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primeidealWaiting for stuff to post about is like waiting for a bus, you wait a while and then, if you're me, the bus comes but you're on the wrong side of the street because you didn't zoom in on Google Maps properly and then by the time you cross over it's gone so you have to wait and...Never mind, this was a metaphor. I have lots of things happening! Mostly good. And I guess there's no rule that says I can't make one monster post with multiple topics but it feels like there should be one in my head.
There's a tendency in some circles to slam the Overton window closed on people's fingers. Like, if someone is making a nuanced argument about how they only agree with some of your points instead of all of them, better write them off as irredeemable and say something dismissive to equate them with your extreme opponents (who you never engage with anyway). The effect of this is, obviously, that the far-extreme opponents won't change anything they do, and anyone in the middle or only 70% in agreement with the dominant discourse instead of 100% will be shamed into silence.
Sometimes this is a desirable effect! The example that goes around is "if we want to kill zero kittens and the other side wants to kill 100% of the kittens, we can't compromise and say 'all right let's only murder 50% of the kittens." If responding to anyone who doesn't agree outright is just "this person is in favor of kitten murder, avoid," then the end result might be deterring people from saying even "maybe we should kill 50% of the kittens," in which case...mission accomplished?
And it's especially common in large social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which is a big reason why I barely post on Twitter at all and Facebook just for RL stuff. The larger the group, I think, the more likely this is to happen. I have a large extended family and there are definitely people there who I would not engage in long back-and-forths with if I can help it. And even in that case, I think, avoidance is better than risking a blowup, even when we agree on a lot.
But it turns out that even in a small, what I thought was fairly intimate, setting, I am not immune to this. :( Feels bad, man. It may be that I should have been more open with some of these loved ones about "by the way, XYZ are really hair-trigger topics for me," but maybe that's a conversation that still has to happen.
There's a tendency in some circles to slam the Overton window closed on people's fingers. Like, if someone is making a nuanced argument about how they only agree with some of your points instead of all of them, better write them off as irredeemable and say something dismissive to equate them with your extreme opponents (who you never engage with anyway). The effect of this is, obviously, that the far-extreme opponents won't change anything they do, and anyone in the middle or only 70% in agreement with the dominant discourse instead of 100% will be shamed into silence.
Sometimes this is a desirable effect! The example that goes around is "if we want to kill zero kittens and the other side wants to kill 100% of the kittens, we can't compromise and say 'all right let's only murder 50% of the kittens." If responding to anyone who doesn't agree outright is just "this person is in favor of kitten murder, avoid," then the end result might be deterring people from saying even "maybe we should kill 50% of the kittens," in which case...mission accomplished?
And it's especially common in large social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook, which is a big reason why I barely post on Twitter at all and Facebook just for RL stuff. The larger the group, I think, the more likely this is to happen. I have a large extended family and there are definitely people there who I would not engage in long back-and-forths with if I can help it. And even in that case, I think, avoidance is better than risking a blowup, even when we agree on a lot.
But it turns out that even in a small, what I thought was fairly intimate, setting, I am not immune to this. :( Feels bad, man. It may be that I should have been more open with some of these loved ones about "by the way, XYZ are really hair-trigger topics for me," but maybe that's a conversation that still has to happen.
