this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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People that are open minded get good responses. People that are not get shit responses.
There is literally no point in attempting to reason with people that do not want to be reasoned with. Libs worship civility, even when it's with fascists.
Eh. A good portion of hexbears are terminally dunk-brained. We've been getting obvious satire posts in the dunk tank for ages because people are so eager to dunk on anything they see.
Being civil isn't the issue. Participating with intent to actually listen and learn is.
This is exactly the point I am making. You think we should respond nicely to people who are NOT participating in good faith, just because they're being """"civil"""". I'm not wasting my fucking time with people who clearly aren't open to hearing what I have to say. There are people who ARE open to hearing what I have to say and they get a genuine response, with sources, and a conversation, and things are learned.
Libs can't tell the difference between each other and the literal actual fascists around them and it's infuriating. Which comes from incredible levels of political illiteracy and deferring all of their opinions and political education to media owned by billionaires.
Mate fuck off yeah? You see a single swear word and tell me to calm down like I've just committed a sin. I grew up in squats this is how I talk. I am not changing the way I speak in order to appeal to middle-class people from privileged backgrounds. This over-reaction to the way different people speak and the demand that people speak with very specific white kkkracka middle-income mannerisms is just classism.
Listen to the content of what people say. Not the tone in which they say it. Stop tone policing people. All it does is shut everyone out of conversation that doesn't come from a very particular white suburban upbringing.
No you see, that's what I don't admit. I firmly believe that being harsh with the libs that won't open up is an effective tool, it makes them uncomfortable, and by making them uncomfortable they eventually change in search of a new comfort zone.
Liberals entire thing is "uphold the status quo". This is the position of pretty much every single politically illiterate liberal who really doesn't understand what any ideology actually is. They change their shape in order to fit themselves into whatever the existing social paradigm is.
This is why LGBT people got absolutely nowhere with liberals until they literally bullied them with riots and pride parades saying a big visible fuck you to everyone that ever tried to make them invisible. They could not be asked to change they had to be bullied and forced. Once the social paradigm is changed they then accept it.
This is why anger and cancelling on twitter became a thing. It bullied liberals into new social paradigms.
This is why it works for dirtbag leftists.
And this is why they picked up guns and shot at whoever the nazis told them to shoot at. Not because they were true believers. But because mussolini or hitler and every other fascist simply bullies them into a new social paradigm... and once the paradigm is changed they accept it.
Liberals are absorbomorphs. Their ideology is absorbomorphism.
Bullying works.
Well said.
Don't try to defuse situations by telling people to "calm down" it will 100% of the time escalate the situation.
You've seen it happen. Gamers used to tell everyone they were gonna r**e them, liberals all used to be transphobic (ask any trans person what engaging anywhere on reddit used to be like), lgbt people in general used to receive hate from everyone libs included, etc etc. All these changes did not come from convincing people nicely, they came from forcefully creating a new social paradigm and demanding people to accept it. People can either be uncomfortable, or they can change in order to find comfort. This is what people do.
When it comes to engaging with people regarding ideology such as socialism, this has to be viewed in a hollistic way. There is absolutely 0% chance I can convince the shithead who is gish galloping the usual 30 different propaganda points about the soviet union, stalin, blah blah blah, into engaging with me in good faith. It just can't be done. Whether they're being "civil" or not. Making interactions with these people unenjoyable and uncomfortable for them has the potential to make them change the way they interact with the next socialist they come across. It has the potential to make them act differently because they don't want that uncomfortable experience again. None of our interactions exist in a vacuum, I am not the only socialist you will ever interact with, you will meet hundreds more during the course of our lives, and that future interaction will include decisions you make based on this interaction. A horrible interaction one time gives way to a more positive interaction next time, where that person says "wow I wish someone were as civil about it as you are, last time I got really abusive people" completely ignoring the fact they were being a dick and there was no reason to waste much time/effort on them.
This is the crux of why bullying works. And also why a broad range of tactics is beneficial to the movement.
Successful marginalised people that improve their conditions don't bargain for it with convincing arguments. They take it.
this needs a content warning/spoiler
I think you read swearing as yelling when it's a different register as often as it is a different tone.
Yeah, that's understandable, I just wanted to mention for the sake of parsing our friend Awoo's tone.
As an aside, Awoo was also right that saying "calm down" is usually a bad strategy for deescalation if they are actually mad at you. Anger tends to come from frustration, i.e. a feeling of helplessness. "Calm down" tends to read as being condescending or dismissive and thereby only agitates people more in such cases. It's my experience that framing it as asking for a favor or suggesting that both of you modulate your tone (not by just saying "let's calm down") can work better because it implies a recognition of agency or equality between you or the other person.
I'm absolutely not good at diplomacy, so take it with a grain of salt, but I felt obligated to suggest an alternative if I'm going to say something is not a good idea.
Just because you can't tell doesn't mean that it's your fault. There are lots of reasons (notably ASD) that can make it hard to tell even if you aren't a) dealing with text b) from a person you don't know c) communicating in a different style than you're used to.
It'll be easier to improve if you don't blame yourself for things you can't help.
the only path there is to work out what they're mad about and productively, empathetically, and concretely work slowly towards a common ground while genuinely apologizing in specific for offense given. it's much easier when they're not mad directly at you, though, as it's more straightforward to establish empathy.
deescalation is hard in online stuff. IRL, you can establish empathy and shortcut the angry response by asking people how they're doing, what they need, etc., getting them to think about the present rather than whatever is riling them up. maybe something similar could work in online discussions if couched carefully. it only works if they're not mad at you, though.
Honestly I'm not sure this might even be true because of how poisoned our culture is. People enjoy watching assholes trolling other people. People love watching people insulting somebody else if it's in a humorous manner. Many people have admitted that they stuck around and checked out r/chapotraphouse because they found the community culture hilarious and fun
The most popular livestreamers are overwhelming douchey and rage on camera all the time
If we want to reach the younger generation, we have to be witty assholes
Appeal to emotion works just as well or even better logic many times
Here's a study proving that being a funny asshole actually gives you more credibility and trust over somebody who is always logical and correct but speaks in a boring manner
I do be nice and nicely explain things to people who seem like they have an open mind and are asking in good faith out of curiosity though. I feel like directly answering those willing to learn and making a mockery of the unwilling is a good way to maximize the draw of our community
Also I'm so sorry about the photo, don't ask what happened there lol
The study is here
🤦 okay, I'm going to just type out the website name in full this time so I can see I didn't mess it up
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8901083/
Hi, I saw you in another thread and you seem cool and here in good faith, so I'm sorry that you're getting dunked on. We're a little high-strung and defensive right now because we're getting used to federation, so there's a bit of friendly fire. However, there is a reason that we're like this.
Here's a quote from Jean-Paul Satre about far-right debate tactics:
If you are too attached to using a logical approach and giving the other side the benefit of the doubt, if you engage on their terms and let them define terms however they want, you've alreadly lost. No matter how many of their concerns you address, they will always come up with another. You'll just end up looking like a nerd or a crank, while at the same time lending credibility to them by engaging with them. But if you don't engage, you leave them unchallenged and it makes it look like you're afraid or have no answer.
The solution to this dilemma is Pig Poop Balls. PPB, along with dunking and rudeness, is a our way of keeping people on the straight and narrow. In theory, it's not supposed to be a first approach unless the person is obviously trolling. Ideally, we make our case with logic and evidence, but then when someone deviates from that and starts trying to redefine to terms of the debate, that's when we start bullying. We want two things to happen: first, we want to make our case effectively enough that people can't just write us off, and second, we want people to feel like they're not entitled to just say whatever nonsense they feel like and have it be respected and taken seriously. After all, an informed, well reasoned, and evidenced based position occupies the same amount of space as random nonsense. If random nonsense is tolerated, then it will dominate, because it's much easier to produce. So the proper role of PPB and bullying is to weed out the nonsense in order to have higher level discussions.
It's also, like, human beings did not evolve to be rational. A lot of the time, getting in someone's face and screaming at them is just more effective than trying to debate them. It's unfortunate and unpleasant but it does work. Generally though it's most effective when you have a reasonable, theoretical side to back it up, so that it's harder for people to write you off.
But yeah that culture developed when we were on Reddit and had lots of people wandering in and just reciting some baby-brained right wing cliche to try to own us, expecting us to clutch pearls or engage on their terms, and they generally had no idea how to react when we took them off-script. Then we were an obscure, isolated niche for three years, with only the ocassional troll wandering in, and so people got used to a higher level of ideological purity - we also had lots of disagreement and interesting discussions, but we mostly agreed on some basic ideas (which is kind of necessary to have higher level discussions). So now we're kind of... adjusting to the new situation, where a lot of people disagree with our positions on a fundamental level. I think (hope) it'll calm down (to a degree) in a week or so.
Not everyone is convinced by civility. This is true online and in real life. You might see civility as being reasonable and convincing while I see civility as being facetious and insincere.