Comment by spaceseaman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by spaceseaman | Hacker News Reader

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You're implying the opioid epidemic is in part due to Reddit banning subreddits filled with hateful speech?* Or what? You're also making some odd as hell "both sides"-ish argument somewhere in there that I can't even parse.

I'm sorry, but we don't have to give spaces for people to be hateful - Reddit banning those assholes was the highlight of my week. I'm not trying to claim that these people should just be ignored, but you're conflating very separate problems.

More importantly, the people being affected by the opioid crisis are predominantly not members of these hateful groups, and I'm pretty frustrated you would conflate them in such a way just so you can have an excuse to talk about the loss of a safe space for hateful rhetoric.

*EDIT: After rereading what the poster wrote a few times, I believe they were attempting to claim that the subreddit bans would encourage more people to head to drug use, rather than vice-versa as I originally interpreted it - it's still pretty off-topic though, and again I'm not very sympathetic to people being sad they no longer have a place to be hateful.

I'd appreciate it if you'd remove your comment since I tried to back out immediately from that line of conversation. Would you mind agreeing?

If so, edit your comment to [removed] and I'll delete this one.

Otherwise, I can try to explain my original motives, and what I observed. But it's a tricky conversation to have, and there's a high chance people's tendency to instantly turn to hatred will focus on me. I'd rather pass.

Calling people out on nonsense isn't hatred.

"Black people are stupid, we need a white ethno-state" is hatred.

"You're wrong and your ideas are wrong" isn't hatred.

Calling people out on bad ideas is a necessary part of the discussion, to weed out bad ideas.

> I'd appreciate it if you'd remove your comment since I tried to back out immediately from that line of conversation. Would you mind agreeing?

Two days ago, I saw you post something asinine and I tried to respond. You deleted your comment before I could hit the reply button, and I lost the opportunity to quote and refute you.

If this is a recurring problem (that you change your mind about statements on a public forum), think a bit more before posting.

If I delete my comment and you can't respond, that's a feature, not a bug. This kind of comment is best left to an email.

The reason I backed out of this subthread is very simple: the first few replies were vaguely insinuating I might somehow be sympathetic to neonazis. That was enough for me to hit the "forget this" button.

> the first few replies were vaguely insinuating I might somehow be sympathetic to neonazis.

Please stop being so defensive. People dog-piled on you because they thought you said something dumb. They're not being "hateful" or "violent". Those words have meanings, and their meanings are actually directly related to why Reddit banned those subreddits. If you can't tell the difference between me saying "Yo your opinion is dumb and here's why" and "You're black you need to leave" then just wow, you may need to take a step away from the Internet for awhile.

I brought up Neo-Nazis and the Alt-Right because they were the main ones affected by the Reddit bans and your comment did not do enough to distance whatever you were talking about from them. Also, the Alt-Right had a large overlap with the subreddits you do seem to be talking about.

If you want to have a conversation about such a thing, I'm happy to engage over private message. But you bringing it up was so tangental, so unrelated, and so odd that I could not resist calling you out on it.

But again, it was just so out of place in a discussion where people are talking about the opioid crisis. The argument you're trying to make is horribly tangental and out of place.

To be especially frank: people are reacting to you so negatively because your comments are completely unrelated and showed an intense desire to discuss the subreddit bans. When we called you out on this, you got extraordinarily defensive and realized the conversation wasn't going to go your way. So you backed down. Welcome to intellectual discourse. If you don't feel confident defending your opinions in such a space...well maybe they're not opinions that you can defend very well.

If you don't feel confident defending your opinions in such a space

The point of HN is to be a search for the truth among colleagues, not a verbal barfight. The fact that you wanted to get into one immediately says a lot about both sides of the conversation.

your comment did not do enough to distance whatever you were talking about from them

You didn't even briefly pause to question whether I might be associated with them. Why should I need to distance myself from them when I'm merely talking about them? The causal linkage is backwards here.

Maybe you feel bad about reacting so harshly and are now backpedaling. Either way, you shouldn't get to force the conversation into a private message:

If you want to have a conversation about such a thing, I'm happy to engage over private message. But you bringing it up was so tangental, so unrelated, and so odd that I could not resist calling you out on it.

If I bring up a topic substantively, honestly, and in a way that's a search for the truth, it shouldn't matter whether it's done in public or in private.

I see Silly doing this everywhere. Asking people to remove their comments.

Edit: See what I did there, bud?

If I recall correctly Silly accused me of slandering some app developer because I posted a negative article.

You're posting about an accusation you can't even remember with incomplete information and out of context. That's like a trifecta of incivility.

If you can't remember exactly what I did, maybe don't spin a half-told version of it?

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