Why are so many people here angry?

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
We have very different definitions of "horribly unfriendly" then. For example if "Fuck off you Trans fuck" was allowed by the rules (the worst word there being "fuck") it'd be far more horribly unfriendly.

The only people that would benefit would be people who say things like that.
Only if you moderate by dictionary. In which case why use actual moderators and not simply use a simple word-based filter to auto ban users who use bad words.

Context matters. Intent matters.

Which is exactly my point. A post without any expletives but written with horrible intent in context can be vastly more hostile and insulting. A post filled with literally nothing but expletives directed at another user but without any bad intent in a context where that can be reasonably interpreted as such shouldn't be a problem.

I mean just read through this entire thread here:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.934875-Race-A-Giant-Middle-Finger-to-Nazi-Germany

Do you honestly believe that's more welcoming to gay people than if someone'd just outright stated "All fucking faggots should just fucking die"?

Does it really matter what exact words someone uses if the message is exactly the same, or worse?

The Escapist's moderation is just way to focussed on literal words instead of what people are actually saying. So we're in a forum where you can say any horrible thing you want as long as you say it the right way.

I'd say either start moderating what people are saying, as subjective as that may be. Or allow people to say what they're already saying in any way they want.

Because the words used don't fucking matter. Except to the moderation here of course.
 

Barbas

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Oh god, this, so much this. It's not even funny the way people sometimes get dismissed on these forums, by people who lack even a basic understanding of the position of person whose experiences are being dismissed. It's especially annoying when people bring up long debunked myths and then reject all evidence against the myths.

Honestly I don't think that people here are particularly angry, but we do tend to bicker a lot. Everyone has their own personal pet peeves and there is a tendency for that to come out here. If people here are angry, we're not nearly as angry as people are in other places. Just look at the bile you tend to see on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and the chan boards. We're pretty tame by comparison, no matter how much we argue.
Most of the times that I've seen someone being met with dismissal on or off the internet, it wasn't down to ignorance or bigotry. It was actually because they conducted their social interactions in a manner that made them come across as either immature or outright insane. To an outsider stumbling upon an argument involving people like that, sometimes all the partaking sides appear the same because that's how they behave.

You're going to meet people whose opinions you find reprehensible - you likely already have, several times. That's life, and it's something everyone has to learn to deal with. What's screaming at it going to do? Nobody's lungs are big enough, and people you don't agree with won't disappear no matter how much you want them to. You'll also run the considerable risk involved is being repeatedly mistaken for the people that you find yourself totally at odds with.
 

Lightknight

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The internet age is what happened. With so much information at our fingertips it is easy to find things that are wrong and out of place. We have evolved to take note of those things in case they are dangerous or potentially beneficial.

As such, humans are drawn to target these things and the internet has provided the tools to both observe them and comment on them.

That is all.
 

Lightspeaker

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Pluvia said:
It sounds like a place where the only people that stay are the people that can put up with a barrage of insults, whereas if you happen to not like being insulted all the time (say for the crime of being a woman/trans/gay/black/etc) then you'd just leave.
Not sure why you brought up the bit up in brackets given I already alluded to that. Again: it was a diverse community. There were plenty of black people, a number of women, one or two trans that I can recall off the top of my head (it wasn't exactly a huge game or anything so its not like there were hundreds, hell I don't think there were hundreds of people playing in general for most of it). Nobody gave a shit about sexual orientation so I have literally no idea if anyone was gay or not, its not something that actually came up as a serious topic.

And yes, you'd have to be able to shrug off surface-level insults; if you were super-sensitive then yeah, you wouldn't like it. But the vast, vast majority of people who joined did just that and it was incredibly easy to do so. Why? Because the whole thing was a gigantic joke, nobody took themselves seriously. For the most part nobody actually MEANT any of it, and the times that they did was when they lost their temper over something and they'd get a figurative slap over the head by a senior player, that's the crucial difference here. There was no built-up venom. Nobody was a prick about it. If you were stressed out and someone was winding you up you'd tell them to fuck off and they WOULD; and if they didn't your superiors would make them, because people backed each other up. That's the point: people weren't out trying to 'get' other people.

In any case, out of respect to Barbas' post I'm not going to comment further about this forum and will now bow out of this thread for good.
 

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
Actually you'll need to use another example, as his posts actually do break the Code of Conduct and he will get banned for that, especially as it's covered in the first paragraph of the CoC. I mean saying that other members of the forum are "mostly pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" is pretty much a sure-fire way to get banned.
He isn't directly calling other forum members that. He's just saying it in general about a group of people. Which whilst completely breaking the spirit of the CoC doesn't break the letter. For all we know he genuinely believes every single gay Escapist member is the exception, after all, he did only say most.

Besides, I do hope you don't mean to imply that that's the problem with the posts in question? I'd say it goes quite a bit farther than that and even in a hypothetical situation where every single Escapist member is heterosexual those posts should still be moderated.
 

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
Hagi said:
He isn't directly calling other forum members that. He's just saying it in general about a group of people. Which whilst completely breaking the spirit of the CoC doesn't break the letter. For all we know he genuinely believes every single gay Escapist member is the exception, after all, he did only say most.

Besides, I do hope you don't mean to imply that that's the problem with the posts in question? I'd say it goes quite a bit farther than that and even in a hypothetical situation where every single Escapist member is heterosexual those posts should still be moderated.
Actually he doesn't need to directly call other forum members that, it still breaks for CoC. Like here:

The Escapist forums are different than most forums on the internet. We want our forums to be a place where everyone, regardless of who they are, can gather to socialize and talk with like-minded people in a safe and welcoming environment.
And:

Calling people names (or groups who may visit The Escapist), this includes calling others a troll. Calling another user a troll is always an infraction.
Saying that many posters here are from a group that's "mostly pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" isn't exactly a safe and welcoming environment. That even targets people for existing (so, not even having an ideology like feminism or GG, just simply existing) and gay people are a group that may, and do, visit the Escapist. Plus calling those people mostly "pedophiles, child molesters and rapists" is quite the name, to say the least, so it quite clearly breaks the CoC.
You're right in that, I missed the part about groups.

Still the fact remains that there's posts in that thread which don't say those things, merely imply all kinds of hostility without directly calling names. I don't see those as any better or worse yet posts like those rarely, if ever, get moderated. On the other hand posts with vastly less offending messages and simple a single expletive get a warning in no time.

Which just teaches people here on the Escapist that it's completely fine to be insulting, offensive and hateful as long as you wrap it in rhetoric. Which is where, in my opinion, this prevailing opinion on these forums being passive-aggressive and filled with hate comes from. Because those things are allowed, but only beneath the surface. There's no release, just tolerated presence.

Hell, the thread linked even has a single warning in it. It just isn't the guy calling most gay people to be pedophiles, molesters or rapists and arguing in favour of their execution. It's some random other guy for an unrelated matter.

That's what makes the escapist such an angry, hostile place. Because it's allowed to be as long as you use the right words.

Either cracking down on the actual message instead of merely the words used, even if subjective, or simply saying, fuck it, use whatever words you want to say what you're already saying would leave this forum a better place.
 

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
Right a lot to address here, will be a bit of a long explanation on my end. Word of warning I am incredibly tired so expect results to reflect that. Oh and to get one point out of the way though; you can swear in posts here, you just can't direct it at people as an insult.

Now anyway, what you're effectively arguing for isn't to stop posts that are insulting, offensive or hateful. You're arguing for tone policing.

For example, I don't think gay people should've been allowed to get married. The majority of people shouldn't have had to bend to the will of a minority of people just because they want special treatment. They could've already gotten married too so their wasn't even a double standard; no one could marry the same sex. It makes me afraid for the future that kids are being taught all this stuff like it's normal. Like I mean, since gay marriage we've had all these trans issues come up, you even hear about people identifying as attack helicopters or gender fluid or strange things like that, and then everyone just celebrates it and we're supposed to pretend it's normal.

So lets say the response to what I said there is heated. Like really think of the worst, most passive-aggressive response you can think of, but with no actual CoC rules broken and no insults used. I mean like really think about a post you'd see around here that you hate.

Now the thing is, that heated but not-breaking-any-rules post is probably the one you and half the people here have a problem with. Posts like those. I mean all that crap I said about gay people and trans people? That is staggeringly offensive. But chances are the people responding to it, the passive-aggressive heated responses, have heard posts like it a million times and have had to put up with it. But my incredibly offensive post would probably go unnoticed by most, or not be seen as being as offensive as it is, but the heated response would sure be noticed. Especially if I kicked up a fuss about them being aggressive towards me simply because of my beliefs and opinions.

So yeah to many people these posts are insulting, offensive and hateful. The thing is most other people are going to see the insulting, offensive and hateful posts being the ones that are responding to a post like mine where I belittled peoples rights, made it out to be terrible that children can find out about them, or just straight up made them out to be crazy whilst also massively belittling the struggles they go through. I can say all that stuff and almost no one will bat an eye, let alone report me for being insulting, hateful and offensive. But if someone responds to me in a passive aggresive manner, but doesn't insult me, you'll sure see them get quickly reported.
I'm not entirely sure what the point you're making is, I'll try to refrain from assumptions but please do correct me if I'm going off the rails somewhere.

But I do think you're accurately describing how many interactions on these forums go. People see a post they find staggeringly offensive, yet one that's politely worded so won't ever get moderated, and they start making passive-aggressive replies in which they pour their frustration. The OP in turn, well aware of the game being played or his OP wouldn't have been worded so carefully, responds in kinds and the whole thing goes back and forth for many pages in a thread seething with frustration and hate, creating an altogether very unwelcoming and unsafe environment.

I'd say one of two things, in this scenario, should happen.
- The original post should get moderated, because regardless of the exact language and words used it's staggeringly offensive and isn't in any way, shape or form making these forums a better place and is just going to lead to the situation described above. Just get rid of it. It's not adding or improving anything.
- The replies should be able to just outright say what they really want to say. "What the hell is wrong with you, you fucking homophobe? Jesus Christ! That's messed up. You know you're a fucking idiot right?". And get it out. Chances of a multi-page discussion filled with passive-aggressive frustration and hatred are substantially lower and whilst said post certainly won't make anyone feel welcome it's at least short with a substantially higher chance of just ending at that.

That's my problem with the rules as is. They do allow the posts that get people frustrated, angry, insulted and hateful. They don't allow the posts that allow people to really express those feelings and get them out.

At which point I think it's a lot easier to allow people to vent their frustration, anger, insult and hate than it is to prevent posts that get people those emotions.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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Barbas said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
Oh god, this, so much this. It's not even funny the way people sometimes get dismissed on these forums, by people who lack even a basic understanding of the position of person whose experiences are being dismissed. It's especially annoying when people bring up long debunked myths and then reject all evidence against the myths.

Honestly I don't think that people here are particularly angry, but we do tend to bicker a lot. Everyone has their own personal pet peeves and there is a tendency for that to come out here. If people here are angry, we're not nearly as angry as people are in other places. Just look at the bile you tend to see on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and the chan boards. We're pretty tame by comparison, no matter how much we argue.
Most of the times that I've seen someone being met with dismissal on or off the internet, it wasn't down to ignorance or bigotry. It was actually because they conducted their social interactions in a manner that made them come across as either immature or outright insane. To an outsider stumbling upon an argument involving people like that, sometimes all the partaking sides appear the same because that's how they behave.

You're going to meet people whose opinions you find reprehensible - you likely already have, several times. That's life, and it's something everyone has to learn to deal with. What's screaming at it going to do? Nobody's lungs are big enough, and people you don't agree with won't disappear no matter how much you want them to. You'll also run the considerable risk involved is being repeatedly mistaken for the people that you find yourself totally at odds with.
Well without bringing the subject up directly, I'm pretty sure you've seen the situation's I've talked about. Where even when you bring evidence. It often depends on how well known the subject is, the subject I'm talking about is one that tends to get the misinformation taken on face value. I see a lot of people get dismissed just on the grounds of political leanings.
 

Hagi

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Richard Gozin-Yu said:
I don't like death metal. It's just loud, obnoxious noise to me. Same with most EDM. If a concert venue is going to heavily feature these styles, I'm going to avoid it. Now, you could call that weakness, tell me to suck it up and get in the mosh, and I'd tell you to go fuck yourself with a kebab. I just don't want to be in a noisy room full of stupid, drunken, angsty idiots. It's not my kind of place, and you can't have a Death Metal show and some other things at the same time either.

Internet forums are private enclaves, not (name notwithstanding) open public forums. You register, you agree to a set of rules, and you join based on the supposed character of the site. You can change that, but you'll change who wants to show up. If you make it a death metal concert, all of the fans of every other style will leave. Not because we can't take it, but because we're not pathetic headbangers with arrested development.

Meanwhile we have you saying, "Just let whoever on the stage, let them play whatever, whenever. FREEEEEDOM!!!!"

Congrats, you now have the freedom to be in a noisy shithole.
As you say yourself, a forum is not really a place with a single style and a single artist having their pre-arranged place on an exclusive stage. And yeah, it probably will be a noisy shithole, already is if we're being honest. It could be a more fun and friendly one though, which is something to aspire to.

Naturally changing the Escapist's rules would change the place. It might no longer appeal to everyone who likes the current format. Then again, considering it's current popularity mayhaps a bit of change wouldn't be so bad. I can't be the only pathetic headbanger with arrested development.

Heck, considering the language you're using you seem already well aboard team "Fuck you", so mayhaps it isn't all that bad.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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Pluvia said:
For example, I don't think gay people should've been allowed to get married. The majority of people shouldn't have had to bend to the will of a minority of people just because they want special treatment. They could've already gotten married too so their wasn't even a double standard; no one could marry the same sex. It makes me afraid for the future that kids are being taught all this stuff like it's normal. Like I mean, since gay marriage we've had all these trans issues come up, you even hear about people identifying as attack helicopters or gender fluid or strange things like that, and then everyone just celebrates it and we're supposed to pretend it's normal.
I want to address this, but lets not derail. The problem with marriage and the exclusion of recognition for same-sex unions was that marriage as an institution is only legal because of abuses in 18th century England. Where a woman would marry several sailors and collect a spousal pension multiple times from the British navy. Marriage by it self is a cultural institution. That said it became law, then Clinton signed DOMA into federal law, which was a violation of the fourteenth amendment. Basically it messed up things like inheritance law for same-sex couples. Personally I think the legal institution should be civil unions for everyone, that keeps the religious side out of the law. That's not what we got though.

Now the only time I hear of people identifying as "attack helicopters" and such is when someone is making a dishonest attempt to invalidate transgender and gender non-conforming people. The thing is, gender dysphoria, being trans gender, non-binary, those are identified non-delusional conditions that people actually have. When it comes to normalizing LGBTQI+ folk, it's not about making other people be like us, it's about spreading understanding. Those who don't understand are the ones most likely to form prejudices based in not understanding, then discriminate. Normalization is specifically about removing negative stigmas, where as keeping Gender and Sexuality Minorities(GSM) on the fringes is a tool used to further unjustifiable discrimination and intolerance. It's not like expanded awareness and understanding of the LGBTQI+ community is going to make people transgender or gay, because those things aren't choices people make about themselves.
 

Dan Steele

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Because there is no interruption or social awkwardness on the internet, no fear of confrontation: only pure unfiltered dialogue. Sure a thread can be deleted, but atleast my mind isn't in socially anxious overdrive trying to respond to your point. I can take as long as I like to refute your argument. This enables people to become passionate and write out what is truly on their mind without fear of offense. Take away confrontation, you take away the filter on an individual's speech.
 

Sheo_Dagana

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Specifically this site? That's odd, I mean people can be rude here, but no more than anywhere else on the internet. You still run across all the general kind of jerks, but I'd say that here, people are more passionate than angry. Everywhere you go on the internet, you rarely come across people who are willing to agree to disagree. Every game/movie/anime/book/whatever is either solid gold or a piece of shit and absolutely no one likes having their opinions questioned or to admit that something they love is less than perfect.

You get that everywhere. At least here there are some people that you can meet in the middle with. The people that aren't willing to ever back down go rounds with each other, making it appear that an entire post has gotten out of control when it's really just two people bickering, each one quoting the other on the only parts of their post they can level an argument against and ignoring the sensible bits without making any concessions. I've found people are a lot angrier elsewhere, and it's not usually just two people like I mentioned previously, it's a BUNCH of people. Like, check out any forum pertaining to whatever the current-running popular shounen anime is and you'll usually see a shit show that sometimes makes even 4chan seem tame.
 

Something Amyss

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KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
I want to address this, but lets not derail.
Yes, let's not. Especially since Pluvia was clearly making a hypothetical case, said it was horrible and offensive, and was trying to make a point.

I think this actually goes to the exact topic at hand: people are very quick to take umbrage and not look at the larger context. In this context, Pluvia is very clearly trying to make a case about the discrepancy in treatment and what is deemed "offensive." This is something I'm pretty sure all three of us agree on. Now, maybe I only read the rest of what he said because I consider him a pal and gave him the benefit of the doubt (in fact, I checked his post primarily because I thought "that doesn't sound like him"), but he's clearly making a rhetorical argument for the sake of example, and it only takes a couple more sentences to see that. But too often, people hear on phrase, see one sentence, and they get outraged.

There are some people who actually espouse this belief, people who hold it. There are people who think worse. But that's not Pluvia, nor the point of his post.

So while what you're saying is true, it's talking past the poster you're quoting. And how are we supposed to get anywhere talking past people?
 

Imperioratorex Caprae

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Something Amyss said:
KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime said:
I want to address this, but lets not derail.
Yes, let's not. Especially since Pluvia was clearly making a hypothetical case, said it was horrible and offensive, and was trying to make a point.

I think this actually goes to the exact topic at hand: people are very quick to take umbrage and not look at the larger context. In this context, Pluvia is very clearly trying to make a case about the discrepancy in treatment and what is deemed "offensive." This is something I'm pretty sure all three of us agree on. Now, maybe I only read the rest of what he said because I consider him a pal and gave him the benefit of the doubt (in fact, I checked his post primarily because I thought "that doesn't sound like him"), but he's clearly making a rhetorical argument for the sake of example, and it only takes a couple more sentences to see that. But too often, people hear on phrase, see one sentence, and they get outraged.

There are some people who actually espouse this belief, people who hold it. There are people who think worse. But that's not Pluvia, nor the point of his post.
Knee-jerk reactions. Those are the death of discourse. People stop listening and instead wait for their turn to speak, and that is giving into the knee-jerk reaction rather than giving a discussion time. There's no thinking, just reacting to one or two bits they heard/read before their ears/eyes turned off.
Human beings have the ability to rise up above their base reactions, to think a situation through rather than act on instinct. That should be the defining trait of what separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom but sometimes I wonder if there's more than a few humans that just haven't evolved with that trait.
 

Breakdown

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This forum has never struck me as being all that angry. I'd say the tone was more smug, self righteous, sanctimonious, superior, probably some other words beginning with S, I don't know.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

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Something Amyss said:
Yes, let's not. Especially since Pluvia was clearly making a hypothetical case, said it was horrible and offensive, and was trying to make a point.

I think this actually goes to the exact topic at hand: people are very quick to take umbrage and not look at the larger context. In this context, Pluvia is very clearly trying to make a case about the discrepancy in treatment and what is deemed "offensive." This is something I'm pretty sure all three of us agree on. Now, maybe I only read the rest of what he said because I consider him a pal and gave him the benefit of the doubt (in fact, I checked his post primarily because I thought "that doesn't sound like him"), but he's clearly making a rhetorical argument for the sake of example, and it only takes a couple more sentences to see that. But too often, people hear on phrase, see one sentence, and they get outraged.

There are some people who actually espouse this belief, people who hold it. There are people who think worse. But that's not Pluvia, nor the point of his post.

So while what you're saying is true, it's talking past the poster you're quoting. And how are we supposed to get anywhere talking past people?
I know, even having read the entire post, I still felt the need to respond the way I did. I kinda go to soapbox mode with statements like the one I quoted. Even when the person in question wasn't intentionally conveying that message, it's one of those things I feel the need to challenge, because someone will take it seriously. So let's just put it down to my having a weird habitual need to say something against statements like those.

Sorry about that too.

But I think that's a good point that you brought up, especially in regards to the internet and internet forums. Somethings just kinda flick people's internal switches on somethings, then someone goes off a tangent. So if I did anything useful, it was proving that people sometimes tend to go into tangent mode with online text communications.