posted on Oct, 25 2023 @ 09:58 PM
originally posted by: SheWasTheDarkness
a reply to: ksihkahe
In the microcosm. I wasn't talking in global sociological reference, but how it relates to conversation here. At this site. It singles themselves out
to incur accusations of being called parrots of multinational and corrupt government apologists.
And, what if what they say isn't all "political beliefs backed by corporations, hedge funds, the global thought police, and tech monopolies?" If you
are dismissing some valid points to lump everything opposing into the category of an uncritical parrot, you're in the pot/kettle conundrum.
That's why I liked them. When everyone was in a smug circle-jerk of absolute correctness, they'd come in and 'parrot' the viewpoint everyone was smug
against.
From outside, they were disrupting mostly a center/far-right conservative echo-chamber.
First I should clarify that it appears you may think I was talking about a specific series of members another person listed. I was not discussing that
list of people, though I'm sure it applies to some, and I very adequately described the traits of those I was talking about.
I was very specifically addressing the assertion of what was courageous and discussing a particular subset of agenda posters here that fit your
description of brave simply by merit of being in opposition to majority opinion. Your statement implied this was somehow heroic and they are no more
heroic than right wing sycophants posting in a similarly brainless way. And trolls are just trolls. If they want to troll that's fine, but obviously
there is a limit to what is tolerated and on ATS that limit was too high for quite some time. Some people didn't adjust, but it was also very unclear
how the site was changing. There are plenty of members with valid grievances, but if some cared as much about the site and how members were treat
before they were banned as after... maybe they wouldn't be banned. Doesn't make it fair, but not being fair doesn't make my statements untrue or make
it my fault.
Either way, it's not courageous to risk people saying mean things about your anonymous screen name on the Internet. It just isn't and echo chambers
are irrelevant to that statement. I'm not romanticizing pure contrarianism as some kind of virtue. It sure as hell doesn't seem like a virtue when
intelligent conversation is intentionally derailed by bickering because extremists with the opposite opinion don't understand the nuance of a
debate.
This isn't a microcosm in a vacuum either. By your reckoning, relative to the state of the digital landscape, you would have called leper colonies
echo chambers. Blaming people who have nowhere else to go for sharing a space or feeling the need to be disruptive to them simply because of that, is
very um... genocidey. If you don't think that right wing opinions literally being made illegal justifies a little slack about echo chambers on the few
websites it's allowed, maybe you're simply intolerant of right wing opinions.
I don't think that the original post you responded to is the quality we want here either, so don't misconstrue it as support for that. I support being
able to tell the truth, no matter who does or doesn't like it, as I see it. I don't need to make threads about my political beliefs every day, because
it's not ever day I feel I have something that needs to be said. I don't have to comment every time I see something I don't like.
We have been capable of having a discussion, in which there were misunderstandings and outright disagreements, and we made it through. If people can't
do that, and can't just walk away from it, they should go be somewhere that makes them happy. Contrarianism and intolerance hiding under a facade of
virtue isn't a positive thing to have on any site.