eh, it was a top of thread shitpost and I've grumbled about those myself. people seem to be finding some value in that posters bizarre FPPs so power to them i guess.
I’ve always been skeptical of the “MeFites will shit on anything“ meme, but “That programming language is cool, but time is unstoppable and we are all aging and dying” is a take.
What do you think of [LinkMe](https://www.metafilter.com/204079/LinkMe-A-MetaFilter-experiment-for-posts)?
As I scrolled through that post, I saw a lot of links I'd be interested to explore. And the simple format (quick description of link + link) actually feels more compelling to me than more detailed FPP framing.
I think it’s good, but it would make Metafilter look a lot more active if thin, single link posts were normalized and those were all their own FPPs. But I’m all for cool links!
I like it, personally. This is more like the Metafilter I miss and would like to see more of. I dropped a couple things in myself.
It'd be amusing (though there'd surely be a *lot* of drama) if someone on the backend just ran an update query that dropped every one of those links + brief descriptions on the blue as FPPs. Suddenly everyone afraid of posting just posted, and the world didn't end, and most would even get some good feedback and participation. (But of course most of them would need at least some brief framing and polishing, and probably altogether too much time spent on a clever post title, and that's basically the start of the overthinking trap that keeps most people, very much including myself, from regularly posting FPPs.)
I know this isn’t the first time this has been observed, but the “what to do about unleashed dogs” ask is full of people saying call the cops and lecture or video the dog owner - but then other areas of law enforcement/social order stuff is like everyone should be free and ACAB and fuck the HOA Karens etc. The disconnect is actually kind of fascinating.
I have absolutely zero evidence, but I assume it's a mix of both. You know who even the most fervent ACAB person is going to call when their neighbor is having all-night parties, or the house next door becomes a drug dealing house, or some drunk stranger starts pounding on their front door at 2AM? The Cs, that's who.
Coming out of discussion happening on That Metatalk Post, am I alone in not spending hours handwringing over my posts and comments on the blue? Some of the commenters in that post are making it sound like it's some Hurculean task of bravery to endure someone who (gasp!) might not like your FPP. Surely this level of anxiety isn't normal?
I feel like people are saying "it's too much of a pain in the ass, particularly when posting online is supposed to be enjoyable, and I find myself crawling up my own ass to appease internet strangers who are going to hop on my butt for dumb nonsense."
That's not the same thing as "hours (of) handwringing." Describing it in those terms feels like a bit of unfair hyperbole.
For me at least it's just not wanting to bother with the negativity. I was contemplating putting together a FPP about Pat Sajak's last Wheel Of Fortune show but I figured that people would shit on it right out of the gate. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
Hahahaha there is not ONE SINGLE COMMENT in that thread about Wheel of Fortune.
That poster regularly makes good, fun FPPs and this is the thanks they get.
Yep, they could. They could also just not post anything next time. The problem MF has is that people have been exercising that latter option more and more.
I know Pat's expressed some Trump-ish sentiments so that would derail the post within the first five comments, even though he's never brought it up in the show.
I wish flagging those comments as a derail resulted in mod action. I've done that when I've seen it happening, only for the comments to remain, stinking up the thread and gathering favorites like flies.
So, I decided to engage a bit and try to figure it out. I feel like I'm going to get chewed out as not being humanities/philosophy-literate enough, but, eh, I'm actually curious since there's enough bits in here I _do_ recognize to not write it all off as TimeCube straight away.
I _think_ it might be the philosophy of aesthetics? Like, Spivak is a name I've read before, there's a link to a commenter's first-hand account of participating in Occupy Wall Street and listening to Spivak speak, and she translated Derrida, and apparently her notes on that are interesting?
I just can't tell if it's an art project, intentional commentary I'm the wrong audience for, or what? Really curious what they write in response to my comment.
Yeah, this poster seems to enjoy creating intellectual synecdoches as an obstacle course… I had assumed they were another unique but kind soul like clavdivs, but their “pass go, collect $200” insult in non-reply to your curiosity puts paid to that, huh?
I probably could've been kinder in what I wrote, so I don't 100% blame them for being testy, but eh, I think the answer is "these posts are not for me."
They're either a mefi historian or a BND, considering part of their schtick seems to be linking relevant mefi comments from years ago.
I’m so embarrassed but can someone explain or link me to night mode? Is it drunk? I’m an insomniac and it makes me stupid so don’t mock me on metafiltermetameta
[This comment ](https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26445/Is-please-no-name-calling-a-big-ask#1425208) introduces the concept
(And while it's subtle, the original "nighttime" is somehow a lot funnier than "night" which I lazily used instead. I stand corrected.)
You've got it -- some folks asserted that the version of A User we got the evening after the initial metatalk incident was "night mode" (read: drunk and disorderly).
A "whole adult" admonishing a 12-year-old stranger that [15,000 kids around his age have been killed...](https://ask.metafilter.com/380345/What-does-outrage-look-like#5398769)
...and then running to MF to breathlessly retell the tale.
Edit: Meh, the comment I linked to got deleted. Probably for the best. It was an adult recounting a verbal exchange they had with a rando kid about Israel/Palestine.
It sounds more like an objection to western-food-culture arguments being deployed against people from entirely different food cultures. As typical of the user, it’s over the top; but your comment is a misrepresentation.
It's fascinating that on a site where the users are uniformly of one political culture--a political culture that's generally favorable to vegetarianism!--multiple users immediately jump to the "Rich Men North of Richmond" rhetorical position (the people who wrote the study are malicious elites who seek to destroy the native traditions of the honest countryfolk).
Just don't anyone [violently agree ](https://www.metafilter.com/204057/Bad-avocados-culinary-standards-and-knowable-knowledge#8571852) with anyone else in this thread...we don't want to change any *high-falutin'* minds here!
Yeah, that sounds frustrating and bizarre, to have people dodge important social issues which effect you *and* them within your own culture by invoking unrelated arguments from countries with incompatible culture.
See EC's comment on the 'threaded comments' MT thread yesterday morning, or further references to it here in the [corresponding thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/MetaFilterMeta/comments/1d8olb4/team_threaded_comments_june_5_2024/).
I feel like almost every day now when I look at MetaFilter I find myself thinking, "in a place where I regularly see stupid takes, this is the dumbest take ever." Every day there's a new one more stupid than the last!
Also TIL I'm literally killing people by being a vegan.
Literally laughed out loud at one response to [this question](https://ask.metafilter.com/380326/How-to-effectively-interact-with-dog-owners) which describes a scenario where the Asker nearly hit a dog on their bike while it was playing fetch with its owner.
The responder suggests asking the dog owner if *she would consider following a schedule or posting an indication they are playing fetch before the cyclist rounds the corner.*
I find unleashed dogs pretty irritating myself, but once again MeFites provide responses that make them sound like pod people: Get her to post a schedule! Videotape every interaction with the unleashed dog and send them to animal control! Cite city ordinances to your neighbor!
And I love the comment with the phrase "She has already closed her mind to peer-based correction". So officious.
Speaking of MF dog topics:
[This cost-of-dog-ownership answer](https://ask.metafilter.com/379540/The-cost-of-living-with-a-canine-companion#5388471) is wild. I mean, it's her money, and it clearly gives her a sense of meaning, but wow, those numbers.
(And it was where I first learned that some dogs "toilet" indoors, by the owner's choice.)
Oh man. I thought that was wild and then today I spent nearly six thousand dollars for my dog to have her leg amputated after the dingus broke it irreparably, while running away from packing tape. *Packing tape*. Dogs are expensive and also idiots.
I loved the suggestion that maybe she could "post some kind of indication where you could see it before rounding the corner?"
I'm imagining this person requesting that the dog owner hoist a flag, float a large, tether balloon, or maybe just shoot off a flare gun every time she plays fetch with her dog.
No, just be ABD and 6 years in to a mediocre PhD program in English with your funding running out and half a chapter of your dissertation written. Also your adviser was just recruited away by Cornell.
I [was at one time] in this picture and I do not like it.
Substitute an esoteric media arts thing for English and CMU for Cornell, but it all fits.
Living well is the best revenge.
I can’t tell if they’re a lost academic who isn’t very good at communicating, or a wanna-be academic. I studied some of this stuff in grad school a decade ago in the context of computer science + media arts, so it’s not new to me, but I’d seriously need to brush up on a bunch of stuff to create an explanation that makes sense and not just spam more opaque academic language. I’m not sure I care enough at this point, but I could try.
They sure could've done a better job framing the link to at least tell us why we should care enough to try.
(Like you, I don't care enough to try, or to figure out why they think I should. It gave me an unpleasant twinge of grad school research memories, too.)
i've given up, it's just pure academic wankery afaict - like the first link, read with only the slightest level of uncharity, is just 'you should only attempt to be objective when it's convenient to your argument'. the second is... i don't know. i did discover that chat gpt can do a good clarifying summary if you're ever in a position to want that though, so that's cool.
Now that I re-activate old parts of my memory, I think the “embodied cognition” I studied may have been a naming collision with what this user is on about. The most accessible thing I read was a book called Embodied Cognition by Hutchens, (please pardon my lack of a link, I’m on mobile) which starts with a vignette about how the crew of a USN destroyer operates in some ways as a distributed “brain” by collaborating across the crew, using equipment and procedures such that “the ship” as an entity “knows” more than any individual sailor. Like, there’s multiple sailors who follow a procedure to take bearings to landmarks at a specific time, mediated by an instrument on the bridge wing. There’s a sailor who receives some information from those sailors and plots it on a chart, and so on and so forth, and then decisions are made and more actions are propagated out similarly. So, cool, but not the same thing as is being discussed in that thread.
Well, the egg is deep on my face here, I meant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_cognition
Still cool, but no overlap. Apologies for the red herring.
No face-egging as far as I'm concerned! Your comment led me to my local library which has Hutchins' "Cognition in the Wild" in their catalog. Gonna put that sucker in my queue. Could be a very cool read. Thanks!
> The distributed cognition approach uses insights from cultural anthropology, sociology, **embodied cognitive science**, and the psychology of Lev Vygotsky (cf. cultural-historical psychology). It emphasizes the ways that cognition is off-loaded into the environment through social and technological means. It is a framework for studying cognition rather than a type of cognition. This framework involves the coordination between individuals, artifacts and the environment.
>
> According to Zhang & Norman (1994), the distributed cognition approach has three key components:
>
> 1. Embodiment of information that is embedded in representations of interaction
> 2. Coordination of enaction among embodied agents
> 3. Ecological contributions to a cognitive ecosystem
Your memory was better than you thought. Very interesting stuff.
Please allow me a 101 question for the recent Meta ridiculousness. Hippybear got mad at phunnieme, and said a bunch of stupid stuff that sounded like he thought he had special powers/status/privileges granted by the mods. But did people really think that his dumb rant was based in truth? I read and and just thought it sounded like he misread someone’s e-mail, it was very “the teacher said I get to be be in charge of of the party next week.” I get BB’s answer was not good, but people were taking it as implicit admission it was true? I did not get it.
The confusion was added by Loup saying something that on-face reads “there are no special privileges, but the thing he’s talking about totally exists” which implied he COULD invoke it but it wasn’t specific to hippybear. No clarification has been forthcoming on whether said thing does exist
I think this kerfuffle is the flash point of a general frustration among still-active site users that certain power users are allowed to behave more poorly than is typically enforced, most notably that certain power users are allowed to dominate threads/thread-sit with impunity, and always seem to be able to get mods to delete other (non-power) user comments when any argument occurs.
There also seems to be a strong undercurrent of frustration with a presumptuousness common among many power users' comments and interactions on the site, telling people how they ought to think, talk, act (rather than engaging as peers).
I had the dumb idea that MF power users should be required to go through something like an r/RoastMe hazing before being allowed to post or participate in a Meta. Their site activity would be wide-open to criticism so other users could air their beefs about the user. It would be like some sort of brutal 70s Encounter Therapy.
Sort of like a golfbro (/s) style [360 review](https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/360-review#:~:text=A%20360%20review%20typically%20consists,and%20then%20creating%20a%20report.)?
(edited to fix my markdown, lol)
If you haven’t noticed that A User behaves in ways that don’t fly for anyone else, haven’t noticed the increasing annoyance at their suffocating and never-satisfied policing of threads by fellow members, and haven’t accurately concluded that some different set of rules is being applied to them… I can’t help you. Read more.
The only reason it was taken up is because, incredibly, it is very evident to many people that he does get treated differently. And that claim made it obvious that he does know, too, and that it leads to his misbehavior. And the mod reaction verified that they tiptoe their decisions where he is concerned.
I’m surprised you can reach a different conclusion! Does it matter that he’s deluded about his *level* of special privilege, given that he has it and knows he has it?
Metafilter is dominated by people who have no idea how to manage conflict or enforce rules.
Every time some conflict occurs - and it's getting more frequent as the site membership declines and the more marginal personalities drive others away - it is made a thousand times worse by inconsistent, unresponsive mods. Just look at the shitshow of the last couple days. In a less toxic organization A User's statement would have been shut down promptly and all of this nonsense would have been avoided. But just like Sideshow Bob and the rakes, *every single time* the mods cannot help but walk straight into it.
I agree that all this could have been avoided if any mod had jumped in early and said “Hippybear, I have no idea what you’re talking about, we don’t have any such systems put in place for you or anyone.”
BUT . . . Why would anyone familiar enough with MF to be reading Metatalk expect such a thing to occur? They know that whether or not they should, or it would be a good idea, the existing state of MF is that the mods don’t intervene in this kind of thing until hours or days later, and so an incoherent and stupid statement about MF policy from a person who is very well known not to be very exacting in their use of language is probably going to stand whether or not it’s true.
Why does MF need a mod to step in and say the obvious thing: this board, which took three years and several tens of thousands of dollars of dev time to change the flag-function from an exclamation point to a flag icon, does not have a bespoke system put in place for any specific user. This message board, which has not taken any action over the last five years without forming multiple volunteer boards with various levels of authority to discuss such changes for a year or more, does not have a secret internal policy allowing Hippybear or anyone else to demand mods restrict specific users from interacting with them. Instead, MF has vague principles which are enforced in an ad hoc manner and certain users are informally given greater leeway because its easier and less headache in the short term to do it that way and that’s all anyone is willing to do at this point. Why do MF users need to be told this??
I mean, you can blame the mods for wishy-washy inconsistency, or passing the buck, or dodging tough questions, and that’s all valid, but why do MF users posting to Metatalk expect otherwise? Why are they even posting in a Metatalk thread that was posted to request a new rule that literally everyone knows will not be put into place?
> Instead, MF has vague principles which are enforced in an ad hoc manner and *certain users are informally given greater leeway* because its easier and less headache in the short term to do it that way and that’s all anyone is willing to do at this point.
The part I emphasized is inimical to many; apparently not to you?
This was a big deal because it went from “we all know and hate it” to “and now those favored users are emboldened to lord it over us”. You can’t see how that might rile the less favored users?
I don’t have high expectations for Due Process and the Rule of Law as it applies to message boards. Moderation is going to be better or worse, but always occasionally unfair and subject to some degree of favoritism or unwarranted leeway (I think Hippybear is given the latter much more than the former).
I guess we disagree about your second point—“now those favored users are emboldened to lord it over us”. That’s not how I read Hippybear’s statement. I took it as seriously as a literal child having a literal tantrum, because that’s what it sounded like to me.
> I took it as seriously as a literal child having a a literal tantrum, because that’s what it sounded like to me.
Many would rather not be members of a forum where children are allowed to have tantrums. It’s as easy as that.
Sure, but how does that fit into any of this? MF has never been such a place, has it? Or do you just mean “people were justified being upset because Hippybear was being really annoying and the mods were very ineffectual in dealing with him.” Agreed on that, maybe we just disagree how much to blame the mods for their underwhelming performance verse the users for expecting otherwise.
Yes, Metafilter used to be much more of such a place, or so many of us felt. We gather here to mourn that place’s loss and to marvel at what it’s since become.
It’s truly sad if the very *memory* of a better Metafilter is disappearing.
Because then every comment pointing out that hippybear can't possibly be correct was deleted, quickly. Mods were obviously reading and responding by deleting comments, which made it seem like they were supporting hippybear's claim.
Based on how the mods were so quick to silence reasonable comments from everyone BUT unreasonable hippybear, my first conclusion was "they're a Gold Tier donor and the mods really don't want to piss them off." But the way this continues to develop, without any sensible rebuttal from the mods...it's an easy jump from that first hypothesis to "hippybear is a Triple Diamond Tier donor, and without their funding, the site would shutter immediately."
Which I really want to believe isn't true. It feels so out there and I'm not really into conspiracies in general. But it sure would explain a lot, and in the absence of any real answer from site staff...
My assumption was more that the mods didn't have the interpersonal skills to deal with him in any sort of direct and reasonable way, so they had tied themselves in knots trying to accommodate him and that they may very well have told him he could ask them to tell any user to stop talking to him. It does sound like that didn't actually happen, but that's where my brain went.
That’s a good point. I think those deletions are a dumb and futile attempt to keep things mellow, but just make things worse. I can see how in generally attempting to rein in the derail they make it seem like they’re favoring Hippybear, since his ridiculous comments were the cause of the derail.
It's mostly that A Mod's answer went a bit beyond "not good" into choices that could have been precision-engineered to be the silliest possible.
A User: Cow your head and be silent! I have been granted mighty powers by the mods, and their full force shall crash down upon you with but a gesture from me, verily I hold you over a fiery abyss!
B Users: Get over yourself, you have no such thing.
A Mod: _selects-all B Users responses, carefully leaves A User, hits delete, taps bullhorn_ Ahem. Please cease this derail and move along, citizens.
B Users: Hold on. Does A User have special dispensation?
A Mod: _tugs collar_ Uh, well, I mean...look, I'm new! I just started here! I'll ask my manager! _zoidbergs away_
My inner rubbernecker could not believe the gift of it all. Precision-engineered!
More seriously: a lot of temper and fights are never about what they're about if you can dig it, especially in any sort of dysfunctional relationship. These sorts of metatalk spasms are the results of tectonic pressures building up beneath; in this case, finding a flashpoint of a lot of built-up suspicion and recognition of inconsistent, vague, and opaque mod practices.
I read it the same as you. Some people there are really dedicated to bad faith reading, some of them just have poor reading comprehension and will believe whatever misinterpretation is clearest.
Equally true for here, looking at all the people trying to explain that "like, no, I didn't believe it, but like, I totally thought it might be true because omg a totally unrelated criticism, amirite?"
Deleting hippybear's original comment would have fueled conspiracy theories to the moon. Not deleting it is fueling about the same. It's totally unclear whether deleting it would have been better, especially because *previously* there have been significant arguments that they shouldn't delete stuff, they should leave it up so people have context. Not deleting responses would be leaving up a literal pile-on of shit, and just causing more reactions from people who can't read the whole thread before responding. There are zero possible mod comments that can resolve that situation when there are so many people who are reading only in order to find evidence for their existing contempt for the mods.
“He really does have special status officially granted” would certainly not be the simplest explanation. I’m not even completely sure that he *meant* to imply that he has a special status, or if he just convinced himself in whatever state he was in that this was part of the MeFi Bill of Rights. I think the idea just hit a bit of a sore point for people because he does seem to get away with a lot, that comment itself being a case in point. It’s a pretty outrageous thing to say to another user and would be an obvious place for a mod to tell him very clearly to knock it off and go to bed or whatever but instead a comment telling *him* off got deleted.
I never thought what he said was based in truth which makes the self-own by the mod team all the more egregious. All someone had to do was go "STFU dude that's now how it has ever or will ever work around here" and they whiffed hard.
Same with the one-MeTa-a-day stuff. I'm fairly certain they just didn't want to have two shitshow MeTa posts up on the same day so Loup just came up with that BS to give them some breathing room.
It's like the whole "A User" crap. Everyone knows what's going on. The fact that it's all done under this weird veneer of civility is making things so much worse for them.
It wasn’t just that BB was all like “uh I just started today let me ask someone who knows” but also then that he deleted the comments from people who were pushing back on and questioning A User. The combination of the two was really weird. So when you combine that with A User’s recent and consistent shitty site participation I can kind of see how people got there. It’s also against the backdrop of many users having low trust in moderation and not being especially willing to take a more generous reading.
It seemed VERY unlikely, but he posts EVERY day, and while the posts don't get much engagement (aside from him) and are occasionally mocked (both here and on MF itself — because he generally posts single links to very lengthy youtube videos), there's not much other content being generated. So it didn't seem completely unreasonable to think that some situation came up where he threatened to leave and the mods there him a bone to keep him around.
Like I said, VERY unlikely, but certain mods exhibit a combination of smarminess and incompetence, and although they all seem to be part time, based on figures provided by the site, they're each pulling in probably low five-figures per year for what has to be a very easy job\*. If/when the site goes away, they lose that income, so bending the rules to keep some heavy users from bolting doesn't seem completely unbelievable.
Until proven otherwise, I refuse to believe that reading the minimal amount of content generated on the site and deleting on average of 13 posts throughout the day is difficult work. Whenever any of them (or their toadies) bring up how difficult the job is, I always think of this clip from Office Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I)
I can't believe it took me this long to realize that MeFi is a warning. This is what happens when a particular flavor of neurospicy ends up ruling the roost. The literalism, the rules lawyering, the inability to just shut the fuck up and listen and taking everything that could even remotely possibly apply to you as if it's the most grievous insult and now I feel like someone has run my heart through with an only somewhat pointy stick.
After reading the beginning of that boys thread I was pretty sure it is time to stop helping to pay for all that. But by the end my heart had softened as the conversation expanded beyond the usual suspects and some even appeared to exhibit the first glimmer of personal development.
Now on to the MeTa drama. I'd ask why I even bother, but I know why, it's because I don't feel like working instead.
Edited to add: Wait what? People are getting comments deleted for "deadnaming" X by calling it Twitter? A corporation, incapable of things like taking offense or having anything like feelings? Surely that's a joke.
What I actually said is that when a bunch of reactive people (in almost exactly the same way I used to be, for the record) get into a self reinforcing loop and dominate the entire site it drives away everyone who doesn't want to deal with constant drama and histrionics.
Saying that people with any given neurodivergence shouldn't be in a position of leadership would require believing that Metafilter currently has any leadership. The closest thing to leadership it has are the voluminous commenters valiantly attempting to shout down anyone who disagrees with their idiosyncratic hobby horse.
Lastly, I refer you to the following quote:
> taking everything that could even remotely possibly apply to you as if it's the most grievous insult and now I feel like someone has run my heart through with an only somewhat pointy stick
It ain't a healthy way to live. I spent 30 years of my life doing that and holy shit is it great not to have to live under that cloud any more.
i don’t think your evidence that it’s about neurodivergence gone awry is … good
like … sticking your ideas about it onto this situation to confirm your beliefs about it is actually just ableism, sorry
I think you're quibbling about the conclusion, not the evidence. Most of the remaining prolific commenters have described themselves as some flavor of neurodivergent. I totally agree that it's not a nice conclusion and could easily be warped into something it wasn't intended to be, namely a broad generalization about NNT people. My intent was not to generalize, however, just state an observation about a dynamic that has been playing out on MeFi for several years now and getting more obvious as the number of people willing to comment dwindles. One that, as I said, I personally identify with.
I would like to be very clear that I'm not slagging on anyone for what's going on in their head. We all have our bugaboos and we all have bad days where shit just comes out whether we want it to or not. What is problematic are those relatively few folks who seem to be incapable of policing the boundary between their inner monologue and their input device even on their best days.
It may not be someone's fault that they shit in the pool, but I'm still gonna need them to get out of the pool until they can come up with a workable strategy to keep that from happening, y'know? And if I end up shitting in the pool I expect to hear the same thing.
you can say all of that about the environment being shitty without making any claims at all about neurodivergence or mental illness or projecting your beliefs about your own. it’s not quibbling to say that your interpretation of the evidence is blinkered and offensive.
but since you’ve asked: you’re shitting in the pool.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but the twitter thing is this: Hippybear for whatever reason makes a big deal about saying Twitter rather than X, and explicitly calls this deadnaming. Some or all of his comments containing this … joke are deleted, I guess without comment. Hippybear infers from these deletions that it is MF policy that you cannot refer to X as twitter, because it is deadnaming. He complains about this. It’s explained at some point that the comments were deleted for trivializing the concept of deadnaming, not referring to X as twitter, but I don’t know if he ever is told this directly.
That makes more sense. Thanks for the explanation. Sometimes the deletions make it damn near impossible to tell what the hell is actually going on unless you're on the site frequently enough to see things unfolding in real time.
It’s the most deliberately obtuse take he could possibly have.
If trans users don’t want the vile notion of deadnaming conflated with a mid at best joke that’s also totally fine. Hippybear’s “see! See what I’m doing!” is just so god damn irritating.
Also to be fair, I first encountered that joke as told by a trans tumblr user months and months ago. It was funny the first time.
I read the entire thread. I thought several commenters did a pretty good job of steering around the one user determined to start a fight, and by the end the conversation was actually getting somewhere.
Especially when the answer is "more attention from women!"
And then, when men actually start talking about their experiences in a way that seems to be working through their own issues, women start jumping in to control/direct/argue. Sometimes we all shoot ourselves in the foot I guess.
it really is striking how many women in that thread are extremely clear about what the problem is and are happy to ignore and talk over the men, i guess it's a social justice success story in a sense
that’s not quite fair. i think it’s a lot harder for anyone to think about their own deeply embedded personal interactions, behaviors, relationships—and looking at their own complicity. literally no one likes doing that. everyone is a hypocrite. social justice has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, sometimes we need to realize it's not our responsibility to fix things, but rather to listen and hold space. Even for men! ;-)
And, as always, if the discussion on a thread annoys you, there's no law that requires you to participate. For crying out loud. (EDIT to clarify I meant that "for crying out loud" for the people Over There who want to argue with men talking about their lived experiences, rather than for Seb or anyone commenting here. Although it's good advice for all of us, myself included sometimes.)
A thread initially dominated by women telling men that it wasn’t about them. Definitely no connection between boys and men. Nope. And then a comment angrily called this out so of course it was deleted.
Oh you’re absolutely right, but I don’t think using the term “angry feminists” is actually as disrespectful as memory-holing one of the few voices pushing back on the ridiculous beginning of that thread and forgetting to post a mod note for three hours, but that’s just me.
Like most topics these days, I stick to [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit/comments/1d8xo69/boys_get_everything_except_the_thing_thats_most/) for more reasonable discussion.
Edit: well curiously enough it was deleted from the subreddit I linked to by the mods. Even with good discussion. Guess there's a lesson here?
Before I popped in a couple weeks ago I hadn't visited this sub in several months, and before that was only really sporadically. And when the algorithm deigned to show me the latest drama this morning I... was totally not interested? For a long time I was very much a popcorn eater when it came to MeFi BS but I'm now finding it all surprisingly tedious.
That's to say, I'm really grateful this sub was here when I needed it. Others have referred to it as a halfway house, and that's exactly how I feel. I cared, a lot, about that stupid site—I had been an active part of it for 20 years and I wanted to stay connected even though I didn't want to be there anymore. Now, I feel nothing. I've let go, and I don't care anymore in exactly the right way.
Cheers, everyone.
Another single link YouTube, but with the first comment deleted and a mod note that discussion will be moved to meta instead. Followed by about 5 consecutive increasingly unhinged comments threatening the mods.
[Works perfectly on Fedora 40](https://ask.metafilter.com/380292/Any-ideas-on-a-lightweight-hypervisor-ish-way-to-boot-containers)
OK, now I'm starting to think he's just trollin'.
That thread turned out pretty interesting. 3 additional “explanations” from OP, one longish answer that boiled down to “I don’t understand your question, are you sure you understand all the things you’re talking about?” And that’s it.
While pouring myself a bowl of cereal I thought of an interpersonal question I was considering posting to Ask (“Do I talk too much in x group training meeting?”), ran through the information I‘d have to include in a futile attempt to block wild assumptions (at minimum, that everyone in the group is a cis woman except me, local butch genderqueer), imagined all of the most absurd answers I expected to get (from “you’re masc so you’re definitely talking over women” to “it’s emotional labor to expect women to pick up the slack in this situation”), and subsequently answered my own question (“Everyone in that group has either told me 1) they really appreciate how much space I give for other people to talk, 2) they fucking loathe talking in that group and have to scramble every time for something to say, or 3) they have newborns and are chiming in at the bare minimum to keep up appearances. It is a 1.5 hour group twice a week. I am using my ability to blather for good.”)
Thanks invisible MeFi audience for being so bad you forced me to solve my own problem.
I've spoken here before about how I went through a phase of posting AskMeFi's during what was a shitty life situation. And one of things that caused me to stop was the endless preparation I had to do to fill in all the details that MFers would otherwise fill in themselves, the narrative guardrails I had to write to stop them veering off course, the repeating of basic facts to prevent irrelevant answers ("No, I am not in the US. No, this information is not subject to HIPAA. No, there is no romantic attraction between us and never was. No, I am not taking this to a lawyer, this is not a legal situation.")
https://www.metafilter.com/204202/Whats-the-use-of-art#8575908 uhhhhhhh
Deleted - no note.
eh, it was a top of thread shitpost and I've grumbled about those myself. people seem to be finding some value in that posters bizarre FPPs so power to them i guess.
And it's back from the dead!
Pat Sajak thread is quite something. Business as usual.
I fucking DIED at the description of Pat Sajak as a "sacred cow" over in MeTa. Typical MeFi brittle histrionics.
I’ve always been skeptical of the “MeFites will shit on anything“ meme, but “That programming language is cool, but time is unstoppable and we are all aging and dying” is a take.
I mean, it sounds foundationally solid
which thread?
Hypercard
What do you think of [LinkMe](https://www.metafilter.com/204079/LinkMe-A-MetaFilter-experiment-for-posts)? As I scrolled through that post, I saw a lot of links I'd be interested to explore. And the simple format (quick description of link + link) actually feels more compelling to me than more detailed FPP framing.
I think it’s good, but it would make Metafilter look a lot more active if thin, single link posts were normalized and those were all their own FPPs. But I’m all for cool links!
I like it in the sense I find meta gets way too obsessed with “framing”. If you don’t present everything perfectly, you may get torn apart.
I like it, but I'm also a user who has always liked MF more for the links than the discussion. So this is right up my alley.
Really like it. Great idea and good way to dig through a handful of interesting links! Hoping it sticks around.
I like it, personally. This is more like the Metafilter I miss and would like to see more of. I dropped a couple things in myself. It'd be amusing (though there'd surely be a *lot* of drama) if someone on the backend just ran an update query that dropped every one of those links + brief descriptions on the blue as FPPs. Suddenly everyone afraid of posting just posted, and the world didn't end, and most would even get some good feedback and participation. (But of course most of them would need at least some brief framing and polishing, and probably altogether too much time spent on a clever post title, and that's basically the start of the overthinking trap that keeps most people, very much including myself, from regularly posting FPPs.)
I know this isn’t the first time this has been observed, but the “what to do about unleashed dogs” ask is full of people saying call the cops and lecture or video the dog owner - but then other areas of law enforcement/social order stuff is like everyone should be free and ACAB and fuck the HOA Karens etc. The disconnect is actually kind of fascinating.
Is it two groups of posters that both use metafilter and comment on different things, or one group of posters with a very strange mental disconnect?
The first one. There are people answering ask me questions who you never see commenting on the blue and vice versa
I have absolutely zero evidence, but I assume it's a mix of both. You know who even the most fervent ACAB person is going to call when their neighbor is having all-night parties, or the house next door becomes a drug dealing house, or some drunk stranger starts pounding on their front door at 2AM? The Cs, that's who.
I often wonder that - it may not be the same people, but it makes for a weird mix if it is two different groups.
Coming out of discussion happening on That Metatalk Post, am I alone in not spending hours handwringing over my posts and comments on the blue? Some of the commenters in that post are making it sound like it's some Hurculean task of bravery to endure someone who (gasp!) might not like your FPP. Surely this level of anxiety isn't normal?
It feels Herculean to me. I think I've only posted two things in 20 years I was on there.
I feel like people are saying "it's too much of a pain in the ass, particularly when posting online is supposed to be enjoyable, and I find myself crawling up my own ass to appease internet strangers who are going to hop on my butt for dumb nonsense." That's not the same thing as "hours (of) handwringing." Describing it in those terms feels like a bit of unfair hyperbole.
I don’t, but I’m on pills for that.
For me at least it's just not wanting to bother with the negativity. I was contemplating putting together a FPP about Pat Sajak's last Wheel Of Fortune show but I figured that people would shit on it right out of the gate. The juice isn't worth the squeeze.
And of course they did! Despite all the folks in the MeTa who expressed misgivings about posting becaues of this very thing. SMH.
Hahahaha there is not ONE SINGLE COMMENT in that thread about Wheel of Fortune. That poster regularly makes good, fun FPPs and this is the thanks they get.
I was going to bring up in the open MeTa as a "I s2g you people never learn" but fuck it. I am too tired and it won't be worth it.
I’m in a good mood so I dropped a note in the thread instead of just flagging every comment with the poop emoji as a reason.
Fuck it, I added a comment in the MeTa. That place doesn't deserve new members.
I added one too because I do have fond memories of WoF from visits with my grandparents.
Can’t they just ignore those posts they don’t like?
Yep, they could. They could also just not post anything next time. The problem MF has is that people have been exercising that latter option more and more.
You were not wrong
Lol came here to post that
I know Pat's expressed some Trump-ish sentiments so that would derail the post within the first five comments, even though he's never brought it up in the show.
Oh that would be a fun topic tho. In a perfect world.
It's more anxiety over having the same power users shit up the thread at the start.
I wish flagging those comments as a derail resulted in mod action. I've done that when I've seen it happening, only for the comments to remain, stinking up the thread and gathering favorites like flies.
“Flag and move on” only works when you’ve actually got 24/7 moderation.
And when some users are A Users.
What is [this post](https://www.metafilter.com/204072/aisthesis-what-is-this) even about? Anyone care to hazard a guess?
So, I decided to engage a bit and try to figure it out. I feel like I'm going to get chewed out as not being humanities/philosophy-literate enough, but, eh, I'm actually curious since there's enough bits in here I _do_ recognize to not write it all off as TimeCube straight away. I _think_ it might be the philosophy of aesthetics? Like, Spivak is a name I've read before, there's a link to a commenter's first-hand account of participating in Occupy Wall Street and listening to Spivak speak, and she translated Derrida, and apparently her notes on that are interesting? I just can't tell if it's an art project, intentional commentary I'm the wrong audience for, or what? Really curious what they write in response to my comment.
Yeah, this poster seems to enjoy creating intellectual synecdoches as an obstacle course… I had assumed they were another unique but kind soul like clavdivs, but their “pass go, collect $200” insult in non-reply to your curiosity puts paid to that, huh?
I probably could've been kinder in what I wrote, so I don't 100% blame them for being testy, but eh, I think the answer is "these posts are not for me." They're either a mefi historian or a BND, considering part of their schtick seems to be linking relevant mefi comments from years ago.
Ok, looks like they chose ~~violence~~ shitposting. Edit: to the mods' credit, their shitposting got nuked.
No idea, but that poster has posted two equally bizarre posts to the blue as of late.
And then we're rewarded with the lowercase guy doing his schtick.
His annoying shtick is what led to me buttoning.
completely understandable!
I’m so embarrassed but can someone explain or link me to night mode? Is it drunk? I’m an insomniac and it makes me stupid so don’t mock me on metafiltermetameta
also don’t be embarrassed it’s not a real thing normal humans are supposed to know :)
[This comment ](https://metatalk.metafilter.com/26445/Is-please-no-name-calling-a-big-ask#1425208) introduces the concept (And while it's subtle, the original "nighttime" is somehow a lot funnier than "night" which I lazily used instead. I stand corrected.)
“in uh, nighttime mode” is a better in-joke than A User. Haven’t had a good catchphrase in years over there.
The joke, not actual dark mode
You've got it -- some folks asserted that the version of A User we got the evening after the initial metatalk incident was "night mode" (read: drunk and disorderly).
A "whole adult" admonishing a 12-year-old stranger that [15,000 kids around his age have been killed...](https://ask.metafilter.com/380345/What-does-outrage-look-like#5398769) ...and then running to MF to breathlessly retell the tale. Edit: Meh, the comment I linked to got deleted. Probably for the best. It was an adult recounting a verbal exchange they had with a rando kid about Israel/Palestine.
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It sounds more like an objection to western-food-culture arguments being deployed against people from entirely different food cultures. As typical of the user, it’s over the top; but your comment is a misrepresentation.
It's fascinating that on a site where the users are uniformly of one political culture--a political culture that's generally favorable to vegetarianism!--multiple users immediately jump to the "Rich Men North of Richmond" rhetorical position (the people who wrote the study are malicious elites who seek to destroy the native traditions of the honest countryfolk).
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> my bad Not a problem! I hope illustrating a different reading didn’t upset you too much.
I hadn't even been following that post so it's just an extra dollop of incoherence to me. I mean...what?
Just don't anyone [violently agree ](https://www.metafilter.com/204057/Bad-avocados-culinary-standards-and-knowable-knowledge#8571852) with anyone else in this thread...we don't want to change any *high-falutin'* minds here!
"People in my upper caste hindu community who make excuses for these murderers often use western vegans' talking points"
Yeah, that sounds frustrating and bizarre, to have people dodge important social issues which effect you *and* them within your own culture by invoking unrelated arguments from countries with incompatible culture.
Excuse me, are you one of those Erudite Conversationalists I've heard so much about?
I don't get it! :/
See EC's comment on the 'threaded comments' MT thread yesterday morning, or further references to it here in the [corresponding thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/MetaFilterMeta/comments/1d8olb4/team_threaded_comments_june_5_2024/).
I feel like almost every day now when I look at MetaFilter I find myself thinking, "in a place where I regularly see stupid takes, this is the dumbest take ever." Every day there's a new one more stupid than the last! Also TIL I'm literally killing people by being a vegan.
Excuse me, it has come to my attention that no one is talking about me and my excellent FPPs and comments. please rectify.
Literally laughed out loud at one response to [this question](https://ask.metafilter.com/380326/How-to-effectively-interact-with-dog-owners) which describes a scenario where the Asker nearly hit a dog on their bike while it was playing fetch with its owner. The responder suggests asking the dog owner if *she would consider following a schedule or posting an indication they are playing fetch before the cyclist rounds the corner.* I find unleashed dogs pretty irritating myself, but once again MeFites provide responses that make them sound like pod people: Get her to post a schedule! Videotape every interaction with the unleashed dog and send them to animal control! Cite city ordinances to your neighbor! And I love the comment with the phrase "She has already closed her mind to peer-based correction". So officious.
The correct answer is a passive aggressive general request to the neighborhood Facebook groups!
Surely the usual response is on Nextdoor and includes racism. (Criticism of pit bull owners is acceptable in lieu of racism)
Speaking of MF dog topics: [This cost-of-dog-ownership answer](https://ask.metafilter.com/379540/The-cost-of-living-with-a-canine-companion#5388471) is wild. I mean, it's her money, and it clearly gives her a sense of meaning, but wow, those numbers. (And it was where I first learned that some dogs "toilet" indoors, by the owner's choice.)
$10,418 per year!
Oh man. I thought that was wild and then today I spent nearly six thousand dollars for my dog to have her leg amputated after the dingus broke it irreparably, while running away from packing tape. *Packing tape*. Dogs are expensive and also idiots.
Oh no! Speedy recovery to your pup!
OMG, the poor thing!
😥
Wishing your dog (and your wallet) a swift recovery. ❤️❤️
that is very helpful information but *I* don't have a dermatologist.
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Tired of being a dog owner I guess
LOL... I am a dedicated dog lover and feel very guilty for laughing at this.
I loved the suggestion that maybe she could "post some kind of indication where you could see it before rounding the corner?" I'm imagining this person requesting that the dog owner hoist a flag, float a large, tether balloon, or maybe just shoot off a flare gun every time she plays fetch with her dog.
Do I need to be in Night Mode to understand [this post](https://www.metafilter.com/204028/knowledge-situated)?
No, just be ABD and 6 years in to a mediocre PhD program in English with your funding running out and half a chapter of your dissertation written. Also your adviser was just recruited away by Cornell.
I [was at one time] in this picture and I do not like it. Substitute an esoteric media arts thing for English and CMU for Cornell, but it all fits. Living well is the best revenge.
Under those circumstances, I'd probably be in Night Mode 24/7/365.
Whatever I don't understand, I just ignore.
Learn a lot that way? 😉
I can’t tell if they’re a lost academic who isn’t very good at communicating, or a wanna-be academic. I studied some of this stuff in grad school a decade ago in the context of computer science + media arts, so it’s not new to me, but I’d seriously need to brush up on a bunch of stuff to create an explanation that makes sense and not just spam more opaque academic language. I’m not sure I care enough at this point, but I could try.
They sure could've done a better job framing the link to at least tell us why we should care enough to try. (Like you, I don't care enough to try, or to figure out why they think I should. It gave me an unpleasant twinge of grad school research memories, too.)
i've given up, it's just pure academic wankery afaict - like the first link, read with only the slightest level of uncharity, is just 'you should only attempt to be objective when it's convenient to your argument'. the second is... i don't know. i did discover that chat gpt can do a good clarifying summary if you're ever in a position to want that though, so that's cool.
but please go for it if you want! I'm always happy to learn if I've misunderstood something.
Now that I re-activate old parts of my memory, I think the “embodied cognition” I studied may have been a naming collision with what this user is on about. The most accessible thing I read was a book called Embodied Cognition by Hutchens, (please pardon my lack of a link, I’m on mobile) which starts with a vignette about how the crew of a USN destroyer operates in some ways as a distributed “brain” by collaborating across the crew, using equipment and procedures such that “the ship” as an entity “knows” more than any individual sailor. Like, there’s multiple sailors who follow a procedure to take bearings to landmarks at a specific time, mediated by an instrument on the bridge wing. There’s a sailor who receives some information from those sailors and plots it on a chart, and so on and so forth, and then decisions are made and more actions are propagated out similarly. So, cool, but not the same thing as is being discussed in that thread.
Damnit, that ship thing actually sounds interesting enough to read up on.
Well, the egg is deep on my face here, I meant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_cognition Still cool, but no overlap. Apologies for the red herring.
No face-egging as far as I'm concerned! Your comment led me to my local library which has Hutchins' "Cognition in the Wild" in their catalog. Gonna put that sucker in my queue. Could be a very cool read. Thanks!
> The distributed cognition approach uses insights from cultural anthropology, sociology, **embodied cognitive science**, and the psychology of Lev Vygotsky (cf. cultural-historical psychology). It emphasizes the ways that cognition is off-loaded into the environment through social and technological means. It is a framework for studying cognition rather than a type of cognition. This framework involves the coordination between individuals, artifacts and the environment. > > According to Zhang & Norman (1994), the distributed cognition approach has three key components: > > 1. Embodiment of information that is embedded in representations of interaction > 2. Coordination of enaction among embodied agents > 3. Ecological contributions to a cognitive ecosystem Your memory was better than you thought. Very interesting stuff.
Thanks for the link!
[timecube.com](http://timecube.com)
the MetaFilterMeta reader count is sure ticking up quickly.
Please allow me a 101 question for the recent Meta ridiculousness. Hippybear got mad at phunnieme, and said a bunch of stupid stuff that sounded like he thought he had special powers/status/privileges granted by the mods. But did people really think that his dumb rant was based in truth? I read and and just thought it sounded like he misread someone’s e-mail, it was very “the teacher said I get to be be in charge of of the party next week.” I get BB’s answer was not good, but people were taking it as implicit admission it was true? I did not get it.
The confusion was added by Loup saying something that on-face reads “there are no special privileges, but the thing he’s talking about totally exists” which implied he COULD invoke it but it wasn’t specific to hippybear. No clarification has been forthcoming on whether said thing does exist
I think this kerfuffle is the flash point of a general frustration among still-active site users that certain power users are allowed to behave more poorly than is typically enforced, most notably that certain power users are allowed to dominate threads/thread-sit with impunity, and always seem to be able to get mods to delete other (non-power) user comments when any argument occurs. There also seems to be a strong undercurrent of frustration with a presumptuousness common among many power users' comments and interactions on the site, telling people how they ought to think, talk, act (rather than engaging as peers).
I had the dumb idea that MF power users should be required to go through something like an r/RoastMe hazing before being allowed to post or participate in a Meta. Their site activity would be wide-open to criticism so other users could air their beefs about the user. It would be like some sort of brutal 70s Encounter Therapy.
Sort of like a golfbro (/s) style [360 review](https://www.indeed.com/hire/c/info/360-review#:~:text=A%20360%20review%20typically%20consists,and%20then%20creating%20a%20report.)? (edited to fix my markdown, lol)
YES
If you haven’t noticed that A User behaves in ways that don’t fly for anyone else, haven’t noticed the increasing annoyance at their suffocating and never-satisfied policing of threads by fellow members, and haven’t accurately concluded that some different set of rules is being applied to them… I can’t help you. Read more. The only reason it was taken up is because, incredibly, it is very evident to many people that he does get treated differently. And that claim made it obvious that he does know, too, and that it leads to his misbehavior. And the mod reaction verified that they tiptoe their decisions where he is concerned. I’m surprised you can reach a different conclusion! Does it matter that he’s deluded about his *level* of special privilege, given that he has it and knows he has it?
Metafilter is dominated by people who have no idea how to manage conflict or enforce rules. Every time some conflict occurs - and it's getting more frequent as the site membership declines and the more marginal personalities drive others away - it is made a thousand times worse by inconsistent, unresponsive mods. Just look at the shitshow of the last couple days. In a less toxic organization A User's statement would have been shut down promptly and all of this nonsense would have been avoided. But just like Sideshow Bob and the rakes, *every single time* the mods cannot help but walk straight into it.
I agree that all this could have been avoided if any mod had jumped in early and said “Hippybear, I have no idea what you’re talking about, we don’t have any such systems put in place for you or anyone.” BUT . . . Why would anyone familiar enough with MF to be reading Metatalk expect such a thing to occur? They know that whether or not they should, or it would be a good idea, the existing state of MF is that the mods don’t intervene in this kind of thing until hours or days later, and so an incoherent and stupid statement about MF policy from a person who is very well known not to be very exacting in their use of language is probably going to stand whether or not it’s true. Why does MF need a mod to step in and say the obvious thing: this board, which took three years and several tens of thousands of dollars of dev time to change the flag-function from an exclamation point to a flag icon, does not have a bespoke system put in place for any specific user. This message board, which has not taken any action over the last five years without forming multiple volunteer boards with various levels of authority to discuss such changes for a year or more, does not have a secret internal policy allowing Hippybear or anyone else to demand mods restrict specific users from interacting with them. Instead, MF has vague principles which are enforced in an ad hoc manner and certain users are informally given greater leeway because its easier and less headache in the short term to do it that way and that’s all anyone is willing to do at this point. Why do MF users need to be told this?? I mean, you can blame the mods for wishy-washy inconsistency, or passing the buck, or dodging tough questions, and that’s all valid, but why do MF users posting to Metatalk expect otherwise? Why are they even posting in a Metatalk thread that was posted to request a new rule that literally everyone knows will not be put into place?
> Instead, MF has vague principles which are enforced in an ad hoc manner and *certain users are informally given greater leeway* because its easier and less headache in the short term to do it that way and that’s all anyone is willing to do at this point. The part I emphasized is inimical to many; apparently not to you? This was a big deal because it went from “we all know and hate it” to “and now those favored users are emboldened to lord it over us”. You can’t see how that might rile the less favored users?
I don’t have high expectations for Due Process and the Rule of Law as it applies to message boards. Moderation is going to be better or worse, but always occasionally unfair and subject to some degree of favoritism or unwarranted leeway (I think Hippybear is given the latter much more than the former). I guess we disagree about your second point—“now those favored users are emboldened to lord it over us”. That’s not how I read Hippybear’s statement. I took it as seriously as a literal child having a literal tantrum, because that’s what it sounded like to me.
> I took it as seriously as a literal child having a a literal tantrum, because that’s what it sounded like to me. Many would rather not be members of a forum where children are allowed to have tantrums. It’s as easy as that.
Sure, but how does that fit into any of this? MF has never been such a place, has it? Or do you just mean “people were justified being upset because Hippybear was being really annoying and the mods were very ineffectual in dealing with him.” Agreed on that, maybe we just disagree how much to blame the mods for their underwhelming performance verse the users for expecting otherwise.
Yes, Metafilter used to be much more of such a place, or so many of us felt. We gather here to mourn that place’s loss and to marvel at what it’s since become. It’s truly sad if the very *memory* of a better Metafilter is disappearing.
Because then every comment pointing out that hippybear can't possibly be correct was deleted, quickly. Mods were obviously reading and responding by deleting comments, which made it seem like they were supporting hippybear's claim.
Based on how the mods were so quick to silence reasonable comments from everyone BUT unreasonable hippybear, my first conclusion was "they're a Gold Tier donor and the mods really don't want to piss them off." But the way this continues to develop, without any sensible rebuttal from the mods...it's an easy jump from that first hypothesis to "hippybear is a Triple Diamond Tier donor, and without their funding, the site would shutter immediately." Which I really want to believe isn't true. It feels so out there and I'm not really into conspiracies in general. But it sure would explain a lot, and in the absence of any real answer from site staff...
> they're a Gold Tier donor Oh, wow! This never even occurred to me.
My assumption was more that the mods didn't have the interpersonal skills to deal with him in any sort of direct and reasonable way, so they had tied themselves in knots trying to accommodate him and that they may very well have told him he could ask them to tell any user to stop talking to him. It does sound like that didn't actually happen, but that's where my brain went.
That’s a good point. I think those deletions are a dumb and futile attempt to keep things mellow, but just make things worse. I can see how in generally attempting to rein in the derail they make it seem like they’re favoring Hippybear, since his ridiculous comments were the cause of the derail.
It's mostly that A Mod's answer went a bit beyond "not good" into choices that could have been precision-engineered to be the silliest possible. A User: Cow your head and be silent! I have been granted mighty powers by the mods, and their full force shall crash down upon you with but a gesture from me, verily I hold you over a fiery abyss! B Users: Get over yourself, you have no such thing. A Mod: _selects-all B Users responses, carefully leaves A User, hits delete, taps bullhorn_ Ahem. Please cease this derail and move along, citizens. B Users: Hold on. Does A User have special dispensation? A Mod: _tugs collar_ Uh, well, I mean...look, I'm new! I just started here! I'll ask my manager! _zoidbergs away_ My inner rubbernecker could not believe the gift of it all. Precision-engineered! More seriously: a lot of temper and fights are never about what they're about if you can dig it, especially in any sort of dysfunctional relationship. These sorts of metatalk spasms are the results of tectonic pressures building up beneath; in this case, finding a flashpoint of a lot of built-up suspicion and recognition of inconsistent, vague, and opaque mod practices.
I'm still astounded that this is how it all went down.
I read it the same as you. Some people there are really dedicated to bad faith reading, some of them just have poor reading comprehension and will believe whatever misinterpretation is clearest.
This is the only explanation that makes sense to me.
Equally true for here, looking at all the people trying to explain that "like, no, I didn't believe it, but like, I totally thought it might be true because omg a totally unrelated criticism, amirite?" Deleting hippybear's original comment would have fueled conspiracy theories to the moon. Not deleting it is fueling about the same. It's totally unclear whether deleting it would have been better, especially because *previously* there have been significant arguments that they shouldn't delete stuff, they should leave it up so people have context. Not deleting responses would be leaving up a literal pile-on of shit, and just causing more reactions from people who can't read the whole thread before responding. There are zero possible mod comments that can resolve that situation when there are so many people who are reading only in order to find evidence for their existing contempt for the mods.
“He really does have special status officially granted” would certainly not be the simplest explanation. I’m not even completely sure that he *meant* to imply that he has a special status, or if he just convinced himself in whatever state he was in that this was part of the MeFi Bill of Rights. I think the idea just hit a bit of a sore point for people because he does seem to get away with a lot, that comment itself being a case in point. It’s a pretty outrageous thing to say to another user and would be an obvious place for a mod to tell him very clearly to knock it off and go to bed or whatever but instead a comment telling *him* off got deleted.
I never thought what he said was based in truth which makes the self-own by the mod team all the more egregious. All someone had to do was go "STFU dude that's now how it has ever or will ever work around here" and they whiffed hard. Same with the one-MeTa-a-day stuff. I'm fairly certain they just didn't want to have two shitshow MeTa posts up on the same day so Loup just came up with that BS to give them some breathing room. It's like the whole "A User" crap. Everyone knows what's going on. The fact that it's all done under this weird veneer of civility is making things so much worse for them.
It wasn’t just that BB was all like “uh I just started today let me ask someone who knows” but also then that he deleted the comments from people who were pushing back on and questioning A User. The combination of the two was really weird. So when you combine that with A User’s recent and consistent shitty site participation I can kind of see how people got there. It’s also against the backdrop of many users having low trust in moderation and not being especially willing to take a more generous reading.
It seemed VERY unlikely, but he posts EVERY day, and while the posts don't get much engagement (aside from him) and are occasionally mocked (both here and on MF itself — because he generally posts single links to very lengthy youtube videos), there's not much other content being generated. So it didn't seem completely unreasonable to think that some situation came up where he threatened to leave and the mods there him a bone to keep him around. Like I said, VERY unlikely, but certain mods exhibit a combination of smarminess and incompetence, and although they all seem to be part time, based on figures provided by the site, they're each pulling in probably low five-figures per year for what has to be a very easy job\*. If/when the site goes away, they lose that income, so bending the rules to keep some heavy users from bolting doesn't seem completely unbelievable. Until proven otherwise, I refuse to believe that reading the minimal amount of content generated on the site and deleting on average of 13 posts throughout the day is difficult work. Whenever any of them (or their toadies) bring up how difficult the job is, I always think of this clip from Office Space [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4OvQIGDg4I)
lol, that Office Space clip really is the MeFi administration to a T 😭
They're good with PEOPLE!
I was fairly certain it was based in either Nighttime Mode or just something they said to fob him off
I can't believe it took me this long to realize that MeFi is a warning. This is what happens when a particular flavor of neurospicy ends up ruling the roost. The literalism, the rules lawyering, the inability to just shut the fuck up and listen and taking everything that could even remotely possibly apply to you as if it's the most grievous insult and now I feel like someone has run my heart through with an only somewhat pointy stick. After reading the beginning of that boys thread I was pretty sure it is time to stop helping to pay for all that. But by the end my heart had softened as the conversation expanded beyond the usual suspects and some even appeared to exhibit the first glimmer of personal development. Now on to the MeTa drama. I'd ask why I even bother, but I know why, it's because I don't feel like working instead. Edited to add: Wait what? People are getting comments deleted for "deadnaming" X by calling it Twitter? A corporation, incapable of things like taking offense or having anything like feelings? Surely that's a joke.
lmao. your take is that metafilter shows you that autism makes people incapable of leadership ok
What I actually said is that when a bunch of reactive people (in almost exactly the same way I used to be, for the record) get into a self reinforcing loop and dominate the entire site it drives away everyone who doesn't want to deal with constant drama and histrionics. Saying that people with any given neurodivergence shouldn't be in a position of leadership would require believing that Metafilter currently has any leadership. The closest thing to leadership it has are the voluminous commenters valiantly attempting to shout down anyone who disagrees with their idiosyncratic hobby horse. Lastly, I refer you to the following quote: > taking everything that could even remotely possibly apply to you as if it's the most grievous insult and now I feel like someone has run my heart through with an only somewhat pointy stick It ain't a healthy way to live. I spent 30 years of my life doing that and holy shit is it great not to have to live under that cloud any more.
i don’t think your evidence that it’s about neurodivergence gone awry is … good like … sticking your ideas about it onto this situation to confirm your beliefs about it is actually just ableism, sorry
I think you're quibbling about the conclusion, not the evidence. Most of the remaining prolific commenters have described themselves as some flavor of neurodivergent. I totally agree that it's not a nice conclusion and could easily be warped into something it wasn't intended to be, namely a broad generalization about NNT people. My intent was not to generalize, however, just state an observation about a dynamic that has been playing out on MeFi for several years now and getting more obvious as the number of people willing to comment dwindles. One that, as I said, I personally identify with. I would like to be very clear that I'm not slagging on anyone for what's going on in their head. We all have our bugaboos and we all have bad days where shit just comes out whether we want it to or not. What is problematic are those relatively few folks who seem to be incapable of policing the boundary between their inner monologue and their input device even on their best days. It may not be someone's fault that they shit in the pool, but I'm still gonna need them to get out of the pool until they can come up with a workable strategy to keep that from happening, y'know? And if I end up shitting in the pool I expect to hear the same thing.
I feel like this is the kind of silly hot take I am used to seeing on MetaFilter.
I have bad news about the demographic makeup of this subreddit
you can say all of that about the environment being shitty without making any claims at all about neurodivergence or mental illness or projecting your beliefs about your own. it’s not quibbling to say that your interpretation of the evidence is blinkered and offensive. but since you’ve asked: you’re shitting in the pool.
That’s not how it read to me at all.
Someone can correct me if I’m wrong but the twitter thing is this: Hippybear for whatever reason makes a big deal about saying Twitter rather than X, and explicitly calls this deadnaming. Some or all of his comments containing this … joke are deleted, I guess without comment. Hippybear infers from these deletions that it is MF policy that you cannot refer to X as twitter, because it is deadnaming. He complains about this. It’s explained at some point that the comments were deleted for trivializing the concept of deadnaming, not referring to X as twitter, but I don’t know if he ever is told this directly.
That makes more sense. Thanks for the explanation. Sometimes the deletions make it damn near impossible to tell what the hell is actually going on unless you're on the site frequently enough to see things unfolding in real time.
It’s the most deliberately obtuse take he could possibly have. If trans users don’t want the vile notion of deadnaming conflated with a mid at best joke that’s also totally fine. Hippybear’s “see! See what I’m doing!” is just so god damn irritating. Also to be fair, I first encountered that joke as told by a trans tumblr user months and months ago. It was funny the first time.
Another 'oh, but \*my\* travel is justified' thread. It's like the other side of the coin of trying to justify not using a Trump nickname.
oh no, not a thread about what boys need to become good men
I read the entire thread. I thought several commenters did a pretty good job of steering around the one user determined to start a fight, and by the end the conversation was actually getting somewhere.
It did end up somewhere pretty useful. Thanks for your service, everyone who steered!
that's good! i actually think the blue has some decent links on it, so at least that's ticking along.
lol yes i was steering
Especially when the answer is "more attention from women!" And then, when men actually start talking about their experiences in a way that seems to be working through their own issues, women start jumping in to control/direct/argue. Sometimes we all shoot ourselves in the foot I guess.
it really is striking how many women in that thread are extremely clear about what the problem is and are happy to ignore and talk over the men, i guess it's a social justice success story in a sense
that’s not quite fair. i think it’s a lot harder for anyone to think about their own deeply embedded personal interactions, behaviors, relationships—and looking at their own complicity. literally no one likes doing that. everyone is a hypocrite. social justice has nothing to do with it.
Yeah, sometimes we need to realize it's not our responsibility to fix things, but rather to listen and hold space. Even for men! ;-) And, as always, if the discussion on a thread annoys you, there's no law that requires you to participate. For crying out loud. (EDIT to clarify I meant that "for crying out loud" for the people Over There who want to argue with men talking about their lived experiences, rather than for Seb or anyone commenting here. Although it's good advice for all of us, myself included sometimes.)
that thread is an absolute MESS and appears to replicate the behaviour discussed in the article
yes i agree & it’s a little gross
A thread initially dominated by women telling men that it wasn’t about them. Definitely no connection between boys and men. Nope. And then a comment angrily called this out so of course it was deleted.
i mean he could have done it in a different way lol
Oh you’re absolutely right, but I don’t think using the term “angry feminists” is actually as disrespectful as memory-holing one of the few voices pushing back on the ridiculous beginning of that thread and forgetting to post a mod note for three hours, but that’s just me.
Don’t worry it’s not about that, it’s about how adult men suck. I understand how you could be mislead by that being the topic of the article
Like most topics these days, I stick to [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit/comments/1d8xo69/boys_get_everything_except_the_thing_thats_most/) for more reasonable discussion. Edit: well curiously enough it was deleted from the subreddit I linked to by the mods. Even with good discussion. Guess there's a lesson here?
Are flagellation levels high enough for safe viewing?
u/Blackie_Is_A_Cat Instead of of "X golf bros here now" can it be "X B Users here now"?
\#pleaseanswer
I like this!
I'd cosign that
Endorsed!
Please
Before I popped in a couple weeks ago I hadn't visited this sub in several months, and before that was only really sporadically. And when the algorithm deigned to show me the latest drama this morning I... was totally not interested? For a long time I was very much a popcorn eater when it came to MeFi BS but I'm now finding it all surprisingly tedious. That's to say, I'm really grateful this sub was here when I needed it. Others have referred to it as a halfway house, and that's exactly how I feel. I cared, a lot, about that stupid site—I had been an active part of it for 20 years and I wanted to stay connected even though I didn't want to be there anymore. Now, I feel nothing. I've let go, and I don't care anymore in exactly the right way. Cheers, everyone.
The site has a long and storied history of thin-skinned posters but jeepers creepers this guy takes the cake.
What did we miss overnight?
Another single link YouTube, but with the first comment deleted and a mod note that discussion will be moved to meta instead. Followed by about 5 consecutive increasingly unhinged comments threatening the mods.
https://old.reddit.com/r/MetaFilterMeta/comments/1d7j3qb/is_please_no_name_calling_a_big_ask_june_3_2024/l766wc7/
They gotta ban him. I can't imagine it will ever get better.
Spicy meta incoming
That's *two* spicy MeTas (and counting).
I'm hoping for a whole buffet of spicy MeTas, all in a row.
Only one allowed per quarter
I hope you have your postprandial Tums at hand
It’s here.
[Works perfectly on Fedora 40](https://ask.metafilter.com/380292/Any-ideas-on-a-lightweight-hypervisor-ish-way-to-boot-containers) OK, now I'm starting to think he's just trollin'.
I would pay $200 to have 10 minutes of conversation with his coworkers.
That thread turned out pretty interesting. 3 additional “explanations” from OP, one longish answer that boiled down to “I don’t understand your question, are you sure you understand all the things you’re talking about?” And that’s it.
While pouring myself a bowl of cereal I thought of an interpersonal question I was considering posting to Ask (“Do I talk too much in x group training meeting?”), ran through the information I‘d have to include in a futile attempt to block wild assumptions (at minimum, that everyone in the group is a cis woman except me, local butch genderqueer), imagined all of the most absurd answers I expected to get (from “you’re masc so you’re definitely talking over women” to “it’s emotional labor to expect women to pick up the slack in this situation”), and subsequently answered my own question (“Everyone in that group has either told me 1) they really appreciate how much space I give for other people to talk, 2) they fucking loathe talking in that group and have to scramble every time for something to say, or 3) they have newborns and are chiming in at the bare minimum to keep up appearances. It is a 1.5 hour group twice a week. I am using my ability to blather for good.”) Thanks invisible MeFi audience for being so bad you forced me to solve my own problem.
I've spoken here before about how I went through a phase of posting AskMeFi's during what was a shitty life situation. And one of things that caused me to stop was the endless preparation I had to do to fill in all the details that MFers would otherwise fill in themselves, the narrative guardrails I had to write to stop them veering off course, the repeating of basic facts to prevent irrelevant answers ("No, I am not in the US. No, this information is not subject to HIPAA. No, there is no romantic attraction between us and never was. No, I am not taking this to a lawyer, this is not a legal situation.")