For a brief period of time I was on a place on Reddit where new users could get help finding their way around the site.
Someone shows up there and says, “I’m not sure why I’m even on this libt++d communist site, nobody here will respect the way any good conservative American thinks.”
I’m thinking, OK, snowflake, don’t melt so hard from being a victim, but I responded with, “You might try /r/Conservative, and I can ask their moderators if they have any other suggestions.”
I did so: I sent the moderators of /r/Conservative a message explaining what I was looking for and asking for any advice they might have for this new user. The response I got back was, “LOL, F+++ off.”
Lovely, lovely people there.
(100% that good conservative American was on the libt++d communist site for the free porn.)
Yeah I tried a few good faith attempts there. People would post asking why there was “no evidence of x” or why “this has never happened” or why “liberals are too afraid to answer y”. So I’d link a news article, or a summary of the argument they were asking about.
I think I ended up getting 6 different accounts banned before I gave up.
edit: Also kind of funny how often they’d brag about never banning anyone, while being one of the most ban-happy subs on the platform.
I had something similar happen to me in r/republican. Pre-Trump, it actually wasn’t a bad subreddit. You could have relatively civil discussions in there. I often used it to see and ask how Republicans/Conservatives thought about various things. I always tried to be respectful, understanding that that the wasn’t “my sub.” I flaired myself with a ‘D’ or something so it’d be obvious that I wasn’t hiding and trolling. Had some OK discussions in there the few times I’d dare to chime in.
But it changed once Trump started running. I once was having a civil discussion with a user, trying to understand their take, and ended up linking to an article from a large, mainstream publication, to show what I was talking about.
I was banned with no comment. When I politely asked mods what I did wrong and if I could be unbanned if I promised to not do whatever I did again, I got the message: “Don’t link liberal sources.” And it wasn’t a liberal source! Just something not from Fox or wherever. From then on, I could lurk, but I could never comment.
And the mods got crazier. I’d see that they’d remove comments and ban anyone, even Republicans, who spoke out against Trump. At that point, there was no reason to go there anymore.
Oh, yeah. The subs that claim they never ban are the ones with the biggest ban hammers.
There used to be some really icky subreddit dedicated to… basically being a bunghole. “Public Health Watch”, I think. It was anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women, anti-just about everything. Everything was a threat to these poor little pseudo-incels (they couldn’t even be incels right). I forget how I stumbled on it, but one day one of them posted a link to a study that “proved” something about women and their sexuality and how it damaged men and I don’t remember clearly, but their conclusion was so stupid. So I read the damn study and it explicitly said the exact opposite of what they said. I replied with whole paragraphs from the study showing that the study said disagreed with what that post claimed. I was banned within minutes.
On the one hand, I kinda get it: I regularly deal with pseudoscientists who cherry pick through studies to find one or two sentences that agrees with them, instead of what the study actually says, and claim I’m “interpreting” the study wrong. On the other hand, when you’re the cherry-picker, you don’t get to be angry when someone else reads the rest of the words and finds out you’re the dimwit.
For a brief period of time I was on a place on Reddit where new users could get help finding their way around the site.
Someone shows up there and says, “I’m not sure why I’m even on this libt++d communist site, nobody here will respect the way any good conservative American thinks.”
I’m thinking, OK, snowflake, don’t melt so hard from being a victim, but I responded with, “You might try /r/Conservative, and I can ask their moderators if they have any other suggestions.”
I did so: I sent the moderators of /r/Conservative a message explaining what I was looking for and asking for any advice they might have for this new user. The response I got back was, “LOL, F+++ off.”
Lovely, lovely people there.
(100% that good conservative American was on the libt++d communist site for the free porn.)
Yeah I tried a few good faith attempts there. People would post asking why there was “no evidence of x” or why “this has never happened” or why “liberals are too afraid to answer y”. So I’d link a news article, or a summary of the argument they were asking about.
I think I ended up getting 6 different accounts banned before I gave up.
edit: Also kind of funny how often they’d brag about never banning anyone, while being one of the most ban-happy subs on the platform.
I had something similar happen to me in r/republican. Pre-Trump, it actually wasn’t a bad subreddit. You could have relatively civil discussions in there. I often used it to see and ask how Republicans/Conservatives thought about various things. I always tried to be respectful, understanding that that the wasn’t “my sub.” I flaired myself with a ‘D’ or something so it’d be obvious that I wasn’t hiding and trolling. Had some OK discussions in there the few times I’d dare to chime in.
But it changed once Trump started running. I once was having a civil discussion with a user, trying to understand their take, and ended up linking to an article from a large, mainstream publication, to show what I was talking about.
I was banned with no comment. When I politely asked mods what I did wrong and if I could be unbanned if I promised to not do whatever I did again, I got the message: “Don’t link liberal sources.” And it wasn’t a liberal source! Just something not from Fox or wherever. From then on, I could lurk, but I could never comment.
And the mods got crazier. I’d see that they’d remove comments and ban anyone, even Republicans, who spoke out against Trump. At that point, there was no reason to go there anymore.
Oh, yeah. The subs that claim they never ban are the ones with the biggest ban hammers.
There used to be some really icky subreddit dedicated to… basically being a bunghole. “Public Health Watch”, I think. It was anti-LGBTQ+, anti-women, anti-just about everything. Everything was a threat to these poor little pseudo-incels (they couldn’t even be incels right). I forget how I stumbled on it, but one day one of them posted a link to a study that “proved” something about women and their sexuality and how it damaged men and I don’t remember clearly, but their conclusion was so stupid. So I read the damn study and it explicitly said the exact opposite of what they said. I replied with whole paragraphs from the study showing that the study said disagreed with what that post claimed. I was banned within minutes.
On the one hand, I kinda get it: I regularly deal with pseudoscientists who cherry pick through studies to find one or two sentences that agrees with them, instead of what the study actually says, and claim I’m “interpreting” the study wrong. On the other hand, when you’re the cherry-picker, you don’t get to be angry when someone else reads the rest of the words and finds out you’re the dimwit.
I got banned because I called healthcare, daycare, education, and paternity leave “pro-life” measures.
Granted, I didn’t belong there, but I tried to regularly converse in good faith… which they never really deserved anyway.
I’m impressed that you managed to find 6 posts that weren’t “flared users only.”