Atychiphobia

[Reactor]

Very well, I am sure he will share your opinion, I was wondering about what experiences he has of course we don't need to notify him about the topic. And insightguy's echo-chamber theory is a pretty good summarization. That's basically what the Internet became. The intention was good: if people can share opinions about everything on-line, mass communities could evolve from that. In contrast, people started to build up echo-chambers, gather supporters, then all these groups started bickering each other. I think this is what you've marked down as human nature-101.

Come to think of it, communism was also an awesome, superb good thing, they forgot one thing...human nature. Amongst ants, it would work flawlessly.

[Rachael]

I've been thinking of opening a new forum pretty much for the purpose of being the "anti-echo chamber" where politics and religion could be discussed, and with the very allowance that arguments resulting from those topics can and would happen. Rules regarding decency and respect would receive a modicum of enforcement - where basically you couldn't go out of your way to harass somebody, but I realize it could create a toxic environment - and while that is not my goal, I have accepted that it might be needed in order to move forward with this issue.

This is the one rare time when I will agree with insightguy: The isolation we have from one another is deafening, and it certainly does not help with our divisive issues. People NEED to get out of their echo chambers, but that's certainly never going to happen if there is no medium for them to do so.

And one might argue Facebook is one way to go there - but Facebook is the worst with this, because they algorithmically group people together based on political ideologies and to be honest, my Facebook feed is nothing but an echo chamber. It's boring. It's so boring, in fact, that I stop going there, because no one challenges me on my views.

[Sgt. Shivers]

I would recommend not having a debate subforum. There are already a ton of websites out there for that and I've seen debate areas drag down other forums.

[wildweasel]

I would recommend not having a debate subforum. There are already a ton of websites out there for that and I've seen debate areas drag down other forums.

Besides that, if you intended for it to be a part of this forum and not something separate? I'd have no interest in maintaining and moderating such a section. Debate, even well-intentioned, is something I tend to stay well away from, because there is a line between "well intentioned" and "outright hurtful" that many, many internet users fail to see, occasionally even myself.

[Rachael]

There will be no such subforum on this forum. It will be entirely separate, and not even on the same site. This place is meant for ZDoom, and ZDoom-related things.

[Reactor]

Yesh, this is a tough question. Satisfying everyone is a nasty task, and there's a bright chance for it will not work out too well. Hmmm. With my best idea, all I can recommend is to create or allow one such topic to see how well it fares. An experiment, if you may. Should you witness that it does more harm than good, then it would indeed prove that no such thing could be effectively operated.

[Rachael]

As I said, there will be no such place on ZDoom whatsoever. I've already opened a site elsewhere for it, but until I can gauge how risky it is and how much interest there actually is in it, I won't be linking it here.

[Nems]

Debate, even well-intentioned, is something I tend to stay well away from, because there is a line between "well intentioned" and "outright hurtful" that many, many internet users fail to see, occasionally even myself.

I certainly agree with this. Perhaps it's the pessimist in me expanding on this particular point as well. However, I think it's less that most of these people fail to see that line and more that they don't care if the line is crossed.

I maintain that how you say something in a post (the tone of the post) is just as important, if not at times more so, as the content of the actual post itself. I'll freely admit that there's a lot I don't know about and I'm more than willing to learn. However, if the tone of the post towards me is condescending, hostile, abusive, and/or dripping with cynicism then I sure as shit won't be paying attention to that post even if I could very well learn something from it. I'm not gonna waste my time deciphering bullshit for nuggets of truth when there's plenty of ways to educate and enlighten myself and other people without resorting to hostilities.

Again though, I don't think most people really care so they don't put any effort into trying to be civil. They'd rather stand by their "I tell it like it is" and "I'm just being honest" claims as an excuse to be a cock to other people when they're called out on it rather than apologize. Of course, this all falls back on the issue of not wanting to be wrong in the first place.

[Rachael]

To some extent, I think many of us our guilty of that. I know I tend not to sugar coat things when I start dropping "truth bombs" - because the truth hurts and some people are simply unable to confront it. But when the truth hurts to such an extent that avoiding "the elephant in the room" is actually harmful to others (the Hall of Unpleasantness is literally a museum for good examples of this) - that person needs to either confront their own issues and solve them, or be removed from the community.

It's not pleasant, but neither is dealing with someone else's own ego that they are unable to control, themselves.

[insightguy]

It's not pleasant, but neither is dealing with someone else's own ego that they are unable to control, themselves.

The internet is a broken place for broken people. Many of us hurt from one thing or another. Some of us learn to toil through it, some of us use this to whine and bitch, and some just want to hurt others because misery loves company.

Debate, even well-intentioned, is something I tend to stay well away from, because there is a line between "well intentioned" and "outright hurtful" that many, many internet users fail to see, occasionally even myself.

People seemingly tend to associate themselves with their beliefs and take any and all criticisms on their beliefs as personal attacks. This is why intent can be hard to judge sometimes. Something well intentioned can be seen as outright hurtful to others.

Again though, I don't think most people really care so they don't put any effort into trying to be civil. They'd rather stand by their "I tell it like it is" and "I'm just being honest" claims as an excuse to be a cock to other people when they're called out on it rather than apologize. Of course, this all falls back on the issue of not wanting to be wrong in the first place.

Sometimes honesty can seem like being a cock. Intent is hard to judge on the internet. And civility can be hard to maintain the more impatient somone is on "getting" their point. This is why some resort to violence.

Fucking hell, this is hard to do on mobile, I wish there was a mobile app for this.

[Graf Zahl]

If someone has an opposing view points on sexual assault, for example, your view points mean absolutely nothing to me and they are objectively and dangerously wrong.

This is something I agree with. You DO have to draw some lines in the sand. You can't objectively be a good person if you support things like pedophelia, rape, or racism. The whole post was shining a light more on the things that do not matter as much - such as whether X or Y is better for game Z.

I think this really points out the whole dilemma. I think it's a given that most people fully agree that pedophelia, rape, racism, terrorism etc. are wrong. There's reasons why they are being considered serious crimes in most jurisdictions. But unfortunately there's people out there that DON'T think so - people who feel that they are entitled to commit these crimes. And guess what other people those tend to congregate with. Yes precisely: The ones that share their twisted beliefs where they can reinforce each other's commitment to their particular kind of wrongdoing.

I agree with you that you should treat everyone with respect and try to talk nicely with them. Otherwise you certainly won't change a thing. But I have to admit I'm also getting increasingly frustrated that some people seem to "reset" every time you talk to them. It really doesn't matter what I say to a certain co-developer at work, he will continue to believe aliens created the pyramids, the moon landings were fake, CIA/FBI/the world government<tm> faked the 9/11 attack, etc. He got all the proof from the Internet, if you care to see it!

A truly committed conspiracy nutjob like the guy you describe is beyond any hope. There's no need trying to convince them of anything if it doesn't fit into their warped world view. They cannot be convinced as long as there's even a hint of a possibility of the conspiracy being true.

But what can you do? I get the same feeling when talking to all those Apple junkies who still believe that Apple is the sole shining light in the computing industry which, unlike others, is on a mission of improving peoples lives, rather than gobbling up money and abusing people's private data, despite making more money than everybody else and being among the most aggressive ones when it comes to storing data on their servers.
Or talking to some older people for whom anything said by the church is sacrosanct, no questions asked.
Or... (insert personal gripe #??? here)

[insightguy]

If someone has an opposing view points on sexual assault, for example, your view points mean absolutely nothing to me and they are objectively and dangerously wrong.

This is something I agree with. You DO have to draw some lines in the sand. You can't objectively be a good person if you support things like pedophelia, rape, or racism. The whole post was shining a light more on the things that do not matter as much - such as whether X or Y is better for game Z.

I think this really points out the whole dilemma. I think it's a given that most people fully agree that pedophelia, rape, racism, terrorism etc. are wrong. There's reasons why they are being considered serious crimes in most jurisdictions. But unfortunately there's people out there that DON'T think so - people who feel that they are entitled to commit these crimes. And guess what other people those tend to congregate with. Yes precisely: The ones that share their twisted beliefs where they can reinforce each other's commitment to their particular kind of wrongdoing.

I'd also like to add that another problem to this is the rampant fallacy of false equivalency.

"Want diversity in _____? YOU'RE AN SJW!"

"Want better government programs? YOU'RE A LIBTARD"

"Don't immediately believe this woman who says she was raped because facts are fuzzy? YOU'RE PRO-RAPE!"

"Think that wearing a Chinese dress to prom is OK? YOU'RE RACIST!"

"Believe in free speech? YOU'RE A NAZI!" (no joke)

"Have disagreeing opinions on my politics? YOU'RE A (insert extreme thing here)!"

Each one of these points have a reason, but it's a common thing to label people the extreme and make that label stick (I genuinely rarely believe in racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, cuck, Libtart, SJW or or any of the same derogatory accusations anymore due to the sheer amount of it, it's like calling someone a "Hitler")

@RexS I rarely see anyone "defend rape" but I do see a lot of people accuse people who doubt the claims of someone who got raped of "defending rape". Because the last thing you want is to make false claims thereby making actual victims doubt themselves.

[Rachael]

Agreed there, too. The immediate attribution of labels to someone just because they don't fall in line with your beliefs is another rampant problem we have, too, whether the person fits the stereotype defined by such a label or not.

The labels are excessively being used by people who are in power to divide us against one another - because if we fight each other, we're not fighting them, when they are the true cause of the majority of our problems.

[Arctangent]

"Believe in free speech? YOU'RE A NAZI!" (no joke)

Actually, you've got this reversed; this is saying that they avoided using the phrase as to not attract the people who would spew slurs in a McDonald's and then themselves complain about about Nazi politics when the manager escorts them out for being a twat.

[insightguy]

"Believe in free speech? YOU'RE A NAZI!" (no joke)

Actually, you've got this reversed; this is saying that they avoided using the phrase as to not attract the people who would spew slurs in a McDonald's and then themselves complain about about Nazi politics when the manager escorts them out for being a twat.

The fact that "nazis" somehow own the word "free speech" is kind of sad in it of itself.