D&D General "Red Orc" American Indians and "Yellow Orc" Mongolians in D&D

[Aldarc]

I swear the word "one" is the answer to this linguistic problem. Nobody takes "one" as meaning them in particular.

Maybe, but I did not take Snarf's "you" to be personally about me. My statement was more a general caution against making possible insinuations about people's characters. As they said earlier, the fact that the thread hasn't been locked is a testament to the posters and mods. But preserving that sort of decorum also requires not making things potentially personal or moving things in that direction, but, rather, it's preserved by keeping on point.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Snark, applied mostly for its emotional impact, in the middle of a call for reasoned discourse.

Next time I will avoid the obvious response when replying to a one-line "fixed that for you" post that ignored the prior several pages.

 

[Zardnaar]

But they...definitely did none of this with you specifically in mind. And again, they owed you nothing. If you had paid for products that they didn't give you, I would see where resentment could come into the picture, but this is just...they stopped selling a thing that they had every right to stop selling.

I feel like I'm missing some crucial thing, here, that informs your take on the situation.

Heck, I can see why some 4e players are resentful that wotc fully pulled the plug on the character builder instead of leaving it up. They paid for that service for years, and it was a service that they paid for often instead of buying books. But even then, we got every single month of access that we paid for, and it's not like they tried to delete people's pdfs of the magizine issues, so while I get why folks are resentful, I don't really agree that said resentment is caused by wotc doing anything they had no ethical right to do.

I used to agree with this completely, but I think the basic design of all the popular forms of social media (and news reporting in much of the world) means that we've entered a situation where opinions/ideas basically either are only amplified or suppressed (or people see it that way, and I can't say they're entirely wrong), and it seems like the amplification of certain ideas, rather than exposing them to sunlight and causing them to fall apart, just makes them reach more vulnerable/susceptible people where those ideas thrive. It seems like the major issue here is maybe the amplification, which didn't really happen in the same way pre-social-media, but virtually all social media was designed to cause (and indeed only in very recent years has any attempt been made to stop this - e.g. YouTube and Facebook recently changing algorithms to no longer push people hard to more extreme material - this was fascinatingly noticeable with my YouTube recommends). Forums don't cause the same amplification, I note, because they don't make decisions on what to show people based on votes etc., and don't try and "increase engagement".

(With news, there have always been attempts to "increase engagement" and so on, but first the 24-hour-news-cycle, and then the proliferation of free "news" on the internet, together with the reliance of an ad-supported model has made it much worse (at least one paywalled UK newspaper shows the "increase engagement" issue can happen without advertising propelling it though)).


This is an interesting claim. I'd wonder how old you are, what circles you move in, and so on. Because at 43, despite being from relatively liberal/left circles, I've absolutely heard people make racist comments and not get "blasted" (as in severely criticized), and not just white people either. There are certain kinds of racist comment that just aren't likely to fly with anyone in public, but there other kinds of racial stereotyping, particularly, and what I might call "racial sneering", which I've absolutely seen people get away with - and to continue to get away with today. And whilst there may be backlash from some of this when its in public, it's not sufficient to create actual consequences in most cases (c.f. most "cancelled" people getting a louder voice post "cancellation").

SPLC in an article said deplatforming was making the problem worse.

Drives it underground and the rhetoric gets more extreme. After a lone wolf guy shot 51 people here can't say I disagree.

We've had 1 American style mass shooting here by the locals that was the second with an Aussie import.

 

[Gradine]

Well, I disagree - especially when everything is controlled by private parties. There's no town square, no public commons - at least not in a meaningful way.

But if you consider this idea "absurd," then there's probably not much room for discussion.

The whole point is we are talking about private parties being responsive to the town square; and in a very meaningful way. That is what I have been proposing.

In any case, there certainly isn't a straight line from "hey, we're not selling this anymore because holy crap is thing super racist, sorry guys" and "this work is banned from all the world", let alone anything approaching legitimate widespread censorship, and frankly I don't believe there's a line connecting the two at all; but you're fully welcome to try to convince me otherwise.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This is probably getting tedious for both of us, not to mention others in the thread. I will only re-state what I've already said: I know that the quote isn't exactly the same thing, but it illustrates a phenomena whereby people are willing to stand by and do nothing as long as it isn't them, but that may lead to it ending up being them. I'm applying that logic to de-platforming, censorship, etc. One might be OK what is done today because it doesn't effect them or they don't like the thing, but what about tomorrow? It is like that old saying, "I might not agree with your opinion but I'll defend your right to express it." Or somesuch.

Ok. Deplatforming doesn’t deny anyone their right to express their opinion. It is t a situation wherein “we” are only okay with it because it isn’t happening to “us”. It’s a situation wherein a business’ right to free speech includes deciding what products they will or won’t carry, and what voice they will or won’t host on their platform.

Yeah. If you find it laughable, then there's no discussion - as I'm not interested in trying to convince you that it is a real thing.

Which is why I'm not in full opposition of disclaimers only. I think they're a decent middle ground that only a small minority will feel is too much or too little.

You’re still arguing against them, which I find very strange. They don’t restrict anything or tell you how to think.

And frankly, I find your claim of a pervasive “you must be this outraged” element to these discussions to be the most important aspect of this exchange. Both because IMO it is completely false, and because it accuses good people unfairly of a despicable behavior.

Again, I'm not comparing this to that, but again, let's not go there.

Then what example do you have that isn’t extremely hyperbolic, and is relevant to the case at hand?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

SPLC in an article said deplatforming was making the problem worse.

Deplatforming might, but the very fact that you're confusing deplatforming with "not amplifiying" really illustrates my point re: people thinking unless an opinion is being actively amplified, it's being "suppressed".

I'm not suggesting deplatforming. I'm suggesting we stop promoting opinions based on algorithms and metrics on social media, particularly where opinions are promoted because they "increase engagement" (which usually means they're extreme and/or controversial - reasonable opinions tend not to "increase engagement"). Even if you just made it so stuff only went to people if people manually sent it to them (effectively putting their name on it) you'd potentially make a huge impact.

(Re: the SPLC in particular there's no question deplatforming makes their job - tracking extremists and extreme groups - harder, because it means those people are no longer happily outing themselves on social media.)

 

[Vaalingrade]

Next time I will avoid the obvious response when replying to a one-line "fixed that for you" post that ignored the prior several pages.

I have now read my post one million times.

I didn't see the words 'fixed that for you' even once.

I'm tired of bigots and other scumbags hiding behind the sentiment of 'free speech' as license to do harm. I don't subscribe to your idea of letting them off the chain and never facing consequences is going to do anything since it didn't work for the past thousand years.

 

[Gradine]

Yeah, great. I heard the same arguments made by people in the 80s and the 90s and 00s to keep gay people (and later, transgender people) down.

Just because you think the state action dichotomy you learned from XKCD is clever as a one-line retort doesn't mean it's not an old and tired argument that hasn't been gone through for decades. Thanks, though, for your reasoned response that really added to the conversation.

One of these things is not like the other.

Homophobic/transphobic gatekeeping and diminishing the social power/reach of bigots are not the same thing. The real world is not a vacuum. They do not balance equally on any scale calibrated with a degree of sensibility. Furthermore, a large part of the reason we're seeing less of the former is because of the work being done through the latter.

Gatekeeping marginalized people is a social ill; gatekeeping bigotry is a social good. The former does real harm to real people; not doing the latter also causes real harm to real people. That's all there is to it. The reason it is so pithy is because it really is just that simple.

 

[Cadence]

I have now read my post one million times.

I didn't see the words 'fixed that for you' even once.

I'm tired of bigots and other scumbags hiding behind the sentiment of 'free speech' as license to do harm. I don't subscribe to your idea of letting them off the chain and never facing consequences is going to do anything since it didn't work for the past thousand years.

I like the idea of "punching Nazi's". There are a lot of folks I don't trust to identify who is actually a Nazi though. [Edit: Clearly consequences vs. no consequences is different from physical violences vs. no physical violence.]

 

[Gradine]

No. Not at all. What I am saying is that people think that there is some magic about the First Amendment (which applied to state action). That's great, and all, and I am a huge supporter of that.

But the FA did not arise in a vacuum; it arose from principles of free speech. Those principles are worth defending regardless of state action (or lack thereof). Simply parroting the First Amendment standard, especially on a board that attracts an international audience, is a poor substitute for reasoned discourse.

Freedom of speech is not unique to the U.S.A., and who I choose to allow access to my own platform or not is absolutely an expression of my freedom of speech.