Well…
More nuts.
You’re associating two statements I made that didn’t go together. Let me help out: I was not claiming that my enjoyment of a scuffle was a positive thing.
However, if someone sends me a note like Knightsaber did, yes I’m going to try to assist. Why wouldn’t I? He may have something interesting to tell me, I may learn something. Hell, that’s the whole reason I brought up this topic back in the BF thread. I think we might benefit from some new blood, some fresh eyes. If there is something I can do to help that along, I’m going to try it.
On the topic of fragility, I distinctly remember that I was very fragile when I first started posting on message boards. It felt like a punch in the gut when someone brusquely disagreed with me. Having a post completely ignored when I thought it had an awesome idea was extremely disheartening.
It just took a chunk of time and persistence to build up a bit of emotional distance so I could post fairly regularly without worrying too much about what people would think of my opinion. To me, it was a bit like driving on the freeway for the first time versus habituation of the daily commute. At first, driving and posting were both fucking scary experiences for me that significantly raised my heart rate on occasion. Even now I’d say I am too guarded in voicing my thoughts (though time is also a huge constraint).
So there definitely are people out there who are fragile. I will also that this initial fragility was specific to online forums. I’m maybe a bit sensitive in real life, but I don’t have any problem holding conversations, even with strangers face-to-face. Maybe it’s the different mode of interaction that drives it? It might also be because if you lurk on a forum you kind of feel that you know people, but they don’t know you. To then step out and be ignored or have you opinion dismissed can feel pretty rough. Kind of an asymmetry of social expectations.
I don’t know what the right response is, other than to try to be extra nice and give the benefit of the doubt to people who haven’t posted a lot. Some opinions are just ill-informed or deserve to be lost in the noise though. There is a balance between being nice and being forthright.
Now that you mention this, it’s coming back to me. I felt the same way when I first started posting online. It was definitely intimidating and disappointing and scary and sometimes just devastating when I felt attacked. I’d kind of forgotten that feeling until you reminded me.
That might be a better expression of the idea than “thick skin.”
Good post. I think some of us get so comfortable posting here we kind of forget we maybe over stomping others. I also think as many of us have been here so long we are comfortable being called out if we post something which is wrong or dickish and likewise calling out other fellow posters who have been around a while. Forgetting there are other more chill or quiet or new posters who are taken aback by that kind of stuff.
QFT
111 new posts in this topic since my last visit yesterday. GOLF CLAP.
I’ve just skimped the posts. IMO JMJ has been trolling hard and has been tonally passive aggressive. So whatever side he is on, I’m not.
So some people don’t like to be more welcoming and don’t realise how unwelcoming they sound, that’s fine by me. At some point we have to just agree to disagree. I’m just going to do my own thing and you can do yours.
And I’ll just leave this here for emphasis:
Disclaimer: I skimmed the gazillion posts that appeared in this thread today, but did not read in detail because there are too many other things to do in life.
So the thread topic here is making this forum a more welcoming place. Our demographics skew pretty heavily to the privileged, white, tech-savvy male nerd. (Yes, I fit all those categories.) I’m all for having other viewpoints represented, and I don’t think we’re in any danger of losing the culture here if that happens. I know I have blind spots due to my background, and I appreciate having other points of view that can cover some of those.
While nothing is perfect, I find that QT3 is one of the least toxic environments on these Interwebs. Discussions can and do get heated, but it’s pretty rare that things devolve into the racist, misogynist, threatening, bullying vitriol that is all too common elsewhere. And I don’t think our moderators, even as light-handed as they are, would stand for that to go on for long.
Of course, there’s always room for improvement. It’s part of the human condition to view everything through the lens of your own bias, and that’s especially easy to do in the mostly-text format of an online forum. I think we all could do a better job of both writing our posts carefully to avoid things that offend, and reading others’ posts with an eye toward their intent rather than assuming hostile or offensive content. Is that easy? Of course not, it goes against our instincts.
So what’s the practical upshot of that? I find that it really helps me to take some time before posting responses. Quick, back-and-forth discussions or immediate reaction to something incendiary tend to mean emotion dictates my response, and that can cause me to say some really regrettable things. I’d say that taking a few minutes, or even a few hours, before replying to an emotionally charged topic is something we could all do in order to improve the welcoming aspect of this community.
This probably describes it very well, well the whole post anyway. I have not stepped back to look at it in this way, but yeah. I have a hard time listening to someone say they’re not talking about women, they’re not being sexist while they use sexist language targeted at women, for example.
Most the time when I frustrate someone, it’s not at all on purpose. I am not misrepresenting, or changing the narrative, or whatever handful of things that keep being lobbing at me on purpose when perceive something differently. I’m simply not doing that.
If I was actually a fragile person, I think I probably would have left a long time ago or never signed up in the first place. I certainly don’t go around correcting behavior wherever I see an issue. It is the reason I said, some people here… just don’t see. I, and others, don’t always point it out.
Shrill, thick skin, fighting the good fight, the use of SJW… what some might call polarizing or complaining, I just see as human decency.
Things like: try not to use sexist language towards women, which in an online environment basically means just try not to use sexist language period since you don’t always know who is what and no matter the target the viewers will see it and make their own assumptions. Thick skin is absolutely used to tell minority groups to to shut the hell up and if you’re hurt or uncomfortable, there is something wrong with you, and I don’t have to do anything different. Finally, when someone tells me, it’s not about women, it’s never been about women or you being a woman and then uses sexist language while engaging with or directed at me… I just don’t believe them. I don’t understand why anyone would think i would.
I really don’t see “thick skin” as anything like shrill or SJW! Both of those convey a very specific meaning and position that has exclusively been weaponized against women and liberals, respectively.
Oh, sorry to add to the post count, but calling someone fragile (like, idk, a snowflake???) or a shrill is basically derogative. Dragging other baggage from other thread is not adding to your case, it is inadmissible evidence because you can’t expect people to know what is happening in those other threads to make a reasonable judgement of the evidence.
There’s a vast difference in connotation between snowflake and thick skin. One is deliberately provocative and insulting in all scenarios, the other not, so you should look at context. I wince when I see someone using SJW, but I would never ban them for it.
I try to have empathy. What offends me on a visceral level? Well, I’ve had confrontations with anti-semites, so I would never stay in a community that tolerated it. Does a casual rape reference feel that same way to women that have been assaulted, which is the majority of them? Maybe calm down on that shit, then.
It’s not just my experience, but thick skin is in the same boat. I don’t know how you want me to prove that to you, but it is a common tactic and term to use when someone wants to make a change for the betterment of a group that isn’t getting a fair shake.
stuff like this:
Yes, that’s the context I was talking about.
And what context do you think we’re using here? Part of the background for this topic is the want, or least the want of some members of the board to be more welcoming to members who might be too intimidated to join like… women and minorities.
They called that guy the N word at work, then fired him when he complained about it. That’s not a great context for “thick skin”.
I don’t know if you were specifically referencing me in the bold part, but it would be reasonable if you were, since I’ve said both things about you recently—that you’re misrepresenting someone’s posts, and that you’re trying to rewrite the narrative to fit your arguments.
So as someone who’s pointed out both things, if you say you’re not doing that on purpose, I will take you at your word. I’ll assume you’re not trolling or deliberately misrepresenting what someone says.
I still believe you have a pattern of doing both, and it damages a discussion whether it’s intentional or not.
Next time I will try not to unload my frustration publically.
I had no idea that people took it that way these days. To me it’s a euphemism that simply means you need to be able to accept criticism and has nothing to do with race or gender or accepting one’s place in the order of things. So perhaps a better way of saying what I meant was that if you are going to post your opinion about things on the internet, you need to be able to accept people criticizing your opinion. Because it’s gonna happen, and sometimes it will be blunt.
I think Qt3 is one of the nicer places and people here seem pretty easy-going compared to other boards I’ve read that get a lot of traffic. Sure, there are always flare-ups and there are always people who enjoy laying on the snark, but people here seem pretty nice usually.
I am all for making the place even nicer and all for having more women post, but I haven’t seen many concrete ideas in this thread for how to make that happen. Maybe I missed them? I just see generalities like “be nicer.” I guess trying to avoid sexist language is a concrete example, but I don’t think we are all aware of objectionable language, just as I was unaware of the phrase “grow a thicker skin” having connotations of racism and misogyny.