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Comment by shawn | Hacker News Reader

It always bugged me that /r/all dangled women like you’re picking out meat from a supermarket. Why not men too, or neither?

That said, incelism is a retaliation against the false idea that everyone has an equal chance at finding a mate. It didn’t have to be like this. It’s what happens when childhood feel-good stories are taken as belief.

Unless you propose to ruthlessly ban everyone who forms communities, Reddit is merely a reflection of ourselves. Humans are a messy species and always have been.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18012374 and marked it off-topic.

Why is this not allowed to be discussed here dang?

What's going on on reddit is something never before seen and has directly lead to the rise of extremism in the US. Every thread about reddit should be about this, nothing else matters in the context of what's going on here - on topic or not. How are more people not paying attention or maybe they are and OK with it, which is even scarier.

You've done the same to my comments about this exact issue in the past. You're denying visibility to an issue so much more important than some inc fluff piece, on the grounds of what - making YC funded companies look bad? Being off topic? Too political?

The admin team has shown a flagrant and criminally negligent disregard for the ethical and social impact of their platform which has lead directly to the loss of human life on more than one occasion, the rise of extremism and fascism but we're not allowed to talk about it here on any threads, why?

Because Reddit drama is tedious and predictable, and tends to suck the oxygen away from other topics.

Right, but the topic here was Reddit’s actions with regards to certain subreddits, and why they can’t simply purge everybody that people wish they would.

It was also on-topic regarding what I replied to, so it was more than a little surprising to see it detached as off-topic. And I find it intellectually gratifying to analyze group dynamics.

Either way, it’s your site, your rules. There are better things to discuss.

    > Unless you propose to ruthlessly ban everyone who 
    > forms communities, Reddit is merely a reflection 
    > of ourselves. Humans are a messy species and always 
    > have been.

I think that's panglossian. There was no public place with the type of content on Reddit 30 years ago. It didn't exist outside of zines. Things change.

This isn't the best of all possible worlds. This is the 1930s, compared to the 1920s. It's the 1970s, compared to the 1960s. A reversal in attitude is inevitable.

And Reddit is not a good representation of humanity, even now. It skews to certain demographics (eg: advertisers, certain types of adolescents, interest groups, etc).

Is "ruthless moderation" ever okay? Is it okay to "ruthlessly moderate" a website if people post kiddie porn? Or bomb-making instructions? Or leaked private photographs? I wouldn't get used to the way things are now, because the backlash to all the destructive garbage on the internet is likely to turn it all upside down.

I moderate, and we mods are not paragons of virtue.

They’re unpaid volunteers who have to make complex censorship decisions, which have very complex knock on effects.

Moderations is quickly becoming the drone wars of free speech. The free speech question of the 90s is dead, and the issue now is how much can we automod and how much can we socially engineer to manage the workload.

And this is not healthy, users can get banned or removed for just going to the wrong forums. Review of bans is dependent on people having the time to care about you.

My mod team doesn’t want this, but we don’t have a choice. As a result we are increasingly at odds with our community and the point of the core mission is increasingly alien to our daily tasks.

The point is that what’s coming is worse. The new tools are more subtle, and it’s decisions often un-appealable.

You can easily denounce kiddie porn.

Can you even know that there’s a watch list for keywords which gets updated regularly to identify new and emerging malignant behavior? Ideas which just don’t get play in forums?

I’m happy with my team, but if most of us were replaced by mods who had an agenda then it’s pretty much game over. Auto mod is a tool. The. Ore powerful it gets the greater the scope for it to be used in unhealthy ways.

And what’s the true effective result of auto mod ? A better idiot filter, and a reduction in work load.

Moderation just doesn’t scale enough to solve the problems of human nature. Automatic tools are too dumb to understand intent, and positively terrifying if they come close to figure it out. (All moderation tools are one step away from being weaponized to seek out dissent)

The future is bleaker. Once the obvious kiddie porn is sent back underground, those tools made to keep the peace are going to be used to “ensure future peace”.

You probably care about moderation more than Reddit C-level execs do.

Do you think you would personally feel more, or less, comfortable than Steve Huffman about hosting content from a hate group on your servers? I don't mean he intentionally supports it, but he tolerates it.

    >  unpaid volunteers

That's probably related to why your task is impossible. Reddit's valuation is $2 billion.

It’s the same at Facebook and other places, and it’s just going to get worse.

This is the kind of messy iob people are going to hate.

And for the record, I predict that the job is going to split. Community management and community policing. Part of the job now is specializing and identifying attackers, which was something never imagined before.

> That said, incelism is a retaliation against the false idea that everyone has an equal chance at finding a mate

That's an incredibly poor interpretation of "there's someone out there for everyone". And whatever version of that your parents told you, opining that women should be forced into sexual slavery is not a valid response.

And that's fine if those people would stay within those communities. But they don't. And so they present their warped vision of the world in front of women who just reel in shock and leave the site.

My point is that the overwhelming trend is for Reddit to become more mainstream. Which means leaving some communities behind.

I've always find the idea that subreddits are communities laughable. I know communities are some kind of brand and advertiser wet dream but it's just not working. I'm not part of the Apple community if I like their page on Facebook.

At best reddit is a food court. So of course the same person will post in many different subreddits, that's the entire point on the site.

Is there any source about women being so shocked that they leave reddit? They don't seem so scared on TwoXChromosomes or Gonewild.

Imgur is also a mainstream site and in the comments women are as thirsty as men.

That’s step one in losing your throne as the cool place to go. The Reddit founders understand this, but few others seem to respect how deadly it can be to social software.

Consider: “YC is so large that we need to suppress negative stories on HN.” What are the diffs between that, which is clearly a tactical mistake, and rooting out your list of unfavorable du jours? Are you sure it’s an invalid comparison?

    > your throne as the cool place to go

For a brief time in the late 1970s, wearing a swastica and defecating in public was cool. That was punk rock. A decade later, kids wore bell-bottoms and the zeitgeist was "peace love unity and respect."

The criteria for the "cool place to go" can change on a dime.

Defecating in public was not cool. Even GG Allin at his peak was eww.

    >  Even GG Allin at his peak was eww.

He had fans. You know what I was getting at though: 1980 https://youtu.be/DgMWyQtucyc had a different ethos to 1990 https://youtu.be/YOdh430r9kE

incelism is a retaliation against the false idea that everyone has an equal chance at finding a mate. It didn’t have to be like this. It’s what happens when childhood feel-good stories are taken as belief.

Most people handle the disappointing but universal discovery that not all childhood beliefs reflect reality without taking up rabid misogyny.

> without taking up rabid misogyny.

I've read many posts on /r/braincels and didn't see any misogyny. Just lots of depressed men who will vehemently reject any notion that they can improve their situation. From what I observed their hatred was either self directed or used to attack straw men caricatures of people trying to offer advice. They seem to be just depressed, frustrated people who cannot get into relationships and hang out and lick their wounds with juvenile defense mechanisms.

Two seconds of scrolling.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Braincels/comments/9gq4q8/average_2...

That's not misogyny. It's attacking a caricature. They do the same thing regarding male caricatures.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Braincels/comments/9gi58u/we_need_t...

The situation is only going to become more divisive if we don’t find a way to come together and work out differences. Especially with those we don’t like.

The commenter was saying there is no misogyny on the subreddit. That isn't true.

Yes, but when your parents tell you something that doesn’t match reality as if it were fact, you start questioning everything you know.

We’d never tell someone “Don’t worry about acquiring skills. A job will be given thanks to your charming personality.” But we’re perfectly fine telling teenagers this about love. It’s no wonder they rebel.

I know plenty of introverted people who have no trouble finding romantic relationships.

Maybe incels have trouble _because_ they are raging misogynists?

I also know many introverts who have never been in a relationship and are technically "involuntarily celibate", yet they don't become misogynists and don't adopt this weird incel ideology.

There's nothing wrong with being bad or awkward at romantic and sexual interactions. It's the people who already have a lot of issues that become misogynists as a result of romantic failure (or romantically fail because they were already misogynists).

Argument from experience is only valid when the dataset is large. On average, introverts won’t have success in love unless they work hard for it, just like everything else in life. It’s the lucky few who are the exception to the rule.

Consider that your phrasing could also be called victim blaming, depending on how you classify those in question. Are people with genetic deformities allowed to feel upset that they are less likely to find love?

It’s not a healthy way to deal with the situation, since it will only push people deeper into their entrenched communities, rallying those you label. After all, if the world thinks you’re a villain, why not act like one?

People with genetic deformities are not in general excused for misogyny, no. Isn't it more than a little insulting to suggest they'd need to be?

If you can’t find a quote to disagree with, you might be arguing with a strawman.

It's just a reflection of who's on the site.

Reddit is mostly full to the brim of dudes.

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