A bad one. And one that requires a belief in a basic principle that some words must not be allowed voice. That idea is wrong. All evil must be allowed voice, that it may be confronted, that its flaws may be enumerated, and the person advocating it known and (if possible) corrected. To not do this is allows evil to fester. Even if the intentions of your actions are good, the result is not. Exposure and vigilance are the only defense. Silencing weakens each of our abilities to call out bullshit. We need to hone that ability. We need the practice.
Plus, power corrupts. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Again, exposure and vigilance are the only defense.
The issue at hand on Reddit was that there was nowhere to voice specific viewpoints. The issue here, frankly, isn't even the viewpoints. It's the active measures that certain political groups take in order to intentionally balkanize a forum, squat in it, and turn it into a very specific, politically aligned, territory. The social aggression that results from their ideological possession makes certain places totally unapproachable to many people, especially when the barrier to entry into those places is zero.
This forum is borderless. There's barely any way to manage exclusivity. So, how do you gatekeep a place that has no borders? Especially from subversive, Leftist, elements that would be happy to fucking inhabit your space for their own political purposes, and then fucking destroy it by making it a worthless, hollow, shell? Social stigma is effectively the only mechanism. This is an effort of subversion.
Well, how do you counter subversion? You have to undercut the specific rhetorical devices of subversion, along with the social weaponry of the subversives. One of the most important rhetorical weapons of subversion is resentment mongering and sectarian rivalry. If you can get people to be resentful of some sect, especially if you can draw a friend-enemy distinction between your sect and another, you can balkanize the population.
The feelings of fear, anger, and resentment produce viral memes (literal scientific term), which will consolidate people into your sect, and destabilize the larger structure. Thus the structure will have been subverted into smaller, and more controllable, political blocs.
One of the easiest ways to do this, is to target immutable characteristics, and then assign the friend-enemy distinction. Due to immutability, you can declare the rival group fundamentally inhuman and you can attack it at will, deny their right to object, and permanently hold them as a lighting rod for any issue you have coming forward. Everyone else that is part of your chosen immutable characteristic can be pressured to feeling affinity towards you and your polarization. This is where the application of social stigma becomes important. You can use social pressure to push conformity into both groups in order to consolidate your own power over the sect you've created with resentment and vitriol. The worse of a shit-heel you are, the more effective it is because your antagonism is quickly replicated in everyone you interact with.
Imagine, if you will, if this sub was filled with people who told you to kill yourself because your username began with a vowel. They call themselves: The Consonant Crew. It's not one or two people. It's dozens of people, everyday they tell you to kill yourself. They make posts about why 'vowelists' are an inherently evil and deserve death for their crimes against humanity. Every objection is rebuffed not with arguments, but demands for suicide. This is everything they do, every day, non-stop. They will look at the name of every person who's written anything. They will construct elaborate narratives that have their own memes, that express why vowelists are sub-human and a threat to all civilization. Every objection or refutation is dismissed. Anti-vowelism is the only thing that is brought up in every thread, in every comment section, and makes up the majority of posts. And again, you can expect most of your comments to encourage you to kill yourself.
Now, sure, you can just say that you have a tough skin. But at some point, it just isn't fucking worth it to engage with a population of people being so openly hostile to you. Worse, that does nothing but support exactly what the subversives are trying to do. Because there is no exclusivity, there is no boundary, there's also nothing to keep you. You have no sunken cost, no real investment into the community. So why even take the minimal effort to return? Boom: subversion successful.
So, what mechanisms and tools do I have at my disposal to counter such subversion? Well, two fold: either restriction on animosity, or restriction on sectarianism. Neither is perfect, and certainly hammering on either to an extreme is nonsensical. Either I have to keep subversives from attacking you directly and telling you to kill yourself, or I have to remove 'vowelism' as an area of discussion because it's nothing more than a front for balkanism, rather than a genuine discussion topic.
This is how I got to violent speech, and identity attacks. Both of these two weapons are the most common mechanisms of subversives in this place. The violent speech can promote severe antagonism among users (and outside of users is a common trick of glowies). The identity attacks, as in declaring a demographic to be innately morally inferior is another tactic that promotes creating a friend-enemy distinction within the forum, and promotes ideological possession.
It is very common for the identitarians to squat in a place and engage in vitriol until a place is effectively ideologically captive and homogeneous. This is basically what happened to Consume Product. ConPro doesn't need to be explicitly White Nationalist or National Socialist. There's really no reason for that, but it very much is. And so many people find the very essence of that to be repugnant that it self-isolates. This happens repeatedly.
Now, the thing for Impy is that he already has his own subs that are explicitly anti-woman, so none of this really harms his efforts. However, his actions are fundamentally subversive. There's not that many women here (there's a couple), and thankfully his ideological possession has been more off-putting than attractive because he's far too zealous. But drawing the line on declaring an entire demographic to be an inherent enemy needs to be a line in the sand to prevent balkanization within the forum, particularly when it is a common rallying point for so many different varieties of subversives at the same time.
I hope I explained my thoughts well enough on that.
If anything, you've engaged in good faith effort posting, which I find encouraging.
My time on 4chan more or less made me immune to the problem you're discussing, but I can see where other people less familiar with the internet would have issues with some of the people I don't have problems just shouting at me. Keeping the forum a place where they can feel welcome is a worthy goal.
Having been through the decline of Reddit and watching the leftist version of ideological possession making territory feel hostile, I can see bad faith actors as a problem in forum management. One I had little understanding of prior to your post. Managing right wing ideologues is a different beast, and I appreciate seeing your thoughts on the matter.
Regarding Impy in particular, I have posted "Impy was banned for our sins" and I stand by it. Our inability to engage with him and get him to even acknowledge when we make points contrary to his particular stance... It's our failure as a group to police the dialogue, which leaves that to the mods-- forcing your hand, per your post.
I can see how you'd interpret Impy subversive. I think he's a one-issue pony, and mentally ill. Regardless of motive, how you manage someone who's ideologically possessed and won't stop is pretty simple. It involves boundaries, and enforcing them when transgressed. It won't earn you friends, but it will control the behavior.
At any rate, those are my thoughts. I'm glad you took the time to reply in depth, thank you for doing so.
My time on 4chan more or less made me immune to the problem you're discussing, but I can see where other people less familiar with the internet would have issues with some of the people I don't have problems just shouting at me.
This is a huge thing, and why the real answer here is growth. A Liberal approach is what a government should take, because no citizen can actually rebel, and sometimes even leave, legally without severe consequences. But what we have here is a problem of toleration. Now, in a perfect world, subversion can't work because everyone looks at balkanization and agitation efforts with a stoic response of: "lol, fag." The problem is that most people aren't that. Worse, most rightists aren't that. They are, by their nature of being the cast out dissidents of a Leftist establishment: reactionary. Meaning they are already the victims of balkanization that has lead them to be subverted. All White Lives Matter activists, and even Blue Lives Matter activists, have been subverted by Leftwing narrative building. No Life Matters, or Each Life Matters Differently, is a completely different attitude which can't be subverted.
Now, I can't make people subversion resistant. Instead I have to allow them to build up resistance to emotional incontinence and manipulation. Now, obviously, going to 4chan builds that resistance, same with 8chan. What do we do with redditors? JFC. Well, we'd have to a) increase their investment into the environment so they are willing to stay, b) not shock them too bad.
The thing is, gatekeeping with shock and taboo works really well to keep many infiltrators out. Poal does this. You're urged to make a welcome post in the community, but most of the responses are anti-semetic slurs and buzzwords. Not because that's what everyone is, but because many people's sensitivities are so repelled, they won't stay unless they are prepared to invest in the community.
Unfortunately that limits growth, but gatekeeps well. So we've got to find a middle ground that is stiff enough to gatekeep, strong enough to build resistance in users, and soft enough to allow a redditor to participate.
What I've already seen, repeatedly, is light self-segregation. This is good because it means the users stay in posts and threads that don't overly agitate them, but are prepared to occasionally engage with users and topics that will. That's a good sign that the userbase is building stoicism and resilience. If you watch carefully, each post attracts slightly different audiences based on the OP, and based on the rhetoric.
The reason that's a problem for subversives is because they need the discourse to be dominated with their ideological possession. That resilience is the opposite of what they want to happen.
Now, there are smart ideological partisans who understand my rules and don't violate them. That's the key. They might be inclined to subvert, but by following the rules, and at least playing coy, they create an environment which both allows them to expound their narrative, but not to subvert the forum.
This whole thing is a work in progress, I'm watching how the sub interacts with Ukraine because it's a good test. Some people mistakenly thought that ideological homogeneity gives them a community, but there are so many varied narratives on what's happening, it's generating tension, because the sub can't get a single narrative. That's good because it promotes resilience by realizing that even your favorite users are going to be wrong about stuff and that's okay.
I can see how you'd interpret Impy subversive. I think he's a one-issue pony, and mentally ill. Regardless of motive, how you manage someone who's ideologically possessed and won't stop is pretty simple. It involves boundaries, and enforcing them when transgressed. It won't earn you friends, but it will control the behavior.
I don't intend to actually stop subversion or ideological possession. That's actually a trap in and of itself, in exactly the way you mentioned. Creating a hard partisan boundary can cause violence and division. The better solution is to allow subversion and ideological possession to manifest itself, and allow it to fail.
Impy, Jester, and some of the Alt-Righters are learning this the hard way. The more they obsess, the more of a meme they become, and the more people just watch them all fight each-other, and the more resilient and desensitized to the agitation everyone else gets. This incentivizes them to lessen their subversion and vitriol in order to be more successful at subversion. It's a negative feed-back loop.
The problem with Impy (and some of the Alt-Right), is that they leave the forum, go to their own special subverted forums, radicalize themselves, and then come back.
At any rate, those are my thoughts. I'm glad you took the time to reply in depth, thank you for doing so.
It's not a principle. It's a boundary.
A bad one. And one that requires a belief in a basic principle that some words must not be allowed voice. That idea is wrong. All evil must be allowed voice, that it may be confronted, that its flaws may be enumerated, and the person advocating it known and (if possible) corrected. To not do this is allows evil to fester. Even if the intentions of your actions are good, the result is not. Exposure and vigilance are the only defense. Silencing weakens each of our abilities to call out bullshit. We need to hone that ability. We need the practice.
Plus, power corrupts. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Again, exposure and vigilance are the only defense.
The issue at hand on Reddit was that there was nowhere to voice specific viewpoints. The issue here, frankly, isn't even the viewpoints. It's the active measures that certain political groups take in order to intentionally balkanize a forum, squat in it, and turn it into a very specific, politically aligned, territory. The social aggression that results from their ideological possession makes certain places totally unapproachable to many people, especially when the barrier to entry into those places is zero.
This forum is borderless. There's barely any way to manage exclusivity. So, how do you gatekeep a place that has no borders? Especially from subversive, Leftist, elements that would be happy to fucking inhabit your space for their own political purposes, and then fucking destroy it by making it a worthless, hollow, shell? Social stigma is effectively the only mechanism. This is an effort of subversion.
Well, how do you counter subversion? You have to undercut the specific rhetorical devices of subversion, along with the social weaponry of the subversives. One of the most important rhetorical weapons of subversion is resentment mongering and sectarian rivalry. If you can get people to be resentful of some sect, especially if you can draw a friend-enemy distinction between your sect and another, you can balkanize the population.
The feelings of fear, anger, and resentment produce viral memes (literal scientific term), which will consolidate people into your sect, and destabilize the larger structure. Thus the structure will have been subverted into smaller, and more controllable, political blocs.
One of the easiest ways to do this, is to target immutable characteristics, and then assign the friend-enemy distinction. Due to immutability, you can declare the rival group fundamentally inhuman and you can attack it at will, deny their right to object, and permanently hold them as a lighting rod for any issue you have coming forward. Everyone else that is part of your chosen immutable characteristic can be pressured to feeling affinity towards you and your polarization. This is where the application of social stigma becomes important. You can use social pressure to push conformity into both groups in order to consolidate your own power over the sect you've created with resentment and vitriol. The worse of a shit-heel you are, the more effective it is because your antagonism is quickly replicated in everyone you interact with.
Imagine, if you will, if this sub was filled with people who told you to kill yourself because your username began with a vowel. They call themselves: The Consonant Crew. It's not one or two people. It's dozens of people, everyday they tell you to kill yourself. They make posts about why 'vowelists' are an inherently evil and deserve death for their crimes against humanity. Every objection is rebuffed not with arguments, but demands for suicide. This is everything they do, every day, non-stop. They will look at the name of every person who's written anything. They will construct elaborate narratives that have their own memes, that express why vowelists are sub-human and a threat to all civilization. Every objection or refutation is dismissed. Anti-vowelism is the only thing that is brought up in every thread, in every comment section, and makes up the majority of posts. And again, you can expect most of your comments to encourage you to kill yourself.
Now, sure, you can just say that you have a tough skin. But at some point, it just isn't fucking worth it to engage with a population of people being so openly hostile to you. Worse, that does nothing but support exactly what the subversives are trying to do. Because there is no exclusivity, there is no boundary, there's also nothing to keep you. You have no sunken cost, no real investment into the community. So why even take the minimal effort to return? Boom: subversion successful.
So, what mechanisms and tools do I have at my disposal to counter such subversion? Well, two fold: either restriction on animosity, or restriction on sectarianism. Neither is perfect, and certainly hammering on either to an extreme is nonsensical. Either I have to keep subversives from attacking you directly and telling you to kill yourself, or I have to remove 'vowelism' as an area of discussion because it's nothing more than a front for balkanism, rather than a genuine discussion topic.
This is how I got to violent speech, and identity attacks. Both of these two weapons are the most common mechanisms of subversives in this place. The violent speech can promote severe antagonism among users (and outside of users is a common trick of glowies). The identity attacks, as in declaring a demographic to be innately morally inferior is another tactic that promotes creating a friend-enemy distinction within the forum, and promotes ideological possession.
It is very common for the identitarians to squat in a place and engage in vitriol until a place is effectively ideologically captive and homogeneous. This is basically what happened to Consume Product. ConPro doesn't need to be explicitly White Nationalist or National Socialist. There's really no reason for that, but it very much is. And so many people find the very essence of that to be repugnant that it self-isolates. This happens repeatedly.
Now, the thing for Impy is that he already has his own subs that are explicitly anti-woman, so none of this really harms his efforts. However, his actions are fundamentally subversive. There's not that many women here (there's a couple), and thankfully his ideological possession has been more off-putting than attractive because he's far too zealous. But drawing the line on declaring an entire demographic to be an inherent enemy needs to be a line in the sand to prevent balkanization within the forum, particularly when it is a common rallying point for so many different varieties of subversives at the same time.
I hope I explained my thoughts well enough on that.
If anything, you've engaged in good faith effort posting, which I find encouraging.
My time on 4chan more or less made me immune to the problem you're discussing, but I can see where other people less familiar with the internet would have issues with some of the people I don't have problems just shouting at me. Keeping the forum a place where they can feel welcome is a worthy goal.
Having been through the decline of Reddit and watching the leftist version of ideological possession making territory feel hostile, I can see bad faith actors as a problem in forum management. One I had little understanding of prior to your post. Managing right wing ideologues is a different beast, and I appreciate seeing your thoughts on the matter.
Regarding Impy in particular, I have posted "Impy was banned for our sins" and I stand by it. Our inability to engage with him and get him to even acknowledge when we make points contrary to his particular stance... It's our failure as a group to police the dialogue, which leaves that to the mods-- forcing your hand, per your post.
I can see how you'd interpret Impy subversive. I think he's a one-issue pony, and mentally ill. Regardless of motive, how you manage someone who's ideologically possessed and won't stop is pretty simple. It involves boundaries, and enforcing them when transgressed. It won't earn you friends, but it will control the behavior.
At any rate, those are my thoughts. I'm glad you took the time to reply in depth, thank you for doing so.
+1 respect from this user.
This is a huge thing, and why the real answer here is growth. A Liberal approach is what a government should take, because no citizen can actually rebel, and sometimes even leave, legally without severe consequences. But what we have here is a problem of toleration. Now, in a perfect world, subversion can't work because everyone looks at balkanization and agitation efforts with a stoic response of: "lol, fag." The problem is that most people aren't that. Worse, most rightists aren't that. They are, by their nature of being the cast out dissidents of a Leftist establishment: reactionary. Meaning they are already the victims of balkanization that has lead them to be subverted. All White Lives Matter activists, and even Blue Lives Matter activists, have been subverted by Leftwing narrative building. No Life Matters, or Each Life Matters Differently, is a completely different attitude which can't be subverted.
Now, I can't make people subversion resistant. Instead I have to allow them to build up resistance to emotional incontinence and manipulation. Now, obviously, going to 4chan builds that resistance, same with 8chan. What do we do with redditors? JFC. Well, we'd have to a) increase their investment into the environment so they are willing to stay, b) not shock them too bad.
The thing is, gatekeeping with shock and taboo works really well to keep many infiltrators out. Poal does this. You're urged to make a welcome post in the community, but most of the responses are anti-semetic slurs and buzzwords. Not because that's what everyone is, but because many people's sensitivities are so repelled, they won't stay unless they are prepared to invest in the community.
Unfortunately that limits growth, but gatekeeps well. So we've got to find a middle ground that is stiff enough to gatekeep, strong enough to build resistance in users, and soft enough to allow a redditor to participate.
What I've already seen, repeatedly, is light self-segregation. This is good because it means the users stay in posts and threads that don't overly agitate them, but are prepared to occasionally engage with users and topics that will. That's a good sign that the userbase is building stoicism and resilience. If you watch carefully, each post attracts slightly different audiences based on the OP, and based on the rhetoric.
The reason that's a problem for subversives is because they need the discourse to be dominated with their ideological possession. That resilience is the opposite of what they want to happen.
Now, there are smart ideological partisans who understand my rules and don't violate them. That's the key. They might be inclined to subvert, but by following the rules, and at least playing coy, they create an environment which both allows them to expound their narrative, but not to subvert the forum.
This whole thing is a work in progress, I'm watching how the sub interacts with Ukraine because it's a good test. Some people mistakenly thought that ideological homogeneity gives them a community, but there are so many varied narratives on what's happening, it's generating tension, because the sub can't get a single narrative. That's good because it promotes resilience by realizing that even your favorite users are going to be wrong about stuff and that's okay.
I don't intend to actually stop subversion or ideological possession. That's actually a trap in and of itself, in exactly the way you mentioned. Creating a hard partisan boundary can cause violence and division. The better solution is to allow subversion and ideological possession to manifest itself, and allow it to fail.
Impy, Jester, and some of the Alt-Righters are learning this the hard way. The more they obsess, the more of a meme they become, and the more people just watch them all fight each-other, and the more resilient and desensitized to the agitation everyone else gets. This incentivizes them to lessen their subversion and vitriol in order to be more successful at subversion. It's a negative feed-back loop.
The problem with Impy (and some of the Alt-Right), is that they leave the forum, go to their own special subverted forums, radicalize themselves, and then come back.
Thank you for your patience.