Why is it

[kiya]

That I never see someone saying "We believe in free speech here" outside a context of "and that means you should shut up about being bothered by what got said"?

Yes, this is the same stupid dwama. I may give up usenet for Lent.

Comments

[ruth-lawrence.livejournal.com]

:::nods:::

I'm trying to find the same emotional distance that I have regarding various list digests I receive:

:::scroll, scroll, whatever, scrollscrollscroll, nifty! scroll, scroll, sameold-sameold, scroll, yay!, scrollscrollscroll, close window:::

..but it may not be Right.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

Free speech doesn't mean telling certain people that they are full of shit, it would seem.

Also, I am thisfar from putting someone in my killfile for the constant fucking nitpicking.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

Are we thinking of the same dwama? I think it's rasfc dwama, I've never seen you there. Of course, it's possible by now that it's all me dwama and I should just go join a nunnery for a while.

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

No, this is me being fed up to the gills with the posting style of one particular a.p poster. The comment about free speech is universal, though.

[sstaten.livejournal.com]

Some speech is more free than others?

[micheinnz.livejournal.com]

It's relative.

I have free speech, you need to avoid hurting my feelings, they need to watch their fucking mouths.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'm not suprised that it was said, but surprised at who said it.

I am, however, surprised, and not in a good way, that it's apparently ok to be offensive if 'that's how you are.' "I' say what I think" appears to be another synonym for "you have no right to be offended."

[redbird]

In a rather different context, I advised a friend (who was leaning in that direction anyhow) that if someone's other friends are excusing his actions because "that's just how he is," it's reasonable to tell them that he can be that way without your company and attention.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

There used to be this woman in my social group who was a real bitch. Just *awful*. And awful human being. And a group of my friends said, "Oh, you'll get used to her!"

I asked them why the hell I should get "used to" someone who was mean and verbally abusive? Why should I be around that kind of person?

It's interesting to note that the group itself is no longer really together. The people I still see, don't really see her.

N.

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

My general reply to that kind of situation is, "You have the right to say whatever you want, and I have the right to think you are a giant asshole."

N.

[surelars.livejournal.com]

The thing I realized when I left alt.poly alone was that I wasn't missing it. Yes, I have good friends there, and I've had some great conversations over the years. But mostly, there's this tyranny of picking apart and putting down that makes it far too much effort to have great conversations.

I've toyed with the idea of returning, with a big old killfile. Surprisingly, such a filter would be mostly for the "good guys". I'm just not sure there's a point to it any more.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I've had holidays from rasfc before and always gone back in the end. However, I think this time I may have left for good. As surelars says about a completely different group, there are some good online friends in there who I'll miss (and who don't have LiveJournals), but I was just fed up of finding myself composing angry posts as I drove to work. My head is noisy enough without encouraging it to go off on rants. :(

I'd stopped finding it useful for writing inspiration/help too. I have a whole file of printouts of interesting and relevant posts, which I still refer back to on occasion, but I haven't printed anything off for ages.

Some people presumably like the big dwamas, but I just can't be doing with it any more.

[Edited to correct name of LJ user. It was surelars's comment I was referring to not nex0s's. Sorry.]

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

This time, I might be with you. There's a small core group of people who can twist any discussion into something that makes me want to wash my hands and scrub out my brain. I feel I'm supposed to accept that because 'that's just how they are'.

I don't want to give up on the group, but it seems as if the group isn't capable anymore to actually host writing discussions. This does not make me happy.

[zeborah]

Wah!

What I'm thinking at the moment is maybe dumping That Thread in my killfile and starting a new thread saying "This that and the other are making rasfc a toxic place for me and various others who may name themselves if they desire. I'm giving rasfc two months' notice. You may continue to exercise your freedom to be offensive and stifling, but if you do so I shall at the end of two months exercise my freedom to leave."

Only I really *don't* want to give up on the group, dammit. If only there's a *few* other sane people staying. (Apologies for implicit <guilt-trip>.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Ok. We need to a) try and ignore the entitled White males other than an initial calling on bullshit. It works pretty well with JAD, who does not appear to notice that he's holding a conversation with himself; and it's more difficult with the other two because they _are_, from time to time, talking about writing; but the _effect_ is just as toxic.

And we probably need to talk about writing more. Start new threads. Come up with a magic formula that will spurn good discussions. Persevere.

[kiya]

I did, at least, respond to Zeborah in the thread entirely on writing-related subjects, though I had more to say about the real-world social stuff.

Sigh.

(JAD is in my killfile. As is Friedman. And Cunningham, after the braineater got him. And a variety of others. My killfile for rasfc is depressing the fuck out of me. It shouldn't have to be this large.)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

after the braineater got him

I think the only reason why I have tried to engage with him is that I remember him as being decent and sensible. That braineater thing is all too evident, though. Grrr.

[kiya]

The 'decent and sensible' thing is why my mind was completely and unpleasantly blown by the "You must have some secret deeper meaning behind referring to your boyfriend as your boyfriend" thread; when the "Medication for depression is bad, mmmkay" thread came around I declared it not worth the pain to engage further.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten that the boyfriend thing was his, also - I came late to that particular party and, well, I'd gotten over my bogglement over that particular issue quite a long time before that. But you're right, the insistence and boneheadedness was already there back then.

The medication thread - *gods* my mind is good at blocking out these things. That was unpleasant. Not in the least because I was coming at it from experience - sometimes medication *is* what you need to cut through a bad cycle in the brain, and not just condemning people but doing so on the basis of falsehoods and made-up opinions with *no* basis in reality. The latest writing discussion was just bizarre - I'm making a statement but I'm not telling you what qualifications I use, in fact, I'll use contrasting statements and claim they're all the same - but I'll ream you out for not argueing in a sensible fashion [and not bowing to my superior intelligence].

[kiya]

The boyfriend thing was my first "What the hell is going on here?" thing. And it's the sort of thing that kind of matters to me to keep track of, obviously.

The medication thing ... my therapist is likely to give me a referral to someone who can talk through meds with me soon. Anxiousmaking, but thingy.

I caught bits of the actual writing discussion (sentence length, yes?) through my killfile. It made no sense.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Best of luck on the medication - it seems to be a completely random game.

And that sentence length thing *was* bizarr. He came blasting in with a statement 'long sentences are inherently weak' and refused to define both 'long' and 'weak'; but instead tried to play all kinds of mindgames.

[zeborah]

(Thanks for the new thread!)

The mindgames thing drives me batty because I'm convinced that the people in question don't mean to do that so I want to explain to them that that's what they're doing with those words, but if I say that then I'm accused of censorship. And they honestly believe that that's what I'm doing.

(The reason I'm convinced that they don't mean to do it is because (other than my inherent naivete) I have caught myself - and on one painful occasion have been called out on - accidentally playing mindgames with other people. I think what happened is that I was caught between wanting to lash back to defend myself and wanting to retain the moral highground, so I chose tactics that allowed me to do both: but the tactics that let one keep the moral highground while still lashing back at someone are passive aggressive tactics, mindgame tactics. I have to watch myself really carefully not to do that again in threads like this dwama one, and I bet I didn't catch myself all the time there either.)

It would not annoy me nearly as much if I thought they were *trying* to mess with my mind on purpose.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

(Thanks for the new thread!)

You're welcome. Yours is pretty cool, too. </mutual admiration society>

The mindgames - I think some of it might be intentional, some not, but it's hard to tell. I'm fairly certain that Jonathan did not _mean_ to be sexist with his question which you so admirably answered - but the _effect_ was sexist, and many people seem to be completely unaware of it, and protest it when it's pointed out - when all that was needed, really, was 'ok, so let's talk about minorities playing the minority card'.

And it's an easy trap to slip into. I am _trying_ to stay out of it now, because I've said what I wanted to say, and I hope I'll have the willpower to remain silent - on the other hand, there are some things that I think *need* to be challenged. I'm not bothering with JAD because, well, see 'batshit crazy' - but JD and DF sound so _reasonable_ at times...

[kiya]

The 'reasonable at times' thing is why I eventually gave up and resorted to killfile on some people -- because the effects of reasonablesoundingness were to draw me and others into engagement that promptly went pearshaped.

... now I think I want a 'pear-shaped' icon.

[zeborah]

I'm now at the point where as soon as someone starts sounding reasonable (as distinct from reasonable) I'm immediately suspicious.

[kiya]

I'm hoping that a good consultation will land me somewhere where I don't have the side-effects that I'm mortally terrified of, at least.... Sigh.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Having just been and had a look at the humungous thread with the dwama, I have to say, sadly, I will not be returning to rasfc unless there's a significant change in the membership of the group. :(

a) That thread started as a perfectly valid writing question posted by someone who is a writer and interested in talking about writing.

b) Within the thread, people who would normally get on well and who would normally have interesting and enlightening conversations about writing, are strating to bicker with one another.

*Big sigh*

I don't know what the answer is. If it were a convention, I would suggest sneaking off to another room to have pleasant and sensible conversations without the troublemakers, but would there be any demand for another discussion forum and how would we stop the same thing happening all over again?

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

would there be any demand for another discussion forum and how would we stop the same thing happening all over again?

I think there would be - look at the way we keep bumping into each other in the corridor, as it is, and having little conversations about writing.

These days, a livejournal community would probably be the best way to go. They're easy to set up (and IIRC we can still set up ad-free accounts), they have threading and ways to keep conversations alive at least a little bit, and they're accessible. I dislike web boards and feel that e-mail would be too much of a closed society,

Right now I am composing a writing post to rasfc. As they say in Monty Python... And now for something completely different...

[brooksmoses]

I've momentarily given up on Usenet since my Usenet-reading computer decided it didn't really want to talk to half of its disks, but before that I'd given up on it for a month or two due to having temporarily lost access, and in the intervening few months rasfc just seemed too large and full of stuff to really keep up with.

Maybe it's a good time for me to accept the fact that it's not necessarily going to be there whenever I happen to want to come back, if I just ignore it, and see about actively participating a little. For, y'know, two months or so.

[zeborah]

If you do want to try it again, now would be a good time. It's certainly not too full of stuff to keep up with at present, but on the other hand if you can ignore the trailing ends of the big thread, we at least have the beginnings of a couple of good threads about actual writing.

[artan]

The problem of Free Speech goes back to "you get what you pay for..."

[zeborah]

Alas, Easter was early this year.

I'm going to make a javascript bingo card.

GIP

[pinkpolarity.livejournal.com]

for the idiots on your usenet board.