I appreciate the vote of support, if that is not be assuming too much. My assessment of my comments is in line with your post here, hyperbole + pointed humour.
Text doesn’t translate well sometimes, but then again, we seem to have what we call in American culture “hall monitors” and “tattle tales” around here. Whenever their feelings get hurt they run to the teacher.
I think this conversation about moderation is more important than the usual take which is, it’s the internet it doesn’t matter. In this case, it really does matter. It mattes a lot, because these are the kinds of people driving our communities, and dare I point to, our western nations into the ground.
Without going into my big picture assessment, the goal of my communication was as follows:
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There are users on this board and in our communities framing all of us and all of our work in very negative frames. They are not entirely incorrect, but they are skewing the general perception of “our communities self image” into a place I do not want to see it go.
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Each time one of the users posted a negative frame, it was framed in a way that positioned their negative frame as the only possible interpretation and excluded everyone elses potential perspectives.
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My goal was to put a giant counterweight to their frame and provide a positive frame. I provided perspectives, contexts and ways to think about how we ought to value our selves that makes us (in my opinion) richer and stronger.
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In addition, my positive frame not only emphasised my positive frame, it included everyone elses potential perspectives including that of the person posting the negative frame.
In other words, I am an expert in many more dimensions than the typical poster of a negative frame and my handling of their perspective was not only a deft counterweight, it includes all of the usual syntactic narrative sugar to drive a point home. As a side point, to address the tone of this paragraph, it is okay to know your strengths, lean into them and declare them to the world. It forces you to claim your position in the hierarchy and live or die by it. Your humility will be displayed in how you handle your eventual failure.
Back to the topic, ultimately, the psychology of a group is highly dependent on having at least a few members capable of recognising when these negative frames get inserted and knowing how to deal with them.
But, none of that is a problem, all of the above is to describe the mechanics of what was actually happening in the discussion versus what is perceived by someone like Privacy2.
I would propose an alternate interpretation here. The true source of toxicity in a community is people like Privacy2, not because they are utterly incapable to understand, but BECAUSE THEY WANT TO NANNY THE COMMUNITY ON BEHALF OF THE COMMUNITY.
The last point is the important point. I don’t care about his opinions (and no one should care about mine, frankly), that isn’t the issue. Hiding my posts is not the issue either. If I believe that I have done something wrong, I will even apologise. What is of great importance is when a community allows a person like that to nanny the community on behalf of the community … to … what? Protect the community from it self?
Here is a novel thought: How about you let adults judge for them selves? They are not children to be cooed and coddled. And who are you to decide on behalf of anyone else anyway?
In a way, I am glad that he decided to do what he did, it shows him for who he really is. It also shines a light on what all of us must become good at: strength of self (being able to separate your self from any critique), strength to speak (standing to others and providing counter balance) and strength to fight for freedom.
This specific example is PRECISELY the exact mechanic that all of our rights are getting eroded in our western civilisations and it is important to fight for those rights. And how do you fight for those rights?
Simple: You fight for your right to speak by fighting for your enemies right to speak. Your enemy may not respect it but you end up controlling the moral high ground which is social proof members in a human social group look for.
To wit, anyone here in the community is given permission to say anything they want to me, in any manner they wish, using any words they wish. Be as rude as you want. Your posts will never be hidden. To anyone moderating, you do not have my permission to moderate on my behalf.