Whelp. So I actually had the most interesting discussion I’ve had on ML. Generally, I ignore the nasty comments there and only respond to those who are actually trying to have a somewhat decent discussion. They’re few and far between, but they exist. Which ended up happening - I had an extended discussion with Cowbee on what a dictatorship is and what democracy is. While IMO there were pretty huge gaps in his arguments, I have to respect that he actually engaged in the discussion without the usual name-calling, putdowns and insults I’m used to on that corner of the fediverse (yes, it’s a low bar, but credit where credit is due). And I’ll be honest, it was a fascinating window into the world view of people who think like that. Call me crazy, but I actually learned something.
At some point, the discussion started going in circles, and I figured there’s no point continuing, since as far as I could tell, everything relevant had already been said, and he didn’t exactly seem to have anything new to add, either - so I stopped responding. (To be fair, I stopped responding once before because life got in the way, but the discussion resumed after I noticed that the thread was actually still alive for whatever reason.) This morning, I wake up - banned for 6 days. Reason: imperialist. The discussion had next to nothing to do with imperialism. It’s like whoever it is who banned me didn’t even bother trying to give a proper explanation. Meanwhile comments like
That’s literally exactly what that means you fucking moron
didn’t get a ban, even though they’re in blatant violation of rule 1:
Be civil and nice.
Interestingly enough, my comments are all still up. I’ve tried to archive it (unfortunately neither archive.org nor archive.is worked) because I actually genuinely found the discussion interesting, even if Cowbee’s arguments ended up reinforcing my own opinion more than I thought it would.
Weird place, ML.
EDIT: I checked lemmy.ml’s modlog and interestingly enough, my ban isn’t listed there, even though I’m very clearly banned from the community. Not sure what’s going on there (or if I’m maybe misunderstanding how this works)
That’s the thing, though - I actually found the arguments somewhat coherent, which is the reason I continued the discussion - something I’m not used to from ML. Otherwise I would have stopped responding a long time ago.
I mean, I know those are the stances there, but I still find it interesting to understand how they get there. Incidentally, I’ve also had plenty of discussions with people who are in the MAGA direction (those more IRL), and at least some of them I found very interesting - and they also taught me to understand how they think, which is one of the first steps to effectively counter that ideology IMO.
I’ve perked through the thread you’ve linked. It certainly seemed coherent, but at one point I’ve realized they started arguing an opposite thing from the OP.
I’ve been in a few arguments with .ml regulars in the past. When I realized they all eventually boil down into goalpost swapping and spamming paragraphs of text with dubious source links, I’ve stopped engaging. It’s fun the first time, then it’s all the same.
Holy crap, I didn’t even realize that… I had just about forgotten about the original même.