Maybe it’s just me, but it feels like things have been getting kind of unpleasant around here lately, a lot more arguments, a lot more “I’m right, you’re wrong, fuck you, now bend the knee” kind of discussions rather than actually explaining a position or trying to convince someone to change their mind.
I know tensions are high for a lot of people right now, but I really don’t want to see this place turn into yet another dead online leftist forum where the dozen or so remaining members declare themselves the One True Leftists after having chased everyone else away through their toxicity.
Just because you think you’re right about something doesn’t give you the right to be an asshole about it.
What do you expect from the “bullying works” board? Internal hostility is a natural byproduct of such things. Either it’s bloodsport or it’s humane, but trying to draw dividing lines so that you never need to see mom and dad fighting but your neighbor can get fucked produces the same outcome on a longer timescale.
Fair. But I don’t think “bullying works” was ever intended to be aimed at fellow leftists.
That’s the “draw dividing lines so that you never need to see mom and dad fighting” part. Who is a leftist? Who is a chauvinist? etc. You can try to just aim things at the other, but that’s not a hard and fast boundary for community norms and people are ultimately going to come to conclusions that x person isn’t really a leftist as concerns that norm because they did y which we are saying is reactionary, and therefore they are a valid target.
For the record, my opinion here is not that we shouldn’t consider things reactionary, but that the “bullying works” approach is a toxic maladaptive behavior that gets in the way of working things out constructively.
Ya, I agree. The more I’ve joined irl organizations trying to build mass movements, the more I’ve been trying to turn away from the “bullying works” mentality. It was fun before, but as fascism approaches the more I feel an urgency that we need to build a real movement soon with people we don’t always agree with, like Lenin when they had to get the reactionary peasants or trade unions on board.
yeah like, it does/did serve a purpose (shutting down bad faith shitlords instead of wasting time arguing with them) but if people can’t be judicious with their dunks and withhold dunking on those who aren’t obviously just reactionaries picking a fight, then it becomes unproductive.
The point isn’t “PPB anyone who disagrees with you more than a little bit” it’s “chud dipshits that wander in and make tired, bad faith arguments deserve ridicule”. Comrades, and even earnest liberals, radlibs, clueless “apolitical” types, etc. all deserve at least a little bit of charity and explanation of why they’re wrong.
Someone just being clueless deserves an explanation but someone clearly trotting out a tired gotcha might not.
it feels like the outright wrecker chuds are just not showing up to the same extent in real life, so there there’s even less reason to have a “bullying works” mentality IRL.
The line of where it’s worth struggling it out with people (constructively, respectfully), vs just ignoring or insulting them and moving on is an important one to draw, and I think it varies based on the kind of work you’re engaged in. If you’re trying to recruit to your cause, more patience is needed, but if you’re just rallying your existing supporter ingroup or carrying out an action, that’s different. But fundamentally you do want to make a good impression on the general public for most purposes, and being too harsh with people is a great way to lose that respect fast.
A leftist cooks video offhandedly mentioned that insults may possibly be inevitably hierarchy reproducing, and the more I’ve thought of it the more I’ve agreed.
Yeah, I’ve already ranted about that a lot so I didn’t want to just reproduce my spiel yet again, but I do think that this is based on a dynamic of forming a new ingroup that is just as emotionally dependent on basically exercising sadism toward an outgroup, even if it’s not fully equivalent in other respects. When you get together a bunch of people under the banner of “bullying works,” slowly but surely you’ll find that you’ve made a group of bullies, and the fact that many were bullied in the past does not necessarily mitigate this and can even heighten it instead as people re-enact their trauma.
Yeah you’re right, methinks. I was never a fan of it myself and I think we’ve grown past it.
Someone should start a thread (on /c/Hexbear?) to discuss a referendum on “bullying works”.
Maybe we can democratically push a moratorium or ban on that attitude? What purpose is it even serving right now?
What are the top posts of the month? Like 300 upvotes?
If someone seconds that motion, copy, paste, and post.
Edit: looks like the number is 300 or so upvotes, not 200