I've noticed a lot of "somebody do something" in these discussions and a stunning paucity of "so I've decided to".I think we can all agree that Hubski needs some fixing.
yeah there's probably a total of about 30 or 40 people who regularly use this site anyway, there really isn't a big barrier towards changing the culture of posting on the site if it's something people have a problem with - i think over half the userbase of the site has already weighed in about it saying "yeah we should change" already so it seems pretty easy i think people are just getting too maddycakes at each other on here and take that to mean the grand death of civility in america it's worth taking a breath i guess for everybody on here i feel like
I think no one has to present a proposed avenue of attack for a solution in order for them to recognize and do what they individually can to resolve an existing problem, lol I get that "actions i state i will do to fix the problem i perceive to exist" are missing, in general, from the posts being made, but c'mon. this isn't a business and i don't post the way i send emails for my job. it doesn't mean those thoughts aren't also on people's minds. the important thing is to acknowledge there is an opportunity to improve. you really can't do anything without that
That's a cop-out, though - every forum has its recognized style of discussion driven by whatever the consensus position is. Sometimes someone breaks out of the consensus and the consensus changes. This isn't limited to the Internet; anywhere people congregate and communicate there's a register and syntax of communication that people's messages and messaging group around. Parliament has always been more fast'n'loose than the House of Lords; as the Republicans started scoring more and more points for being rude on C-SPAN, the House of Representatives has gotten ruder and ruder. Usenet was necessarily without memes so people had to communicate via in-jokes and .sigs. PHPBBs used different iconography to communicate different shorthand. I spent a lot of time on a screenwriting board whose style of communication was moderated, so you learned how to make your point without upsetting the moderator (who would call you on the phone if you stepped over the line). going from there to Reddit was a culture shock; Reddit refined my online knife-fighting skillz like nowhere else so when I got here, "put down the knife" took too long to internalize. On the other hand, I'm on professional beta-testing forums where speaking ill of Dear Leader will most assuredly cut off your access to the Nectar of the Gods and professional forums where you never criticize a colleague lest some crunchy leviathan from ancient yore decides to surface and cut you down to size using manuals that haven't been in print since the Wilson administration. Reddit has become a much nicer place because it filled up with kids who rarely encounter criticism of any kind, unless it's ad-hominem shit-slinging on XBL. As a consequence it's become a place where you can't criticize someone's ideas because you'll blemish their fee-fees but you can call them all sorts of random names because everyone is used to be calling names. And that, I think, is where the conflict lies: the older generation is used to being able to question each others' ideas without anyone taking it personally while taking it very personally when personally attacked while the younger generation's ideas are never questioned lest it cause existential injury but calling someone an idiotic shitcamel with five exclamation points is just people talking. I will agree with you that I have more enthusiasm for defending my points than most. However, I take pains to do so within the register of the space. If anything, I'd say that people come here expecting the register to suit their wants, rather than recognizing that they need to adjust to suit the space. And for people who insist on their right to their way through any debate, Hubski is frustrating.
I'll offer a few and see if any stick. Shit they might be common place for you. The King of Kiwi insults is surely: "Egg" - Possibly it benefits from our blunt accents, but it really does make the target feel like an idiot. Example - "Oi did you hear James got caught shoplifting?" - "Aye? Fuckin' egg" - "I know aye. Complete egg". Others include, Tō Raho, munter, muppet, dickhead, mong.
Egg is a personal favorite for insults, it’s so disarming and unexpected. What does Tō Raho mean?
This is twice in the last 30 minutes I've been called "old" on this site! I don't think it's a cop out to just turn away. Talking with people is a great way to learn a lot, but it also saps a lot of time an energy (I'm sure no one knows that better than you). So when you're met with the Internet as it exists right now, it's sometimes just a better use of time to say, "I'm going to do something else today." I left this site for almost 2 years because it was taking more out of me than it was giving back (lots of reasons for that, some of which are, frankly, unique to me and so not generalizable). In that case you're doing yourself a disservice to stay on board. There's an old New Yorker cartoon of a dude on his computer. His wife says, "Come to bed" and he replies with, "But someone on the internet is wrong!" It sums up a lot. Most people want to be validated. They don't want to teach and be taught. I've made real life friends on this site, and I'm happy about that. That (and covid) is what finally brought me back. I missed it in a way I didn't realize I did. I'm not an old-hand at internet forums, so my perspective on that does not exist. What I do know is what I enjoy, which is talking about history, current events, science, etc., and also admiring all the cool things that people do and then share. So long as that's happening, I can say I'll probably be around. But if and when we get to a point where sharing a well reasoned (or at least some reasoned) opinion is met with attacks on your person and not on your words more often than not, that's when I'll fuck off again. Don't give a fuck whether the kids do that all day. It's not for me.
If you were king, and this were your kingdom, on a scale of "go fuck yourself" to "well, i mostly agree with you, but there's one point in particular that i'd like to raise here...", where would you land Hubski?
Don’t you ever talk to me and my bread like that again.