find to be completely and absolutely immoral.
It changes the primary focus and most important aspect from the bond of love and dedication between two people, to not having to be lonely and go without fucking someone. It seems base, and degrading to anything that should hold true meaning and value.
It definitely does to me. It would very literally make many of the things I said lies. Yes, most humans would consider doing that acceptable and understandable, but that honestly makes it worse to me, not better. It seems like the bulk of humanity values their own personal comfort, the happiness or pleasure of the now, and not being stuck alone more than they value the honesty and integrity of words and promises they made that at the time felt like the most important a thing could be.
It changes the primary focus and most important aspect from the bond of love and dedication between two people, to not having to be lonely and go without fucking someone. It seems base, and degrading to anything that should hold true meaning and value.