Posted by:
midwestanon
(
)
Date: April 22, 2017 06:48PM
This thread seems to be about the catnip thread. As soon as some context was applied to the original poster and her remarks, I didn't find her racist. Some people were offended, and they are entitled to be offended. It is often inexplicable how people are offended and why, but the caveat is that it's not our problem if we haven't done anything wrong. Sometimes people are offended because of their own issues. This is how I see it.
Poopstone is another story. This poster does hit jobs. He goes into threads, makes racist and offensive remarks- remarks that would offend just about anyone- and then leaves the thread. People point out how racist and insensitive his remarks are,and call him out and invite him to reply and defend his position, and he never does. He is the definition of a coward. The fact that he does this, the whole hit-and-run posting, bothers me almost as much as the content of his posts. He holds all of these insanely ignorant and indefensible positions, but does not have the stones, apparently, to defend them. I can only conclude that he enjoys responses that are generated in response to his vitriol.
Despite all of this, I will continue to call him out each and every time. I think it's important, so I will do it. So much on the internet is not serious, and some things on this message board aren't serious sometimes, but in general, I think Rfm is serious, and I want to treat it seriously. That means if someone comes onto a thread and says something that is racist, homophobic, or sexist, that post should be responded to appropriately- meaning that their sexism and racism and homophobia should be pointed out and the poster should be told that posting such nonsense is not something that is tolerated here.
Poopstone has shown an unwillingness to rectify any of his Behaviour and a cowardice to even respond to the people he's offended. People have also alluded to allegations that I believe are true about him- such as responding to his own posts using a different screen name, and also him being an apologist for the church, although not an out-and-out apologist, just in some subtle ways. I know both of those things violate the Forum rules.
Poopstone should be banned from the forum.
Anyway, that's what I have to say about it. If people can't handle the way people act on the internet, then they shouldn't go on the internet. Message boards have guidelines for how to treat other posters, but the reality is that these guidelines are violated all the time, and when you don't see the person you're interacting with, don't know them in real life, and can react to their facial cues or expressions, you are going to end up saying whatever you want to them, without any consideration for their feelings or for how they might react to your words. This in general makes the internet very blunt, mean, and for some people, I guess, a frightening place to interact. You have to have a thick skin. Someone alluded earlier to an elderly poster not wanting to post on here because they were afraid that their post would be criticized. There are many a hard-nosed senior citizen posters on here who have demonstrated time and again that they couldn't give a shit what people think about what they have to say. It doesn't make them rude, it just makes them who they are. There are no considerations on the internet for treating people arbitrarily- no presidents, no Kings or Queens, just people who have things to say, and occasionally people who administer message boards like these or are paid to moderate and remove offensive content from places like BuzzFeed, or Facebook, or Twitter, Etc.
I'm glad it's like that here. Unless people give details about who they are, I don't know, and I like it that way. I don't want to have any subconscious prejudice or bias I might have against anyone influence what I might have to say to them. Frankly, in almost any given situation on RfM, I would rather not know if someone is young or old, black or white, male or female. The internet is the ultimate equalizer.
Postscript: obviously people know who you are (usually) if you're on something like Facebook or Twitter or some other kind of social media. I was mostly talking about forums like this, where people use pseudonyms Grand don't have to give details about their real name, age, etc.
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2017 07:14PM by midwestanon.