I find it surprising how many folks are pissed off by the idea that Qt3 could be more welcoming. I would invite those folks to ask themselves why it bothers them? Or not, thats fine as well. Just seems a very odd thing to get worked up about.
I disagree with this, totally.
Nesrie has a habit of reading a post, on a regular basis and adding her own misguided interpretation to it, moving the goalposts at the same time and then saying, see, see this is what you are or what you say or what you do and then saying you are this or that.
When in fact the poster has in fact said nothing of the sort.
From my perspective it gets a bit tiresome as we go round in round in circles while we argue about what was said and totally miss the point.
Personally it’s great to have vocal, ladies with their views on here and being very active, however… and this is where I personally struggle, I know what I want to say but can never get it over in a forum in a way that may not be shitty or too much attitude so instead half way through a post like this I think F*** it and give up.
Again, no offence this is pretty much rubbish. Some people are saying they are not bothered, that’s not the same.
Most people are happy if it’s more welcoming but the questions is what is more welcome, is it being more friendly, fun more PC, all of them none of them. No one really seems to know reading all of the above.
Look I’m not trying to argue the other point(s) made about Nesrie’s style of argumentation, I’m just trying to say it’s a bit pot calling kettle going on when a dude who is completely unable to budge and tells us repeatedly that it is so calls someone else a broken record.
Personally I don’t like the Pot Kettle idea. Let JMJ has their say and let Nesrie have hers. I really dislike people saying you can’t say that because you are like that. If that was true we would all be posting not a lot…
The one thing pretty much everyone has agreed on so far is that we should be courteous and respectful and talk to people in here the way that we talk to them in “real life”.
Would it be better if I said that he was being a little hypocritical of someone instead of using that idiom?
I don’t mean to try to shut him down I just want him to think about his own thing before calling out someone else.
Again, as someone working with the general public for 30 years I get spoken poorly more than well, it seems there are aholes everywhere out there, sure it would be nice if everyone was chummy and lovely, the reality is somewhat different.
Of course a forum is even harder as it’s easy to misinterpret the written word even more. Add to that the people that enjoy confrontation and there will always be pockets of disagreement.
@Nesrie, I will tell you what I mean by that. Here’s what happened:
Mark said:
So divedivedive said:
So John_Many_Jars said:
So divedivedive said:
And I will point out here that you said in response to divedivedive:
But then John_Many_Jars responded not to you, but back to divedivedive’s last post:
So let’s pause and look at this. John is talking, and has been talking, about people who were being described as fragile, people Mark suggested would benefit from a thicker skin, but at this point John reframes the discussion slightly. These people—not a specific race/gender/class of people, but people who appear to get unhappy when disagreed with—who were being described as fragile, perhaps fragility isn’t the root cause.
John’s suspicion is that first of all, they enjoy feeling like they’re on the moral high ground fighting for important issues. This is an assumption, all of this is framed as such, but it’s not necessarily a judgement. John isn’t saying that they, or anyone else, is wrong for enjoying the feeling that they’re on the moral high ground in any particular area of life.
More specifically, he suspects that because they’re seeking that feeling on a hobby message board, they don’t have another place in real life where they have this opportunity, or a place that they dare to try, or a place where people will listen.
All of that is framed as John’s thoughts on what these people might be like: not fragile, but instead, people who enjoy being on the moral high ground of an argument, and for whom a hobby message board is their preferred outlet.
John wasn’t replying to you or your point that minorities and women are often the target of the advice to develop a thick skin, and what he was saying wasn’t exactly judgmental. Maybe a little condescending, but still not directed at a certain people group. Just a possible explanation for a type of behavior he’s observed.
So then you said:
So far, it’s clear from this post you think he’s being judgmental. John responds, only to your question, with a sort of glib answer, but no reason to think it’s not true.
RickH and John have a little side discussion here about how RickH saw similar behavior from people in high school, John saw them more at the collegiate level. Still not talking about women or minorities.
divedivedive follows that with a response to RickH:
RickH agrees with the last bit:
You reply:
At this point I assume you’ve conflated John’s post about his theory on why people who appear fragile are behaving that way with your earlier remarks about minorities and women that no one was specifically responding to. This is confirmed in the next exchange:
There it is, you’ve pulled John’s earlier post completely out of context and entirely misrepresented what he was saying. His theory had nothing to do with women and minorities talking about issues associated with women and minorities. His theory which also did not say he thought “they are deficit in life”.
You’ve got a completely wrong understanding of what he said, but these things happen. I’ll be the first to agree that threading on Discourse doesn’t always make it entirely clear who is responding to what. So far, what we have here is potentially nothing worse than a misunderstanding of who John was replying to. So John clarifies:
You respond:
@Nesrie, you misunderstood what John said, and he pointed out what he was actually saying. The best thing to do here is to acknowledge the mistake and move on. Or even just let it drop, ignore it entirely, and move on. But instead, you try to turn this into an argument.
Well you were involved in the other topic, so you must know part of the reason this topic exists is because of the question of women participating, or not participating on this forum despite the fact women absolutely enjoy these games and run across this site too.
You suggest that he shouldn’t have said what he said because part of the reason this topic was started was about the question of women participating. So what? Again, review the thread history, that’s not the only thing this thread is about, and John’s post was unambiguous to the rest of us. John was not talking about women and minorities, it’s not his fault you thought he was.
You can’t assume that because someone is sharing with a like minded-community something about themselves that somehow their deficit. Why would anyone assume that? And also, how would that not come off as hostile?
You’ve also latched onto this idea of a “deficit” as a negative personality trait, and you then you make, like, three different mistakes discussing it.
John never even used the word deficit, he said:
That people think hobby message boards are an important place to fight that good fight would seem to me to indicate they don’t have a place in real life to do it, or where they dare to do it, or where people would listen to them.
So point one: that’s a description of someone’s circumstances, not of the person. When you say “that somehow their deficit” (which I assume should read “that somehow they’re deficient”—explaining that not to call out typos, but to be clear what I’m responding to), you’ve misunderstood what he’s saying.
You say that “You can’t assume that because someone is sharing with a like minded-community something about themselves that [somehow they’re deficient]”. Also incorrect to say this to John, because he did not assume any of that. He wasn’t talking broadly about “someone sharing with a like-minded community something about themselves”, he was offering his thoughts on the motivation for the online behavior from people who—according to Mark’s original post—“become unhappy when people disagree with [their] stated opinion”.
So you’ve answered both of your own follow up questions:
“Why would anyone assume that?” No one did.
“And also, how would that not come off as hostile?” I suppose it would be hostile, if someone did that, but no one did.
tl;dr:
The reason for my blunt response is what I said earlier, but lest it get lost:
@Nesrie, you misunderstood what John said, and he pointed out what he was actually saying. The best thing to do here is to acknowledge the mistake and move on. Or even just let it drop, ignore it entirely, and move on. But instead, you try to turn this into an argument.
I’ve been frustrated to see similar discussions play out in several threads with you, both when I’ve agreed and when I’ve been against you. It’s happened enough to become a pattern. You misunderstand or misread what someone says, and when confronted with it, you double down and fight about it, or move the goal posts, or try anything you can to reframe it as something other than you misunderstanding.
I have never claimed to be a perfect person, or to have some mastery of whatever some of you guys think is an okay way to address somethings… but the way some of you post about me, this general brush off and dismissal, it’s beyond unkind.
I didn’t join this topic and try help push it so each person could just take turns on what is is they don’t like about me.
The discussion between me and john, didn’t start out of the blue here. He did the same thing at the last topic, but yeah, I know, just me being me right?
This is much more concise than my version. Need a like button.
One thing that is difficult is people pointing out your errors or issues, it is one reason I don’t post much at all. I don’t do the written word well and worry more about saying the wrong thing or making it worse so instead keep quiet.
I visit here multiple times daily and really enjoy some of the topics, but posting is never easy, it’s like putting yourself out there and the worry some people will shoot you down over a poorly written word or my poor understanding.
In which I take a brief divergence to expand on old thoughts:
I find the idea that learning to be proud of being an asshole is something to strive for really, really goddamn weird. Like, super fucking weird. Hearing constantly that you’re disagreeable, intimidating, offputting, etc., and eventually just shrugging and saying, “Eh, fuck the world, I ain’t got time to bother with nobody else’s feelings” strikes me as a really unfortunate position to take.
(I realize I’m taking your words further than you yourself set them, @RickH, in order to setup the larger point)
Like, look, yeah, the world sucks and everybody dies and some people are just going to have it rough and die sooner and sadder, and you’re never going to make everyone around you happy by being a bright-shining ray of joy in the universe.
But just accepting the curmudgeonliness, much less glorifying in it, wearing proudly the badge of asshole, declaring with glee that the world is just going to have to adapt to you instead of you adapting to it. . . not only does that strike me as a remarkably unpleasant mindset to fall into, but it also seems to fly in the face of the idea that people who take offense to stuff are the selfish, self-centered ones.
This idea that being an “asshole” (as its often said) is so much like the “If you can’t handle me at my worst y’all don’t deserve me at my best” attitude I see from meth’ed out ex-con chicks from my shitty podunk southern hometown so often on Facebook. Like, girl, your best is still missing half her teeth, has four kids she’s gotten taken away because she bought drugs instead of caring for them, constantly lies, cheats, and steals from everyone she knows, and wants to fight at the drop of a fuckin’ hat. You’re not a princess to be woo’ed, your a tragic failure of the state and en route to an early grave.
But they still revel in it, and see themselves as being the righteous victors, standing up for their independence, their prowess, their being perfectly fine as they are, and goddammit, why people always gotta talk smack and snitch on me when I steal money from them to buy drugs and land me another stint in jail, dammit? These ho’s ain’t loyal! Nevermind that I have cheated on the last 8 boyfriends I had–they deserved it, dangit! And why can’t I find a good man anyway?
Sorry, I know, weird tangent, and to be clear, I’m not calling anyone here a meth’ed out ex-con chick. Presumably none of you, no matter how curmudgeonly, deserve to have your kids taken away by the state :P
BUT! That same core of it, the idea that all these negative responses back, all these critiques and comments, could somehow be something wrong in the external parties, and have nothing at all to do with the recipient, and that they are fine as is, and entirely content not budging from that place. . . I think there is a smidgen of similarity there.
Being “that asshole who tells it like it is” is so often the same kinda thing that got Trump elected, and the people who praise him for “speaking his mind” really always seem to mean they like the way that he’s a racist, sexist, spiteful dick who wants to tear down the world, and they really love it when his comments hurt people and offend sensibilities. People who like to “be straight” and “talk direct and plain” often seem to really revel in tearing others down, in being unpleasant, in critiquing, in hurting.
Again, this is a general observation from my relatively brief span on this earth. That people who say that they like to be “unfiltered” mostly just mean that they like to be hurtful and not feel like they’re doing a bad thing, because you see, they’re not being meanspirited, they’re just refusing to sugarcoat. They’re not being unnecessarily harsh, they’re just showing this person that the world is a harsh place. They’re not the issue, everyone else is.
I have to hop off the PC for the rest of the night, so I can’t really finish this thought properly. But to try for some sort of summary, if you’re getting up in arms about the possible need to change your behaviors, and suspect the motivations of those who are suggesting those changes of being bad, consider for a moment how often that’s been remarked upon in your life. How much pride you hold in what you say and how you act and how you’re perceived, and how much of that pride seems to have coalesced around something that. . . isn’t that positive. Ask why it’s been easier to continue down that road rather than just, you know, not.
Full disclosure: in politics, I consider myself an absolute fucking asshole shitbag, and it’s not something I’m proud of. I’d be horrified to see someone like me take a leadership role in this world, or even this forum, because I don’t know how to talk about this shit without either being a frothing-at-the-mouth rabble-rouser, or shitposting about it like it doesn’t matter, because it matters so goddamn much to me and I lack the patience and tact and self-reflection necessary to communicate about it without going nuts and attacking.
I admire your passion and persistence, but at the same time, there’s an old saying that some people would rather fight than win. For the most part you are winning, and (in my estimation) you don’t have as many enemies as you might think. So, why polarize?
I think that, as I do with most people on this board, I’d probably have a fun evening discussing any number of things over dinner & drinks with you. But a message board is not a medium that lends itself to nuance.
Ha, fair enough, but I am a lawyer so some of it is indeed useful.
As impartially as I could, I walked back through the discussion to explain first of all what John was saying.
Then, I pointed out it’s easy for anyone to lose track, and no one should blame anyone for a mistake in who’s responding to who about what.
But the crux of this is that when John explained himself, repeated what he’s actually meant, you didn’t accept that explanation.
None of us are perfect people, no one’s holding you to that standard.
That was some epic mansplaining going on.
An interesting take, but you take agree, the idea of other people growing a thicker skin is usually applied to minorities or women, not to white men. I feel like ever case of that comment, it’s to argue that other people must accommodate that white man, whether it’s crude humor, traditions or just out and out racisms. Just using that terminology informs me of the the type of view that @John_Many_Jars might have, and it isn’t pretty.
The fact that he calls are @Nesrie for being shrill is another critique that is almost always universal applied to only women, or men considered feminine by men of a certain character. The fact that it was made to @Nesrie does not seem to be random or chance but a direct comment on gender. Again, I may be off base, but comments like that, and choice phrases he has made makes me question his character or his goals in this discussion.
I wasn’t willing to accept this premise until I saw JMJ openly trolling Nesrie in a sexist way and you backing him up.
Ultimately it’s Tom’s house and it’s up to him if he wants to stamp on this behaviour but I don’t like it.
Your call to make, but my point was valid. Words matter, and adding them after the fact to what someone said so that it suits your argument isn’t a fair tactic.