Wow. Some of your other posts are intelligent, but this is pure troll-bait.
EDIT: I suppose I should share my reasoning. Copied from my other post lower down the thread:
Hello, I expect you won’t like me, I’m
Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective ‘manhood’ is threatened if react normally (eg saying “trolls fuck off”).
dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should
Insulting straw man with a side of “you are an irrational cult”.
I’ve been lurking for a long time… overcoming bias… sequences… HP:MOR… namedropping
“Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.
evaporative cooling… women… I’m here to help you not be a cult.
Again undertones of “you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult”. Again we are challenged to take it seriously.
I just espoused, it’ll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.
I didn’t quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.
I’d rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don’t agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.
Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:
implying we don’t care about friendliness implying you know more about friendliness than EY
’nuff said
Okay, ready to be shouted down. I’ll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all.
classic reddit downvote preventer:
Post a troll or other worthless opinion
Imply that the hivemind wont like it
Appeal to people’s fear of hivemind
Collect upvotes.
You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)
again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.
Of course the kneejerk response is “no no, we don’t hate you and we certainly won’t censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you”. EDIT: Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses. /EDIT
I’ll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I shouldn’t be here; you don’t want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn’t bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT
This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn’t have to be.
Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10⁄10.
You’ve got an interesting angle there, but I don’t think AspiringKnitter is a troll in the pernicious sense—her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she’s made a significant contribution to.
I do think she wanted attention, and her post had more than a few hooks to get it. However, I don’t think it’s useful to describe trolls as “just wanting attention”. People post because they want attention. The important thing is whether they repay attention with anything valuable.
I don’t have the timeline completely straight, but it looks to me like AspiringKnitter came in trolling and quickly changed gears to semi-intelligent discussion. Such things happen. AspiringKnitter is no longer a troll, that’s for sure; like you say “her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she’s made a significant contribution to”.
All that, however, does not change the fact that this particular post looks, walks, and quacks like troll-bait and should be treated as such. I try to stay out of the habit of judging posts on the quality of the poster’s other stuff.
Thanks for letting me know. If most people disagree with my assessment, I’ll adjust my troll-resistance threshold.
I just want to make sure we don’t end up tolerating people who appear to have trollish intent. AspiringKnitter turned out to be positive, but I still think that particular post needed to be called out.
You’re welcome. This makes me glad I didn’t come out swinging—I’d suspected (actually I had to resist the temptation to obsess about the idea) that you were a troll yourself.
If you don’t mind writing about it, what sort of places have you been hanging out that you got your troll sensitivity calibrated so high? I’m phrasing it as “what sort of places” in case you’d rather not name particular websites.
what sort of places have you been hanging out that you got your troll sensitivity calibrated so high?
4chan, where there is an interesting dynamic around trolling and getting trolled. Getting trolled is low-status, calling out trolls correctly that no-one else caught is high-status, and trolling itself is god-status, calling troll incorrectly is low status like getting trolled. With that culture, the art of trolling, counter-trolling and troll detection gets well trained.
I learned a lot of trolling theory from reddit, (like the downvote preventer and concern trolling). The politics, anarchist, feminist and religious subreddits have a lot of good cases to study (they generally suck at managing community, tho).
I learned a lot of relevant philosophy of trolling and some more theory from /i/nsurgency boards and wikis (start at partyvan.info). Those communities are in a sorry state these days.
Alot of what I learned on 4chan and /i/ is not common knowledge around here and could be potentially useful. Maybe I’ll beat some of it into a useful form and post it.
Maybe I’ll beat some of it into a useful form and post it.
For one thing, the label “trolling” seems like it distracts more than it adds, just like “dark arts.” AspiringKnitter’s first post was loaded with influence techniques, as you point out, but it’s not clear to me that pointing at influence techniques and saying “influence bad!” is valuable, especially in an introduction thread. I mean, what’s the point of understanding human interaction if you use that understanding to botch your interactions?
There is a clear benefit to pointing out when a mass of other people are falling for influence techniques in a way you consider undesirable.
It is certainly worth pointing out the techniques, especially since it looks like not everyone noticed them. What’s not clear to me is the desirability of labeling it as “bad,” which is how charges of trolling are typically interpreted.
Easiest first: I introduced “dark arts” as an example of a label that distracted more than it added. It wasn’t meant as a reference to or description of your posts.
In your previous comment, you asked the wrong question (‘were they attempting to persuade?’) and then managed to come up with the wrong answer (‘nope’). Both of those were disappointing (the first more so) especially in light of your desire to spread your experience.
The persuasion was “please respond to me nicely.” It was richly rewarded: 20 welcoming responses (when most newbies get 0 or 1), and the first unwelcoming response got downvoted quickly.
The right question is, what are our values, here? When someone expressing a desire to be welcomed uses influence techniques that further that end, should we flip the table over in disgust that they tried to influence us? That’ll show them that we’re savvy customers that can’t be trolled! Or should we welcome them because we want the community to grow? That’ll show them that we’re worth sticking around.
I will note that I upvoted this post, because in the version that I saw it started off with “Some of your other posts are intelligent” and then showed many of the tricks AspiringKnitter’s post used. Where I disagree with you is the implication that we should have rebuked her for trolling. The potential upsides of treating someone with charity and warmth is far greater than the potential downsides of humoring a troll for a few posts.
That’s interesting—I’ve never hung out anywhere that trolling was high status.
In reddit and the like, how is consensus built around whether someone is a troll and/or is trolling in a particular case?
I think I understand concern trolling, which I understand to be giving advice which actually weakens the receiver’s position, though I think the coinage “hlep” from Making Light is more widely useful—inappropriate, annoying/infuriating advice which is intended to be helpful but doesn’t have enough thought behind it, but what’s downvote preventer?
Hlep has a lot of overlap with other-optimizing.
I’d be interested in what you have to say about the interactions at 4chan and /i/, especially about breakdowns in political communities.
I’ve been mulling the question of how you identify and maintain good will—to my mind, a lot of community breakdown is caused by tendencies to amplify disagreements between people who didn’t start out being all that angry at each other.
In reddit and the like, how is consensus built around whether someone is a troll and/or is trolling in a particular case?
On reddit there is just upvotes and downvotes. Reddit doesn’t have developed social mechanisms for dealing with trolls, because the downvotes work most of the time. Developing troll technology like the concern troll and the downvote preventer to hack the hivemind/vote dynamic is the only way to succeed.
4chan doesn’t have any social mechanisms either, just the culture. Communication is unnecessary for social/cultural pressure to work, interestingly. Once the countertroll/troll/troll-detector/trolled/troll-crier hierarchy is formed by the memes and mythology, the rest just works in your own mind. “fuck I got trolled, better watch out better next time”, “all these people are getting trolled, but I know the OP is a troll; I’m better than them” “successful troll is successful” “I trolled the troll”. Even if you don’t post them and no-one reacts to them, those thoughts activate the social shame/status/etc machinery.
I think I understand concern trolling, which I understand to be giving advice which actually weakens the receiver’s position, though I think the coinage “hlep” from is more widely useful
Not quite. A concern troll is someone who comes in saying “I’m a member of your group, but I’m unsure about this particular point in a highly controversial way” with the intention of starting a big useless flame-war.
Havn’t heard of hlep. seems interesting.
but what’s downvote preventer
The downvote preventer is when you say “I know the hivemind will downvote me for this, but...” It creates association in the readers mind between downvoting and being a hivemind drone, which people are afraid of, so they don’t downvote. It’s one of the techniques trolls use to protect the payload, like the way the concern troll used community membership.
I’ve been mulling the question of how you identify and maintain good will—to my mind, a lot of community breakdown is caused by tendencies to amplify disagreements between people who didn’t start out being all that angry at each other.
Yes. A big part of trolling is actually creating and fueling those disagreements. COINTELPRO trolling is disrupting peoples ability to identify trolls and goodwill. There is a lot of depth and difficulty to that.
Wow, I don’t post over Christmas and look what happens. Easiest one to answer first.
Wow, thanks!
You’re a little mean.
You don’t need an explanation of 2, but let me go through your post and explain about 1.
Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective ‘manhood’ is threatened if react normally (eg saying “trolls fuck off”).
Huh. I guess I could have come up with that explanation if I’d thought. The truth here is that I was just thinking “you know, they really won’t like me, this is stupid, but if I make them go into this interaction with their eyes wide open about what I am, and phrase it like so, I might get people to be nice and listen”.
dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should
Insulting straw man with a side of “you are an irrational cult”.
That was quite sincere and I still feel that that’s a worry.
Also, I don’t think I know more about friendliness than EY. I think he’s very knowledgeable. I worry that he has the wrong values so his utopia would not be fun for me.
classic reddit downvote preventer:
Post a troll or other worthless opinion
Imply that the hivemind wont like it
Appeal to people’s fear of hivemind
Collect upvotes.
Wow, you’re impressive. (Actually, from later posts, I know where you get this stuff from. I guess anyone could hang around 4chan long enough to know stuff like that if they had nerves of steel.) I had the intuition that this will lead to fewer downvotes (but note that I didn’t lie; I did expect that it was true, from many theist-unfriendly posts on this site), but I didn’t think consciously this procedure will appeal to people’s fear of the hivemind to shame them into upvoting me. I want to thank you for pointing that out. Knowing how and why that intuition was correct will allow me to decide with eyes wide open whether to do something like that in the future, and if I ever actually want to troll, I’ll be better at it.
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap.
Actually, I just really need to learn to remember that while I’m posting, proper procedure is not “allow internal monologue to continue as normal and transcribe it”. You have no idea how much trouble that’s gotten me into. (Go ahead and judge me for my self-pitying internal monologue if you want. Rereading it, I’m wondering how I failed to notice that I should just delete that part, or possibly the whole post.) On the other hand, I’d certainly hope that being honest makes me a sympathetic character. I’d like to be sympathetic, after all. ;)
This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn’t have to be.
Thank you. It wasn’t, but as you say, it doesn’t have to be. I hope I’ll be more mindful in the future, and bear morality in mind in crafting my posts here and elsewhere. I would never have seen these things so clearly for myself.
10⁄10.
Thanks, but no. LOL.
I’d upvote you, but otherwise your post is just so rude that I don’t think I will.
Thank you. I was complaining about his use of needless profanity to refer to what I said, and a general “I’m better than you” tone (understandable, if he comes from a place where catching trolls is high status, but still rude). I not only approve of being told that I’ve done something wrong, I actually thanked him for it. Crocker’s rules don’t say “explain things in an insulting way”, they say “don’t soften the truths you speak to me”. You can optimize for information—and even get it across better—when you’re not trying to be rude. For instance,
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap.
That would not convey less truth if it weren’t vulgar. You can easily communicate that someone is tugging people’s heartstrings by presenting as a highly sympathetic damsel in distress without being vulgar.
Also, stuff like this:
Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses.
That makes it quite clear that nyan_sandwich is getting a high from this and feels high-status because of behavior like this. While that in itself is fine, the whole post does have the feel of gloating to it. I simultaneously want to upvote it for information and downvote it for lowering the overall level of civility.
Here’s my attempt to clarify how I wish to be engaged with: convey whatever information you feel is true. Be as reluctant to actively insult me as you would anyone else, bearing in mind that a simple “this is incorrect” is not insulting to me, and nor is “you’re being manipulative”. “This is crap” always lowers the standard of debate. If you spell out what’s crappy about it, your readers (including yours truly) can grasp for themselves that it’s crap.
Of course, if nyan_sandwich just came from 4chan, we can congratulate him on being an infinitely better human being than everyone else he hangs out with, as well as on saying something that isn’t 100% insulting, vulgar nonsense. (I’d say less than 5% insulting, vulgar nonsense.) Actually, his usual contexts considered, I may upvote him after all. I know what it takes to be more polite than you’re used to others being.
Thus, one who has committed to these rules largely gives up the right to complain about emotional provocation, flaming, abuse and other violations of etiquette
There’s a decision theoretic angle here. If I declare Crocker’s rules, and person X calls me a filthy anteater, then I might not care about getting valuable information from them (they probably don’t have any to share) but I refrain from lashing out anyway! Because I care about the signal I send to person Y who is still deciding whether to engage with me, who might have a sensitive detector of Crocker’s rules violations. And such thoughtful folks may offer the most valuable critique. I’m afraid you might have shot yourself in the foot here.
I think this is generally correct. I do wonder about a few points:
If I am operating on Crocker’s Rules (I personally am not, mind, but hypothetically), and someone’s attempt to convey information to me has obvious room for improvement, is it ever permissible for me to let them know this? Given your decision theory point, my guess would be “yes, politely and privately,” but I’m curious as to what others think as well. As a side note, I presume that if the other person is also operating by Crocker’s Rules, you can say whatever you like back.
someone’s attempt to convey information to me has obvious room for improvement
Do you mean improvement of the information content or the tone? If the former, I think saying “your comment was not informative enough, please explain more” is okay, both publicly and privately. If the latter, I think saying “your comment was not polite enough” is not okay under the spirit of Crocker’s rules, neither publicly nor privately, even if the other person has declared Crocker’s rules too.
When these things are orthogonal, I think your interpretation is clear, and when information would be obscured by politeness the information should win—that’s the point of Crocker’s Rules. What about when information is obscured by deliberate impoliteness? Does the prohibition on criticizing impoliteness win, or the permit for criticizing lack of clarity? In any case, if the other person is not themselves operating by Crocker’s Rules, it is of course important that your response be polite, whatever it is.
Question: do Crocker’s rules work differently here than I’m used to? I’m used to a communication style where people say things to get the point across, even though such things would be considered rude in typical society, not for being insulting but for pointless reasons, and we didn’t do pointless things just to be typical. We were bluntly honest with each other, even (actually especially) when people were wrong (after all, it was kind of important that we convey that information accurately, completely and as quickly as possible in some cases), but to be deliberately insulting when information could have been just as easily conveyed some other way (as opposed to when it couldn’t be), or to be insulting without adding any useful information at all, was quite gauche. At one point someone mentioned that if we wanted to invoke that in normal society, say we were under Crocker’s rules.
So it looks like the possibilities worth considering are:
Someone LIED just to make it harder for us to fit in with normal society!
Someone was just wrong.
You’re wrong.
Crockering means different things to different people.
Baiting and switching by declaring Crocker’s rules then shaming and condescending when they do not meet your standard of politeness could legitimately be considered a manipulative social ploy.
I didn’t consider Crocker’s rules at all when reading nyan’s comment and it still didn’t seem at all inappropriate. You being outraged at the ‘vulgarity’ of the phrase “damsel in distress crap” is a problem with your excess sensitivity and not with the phrase. As far as I’m concerned “damsel in distress crap” is positively gentle. I would have used “martyrdom bullshit” (but then I also use bullshit as a technical term).
Crocker’s rules is about how people speak to you. But for all it is a reply about your comment nyan wasn’t even talking to you. He was talking to the lesswrong readers warning them about perceived traps they are falling into when engaging with your comment.
Like it or not people tend to reciprocate disrespect with disrespect. While you kept your comment superficially civil and didn’t use the word ‘crap’ you did essentially call everyone here a bunch of sexist Christian hating bullies. Why would you expect people to be nice to you when you treat them like that?
The impression I have is that calling Crocker’s rules being never acting offended or angry at the way people talk to you, with the expectation that you’ll get more information if people don’t censor themselves out of politeness.
Some of your reactions here are not those I expect from someone under Crocker’s rules (who would just ignore anything insulting or offensive).
So maybe what you consider as “Crocker’s rules” is what most people here would consider “normal” discussion, so when you call Crocker’s rules, people are extra rude.
I would suggest just dropping reference to Crocker’s rules, I don’t think they’re necessary for having a reasonable discussion, and they they put pressure on the people you’re talking to to either call Crocker’s rules too (giving you carte blanche to be rude to them), otherwise they look uptight or something.
So maybe what you consider as “Crocker’s rules” is what most people here would consider “normal” discussion, so when you call Crocker’s rules, people are extra rude.
Possible. I’m inexperienced in talking with neurotypicals. All I know is what was drilled into me by them, which is basically a bunch of things of the form “don’t ever convey this piece of information because it’s rude” (where the piece of information is like… you have hairy arms, you’re wrong, I don’t like this food, I don’t enjoy spending time with you, this gift was not optimized for making me happy—and the really awful, horrible dark side where they feel pressured never to say certain things to me, like that I’m wrong, they’re annoyed by something I’m doing, I’m ugly, I sound stupid, my writing needs improvement—it’s horrible to deal with people who never say those things because I can never assume sincerity, I just have to assume they’re lying all the time) that upon meeting other neurodiverse I immediately proceeded to forget all about. And so did they. And THAT works out well. It’s accepted within that community that “Crocker’s rules” is how the rest of the world will refer to it.
Anyway, if I’m not allowed to hear the truth without having to listen to whatever insults anyone can come up with, then so be it, I really want to hear the truth and I know it will never be given to me otherwise. But there IS supposed to be something between “you are not allowed to say anything to me except that I’m right about everything and the most wonderful special snowflake ever” and “insult me in every way you can think of”, even if the latter is still preferable to the former. (Is this community a place with a middle ground? If so, I didn’t think such existed. If so, I’ll gladly go by the normal rules of discussion here.)
the baseline interaction mode would be considered rude-but-not-insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
the interaction mode invoked by “Crocker’s rules” would be considered insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
there’s considerable heterogeneity in terms of what’s considered unacceptably rude
there’s a tentative consensus that dealing with occasional unacceptable rudeness is preferable to the consequences of disallowing occasional unacceptable rudeness, and
the community pushes back on perceived attempts to enforce politeness far more strongly than it pushes back on perceived rudeness.
Dunno if any of that answers your questions.
I would also say that nobody here has come even remotely close to “insult in every conceivable way” as an operating mode.
the baseline interaction mode would be considered rude-but-not-insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
the community pushes back on perceived attempts to enforce politeness far more strongly than it pushes back on perceived rudeness.
YES!
There seem to be a lot of new people introducing themselves on the Welcome thread today/yesterday. I would like to encourage everyone to maybe be just a tad bit more polite, and cognizant of the Principle of Charity, at least for the next week or two, so all our newcomers can acclimate to the culture here.
As someone who has only been on this site for a month or two (also as a NT, socially-skilled, female), I have spoken in the past about my difficulties dealing with the harshness here. I ended up deciding not to fight it, since people seem to like it that way, and that’s ok. But I do think the community needs to be aware that this IS in fact an issue that new (especially NT) people are likely to shy away from, and even leave or just not post because of.
tl;dr- I deal with the “rudeness”, but want people to be aware that is does in fact exist. Those of us who dislike it have just learned to keep our mouths shut and deal with it. There are a lot of new people now, so try to soften it for the next week or two.
(Note: I have not been recently down-voted, flamed, or crushed, so this isn’t just me raging.)
I’m unlikely to change my style of presentation here as a consequence of new people arriving, especially since I find it unlikely that the wave of introductions reflects an actual influx of new people, as opposed to an influx of activity on the Welcome threads making the threads more visible and inspiring introductions.
If my presentation style is offputting to new people who prefer a different style, I agree that’s unfortunate. I’m not sure that my dealing by changing my style for their benefit—supposing they even benefit from it—is better.
You are correct, in that I do believe that many of the introductions here are people who have been lurking a long time, but are following the principle of social proof, and just introducing themselves now that everyone else is.
However, I do think that once they have gone through the motions of setting up an account an publishing their introduction, that self-consistency will lead them to continue to be more active on this site; They have just changed their self-image to that of “Member of LW” after all!
Your other supposition- that they might not benefit from it… I will tell you that I have almost quit LW many times in the past month, and it is only a lack of anything better out there that has kept me here.
My assumption is that you are OK with this, and feel that people that can’t handle the heat should get out of the kitchen anyway, so to speak.
I think that is a valid point, IFF you want to maintain LW as it currently stands. I will admit that my preferences are different in that I hope LW grows and gets more and more participants. I also hope that this growth causes LW to be more “inclusive” and have a higher percentage of females (gender stereotyping here, sorry) and NTs, which will in effect lower the harshness of the site.
So I think our disagreement doesn’t stem from “bad” rationality on either of our parts. It’s just that we have different end-goals.
I’m sorry, I did not want to imply that you specifically made me want to quit. In all honesty, the lack of visual avatars means I can’t keep LW users straight at all.
But since you seem to be asking about your presentation style, here is me re-writing your previous post in a way that is optimized for a conversation I would enjoy, without feeling discomfort.
Original:
I’m unlikely to change my style of presentation here as a consequence of new people arriving, especially since I find it unlikely that the wave of introductions reflects an actual influx of new people, as opposed to an influx of activity on the Welcome threads making the threads more visible and inspiring introductions.
If my presentation style is offputting to new people who prefer a different style, I agree that’s unfortunate. I’m not sure that my dealing by changing my style for their benefit—supposing they even benefit from it—is better.
How I WISH LW operated (and realize that 95% of you do not wish this)
I agree that it’s unfortunate that the style of LW posts may drive new users away, especially if they would otherwise enjoy the site and become valuable participants. However, I don’t plan on updating my personal writing style here.
My main reason for this is that I find it unlikely that the wave of introductions reflects an actual influx of new people, as opposed to an influx of activity on the Welcome threads making the threads more visible and inspiring introductions.
I am also unsure if changing my writing style would actually help these newcomers in the long run. Or even if it did, would I prefer a LW that is watered-down, but more accessible? (my interpretation of what you meant by “better”)
I asked about my presentation style because that’s what I wrote about in the first place, and I couldn’t tell whether your response to my comment was actually a response to what I wrote, or some more general response to some more general thing that you decided to treat my comment as a standin for.
I infer from your clarification that i was the latter. I appreciate the clarification.
Your suggested revision of what I said would include several falsehoods, were I to have said it.
Your suggested revision of what I said would include several falsehoods, were I to have said it.
I had to fill in some interpretations of what I thought you could have meant. If what I filled in was false, it is just that I do not know your mind as well as you do. If I did, I could fill in things that were true.
Politeness does not necessarily require falsity. Your post lacked the politeness parts, so I had to fill in politeness parts that I thought sounded like reasonable things you might be thinking. Were you trying to be polite, you could fill in politeness parts with things that were actually true for you (and not just my best guesses.)
I infer from your explanation that your version of politeness does require that I reveal more information than I initially revealed. Can you say more about why?
How do I insult thee? Let me count the ways. I insult thee to the depth and breadth and height My mind can reach, when feeling out of sight For the lack of Reason and the craft of Bayes.
I must confess, I have never actually heard the words ‘gyre’ and ‘falconer’. I assumed they could be pronounced in such a way that it would sound like a rhyme. In my head, they both were pronounced like ‘hear’. Likewise, I assumed one could pronounce ‘world’ and ‘hold’ in such a way that they could sort-of rhyme. In my head, ‘hold’ was pronounced ‘held’ and ‘world’ was pronounced ‘weld.’
Returning to this… if you’re still tempted, I’d love to see your take on it. Feel free to use me as a target if that helps your creativity, though I’m highly unlikely to take anything you say in this mode seriously. (That said, using a hypothetical third party would likely be emotionally easier.)
Unrelatedly: were you the person who had the script that sorts and display’s all of a user’s comments? I’ve changed computers since being handed that pointer and seem to have misplaced the pointer.
[T]hey put pressure on the people you’re talking to to either call Crocker’s rules too (giving you carte blanche to be rude to them), otherwise they look uptight or something.
This should be strongly rejected, if Crocker’s Rules are ever going to do more good than harm. I do not mean that it is not the case given existing norms (I simply do not know one way or the other), but that norms should be established such that this is clearly not the case. Someone who is unable to operate according to Crocker’s Rules attempting to does not improve discourse or information flow—no one should be pressured to do so.
The problem is, the more a community is likely to consider X a “good” practice, the more it is likely to think less of those who refuse to do do X, whatever X is; so I don’t see a good way of avoiding negative connotations to “unable to operate according to Crocker’s Rules”.
… that is, unless the interaction is not symmetric, so that when one side announces Crocker’s rules, there is no implicit expectation that the other side should do the same (with the associated status threat); for example if on my website I mention Crocker’s rules next to the email form or something.
But in a peer-to-peer community like this, that expectation is always going to be implicit, and I don’t see a good way to make it disappear.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am not operating by Crocker’s rules. I try to be responsible for my emotional state, but realize that I’m not perfect at this, so tell me the truth but there’s no need to be a dick about it. I am not unlikely, in the future, to declare Crocker’s rules with respect to some specific individuals and domains, but globally is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Here’s my part too: I don’t declare Crocker’s rules and do not commit to paying any heed to whether others have declared Crocker’s rules. I’ll speak to people however I see fit—which will include taking into account the preferences of both the recipient and any onlookers to precisely the degree that seems appropriate or desirable at the time.
I don’t know about getting rid of it entirely, but we can at least help by stressing the importance of the distinction, and choosing to view operation by Crocker’s rules as rare, difficult, unrelated to any particular discussion, and of only minor status boost.
Another approach might be to make all Crocker communication private, and expect polite (enough) discourse publicly.
The underlying assumption is that rudeness is sometimes necessary for effective conveyance of information, if only to signal a lack of patience or tolerance: after all, knowing whether the speaker is becoming angry or despondent is useful rational evidence.
Looking hard for another source, something called the DoWire Wiki has this unsourced:
By invoking these Rules, the recipient declares that s/he does not care about, and some hold that s/he gives up all right to complain about and must require others not to complain about, any level of emotional provocation, flames, abuse of any kind.
So if anyone is using Crocker’s Rules a different way, I think it’s safe to say they’re doing it wrong, but only by definition. Maybe someone should ask Crocker, if they’re concerned.
OK. FWIW, I agree that nyan-sandwich’s tone was condescending, and that they used vulgar words. I also think “I suppose they can’t be expected to behave any better, we should praise them for not being completely awful” is about as condescending as anything else that’s been said in this thread.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I didn’t mean for that to come out that way (when I used to spend a lot of time on places with low standards, my standards were lowered, too), but that did end up insulting. I’m sorry, nyan_sandwich.
Crocker’s rules don’t say “explain things in an insulting way”, they say “don’t soften the truths you speak to me”. You can optimize for information—and even get it across better—when you’re not trying to be rude.
A lot of intelligent folks have to spend a lot of energy trying not to be rude, and part of the point of Crocker’s Rules is to remove that burden by saying you won’t call them on rudeness.
Not all politeness is inconsistent with communicating truth. I agree that “Does this dress make me look fat” has a true answer and a polite answer. It’s worth investing some attention into figuring out which answer to give. Often, people use questions like that as a trap, as mean-spirited or petty social and emotional manipulation. Crocker’s Rule is best understood as a promise that the speaker is aware of this dynamic and explicitly denies engaging in it.
That doesn’t license being rude. If you are really trying to help someone else come to a better understanding of the world, being polite helps them avoid cognitive biases that would prevent them from thinking logically about your assertions. In short, Crocker’s Rule does not mean “I don’t mind if you are intentionally rude to me.” It means “I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.
In short, Crocker’s Rule does not mean “I don’t mind if you are intentionally rude to me.” It means “I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.
Right, I wasn’t saying anything that contradicted that. Rather, some of us have additional cognitive burden in general trying to figure out if something is supposed to be rude, and I always understood part of the point of Crocker’s Rules to be removing that burden so we can communicate more efficiently. Especially since many such people are often worth listening to.
For what it’s worth, I generally see some variant of “please don’t flame me” attached only to posts which I’d call inoffensive even without it. I’m not crazy about seeing “please don’t flame me”, but I write it off to nervousness and don’t blame people for using it.
Caveat: I’m pretty sure that “please don’t flame me” won’t work in social justice venues.
I had missed this. The original post read as really weird and hostile, but I only read after having heard about this thread indirectly for days, mostly about the way how later she seemed pretty intelligent, so I dismissed what I saw and substituted what I ought to have seen. Thanks for pointing this out.
I disagree. It’s an honest expression of feeling, and a reasonable statement of expectations, given LW’s other run-ins with self-identified theists. It may be a bit overstated, but not terribly much.
Do you really think it’s only a bit overstated? I mean, has anybody been banned for being religious? And has anybody here indicated that they hate Christians without immediately being called on falling into blue vs. green thinking?
Okay, ready to be shouted down. I’ll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?) I’ll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I shouldn’t be here; you don’t want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn’t bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.
From her other posts, AspiringKnitter strikes me as being open-minded and quite intelligent, but that last paragraph really irks me. It’s self-debasing in an almost manipulative way—as if she actually wants us to talk to her like we “only want [her] to hate God” or as if we “really hate Christians”. Anybody who has spent any non-trivial amount of time on LW would know that we certainly don’t hate people we disagree with, at least to the best of my knowledge, so asserting that is not a charitable or reasonable expectation. Plus, it seems that it would now be hard(er) to downvote her because she specifically said she expects that, even given a legitimate reason to downvote.
Well, some of Eliezer’s posts about religion and religious thought have been more than a little harsh. (I couldn’t find it, but there was a post where he said something along the lines of “I have written about religion as the largest imaginable plague on thinking...”) They didn’t explicitly say that religious people are to be scorned, but it’s very easy to read in that implication, especially since many people who are equally vocal about religion being bad do hold that opinion.
Being honest and having reasonable expectations of being treated like a troll does not disqualify a post from being a troll.
Hello, I expect you won’t like me, I’m
Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective ‘manhood’ is threatened if react normally (eg saying “trolls fuck off”).
dont want to be turned onto an immortal computer-brain-thing that acts more like Eliezer thinks it should
Insulting straw man with a side of “you are an irrational cult”.
I’ve been lurking for a long time… overcoming bias… sequences… HP:MOR… namedropping
“Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.
evaporative cooling… women… I’m here to help you not be a cult.
Again undertones of “you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult”. Again we are challenged to take it seriously.
I just espoused, it’ll raise the probability that you start worshiping the possibility of becoming immortal polyamorous whatever and taking over the world.
I didn’t quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.
I’d rather hang around and keep the Singularity from being an AI that forcibly exterminates all morality and all people who don’t agree with Eliezer Yudkowsky. Not that any of you (especially EY) WANT that, exactly. But anyway, my point is, With Folded Hands is a pretty bad failure mode for the worst-case scenario where EC occurs and EY gets to AI first.
Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:
implying we don’t care about friendliness implying you know more about friendliness than EY
’nuff said
Okay, ready to be shouted down. I’ll be counting the downvotes as they roll in, I guess. You guys really hate Christians, after all.
classic reddit downvote preventer:
Post a troll or other worthless opinion
Imply that the hivemind wont like it
Appeal to people’s fear of hivemind
Collect upvotes.
You guys really hate Christians, after all. (Am I actually allowed to be here or am I banned for my religion?)
again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.
Of course the kneejerk response is “no no, we don’t hate you and we certainly won’t censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you”
I’ll probably just leave soon anyway. Nothing good can come of this. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I shouldn’t be here; you don’t want me here, not to mention I probably shouldn’t bother talking to people who only want me to hate God. Why am I even here again? Seriously, why am I not just lurking? That would make more sense.
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT
This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn’t have to be.
Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10⁄10.
I’ve been lurking for a long time… overcoming bias… sequences… HP:MOR… namedropping
“Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.
I don’t follow how indicating that she’s actually read the site can be a mark against her. If the comment had not indicated familiarity with the site content, would you then describe it as less trollish?
it’s a classic troll technique. It’s not independent of the other trollish tendencies. Alone, saying those things does not imply troll, but in the presence of other troll-content it is used to raise perceived standing and lower the probability that they are a troll.
EDIT: and yes, trollish opinions without trollish disclaimers raise probability of plain old stupidity.
EDIT2: Have to be very careful with understanding the causality of evidence supplied by hostile agents. What Evidence Filtered Evidence and so on,
So… voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going “Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Joking about the image a group idea’s have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.
Okay, so I see the bits that are protection against being called a troll. What I don’t see is the trolling. Is it “I’m a Christian”? If you think all Christians should pretend to be atheists… well, 500 responses disagree with you. Is it what you call straw men? I read those as jokes about what we look like to outsiders, but even if they’re sincere, they’re surrounded with so much display of uncertainty that “No, that’s not what we think.” should end it then and there. And if AspiringKnitter where a troll, why would she stop trolling and write good posts right after that?
Conclusion: You fail the principle of charity forever. You’re a jerk. I hope you run out of milk next time you want to eat cereal.
So… voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going “Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Joking about the image a group idea’s have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.
Deliberate, active straw manning sarcasm for the purpose of giving insult and conveying contempt.
What I don’t see is the trolling.
Yes, trolling is distinguished from what nyan called “troll-bait” by, for most part, duration. Trolls don’t stop picking fights and seem to thrive on the conflict they provoke. If nyan tried to claim that AspiringKnitter was a troll in general—and fail to update on the evidence from after this comment—he would most certainly be wrong.
Conclusion: You fail the principle of charity forever.
He wasn’t very charitable in his comment, I certainly would have phrased criticism differently (and directed most of it at those encouraging damsel in distress crap.) But for your part you haven’t failed the principle of charity—you have failed to parse language correctly and respond to the meaning contained therein.
You’re a jerk. I hope you run out of milk next time you want to eat cereal.
You’re a jerk. I hope you run out of milk next time you want to eat cereal.
This is not ok.
The cereal thing is comically mild. The impulse to wish bad things on others is a pretty strong one and I think it’s moderated by having an outlet to acknowledge that it’s silly in this or maybe some other way—I’d rather people publicly wish me to run out of milk than privately wish me dead.
The cereal thing is comically mild. The impulse to wish bad things on others is a pretty strong one and I think it’s moderated by having an outlet to acknowledge that it’s silly in this or maybe some other way
Calling nyan a jerk in that context wasn’t ok with me and nor was any joke about wanting harm to come upon him. It was unjustified and inappropriate.
I’d rather people publicly wish me to run out of milk than privately wish me dead.
I don’t much care what MixedNuts wants to happen to nyan. The quoted combination of words constitutes a status transaction of a kind I would see discouraged. Particularly given that we don’t allow reciprocal personal banter of the kind this sort insult demands. If, for example, nyan responded with a pun on a keyword and a reference to Mixed’s sister we wouldn’t allow it. When insults cannot be returned in kind the buck stops with the first personal insult. That is, Mixed’s.
[emphasis mine]. You assume that nyan is male. Where did “he” say that? nyan explicitly claims to be a “genderless internet being” in the introductions thread.
Last LW survey came out with 95% male, IIRC. 95% sure of something is quite strong. nyan called Aspiring_Knitter a troll on much less solid evidence. Also, you come from the unfortunate position of not having workable genderless pronouns.
[emphasis mine]. You assume that nyan is male. Where did “he” say that? nyan explicitly claims to be a “genderless internet being” in the introductions thread.
That’s fair. I used male because you sounded more like a male—and still do. If you are a genderless internet being then I will henceforth refer to you as an ‘it’. If you were a genderless human I would use the letter ‘v’ followed by whatever letters seem to fit the context.
I’d rather people publicly wish me to run out of milk than privately wish me dead.
Well, who knows what MixedNuts’ wishes? Wishing wedrifid runs out of milk doesn’t exclude this latter possibility.
I’m also reminded, of all the silly things, (the overwhelmingly irrational) Simone Weil:
If someone does me an injury I must desire that this injury shall not degrade me. I must desire this out of love for him who inflicts it, in order that he may not really have done evil.
Delicious controversy. Yum. I might have a lulz-relapse and become a troll.
So… voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going “Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Joking about the image a group idea’s have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.
Burn the witch!
Disagreement is not trolling. Neither is nervous disagreement. The hivemind thing had nothing to do with status signaling, it was about the readers insecurity. The group membership/cultural knowledge signaling thing is almost always used as a delivery vector for a ignoble payload.
They didn’t look like jokes or uncertainty to me. I am suddenly gripped by a mortal fear that I may not have a sense of humor. The damsel in distress thing was unconnected to the ideas thing.
TL;DR: what wedrifid said.
Okay, so I see the bits that are protection against being called a troll. What I don’t see is the trolling. Is it “I’m a Christian”? If you think all Christians should pretend to be atheists… well, 500 responses disagree with you. Is it what you call straw men? I read those as jokes about what we look like to outsiders, but even if they’re sincere, they’re surrounded with so much display of uncertainty that “No, that’s not what we think.” should end it then and there. And if AspiringKnitter where a troll, why would she stop trolling and write good posts right after that?
Again, they still don’t look like jokes. If everyone else decides they were jokes, I will upmod my belief that I am a humorless internet srs-taker. EDIT: oh I forgot to address the AS is not troll claim. It has been observed, in the long history of the internet, that sometimes a person skilled in the trolling arts will post a masterfully crafted troll-bait, and then decide to forsake their lulzy crusade for unknown reasons. /EDIT
I hope you run out of milk next time you want to eat cereal.
Joke is on you. nyan_sandwich″s human alter-ego doesn’t eat cereal.
nyan_sandwich may have been stricken with a minor case of confirmation bias when they made that assessment, but I think it still stands.
Wow. Some of your other posts are intelligent, but this is pure troll-bait.
EDIT: I suppose I should share my reasoning. Copied from my other post lower down the thread:
Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective ‘manhood’ is threatened if react normally (eg saying “trolls fuck off”).
Insulting straw man with a side of “you are an irrational cult”.
“Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.
Again undertones of “you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult”. Again we are challenged to take it seriously.
I didn’t quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.
Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:
’nuff said
classic reddit downvote preventer:
Post a troll or other worthless opinion
Imply that the hivemind wont like it
Appeal to people’s fear of hivemind
Collect upvotes.
again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.
Of course the kneejerk response is “no no, we don’t hate you and we certainly won’t censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you”. EDIT: Ha! well predicted I say. I just looked at the other 500 responses. /EDIT
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT
This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn’t have to be.
Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10⁄10.
You’ve got an interesting angle there, but I don’t think AspiringKnitter is a troll in the pernicious sense—her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she’s made a significant contribution to.
I do think she wanted attention, and her post had more than a few hooks to get it. However, I don’t think it’s useful to describe trolls as “just wanting attention”. People post because they want attention. The important thing is whether they repay attention with anything valuable.
I don’t have the timeline completely straight, but it looks to me like AspiringKnitter came in trolling and quickly changed gears to semi-intelligent discussion. Such things happen. AspiringKnitter is no longer a troll, that’s for sure; like you say “her post has led to a long reasonable discussion that she’s made a significant contribution to”.
All that, however, does not change the fact that this particular post looks, walks, and quacks like troll-bait and should be treated as such. I try to stay out of the habit of judging posts on the quality of the poster’s other stuff.
I don’t know if this is worth saying, but you look a lot more like a troll to me than she does, though of a more subtle variety than I’m used to.
You seem to be taking behavior which has been shown to be in the harmless-to-useful range and picking a fight about it.
Thanks for letting me know. If most people disagree with my assessment, I’ll adjust my troll-resistance threshold.
I just want to make sure we don’t end up tolerating people who appear to have trollish intent. AspiringKnitter turned out to be positive, but I still think that particular post needed to be called out.
Well Kept Gardens Die By Pacifism.
You’re welcome. This makes me glad I didn’t come out swinging—I’d suspected (actually I had to resist the temptation to obsess about the idea) that you were a troll yourself.
If you don’t mind writing about it, what sort of places have you been hanging out that you got your troll sensitivity calibrated so high? I’m phrasing it as “what sort of places” in case you’d rather not name particular websites.
4chan, where there is an interesting dynamic around trolling and getting trolled. Getting trolled is low-status, calling out trolls correctly that no-one else caught is high-status, and trolling itself is god-status, calling troll incorrectly is low status like getting trolled. With that culture, the art of trolling, counter-trolling and troll detection gets well trained.
I learned a lot of trolling theory from reddit, (like the downvote preventer and concern trolling). The politics, anarchist, feminist and religious subreddits have a lot of good cases to study (they generally suck at managing community, tho).
I learned a lot of relevant philosophy of trolling and some more theory from /i/nsurgency boards and wikis (start at partyvan.info). Those communities are in a sorry state these days.
Alot of what I learned on 4chan and /i/ is not common knowledge around here and could be potentially useful. Maybe I’ll beat some of it into a useful form and post it.
For one thing, the label “trolling” seems like it distracts more than it adds, just like “dark arts.” AspiringKnitter’s first post was loaded with influence techniques, as you point out, but it’s not clear to me that pointing at influence techniques and saying “influence bad!” is valuable, especially in an introduction thread. I mean, what’s the point of understanding human interaction if you use that understanding to botch your interactions?
There is a clear benefit to pointing out when a mass of other people are falling for influence techniques in a way you consider undesirable.
It is certainly worth pointing out the techniques, especially since it looks like not everyone noticed them. What’s not clear to me is the desirability of labeling it as “bad,” which is how charges of trolling are typically interpreted.
I see your point, but that post wasn’t using dark arts to persuade anything, it looked very much like the purpose was controversy. Hence trolling.
Son, I am disappoint.
are you implying there was persuasion going on? or that I used “dark arts” when I shouldn’t?
Easiest first: I introduced “dark arts” as an example of a label that distracted more than it added. It wasn’t meant as a reference to or description of your posts.
In your previous comment, you asked the wrong question (‘were they attempting to persuade?’) and then managed to come up with the wrong answer (‘nope’). Both of those were disappointing (the first more so) especially in light of your desire to spread your experience.
The persuasion was “please respond to me nicely.” It was richly rewarded: 20 welcoming responses (when most newbies get 0 or 1), and the first unwelcoming response got downvoted quickly.
The right question is, what are our values, here? When someone expressing a desire to be welcomed uses influence techniques that further that end, should we flip the table over in disgust that they tried to influence us? That’ll show them that we’re savvy customers that can’t be trolled! Or should we welcome them because we want the community to grow? That’ll show them that we’re worth sticking around.
I will note that I upvoted this post, because in the version that I saw it started off with “Some of your other posts are intelligent” and then showed many of the tricks AspiringKnitter’s post used. Where I disagree with you is the implication that we should have rebuked her for trolling. The potential upsides of treating someone with charity and warmth is far greater than the potential downsides of humoring a troll for a few posts.
Ok. That makes sense.
Was parent downvoted for asking questions or for improper capitalization?
Was I downvoted for asking about downvotes or false dilemma?
Was I downvoted for meta-humor or carrying the joke too far?
That’s interesting—I’ve never hung out anywhere that trolling was high status.
In reddit and the like, how is consensus built around whether someone is a troll and/or is trolling in a particular case?
I think I understand concern trolling, which I understand to be giving advice which actually weakens the receiver’s position, though I think the coinage “hlep” from Making Light is more widely useful—inappropriate, annoying/infuriating advice which is intended to be helpful but doesn’t have enough thought behind it, but what’s downvote preventer?
Hlep has a lot of overlap with other-optimizing.
I’d be interested in what you have to say about the interactions at 4chan and /i/, especially about breakdowns in political communities.
I’ve been mulling the question of how you identify and maintain good will—to my mind, a lot of community breakdown is caused by tendencies to amplify disagreements between people who didn’t start out being all that angry at each other.
On reddit there is just upvotes and downvotes. Reddit doesn’t have developed social mechanisms for dealing with trolls, because the downvotes work most of the time. Developing troll technology like the concern troll and the downvote preventer to hack the hivemind/vote dynamic is the only way to succeed.
4chan doesn’t have any social mechanisms either, just the culture. Communication is unnecessary for social/cultural pressure to work, interestingly. Once the countertroll/troll/troll-detector/trolled/troll-crier hierarchy is formed by the memes and mythology, the rest just works in your own mind. “fuck I got trolled, better watch out better next time”, “all these people are getting trolled, but I know the OP is a troll; I’m better than them” “successful troll is successful” “I trolled the troll”. Even if you don’t post them and no-one reacts to them, those thoughts activate the social shame/status/etc machinery.
Not quite. A concern troll is someone who comes in saying “I’m a member of your group, but I’m unsure about this particular point in a highly controversial way” with the intention of starting a big useless flame-war.
Havn’t heard of hlep. seems interesting.
The downvote preventer is when you say “I know the hivemind will downvote me for this, but...” It creates association in the readers mind between downvoting and being a hivemind drone, which people are afraid of, so they don’t downvote. It’s one of the techniques trolls use to protect the payload, like the way the concern troll used community membership.
Yes. A big part of trolling is actually creating and fueling those disagreements. COINTELPRO trolling is disrupting peoples ability to identify trolls and goodwill. There is a lot of depth and difficulty to that.
Wow, I don’t post over Christmas and look what happens. Easiest one to answer first.
Wow, thanks!
You’re a little mean.
You don’t need an explanation of 2, but let me go through your post and explain about 1.
Huh. I guess I could have come up with that explanation if I’d thought. The truth here is that I was just thinking “you know, they really won’t like me, this is stupid, but if I make them go into this interaction with their eyes wide open about what I am, and phrase it like so, I might get people to be nice and listen”.
That was quite sincere and I still feel that that’s a worry.
Also, I don’t think I know more about friendliness than EY. I think he’s very knowledgeable. I worry that he has the wrong values so his utopia would not be fun for me.
Wow, you’re impressive. (Actually, from later posts, I know where you get this stuff from. I guess anyone could hang around 4chan long enough to know stuff like that if they had nerves of steel.) I had the intuition that this will lead to fewer downvotes (but note that I didn’t lie; I did expect that it was true, from many theist-unfriendly posts on this site), but I didn’t think consciously this procedure will appeal to people’s fear of the hivemind to shame them into upvoting me. I want to thank you for pointing that out. Knowing how and why that intuition was correct will allow me to decide with eyes wide open whether to do something like that in the future, and if I ever actually want to troll, I’ll be better at it.
Actually, I just really need to learn to remember that while I’m posting, proper procedure is not “allow internal monologue to continue as normal and transcribe it”. You have no idea how much trouble that’s gotten me into. (Go ahead and judge me for my self-pitying internal monologue if you want. Rereading it, I’m wondering how I failed to notice that I should just delete that part, or possibly the whole post.) On the other hand, I’d certainly hope that being honest makes me a sympathetic character. I’d like to be sympathetic, after all. ;)
Thank you. It wasn’t, but as you say, it doesn’t have to be. I hope I’ll be more mindful in the future, and bear morality in mind in crafting my posts here and elsewhere. I would never have seen these things so clearly for myself.
Thanks, but no. LOL.
I’d upvote you, but otherwise your post is just so rude that I don’t think I will.
Note that declaring Crocker’s rules and subsequently complaining about rudeness sends very confusing signals about how you wish to be engaged with.
Thank you. I was complaining about his use of needless profanity to refer to what I said, and a general “I’m better than you” tone (understandable, if he comes from a place where catching trolls is high status, but still rude). I not only approve of being told that I’ve done something wrong, I actually thanked him for it. Crocker’s rules don’t say “explain things in an insulting way”, they say “don’t soften the truths you speak to me”. You can optimize for information—and even get it across better—when you’re not trying to be rude. For instance,
That would not convey less truth if it weren’t vulgar. You can easily communicate that someone is tugging people’s heartstrings by presenting as a highly sympathetic damsel in distress without being vulgar.
Also, stuff like this:
That makes it quite clear that nyan_sandwich is getting a high from this and feels high-status because of behavior like this. While that in itself is fine, the whole post does have the feel of gloating to it. I simultaneously want to upvote it for information and downvote it for lowering the overall level of civility.
Here’s my attempt to clarify how I wish to be engaged with: convey whatever information you feel is true. Be as reluctant to actively insult me as you would anyone else, bearing in mind that a simple “this is incorrect” is not insulting to me, and nor is “you’re being manipulative”. “This is crap” always lowers the standard of debate. If you spell out what’s crappy about it, your readers (including yours truly) can grasp for themselves that it’s crap.
Of course, if nyan_sandwich just came from 4chan, we can congratulate him on being an infinitely better human being than everyone else he hangs out with, as well as on saying something that isn’t 100% insulting, vulgar nonsense. (I’d say less than 5% insulting, vulgar nonsense.) Actually, his usual contexts considered, I may upvote him after all. I know what it takes to be more polite than you’re used to others being.
That doesn’t sound right. Here’s a quote from Crocker’s rules:
Another quote:
Quote from our wiki:
There’s a decision theoretic angle here. If I declare Crocker’s rules, and person X calls me a filthy anteater, then I might not care about getting valuable information from them (they probably don’t have any to share) but I refrain from lashing out anyway! Because I care about the signal I send to person Y who is still deciding whether to engage with me, who might have a sensitive detector of Crocker’s rules violations. And such thoughtful folks may offer the most valuable critique. I’m afraid you might have shot yourself in the foot here.
I think this is generally correct. I do wonder about a few points:
If I am operating on Crocker’s Rules (I personally am not, mind, but hypothetically), and someone’s attempt to convey information to me has obvious room for improvement, is it ever permissible for me to let them know this? Given your decision theory point, my guess would be “yes, politely and privately,” but I’m curious as to what others think as well. As a side note, I presume that if the other person is also operating by Crocker’s Rules, you can say whatever you like back.
Do you mean improvement of the information content or the tone? If the former, I think saying “your comment was not informative enough, please explain more” is okay, both publicly and privately. If the latter, I think saying “your comment was not polite enough” is not okay under the spirit of Crocker’s rules, neither publicly nor privately, even if the other person has declared Crocker’s rules too.
When these things are orthogonal, I think your interpretation is clear, and when information would be obscured by politeness the information should win—that’s the point of Crocker’s Rules. What about when information is obscured by deliberate impoliteness? Does the prohibition on criticizing impoliteness win, or the permit for criticizing lack of clarity? In any case, if the other person is not themselves operating by Crocker’s Rules, it is of course important that your response be polite, whatever it is.
Basically, no. If you want to criticize people for being rude to you just don’t operate by Crocker’s rules. Make up different ones.
Question: do Crocker’s rules work differently here than I’m used to? I’m used to a communication style where people say things to get the point across, even though such things would be considered rude in typical society, not for being insulting but for pointless reasons, and we didn’t do pointless things just to be typical. We were bluntly honest with each other, even (actually especially) when people were wrong (after all, it was kind of important that we convey that information accurately, completely and as quickly as possible in some cases), but to be deliberately insulting when information could have been just as easily conveyed some other way (as opposed to when it couldn’t be), or to be insulting without adding any useful information at all, was quite gauche. At one point someone mentioned that if we wanted to invoke that in normal society, say we were under Crocker’s rules.
So it looks like the possibilities worth considering are:
Someone LIED just to make it harder for us to fit in with normal society!
Someone was just wrong.
You’re wrong.
Crockering means different things to different people.
Which do you think it is?
Cousin it’s comment doesn’t leave much room for doubt.
Baiting and switching by declaring Crocker’s rules then shaming and condescending when they do not meet your standard of politeness could legitimately be considered a manipulative social ploy.
I didn’t consider Crocker’s rules at all when reading nyan’s comment and it still didn’t seem at all inappropriate. You being outraged at the ‘vulgarity’ of the phrase “damsel in distress crap” is a problem with your excess sensitivity and not with the phrase. As far as I’m concerned “damsel in distress crap” is positively gentle. I would have used “martyrdom bullshit” (but then I also use bullshit as a technical term).
Crocker’s rules is about how people speak to you. But for all it is a reply about your comment nyan wasn’t even talking to you. He was talking to the lesswrong readers warning them about perceived traps they are falling into when engaging with your comment.
Like it or not people tend to reciprocate disrespect with disrespect. While you kept your comment superficially civil and didn’t use the word ‘crap’ you did essentially call everyone here a bunch of sexist Christian hating bullies. Why would you expect people to be nice to you when you treat them like that?
The impression I have is that calling Crocker’s rules being never acting offended or angry at the way people talk to you, with the expectation that you’ll get more information if people don’t censor themselves out of politeness.
Some of your reactions here are not those I expect from someone under Crocker’s rules (who would just ignore anything insulting or offensive).
So maybe what you consider as “Crocker’s rules” is what most people here would consider “normal” discussion, so when you call Crocker’s rules, people are extra rude.
I would suggest just dropping reference to Crocker’s rules, I don’t think they’re necessary for having a reasonable discussion, and they they put pressure on the people you’re talking to to either call Crocker’s rules too (giving you carte blanche to be rude to them), otherwise they look uptight or something.
Possible. I’m inexperienced in talking with neurotypicals. All I know is what was drilled into me by them, which is basically a bunch of things of the form “don’t ever convey this piece of information because it’s rude” (where the piece of information is like… you have hairy arms, you’re wrong, I don’t like this food, I don’t enjoy spending time with you, this gift was not optimized for making me happy—and the really awful, horrible dark side where they feel pressured never to say certain things to me, like that I’m wrong, they’re annoyed by something I’m doing, I’m ugly, I sound stupid, my writing needs improvement—it’s horrible to deal with people who never say those things because I can never assume sincerity, I just have to assume they’re lying all the time) that upon meeting other neurodiverse I immediately proceeded to forget all about. And so did they. And THAT works out well. It’s accepted within that community that “Crocker’s rules” is how the rest of the world will refer to it.
Anyway, if I’m not allowed to hear the truth without having to listen to whatever insults anyone can come up with, then so be it, I really want to hear the truth and I know it will never be given to me otherwise. But there IS supposed to be something between “you are not allowed to say anything to me except that I’m right about everything and the most wonderful special snowflake ever” and “insult me in every way you can think of”, even if the latter is still preferable to the former. (Is this community a place with a middle ground? If so, I didn’t think such existed. If so, I’ll gladly go by the normal rules of discussion here.)
My experience of LW is that:
the baseline interaction mode would be considered rude-but-not-insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
the interaction mode invoked by “Crocker’s rules” would be considered insulting by most American subcultures, especially neurotypical ones
there’s considerable heterogeneity in terms of what’s considered unacceptably rude
there’s a tentative consensus that dealing with occasional unacceptable rudeness is preferable to the consequences of disallowing occasional unacceptable rudeness, and
the community pushes back on perceived attempts to enforce politeness far more strongly than it pushes back on perceived rudeness.
Dunno if any of that answers your questions.
I would also say that nobody here has come even remotely close to “insult in every conceivable way” as an operating mode.
YES!
There seem to be a lot of new people introducing themselves on the Welcome thread today/yesterday. I would like to encourage everyone to maybe be just a tad bit more polite, and cognizant of the Principle of Charity, at least for the next week or two, so all our newcomers can acclimate to the culture here.
As someone who has only been on this site for a month or two (also as a NT, socially-skilled, female), I have spoken in the past about my difficulties dealing with the harshness here. I ended up deciding not to fight it, since people seem to like it that way, and that’s ok. But I do think the community needs to be aware that this IS in fact an issue that new (especially NT) people are likely to shy away from, and even leave or just not post because of.
tl;dr- I deal with the “rudeness”, but want people to be aware that is does in fact exist. Those of us who dislike it have just learned to keep our mouths shut and deal with it. There are a lot of new people now, so try to soften it for the next week or two.
(Note: I have not been recently down-voted, flamed, or crushed, so this isn’t just me raging.)
I’m unlikely to change my style of presentation here as a consequence of new people arriving, especially since I find it unlikely that the wave of introductions reflects an actual influx of new people, as opposed to an influx of activity on the Welcome threads making the threads more visible and inspiring introductions.
If my presentation style is offputting to new people who prefer a different style, I agree that’s unfortunate. I’m not sure that my dealing by changing my style for their benefit—supposing they even benefit from it—is better.
You are correct, in that I do believe that many of the introductions here are people who have been lurking a long time, but are following the principle of social proof, and just introducing themselves now that everyone else is.
However, I do think that once they have gone through the motions of setting up an account an publishing their introduction, that self-consistency will lead them to continue to be more active on this site; They have just changed their self-image to that of “Member of LW” after all!
Your other supposition- that they might not benefit from it… I will tell you that I have almost quit LW many times in the past month, and it is only a lack of anything better out there that has kept me here.
My assumption is that you are OK with this, and feel that people that can’t handle the heat should get out of the kitchen anyway, so to speak.
I think that is a valid point, IFF you want to maintain LW as it currently stands. I will admit that my preferences are different in that I hope LW grows and gets more and more participants. I also hope that this growth causes LW to be more “inclusive” and have a higher percentage of females (gender stereotyping here, sorry) and NTs, which will in effect lower the harshness of the site.
So I think our disagreement doesn’t stem from “bad” rationality on either of our parts. It’s just that we have different end-goals.
I am going to share with you a trick that is likely to make staying here (or anywhere else with some benefit) easier...
Prismattic’s guaranteed (or your money back) method for dealing with stupid or obnoxious text on the Internet:
Read the problematic material as though it is being performed by Gonzo’s chickens, to the tune of the William Tell Overture.
When this gets boring, you can alternate with reading it as performed by the Swedish chef, to the tune of Ride of the Valkyries.
Really, everything becomes easier to bear when filtered this way. I wish separating out emotional affect was as easy in tense face-to-face situations.
Can you confirm that you’re actually responding to what I wrote?
If so, can you specify what it is about my presentation style that has encouraged you to almost quit?
I’m sorry, I did not want to imply that you specifically made me want to quit. In all honesty, the lack of visual avatars means I can’t keep LW users straight at all.
But since you seem to be asking about your presentation style, here is me re-writing your previous post in a way that is optimized for a conversation I would enjoy, without feeling discomfort.
Original:
How I WISH LW operated (and realize that 95% of you do not wish this)
I asked about my presentation style because that’s what I wrote about in the first place, and I couldn’t tell whether your response to my comment was actually a response to what I wrote, or some more general response to some more general thing that you decided to treat my comment as a standin for.
I infer from your clarification that i was the latter. I appreciate the clarification.
Your suggested revision of what I said would include several falsehoods, were I to have said it.
I had to fill in some interpretations of what I thought you could have meant. If what I filled in was false, it is just that I do not know your mind as well as you do. If I did, I could fill in things that were true.
Politeness does not necessarily require falsity. Your post lacked the politeness parts, so I had to fill in politeness parts that I thought sounded like reasonable things you might be thinking. Were you trying to be polite, you could fill in politeness parts with things that were actually true for you (and not just my best guesses.)
I agree that politeness does not require falsity.
I infer from your explanation that your version of politeness does require that I reveal more information than I initially revealed. Can you say more about why?
I should hope not. I can conceive of more ways to insult than I can type in a day, depending on how we want to count ‘ways’.
How do I insult thee? Let me count the ways.
I insult thee to the depth and breadth and height
My mind can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the lack of Reason and the craft of Bayes.
Turning and turning in the narrowing spiral
The user cannot resist those memes which are viral;
The waterline is lowered; beliefs begin to cool;
Mere tribalism is loosed, upon Lesswrong’s school,
The grey-matter is killed, and everywhere
The knowledge of one’s ignorance is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Heh. I’m not sure why you felt compelled to rhyme there, though; Yeats didn’t.
I must confess, I have never actually heard the words ‘gyre’ and ‘falconer’. I assumed they could be pronounced in such a way that it would sound like a rhyme. In my head, they both were pronounced like ‘hear’. Likewise, I assumed one could pronounce ‘world’ and ‘hold’ in such a way that they could sort-of rhyme. In my head, ‘hold’ was pronounced ‘held’ and ‘world’ was pronounced ‘weld.’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEunVObSnVM
Apparently, this is not the case. Oops.
Although I must admit I was tempted take it up as a novel challenge just to demonstrate how absurd the hyperbole was.
Returning to this… if you’re still tempted, I’d love to see your take on it. Feel free to use me as a target if that helps your creativity, though I’m highly unlikely to take anything you say in this mode seriously. (That said, using a hypothetical third party would likely be emotionally easier.)
Unrelatedly: were you the person who had the script that sorts and display’s all of a user’s comments? I’ve changed computers since being handed that pointer and seem to have misplaced the pointer.
No, that’d be Wei Dai, I think; eg. I recently used http://www.ibiblio.org/weidai/lesswrong_user.php?u=Eliezer_Yudkowsky to point out that Eliezer has more than one negative comment (contra the cult leader accusation).
Hah! Awesome. Thank you!
You might like this comment.
This should be strongly rejected, if Crocker’s Rules are ever going to do more good than harm. I do not mean that it is not the case given existing norms (I simply do not know one way or the other), but that norms should be established such that this is clearly not the case. Someone who is unable to operate according to Crocker’s Rules attempting to does not improve discourse or information flow—no one should be pressured to do so.
I agree with you in the abstract.
The problem is, the more a community is likely to consider X a “good” practice, the more it is likely to think less of those who refuse to do do X, whatever X is; so I don’t see a good way of avoiding negative connotations to “unable to operate according to Crocker’s Rules”.
… that is, unless the interaction is not symmetric, so that when one side announces Crocker’s rules, there is no implicit expectation that the other side should do the same (with the associated status threat); for example if on my website I mention Crocker’s rules next to the email form or something.
But in a peer-to-peer community like this, that expectation is always going to be implicit, and I don’t see a good way to make it disappear.
Well, here’s me doing my part: I don’t declare Crocker’s rules, and am unlikely to ever do so. Others can if they wish.
As I’ve mentioned before, I am not operating by Crocker’s rules. I try to be responsible for my emotional state, but realize that I’m not perfect at this, so tell me the truth but there’s no need to be a dick about it. I am not unlikely, in the future, to declare Crocker’s rules with respect to some specific individuals and domains, but globally is unlikely in the foreseeable future.
Here’s my part too: I don’t declare Crocker’s rules and do not commit to paying any heed to whether others have declared Crocker’s rules. I’ll speak to people however I see fit—which will include taking into account the preferences of both the recipient and any onlookers to precisely the degree that seems appropriate or desirable at the time.
I don’t know about getting rid of it entirely, but we can at least help by stressing the importance of the distinction, and choosing to view operation by Crocker’s rules as rare, difficult, unrelated to any particular discussion, and of only minor status boost.
Another approach might be to make all Crocker communication private, and expect polite (enough) discourse publicly.
Wikipedia and Google seem to think Eliezer is the authority on Crocker’s Rules. Quoting Eliezer on sl4 via Wikipedia:
Also, from our wiki:
Looking hard for another source, something called the DoWire Wiki has this unsourced:
So if anyone is using Crocker’s Rules a different way, I think it’s safe to say they’re doing it wrong, but only by definition. Maybe someone should ask Crocker, if they’re concerned.
OK.
FWIW, I agree that nyan-sandwich’s tone was condescending, and that they used vulgar words.
I also think “I suppose they can’t be expected to behave any better, we should praise them for not being completely awful” is about as condescending as anything else that’s been said in this thread.
Yeah, you’re probably right. I didn’t mean for that to come out that way (when I used to spend a lot of time on places with low standards, my standards were lowered, too), but that did end up insulting. I’m sorry, nyan_sandwich.
A lot of intelligent folks have to spend a lot of energy trying not to be rude, and part of the point of Crocker’s Rules is to remove that burden by saying you won’t call them on rudeness.
Not all politeness is inconsistent with communicating truth. I agree that “Does this dress make me look fat” has a true answer and a polite answer. It’s worth investing some attention into figuring out which answer to give. Often, people use questions like that as a trap, as mean-spirited or petty social and emotional manipulation. Crocker’s Rule is best understood as a promise that the speaker is aware of this dynamic and explicitly denies engaging in it.
That doesn’t license being rude. If you are really trying to help someone else come to a better understanding of the world, being polite helps them avoid cognitive biases that would prevent them from thinking logically about your assertions. In short, Crocker’s Rule does not mean “I don’t mind if you are intentionally rude to me.” It means “I am aware that your assertions might be unintentionally rude, and I will be guided by your intention to inform rather than interpreting you as intentionally rude.
Right, I wasn’t saying anything that contradicted that. Rather, some of us have additional cognitive burden in general trying to figure out if something is supposed to be rude, and I always understood part of the point of Crocker’s Rules to be removing that burden so we can communicate more efficiently. Especially since many such people are often worth listening to.
For what it’s worth, I generally see some variant of “please don’t flame me” attached only to posts which I’d call inoffensive even without it. I’m not crazy about seeing “please don’t flame me”, but I write it off to nervousness and don’t blame people for using it.
Caveat: I’m pretty sure that “please don’t flame me” won’t work in social justice venues.
Excellent analysis. I just changed my original upvote for that post to a downvote, and I must admit that it got me in exactly every way you explained.
I had missed this. The original post read as really weird and hostile, but I only read after having heard about this thread indirectly for days, mostly about the way how later she seemed pretty intelligent, so I dismissed what I saw and substituted what I ought to have seen. Thanks for pointing this out.
Upvoted
I disagree. It’s an honest expression of feeling, and a reasonable statement of expectations, given LW’s other run-ins with self-identified theists. It may be a bit overstated, but not terribly much.
Do you really think it’s only a bit overstated? I mean, has anybody been banned for being religious? And has anybody here indicated that they hate Christians without immediately being called on falling into blue vs. green thinking?
From her other posts, AspiringKnitter strikes me as being open-minded and quite intelligent, but that last paragraph really irks me. It’s self-debasing in an almost manipulative way—as if she actually wants us to talk to her like we “only want [her] to hate God” or as if we “really hate Christians”. Anybody who has spent any non-trivial amount of time on LW would know that we certainly don’t hate people we disagree with, at least to the best of my knowledge, so asserting that is not a charitable or reasonable expectation. Plus, it seems that it would now be hard(er) to downvote her because she specifically said she expects that, even given a legitimate reason to downvote.
I agree. See my other post deconstructing the troll-techniques used.
Well, some of Eliezer’s posts about religion and religious thought have been more than a little harsh. (I couldn’t find it, but there was a post where he said something along the lines of “I have written about religion as the largest imaginable plague on thinking...”) They didn’t explicitly say that religious people are to be scorned, but it’s very easy to read in that implication, especially since many people who are equally vocal about religion being bad do hold that opinion.
Banned? Not that I know of. But there have certainly been Christians who have been serially downvoted, perhaps more than they deserved.
“Hate” may be too strong a word, but the original poster’s meaning seems to lean closer to “openly intolerant”, which is true and partially justified.
EDIT: Looking back, the original poster was asking if they would be banned, not claiming so. So that doesn’t seem to be a valid criticism.
Being honest and having reasonable expectations of being treated like a troll does not disqualify a post from being a troll.
Classic troll opening. Challenges us to take the post seriously. Our collective ‘manhood’ is threatened if react normally (eg saying “trolls fuck off”).
Insulting straw man with a side of “you are an irrational cult”.
“Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Concern troll disclaimer. Classic.
Again undertones of “you are a cult and you must accept my medicine or turn into a cult”. Again we are challenged to take it seriously.
I didn’t quite understand this part, but again, straw man caricature.
Theres a rhetorical meme on 4chan that elegantly deals with this kind of crap:
’nuff said
classic reddit downvote preventer:
Post a troll or other worthless opinion
Imply that the hivemind wont like it
Appeal to people’s fear of hivemind
Collect upvotes.
again implying irrational insider/outsider dynamic, hivemind tendencies and even censorship.
Of course the kneejerk response is “no no, we don’t hate you and we certainly won’t censor you; please we want more christian trolls like you”
And top it off with a bit of sympathetic character, damsel-in-distress crap. EDIT: Oh and the bit about hating God is a staw-man. /EDIT
This is not necessarily deliberate, but it doesn’t have to be.
Trolling is a art. and Aspiring_Knitter is a artist. 10⁄10.
I don’t follow how indicating that she’s actually read the site can be a mark against her. If the comment had not indicated familiarity with the site content, would you then describe it as less trollish?
it’s a classic troll technique. It’s not independent of the other trollish tendencies. Alone, saying those things does not imply troll, but in the presence of other troll-content it is used to raise perceived standing and lower the probability that they are a troll.
EDIT: and yes, trollish opinions without trollish disclaimers raise probability of plain old stupidity.
EDIT2: Have to be very careful with understanding the causality of evidence supplied by hostile agents. What Evidence Filtered Evidence and so on,
So… voicing disagreement boldly is trolling, voicing it nervously is trolling and trying to prevent being called out. Signalling distance from the group is trolling and accusations of hive mind, signalling group membership is trolling and going “Seriously, I’m one of you guys”. Joking about the image a group idea’s have, in the same way the group itself does, is straw-manning and caricature, seriously worrying about those ideas is damsel-in-distress crap.
Okay, so I see the bits that are protection against being called a troll. What I don’t see is the trolling. Is it “I’m a Christian”? If you think all Christians should pretend to be atheists… well, 500 responses disagree with you. Is it what you call straw men? I read those as jokes about what we look like to outsiders, but even if they’re sincere, they’re surrounded with so much display of uncertainty that “No, that’s not what we think.” should end it then and there. And if AspiringKnitter where a troll, why would she stop trolling and write good posts right after that?
Conclusion: You fail the principle of charity forever. You’re a jerk. I hope you run out of milk next time you want to eat cereal.
Deliberate, active straw manning sarcasm for the purpose of giving insult and conveying contempt.
Yes, trolling is distinguished from what nyan called “troll-bait” by, for most part, duration. Trolls don’t stop picking fights and seem to thrive on the conflict they provoke. If nyan tried to claim that AspiringKnitter was a troll in general—and fail to update on the evidence from after this comment—he would most certainly be wrong.
He wasn’t very charitable in his comment, I certainly would have phrased criticism differently (and directed most of it at those encouraging damsel in distress crap.) But for your part you haven’t failed the principle of charity—you have failed to parse language correctly and respond to the meaning contained therein.
This is not ok.
The cereal thing is comically mild. The impulse to wish bad things on others is a pretty strong one and I think it’s moderated by having an outlet to acknowledge that it’s silly in this or maybe some other way—I’d rather people publicly wish me to run out of milk than privately wish me dead.
Calling nyan a jerk in that context wasn’t ok with me and nor was any joke about wanting harm to come upon him. It was unjustified and inappropriate.
I don’t much care what MixedNuts wants to happen to nyan. The quoted combination of words constitutes a status transaction of a kind I would see discouraged. Particularly given that we don’t allow reciprocal personal banter of the kind this sort insult demands. If, for example, nyan responded with a pun on a keyword and a reference to Mixed’s sister we wouldn’t allow it. When insults cannot be returned in kind the buck stops with the first personal insult. That is, Mixed’s.
This is admirably compelling.
Upvoted.
I am happy that someone other than me gets upset when they see these “jokes” on here.
(I also downvoted the “jerk” comment)
[emphasis mine]. You assume that nyan is male. Where did “he” say that? nyan explicitly claims to be a “genderless internet being” in the introductions thread.
Last LW survey came out with 95% male, IIRC. 95% sure of something is quite strong. nyan called Aspiring_Knitter a troll on much less solid evidence. Also, you come from the unfortunate position of not having workable genderless pronouns.
I’ll allow it.
That’s fair. I used male because you sounded more like a male—and still do. If you are a genderless internet being then I will henceforth refer to you as an ‘it’. If you were a genderless human I would use the letter ‘v’ followed by whatever letters seem to fit the context.
I wished nyan_sandwich to stub eir toe, but immediately regretted it as too harsh.
Well, who knows what MixedNuts’ wishes? Wishing wedrifid runs out of milk doesn’t exclude this latter possibility.
I’m also reminded, of all the silly things, (the overwhelmingly irrational) Simone Weil:
Everyone does, because I said it!
Delicious controversy. Yum. I might have a lulz-relapse and become a troll.
Burn the witch!
Disagreement is not trolling. Neither is nervous disagreement. The hivemind thing had nothing to do with status signaling, it was about the readers insecurity. The group membership/cultural knowledge signaling thing is almost always used as a delivery vector for a ignoble payload.
They didn’t look like jokes or uncertainty to me. I am suddenly gripped by a mortal fear that I may not have a sense of humor. The damsel in distress thing was unconnected to the ideas thing.
TL;DR: what wedrifid said.
Again, they still don’t look like jokes. If everyone else decides they were jokes, I will upmod my belief that I am a humorless internet srs-taker. EDIT: oh I forgot to address the AS is not troll claim. It has been observed, in the long history of the internet, that sometimes a person skilled in the trolling arts will post a masterfully crafted troll-bait, and then decide to forsake their lulzy crusade for unknown reasons. /EDIT
Joke is on you. nyan_sandwich″s human alter-ego doesn’t eat cereal.
nyan_sandwich may have been stricken with a minor case of confirmation bias when they made that assessment, but I think it still stands.