with tact (Destiny)

by slycrel , Thursday, July 30, 2015, 23:47 (3402 days ago) @ Xenos

I don't agree that we should always be "careful not to accidentally exclude swaths of the community by the words you choose". Because it's not my responsibility to keep tabs on the perspective of the people posting in a given thread, the forum as a whole, or even in the larger community. I'll try to be a good guy as much as possible. But I may say something that offends someone, or is taken out of context. That's life, especially on the internet.

I don't think Claude is suggesting that if you post something and it offends someone that you are ALWAYS at fault, I think he's more suggesting that some people don't consider it AT ALL. The biggest complaints I have about people on both sides of any argument are:

1. Many of them never take into account what they are saying, don't even re-read it or think about it after putting it expressing it.
2. Many of them take offense at a single word or phrase in an otherwise totally fine comment.
3. Many of them after seeing that some people react like 2. to a post they made as 1. then instead of realizing "oh that was kind of dickish, I should explain what I meant." they react like 2, starting the process all over again.

You can see it on this forum, reddit, bungie.net, and pretty much any other discussion site anywhere (you can even see it in this very thread, and no I don't want to discuss which ones), and to me is the core of most heated, hurtful arguments on the Internet, and CAN be easily avoided by both sides. Does this mean you have to carefully go through and sanitize every post you make, of course not, that would be insane (and is the core problem behind political correctness), instead it means using an attitude of acceptance instead of an attitude of hostility. The issue is always figuring out if you are someone who needs to adjust your attitude (I have no idea if I do, and I am prideful enough I wouldn't trust anyone telling me if I need to or not).

I agree with what you've said here, thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm not sure exactly what claude meant, but I'm seeing an undercurrent of this happening here, so I thought I'd bring it to the forefront.

For myself, if someone tells me to adjust my attitude, generally I take a good hard look at things and make sure I take care of it or that I'm not the problem. I think a lot of people do. I think that's what cruel is doing even in this thread. I think the vast majority of the time that's what happens around here.

Ragashingo said above:

What should have happened here is that Mig's post should have been condemed, but instead you with your first words condemed those who rightly choose not to engage. Mig's post should not have been acceptable in the least. Once that was made loud and clear maybe we could move on to a separate discussion about this "virus of negativity first" that has gripped our community.

I think this is entirely accurate. Cody, per usual, stirred the pot and made a controversial post, and added his goodbye to it. Responses were about what I expected up until Mig posted. That was an attack on what he sees as a problem, but mixed with some very personal comments and a very negative tone. People rose up to defend against an attack on a well liked community member. (Note that few defended cody. heh. Generally he's happy to defend himself and probably would want it no other way.) Others rose against that counter-attack to defend the attacker. And so on. Now it's a bit sticky and there's lots of little conversations happening around all of this. In the end, I've been disappointed that the overt personal attacks have been glossed over in favor of the underlying point -- which I think we can all agree should have been brought up as it's own topic rather than as a response to the goodbye post, mixed with negative talk about others on the forum. I'd like to participate in that discussion. But not in this thread. Not like this. And I can't start it like that, ignoring what's been said about a friend, in what I see as an unprovoked attack on him.

And I agree, the worst stuff can totally be avoided. Almost always I think that's good. I also think that it's good to sometimes not avoid the touchy subjects, to be just a little unfiltered, and have an honest discussion. Because, as you said, you shouldn't be on your guard all the time.

I'm not excusing anyone of anything. But I am concerned about how thing are shaking out here. I know I'll be thinking twice before posting anything perceptibly touchy here for a while. And that makes me a little sad.