Political Threads

[zfreeman]

I understand that we run the gamut of most topics, given the purpose of a forum. I'm not demanding we adhere strictly to gaming-only subjects. I only wanted to comment that I think the political subjects are not worth the effort of having them.

The initial discourse may possibly be constructive, but it quickly devolves into ad hominem attacks and immature hyperbole, with mods having to get involved almost every time. I think these conversations are only causing bad blood between members, instead of finding common interests between strangers.

This should be a place to have fun, contribute, discuss, and make friends. Political threads seem to run counter to GBAtemp's ethos. I think all parties would benefit by having these conversations on other sites.

 

[The Catboy]

It's all virtuous intent up until people begin gaming the system and labeling anyone they don't like the flavor of the month villainous "oppressive" demographic to get rid of them. Or, as the age old image that has somehow become more relevant since it was created:

I've literally exposed these members as actual nazis and or white nationalists during the times when their masks slipped. All of them have made posts that either directly referenced/stated their ideology, many even posted shit like, "1488" or "White Pride." I don't throw this term around loosely. Please don't assume I am just labeling people I don't agree with as "nazis," I don't make accusations without evidence.

 

[LainaGabranth]

I've literally exposed these members as actual nazis and or white nationalists during the times when their masks slipped. All of them have made posts that either directly referenced/stated their ideology, many even posted shit like, "1488" or "White Pride." I don't throw this term around loosely. Please don't assume I am just labeling people I don't agree with as "nazis," I don't make accusations without evidence.

Nazi apologia has always been about moving the goalposts. First it starts with, "You crazy lefties just call everyone a nazi!" And then even though they can't prove that happens they just run with it anyways. When actual nazis are exposed, they go "YEAH, WELL, AT LEAST THEY AREN'T BAD PEOPLE!"

Next thing you know, the exposed people start posting literal white nationalist propaganda. And then the apologia for it is "w-well, at least they're not bad YET!"

So on, so forth, etc etc, until it reaches a point where the nazis have ruined your community like they consistently do, and all you hear in response is either "muh free speech" or "w-w-well the left is just as bad!!"

So like, yeah, not only is the term "nazi" not thrown around like it ain't shit, but when the nazis are exposed, these performatively anti-leftist people get real, real fuckin quiet about it. Like I said in another thread, it's all just virtue signalling when someone goes "blehhhh, left bad, you're all calling everyone hitler" or whatever the fuck. Meaningless pseudo intellectual nonsense.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

I've literally exposed these members as actual nazis and or white nationalists during the times when their masks slipped. All of them have made posts that either directly referenced/stated their ideology, many even posted shit like, "1488" or "White Pride." I don't throw this term around loosely. Please don't assume I am just labeling people I don't agree with as "nazis," I don't make accusations without evidence.

My post insinuated that once you began banning people on their political ideology, the system can become gamed in such a way that people begin to abuse it try trying to force rhetoric that people they do not like are of those ideologies who have been banned -- so that they can ban the person they're targeting.

That I'm aware, GBATemp seemingly has no precedent for banning people on political ideology alone. Once it does though, it sets bad precedent that people begin to prey on and will begin bending narratives.

Given there is no precedent (that I'm aware of), I did not implicate that you were "throwing things around lightly". I'd be more inclined to if you supposedly had a history of it, but I've no interest in stalking any particular member here to prove a point. Giving you the benefit of the doubt, I assume you have not.

I 100% believe the people who you are referring to using white supremacist/nazi dog whistles genuinely did use them and having implicated themselves as those ideologies. Truthfully, I imagine they deliberately did so to get a rise out of you and likely were doing it ironically. However, by no means should that mean it's acceptable or dismissal. Ironic or not, I still believe politics have no place in a community such as this.

Nazi apologia has always been about moving the goalposts. First it starts with, "You crazy lefties just call everyone a nazi!" And then even though they can't prove that happens they just run with it anyways. When actual nazis are exposed, they go "YEAH, WELL, AT LEAST THEY AREN'T BAD PEOPLE!"

And thus, my point is proven within 2 replies to my post. I am now a Nazi sympathizer after making an argument that politics don't belong on a video game modding forum, thus implicating that white supremacy/nazi ideology would too, not have a platform here.

Next thing you know, the exposed people start posting literal white nationalist propaganda. And then the apologia for it is "w-well, at least they're not bad YET!"

So on, so forth, etc etc, until it reaches a point where the nazis have ruined your community like they consistently do, and all you hear in response is either "muh free speech" or "w-w-well the left is just as bad!!"

This is already pointless meandering to try and paint rhetoric of your boogeyman. My point stands that it shouldn't be tolerated in the first place. In a forum where the agenda is not that of any type of political ideology, the first alluding to it should be met with immediate deletion, a warning to the member, and a ban if the offense is repeated. Yes, that includes white nationalism and nazism.


Now, in response to each of your points, there's been a continued implication here that I'm somehow a white supremacist/nazi or white supremacist/nazi sympathizer or apologist, and that its the demographic to get off this site because of just how evil and villainous they are. 10-15 years ago on the internet, outside of circles of say, like 4chan, such rhetoric would have had them dismissed as "dumb rednecks" and people would have moved on -- yet today, it's a witch hunt for anyone with those ideologies.
(If the undertone here isn't explicit, white supremacy/nazism is ridiculous and their stupidity shouldn't be tolerated, the argument here is about target demographics in general, not sympathy for this awful demographic)

But who picks the "good and bad" demographics that are acceptable? For sake of giving a very real and a very dissenting opinion: I'm going to throw a controversial counter-argument out. I, for one, think that any transgender ideologies should also not be expressed on websites such as this. Not because I don't believe transgenders shouldn't be allowed to be transgender, but because this is a community forum full of impressionable teenagers trying to find their identity in life and may be coerced to make irreversible physiological alterations to their body they may later regret but can't undo.

Is my opinion at all valid? I imagine by majority opinion alone, the perspective is likely no. However, it begs the question on the staff of this website has to make such decisions in the first place because, again, this is a video game modding website and the questions of drawing lines in the sand of where to draw the line in the sand of "how much nazi/white supremacist dog whistling is too much" and "at what point is transgender expression simply expression vs the grooming of some of our more impressionable members of this site" at all relevant to this site's interests?

If you eliminate the opportunity for such things to be expressed, be it in a containment board or the site itself, you don't have to get into such semantic arguments and divide your community.

If you want to be a white nationalist? Great, 4chan is that way. Want to have a community focused around transgenderism? I imagine there's more than enough sub-reddit and other communities focused on exactly that.

 

[The Catboy]

My post insinuated that once you began banning people on their political ideology, the system can become gamed in such a way that people begin to abuse it try trying to force rhetoric that people they do not like are of those ideologies who have been banned -- so that they can ban the person they're targeting.

That I'm aware, GBATemp seemingly has no precedent for banning people on political ideology alone. Once it does though, it sets bad precedent that people begin to prey on and will begin bending narratives.

I don’t advocate for banning people for having different opinions, but I do advocate banning actual threats to the community. These members have a long history of disrespecting members, spreading conspiracies, spreading hatred, and generally make the forums more hostile. Many of them stay on the fringe of the rules to avoid getting banned. Other times they get warned, chill until that warning is removed, get warned again, and continue the cycle. At some point the staff really just need to realize these members are going to always be terrible and aren’t worth the constant hassle.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

I don’t advocate for banning people for having different opinions, but I do advocate banning actual threats to the community. These members have a long history of disrespecting members, spreading conspiracies, spreading hatred, and generally make the forums more hostile. Many of them stay on the fringe of the rules to avoid getting banned. Other times they get warned, chill until that warning is removed, get warned again, and continue the cycle. At some point the staff really just need to realize these members are going to always be terrible and aren’t worth the constant hassle.

Assuming that to be an accurate representation, I agree with you. Online moderation is hard, especially when your staff is volunteer.

There's also a desire to not want to be tyrannical, but as you say, there's a limit.
I've done online community administration off and on for 16 years, including a forum of 250,000 monthly active users. I've learned a lot on tbat time and had to learn to become less passive. One tidbit I've come to learn is that rules exist as loose guidelines at best, and anyone who treats them as a limbo stick to narrowly avoid to "stay in the community" usually aren't the demographic you want to keep around as they aren't healthy contributors to the community anyway

 

[LainaGabranth]

Ah ah ah. No, not letting you strawman so easily.

"And thus, my point is proven within 2 replies to my post. I am now a Nazi sympathizer after making an argument that politics don't belong on a video game modding forum, thus implicating that white supremacy/nazi ideology would too, not have a platform here."

No, you'll notice I said apologia. That does not mean sympathizer. It's been pretty well documented for the past 10 years or so that there's a noticeable interest in downplaying toxic shit online out of a mistaken belief in free speech absolutism, to cite one example that'd give such a position. Quit the victim complex shit, you know exactly what I meant, and I think it's pretty dishonest to try to use it to soapbox about something that isn't even happening.

"Now, in response to each of your points, there's been a continued implication here that I'm somehow a white supremacist/nazi or white supremacist/nazi sympathizer or apologist"
Wrong. Like, right off the bat. You've at worst been accused of downplaying the problems with those people.

To snip the rest of your rant,

"BUH BUH, WHO IS THE ARBITER OF GOOD DEMOGRAPHICS???"
There doesn't need to be one. You fell for a moronic smokescreen in believing that an objective arbiter or even a specific figurehead is ultimately necessary to decide what is or isn't good or bad. There is no objective aspect to it, it's merely a matter of opinion that white nationalists do not bring anything of value to a community besides astroturfing, and I know this to be the case because I've seen it happen to a community I once moderated. The higherups were a bunch of pseudo intellectual "free speech absolutists" and what happened was that the game and its community ultimately died because the only people who wanted to play it were holocaust deniers and incredibly uninteresting powergamers.

Even without a game to play, there was still a community when the game server wasn't populated, but that was quickly destroyed once the owners didn't want to do anything about the rampant /pol/ shit in every part of the chat rooms, leading to at least 6 people off the top of my head, three of which were close friends of mine, getting witch hunted and ultimately unable to show themselves in the community.

The moral of this cautionary tale is that a community should moderate itself to keep nazis and the like out. I don't give a shit about the cope nonsense of "b-b-buh whuh if i get thrown out for being called bad???" because unless you either A) deny the fucking holocaust or B) post biogted shit, then no one is going to give a fuck what you think. I mean, they kinda already don't care what you think, but that's besides the point.

Spare everyone here your posturing. You know good and damn well what's being said, I think you just want someone to call you a sympathizer so you can soapbox about what a horrible victim you are of online witchhunting.

Well, you aren't a sympathizer. You're just a simp.

Also, while I'm at it, genocide shit isn't "a different political opinion," and you shouldn't push such a ridiculous idea that advocating for ideologies that result in the mass expulsion at best, and mass execution at worst of entire groups of people are not "mere difference in political opinion."

If you take such a myopic stance of the definition of "politics" you can stretch it to mean literally anything, dumbass. "Baw!!! the mods banned me for posting links to the pirate bay! I think copyright law should be abolished, this is just a difference in politics!!!" and so on and so forth. People who actively go out of their way to ruin communities are not just people with "political differences," they are people whose actions explicitly cause problems for a community. If you spent more time critically thinking instead of having your kneejerk reaction to the word "nazi" you probably would've grasped this.

No, I don't care enough to format the post for quotes. Deal with it.

 

[Gamemaster1379]

Ah ah ah. No, not letting you strawman so easily.

"And thus, my point is proven within 2 replies to my post. I am now a Nazi sympathizer after making an argument that politics don't belong on a video game modding forum, thus implicating that white supremacy/nazi ideology would too, not have a platform here."

No, you'll notice I said apologia. That does not mean sympathizer. It's been pretty well documented for the past 10 years or so that there's a noticeable interest in downplaying toxic shit online out of a mistaken belief in free speech absolutism, to cite one example that'd give such a position. Quit the victim complex shit, you know exactly what I meant, and I think it's pretty dishonest to try to use it to soapbox about something that isn't even happening.

"Now, in response to each of your points, there's been a continued implication here that I'm somehow a white supremacist/nazi or white supremacist/nazi sympathizer or apologist"
Wrong. Like, right off the bat. You've at worst been accused of downplaying the problems with those people.

To snip the rest of your rant,

"BUH BUH, WHO IS THE ARBITER OF GOOD DEMOGRAPHICS???"
There doesn't need to be one. You fell for a moronic smokescreen in believing that an objective arbiter or even a specific figurehead is ultimately necessary to decide what is or isn't good or bad. There is no objective aspect to it, it's merely a matter of opinion that white nationalists do not bring anything of value to a community besides astroturfing, and I know this to be the case because I've seen it happen to a community I once moderated. The higherups were a bunch of pseudo intellectual "free speech absolutists" and what happened was that the game and its community ultimately died because the only people who wanted to play it were holocaust deniers and incredibly uninteresting powergamers.

Even without a game to play, there was still a community when the game server wasn't populated, but that was quickly destroyed once the owners didn't want to do anything about the rampant /pol/ shit in every part of the chat rooms, leading to at least 6 people off the top of my head, three of which were close friends of mine, getting witch hunted and ultimately unable to show themselves in the community.

The moral of this cautionary tale is that a community should moderate itself to keep nazis and the like out. I don't give a shit about the cope nonsense of "b-b-buh whuh if i get thrown out for being called bad???" because unless you either A) deny the fucking holocaust or B) post biogted shit, then no one is going to give a fuck what you think. I mean, they kinda already don't care what you think, but that's besides the point.

Spare everyone here your posturing. You know good and damn well what's being said, I think you just want someone to call you a sympathizer so you can soapbox about what a horrible victim you are of online witchhunting.

Well, you aren't a sympathizer. You're just a simp.

Also, while I'm at it, genocide shit isn't "a different political opinion," and you shouldn't push such a ridiculous idea that advocating for ideologies that result in the mass expulsion at best, and mass execution at worst of entire groups of people are not "mere difference in political opinion."

If you take such a myopic stance of the definition of "politics" you can stretch it to mean literally anything, dumbass. "Baw!!! the mods banned me for posting links to the pirate bay! I think copyright law should be abolished, this is just a difference in politics!!!" and so on and so forth. People who actively go out of their way to ruin communities are not just people with "political differences," they are people whose actions explicitly cause problems for a community. If you spent more time critically thinking instead of having your kneejerk reaction to the word "nazi" you probably would've grasped this.

No, I don't care enough to format the post for quotes. Deal with it.

Ah yes. The strawman argument. And then you continue on with the white nationalist nazi witch hunt bullshit rhetoric while justifying self-righteous beliefs as inalienable virtues of right and wrong. Then, continuing on as per the usual political strategy, you claim to deny my claims, using euphemisms in their place, then use narrative shaping to claim that you aren't expressing the exact values you're accused of while still expressing them anyhow. You project, accussing me of soapboxing while you've found a roundabout way to soapbox immediately thereafter. Throw in a few ad hominems under the justification of being virtuous, and you have yourself a cookie cutter political progressive counter argument to justify whatever belief you want.

A bit sad I have to state this a third time, after having to state it twice, *explicitly*, but none of what I have suggested here enables or sympathizes with any type of white nationalist/nazi rhetoric as it advocates for the elimination of political speech on a community not centered on those ideologies. If anything, it directly _opposes_ the pretense of the "free speech" ideology by restricting the ability to express one's political beliefs on communities such as this.

This conversation has 100% reinforced why I believe political speech doesn't belong communities on this. These types of arguments always devolve into the "good guys" vs the "bad guys", where the good guys always being they're of pure, virtuous intent -- but the "bad guys" don't play fair, so you have to play dirty just like they do, but justify the means under the guise of pure intent or being "the good guys". It just devolves into subversive horse-shit tactics where political beliefs are then heralded as a proxy for someone being the "good guy" with pure beliefs.

In such a theoretical scenario, I would like to think that members like you and I at such inevitable ends with one another never have to express our ideologies, and are apart of this community on our merits of video game modding, and share those virtues instead as a collective rather than having to witch hunt and then deflect or justify whenever being accused of it.

 

[chrisrlink]

I kind of wish the staff would actually ban some of the obviously harmful members, like those spreading White Nationalist/Neo-Nazi conspiracies and talking points. I really hate how often it seems like staff either ignore these members or even say something dismissive towards those reporting them. I am not sorry to say this, but members posting anti-LGBT+, borderline racist, and sexist comments are creating a hostile environment, the staff needs to actually deal with them.

at least one certain staff i cannot stand who frequents the section he needs to be demoted at least because imo that staff is toxic and is part of the problem i kept my mouth shut because of retalitory banning but i'm getting sick .of not speaking out even Costello turned a blind eye after even giving evidence to him

 

[Deleted member 586536]

This conversation has 100% reinforced why I believe political speech doesn't belong communities on this. These types of arguments always devolve into the "good guys" vs the "bad guys", where the good guys always being they're of pure, virtuous intent -- but the "bad guys" don't play fair, so you have to play dirty just like they do, but justify the means under the guise of pure intent or being "the good guys". It just devolves into subversive horse-shit tactics where political beliefs are then heralded as a proxy for someone being the "good guy" with pure beliefs.

Except it devolves to that because we geniunely have a problem. Look at my signature and honestly tell me that what is said there, is not borderline fascist (and a lot of other shit) statements. I did not edit them you can look at them through the link just like any normal quote here.

 

[LainaGabranth]

Ah yes. The strawman argument. And then you continue on with the white nationalist nazi witch hunt bullshit rhetoric while justifying self-righteous beliefs as inalienable virtues of right and wrong. Then, continuing on as per the usual political strategy, you claim to deny my claims, using euphemisms in their place, then use narrative shaping to claim that you aren't expressing the exact values you're accused of while still expressing them anyhow. You project, accussing me of soapboxing while you've found a roundabout way to soapbox immediately thereafter. Throw in a few ad hominems under the justification of being virtuous, and you have yourself a cookie cutter political progressive counter argument to justify whatever belief you want.

A bit sad I have to state this a third time, after having to state it twice, *explicitly*, but none of what I have suggested here enables or sympathizes with any type of white nationalist/nazi rhetoric as it advocates for the elimination of political speech on a community not centered on those ideologies. If anything, it directly _opposes_ the pretense of the "free speech" ideology by restricting the ability to express one's political beliefs on communities such as this.

This conversation has 100% reinforced why I believe political speech doesn't belong communities on this. These types of arguments always devolve into the "good guys" vs the "bad guys", where the good guys always being they're of pure, virtuous intent -- but the "bad guys" don't play fair, so you have to play dirty just like they do, but justify the means under the guise of pure intent or being "the good guys". It just devolves into subversive horse-shit tactics where political beliefs are then heralded as a proxy for someone being the "good guy" with pure beliefs.

In such a theoretical scenario, I would like to think that members like you and I at such inevitable ends with one another never have to express our ideologies, and are apart of this community on our merits of video game modding, and share those virtues instead as a collective rather than having to witch hunt and then deflect or justify whenever being accused of it.

I did not strawman a single statement. I at most paraphrased something you explicitly said to be in a more condescendingly mocking tone, because your post reeks of pseudo intellectualism and pearl clutching, thus making it funny.

You will find my post that you are STILL soapboxing over did not, at any point use the word "sympathizing," but rather the words "apologia" and "downplaying." So, until you take note of that, it doesn't matter how many times you performatively state how disappointed you *totally* are over me saying something I...never actually said. This isn't even pedantry, you were straight up never called a sympathizer. The Catboy was explicitly talking about mask off nazis posting nazi rhetoric, and I was talking about apologia for them in general, you just randomly barged in to bitch and moan thinking you got targeted as something you were never once called.

So much posturing and virtue signalling. Can you try talking like someone who isn't obsessed with their ego instead?

 

[The Catboy]

Assuming that to be an accurate representation, I agree with you. Online moderation is hard, especially when your staff is volunteer.

There's also a desire to not want to be tyrannical, but as you say, there's a limit.
I've done online community administration off and on for 16 years, including a forum of 250,000 monthly active users. I've learned a lot on tbat time and had to learn to become less passive. One tidbit I've come to learn is that rules exist as loose guidelines at best, and anyone who treats them as a limbo stick to narrowly avoid to "stay in the community" usually aren't the demographic you want to keep around as they aren't healthy contributors to the community anyway

I tend to be the one who reports their posts which results in them getting suspended for a few days. Only for them to come back, lay low for a few weeks to months (even years in one case,) only to repeat the same cycle. It's kind of just been the same members most people have issues with. Admittedly, this is only from my observations over the years but I think I have a pretty good grasp on the situation because I am constantly complaining about this very issue. With that constant complaining, I've gotten many staff members to mention that these members are constantly on the cusp of being banned. This makes me wish the staff would just commit to banning them once and for all. These members really don't seem like they are worth the constant cat and mouse game.