Comment by ethagnawl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ethagnawl | Hacker News Reader

I generally agree with the author's sentiment regarding "the Old Internet". However, using "voat" and "thank goodness" in the same breath raised a red flag for me about the author and their motives. They mentioned being kicked off raddle.me for posting links to their site (the one that's currently linked to on the top of the HN homepage); maybe that was with good reason and not a result of gatekeeping?

For example, from _Men and Women and Marriage_:

> In contrast, from what I've observed of women's behavior, most women marry for money. Some of them marry several times for money. You see, women understand why marriage exists. It exists to ensure that women will be provided for while they raise their children. This is why so many marriages are dissolved after the children leave home. From the woman's perspective: no more children, no more reason to be married.

Perhaps, in addition to the conveniences, opportunities (learning, employment and otherwise), etc. the "New Internet" has afforded us, making this sort of trash harder to find is a bit of silver lining.

That would be a horrible comment to post here, but please don't do the internet thing of bringing the worst thing someone said (or the worst you can find) into an HN thread in order to make that be the topic instead. This is not the way to improve signal/noise ratio or serve intellectual curiosity on this site.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's far trashier to dig through a person's history to find the most risque tidbit you can in order to disqualify everything he is saying.

I went and read _Men and Women and Marriage_. It didn't strike me as a hate piece. It's the kind of thing that I could see some version of myself writing as an angsty teenager with a Mormon upbringing that was extremely focused on gender roles.

Multiple comments on this sub-thread have gone as far as accusing the author of "hate". The parent comment stops at "this sort of trash". I don't think that the authors of these comments would use those words if they heard this piece in person from the author, in an environment where they could question its more extreme assertions. Perhaps this person has themselves been through (or had a close friend go through) a bad divorce, and is simply venting under the guise of philosophical ramblings. It's totally natural to project your personal experience on the rest of the world in this way. It's something people have to be trained not to do.

We seem to be in the habit of turning our ire all the way up as soon as somebody barely crosses some invisible threshold of harmful opinion. That habit makes us a lot less effective at communicating. If it weren't for the article title and excerpt, I would assume from some of the commentors that this person had written a piece calling for wives-as-property or genocide or something. There's just no way to tell if it's all "trash" and "hate". Isn't there such a thing as a poorly-written post with vaguely sexist undertones that _isn't_ an atrocity?

I was very much on-board with his message until he brought up voat and raddle existing, "Thank goodness". Oh dear.

"Hello? Whole man disposal services? Do you offer same day pickup?"

The way you're just completely proving his point is amazing.

Voat is a breeding ground and gathering place for white supremacists.

A small selection of the top posts on Voat right now:

- "jew politician calls for war on whites" -> http://magaimg.net/img/9f2p.png

- "NFL player's wife accuses Dolphins owner of favoring 'Jew buddies'" -> https://www.timesofisrael.com/nfl-players-wife-accuses-dolph...

- "Everything's about race. Every single thing is about race. Remember that it's all about race, everything. All of it." -- member-only discussion

- "Voat in a nutshell" -> https://files.catbox.moe/se4iny.jpg

What those people really need is to have their opinions challenged by outsiders. That used to happen more on the early internet.

Keep in mind that they didn't leave Reddit because they wanted to leave. They left and made Voat because they were banned. Now they don't have to interact with people that have dissenting opinions, and they can ban you if you dissent.

Reddit is relieved because their users are no longer exposed to this toxicity. Unfortunately, now those users are no longer exposed to anything but toxicity.

One of reddit's most common in-jokes is the moderation team on /r/the_donald banning literally anyone who wasn't pro-Trump while allowing white supremacist posts on their subreddit.

So they were doing that anyway.

> One of reddit's most common in-jokes is the moderation team on /r/the_donald ...

This right here is my point. I know that and you know that. I don't subscribe to that subreddit.

But I still hear about what goes on there sometimes, because you know, reddit, stuff leaks out a little if it's popular.

So that wouldn't be an in-joke if they weren't self-aware that they're outcasts on reddit. Now tell me a voat in-joke, because I don't know any.

Do you know what goes on at voat? I don't, so I just made an account. What I see looks like a community isolated, not a community scorned. It's much worse than any unmoderated community on reddit could ever be. That's what I think is dangerous.

From my point of view, reddit dropped the banhammer and this thing called Voat popped out.

> What those people really need is to have their opinions challenged by outsiders. That used to happen more on the early internet.

This is your opinion, please don't present it as fact.

Feel free to spend your own time deradicalizing white supremacists, but don't insist that the problem is that normal people aren't being welcoming enough to white supremacists.

Can you please link to the list of Empirically Correct Viewpoints™ so that I can identify and purge myself of thoughtcrimes?

They aren't thought crimes, but they are views that will get you ostracized... and they should.

The rule is fairly simple, and does not require a list; if you believe that someone should have a different set of rules and expectations just because of a characteristic outside or their control, that is not acceptable.

Dividing the discourse into Correct people and The Others Who Shall Be Shunned is exactly the kind of binary thinking that is killing rational discourse.

You are never going to change someone's mind by shouting at them.

It kills far more than rational discourse. People have had their careers and lives ruined over what somebody else deems to be wrongthink.

Are you suggesting that there are NO viewpoints that are worth rejecting out of hand? If someone thinks that all black people should be killed, we need to entertain his views?

There are limits, and some views are not just a difference of opinion. Some viewpoints need to be shunned.

Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. What serves the value of the site is rather to ignore provocation and invest energy in what's intellectually interesting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Congratulations! Your personal values are presently inline with corporate values.

The world's largest moderators have you in mind when they're removing content. That must be great for you, because your experience is tailored for your personal satisfaction. And if you ever do happen upon something that offends you, you can report it and rest assured that corporate america will take care of it for you.

Now imagine you have a deeply held belief, and suddenly, it's been canceled. Your content has been banned, even though you made some well-received things. What do you do? Where do you go? Maybe you just give up on that belief, replace it with the new corporate belief, and move on.

But some years tick by, and now you find that all of your old beliefs have been canceled. Have you assimilated and given up contact with people that talk about canceled ideas and share canceled content? That's what you should have done. That's why our corporate monoculture is so harmonious. This is a wonderful thing... right?

If you're not ok with that, then maybe you need to get onboard with platforms that allow alternative opinions, because you might need one some day.

Not hating women == corporate shill. Nice.

Umm… raddle.me literally used to have "Made with [U+262D: hammer and sickle]" in the footer of every page. It's an explicitly far-left, anti-corporate, alternative platform.

So because you don't like some of their content it's a "good thing" that it's hard to find on the Internet?

I guess I miss the old internet, too.

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