I did find the meta tangent interesting, though, because everything Unibro said here was correct:
MyUnibroDavis wrote: This is also like, the most passive aggressive place ever half the time.
every insulting adjective is replaced with a 2-3 polite word description that just comes across as condescending.
He is also right that such a standard is mostly fine. Bitter subtext is a lot less likely to lead to flame wars than outright aggression. “You tone feels condescending” is typically preferable to the trading of escalating epithets — although again, the epithets are still there, just more thinly barbed.
I have more of a problem when people think they are being slick by couching their attacks with empty disclaimers that anyone can see through.
Not directing this at any single person or post, but the 2nd half or so of this thread is a pretty good exhibit of why the quality of discussion on this board has gone down the toilet over the past several months. This isn’t the only thread, but it seems a large number of them at this point, especially among more polarizing players devolve into personal attacks, and just aggressive posting in general. I think a lot of us engage in it at times, but it’s been way over the top lately. People will do what they do I guess, it’s just a shame to see half of a thread wasted on this ridiculous amount of BS.
It’s the internet, so it’s not going to be the same as normal life discussion, but i imagine most people would rather not feel like they’re walking on egg shells whenever they make a post here.
“Not directing this at any single person, but the quality of discussion has gone down the toilet because of personal attacks and aggressive posting.” Wow, good thing that disclaimer was there, otherwise I might think that actually the poster had a specific person or people in mind!
I am not tagging this person, because tagging them is irrelevant to and only a distraction to my point, and their comment is nothing too distinct from other similar sentiments. See, I read this board for a while before joining. I loved to bookmark threads and posts to reference elsewhere online or socially with irl friends. And then for the peaks project I went back and reread the bulk of the major projects from years past. Feeling like the animosity or whatever is higher now is a total self-tell. Discussion has never been more anodyne. I think I said it during the peaks project, but some people seemed to be acting as if proper discussion etiquette may as well have been to post your thoughts and then dip. That is “walking on eggshells,” but not because the dialogue is more aggressive. It is demonstrably less, and if anyone thinks otherwise, go back to some of those projects and read some of the multi-page long fights that just kept escalating and escalating until one person or both people obviously got banned (or perhaps more charitably, got so mad they decided to just leave for multiple threads in a row, or sometimes even permanently).
What is actually meant by “walking on egg shells” and “aggressive posting” is “being pushed to defend takes.” That is it, and that is not real aggression. It might not always be productive, and I think — to bring it back to the original topic — doing it for what one would think would be an obvious joke is likely to derail a thread unproductively and for no real purpose, but honestly I am not too concerned about there being an informal standard where posts are expected to come with a certain amount of effort behind them. Perhaps that will exacerbate the effect of “walking on egg shells,” but to me being able to coherently defend your takes is a pretty base level expectation. And yes, I am fully aware that many are not accustomed to that expectation and prefer to just treat their personal assumptions as near-universally given. I am also aware that when challenged on those assumptions they would sooner lash out wildly about other people’s biases, or their choice of language or formatting, or really any possible tangent which could possibly distract from being expected to defend their own basketball stances.
On that subject, what rankles me a little more is when those expectations are claimed (or sorry, non-specifically implied) to be “aggressive” by posters who make it their habit to rant about what they see as “teenage” posting aesthetics; whether it be the use of lols or the use of emojis or simply “preferring modern players,” assuming an age and then attacking it seems to be one of the most reliable methods of a certain group of posters here. Generally not report-worthy in my eyes, but hardly conducive to discussion. Then again, I do not see any reason to assume the intent was ever to improve discussion. As soon as you start projecting, as soon as you start claiming that everyone should be in consensus about extemporaneous feelings, or (here is a good one) as soon as you start accusing people who agree with each other as being “alts” of each other, no, sorry, you have no ground to complain about the “quality” of discussion declining or whatever, and if anything, you are probably the biggest part of any “problem”.
Not referencing anyone in particular, of course.
And while we are bringing up passive-aggression, yes, Unibro is right that +1s are public, and if you (as an abstract “you”) think you are somehow adopting a neutral position by saying nothing, or trying to say things obliquely, all while handing out +1s to a specific voice and stance, you must have an extraordinarily low opinion of people’s ability to use this website’s functionalities to gauge “neutrality”. You cannot pretend to be above the fray while semi-openly backing one side over the other. Everyone can see those and know where you actually stand, just as everyone can read your past posts rather than accept your in the moment characterisations of yourself.
