A LANDFILL

Godfrick I'm a liar through responsibility-dodging

Part of me would've been pretty ok with letting this thread die because nobody likes drama and some people might reckon that everyone shutting up about/silently collectively moving on from/ a problem is equivalent to Thing not being a problem anymore.

Still, I think trying to use this to raise a point I've been thinking about when it comes to debate/arguments and internet friendcircles, and as an ex-admin of a friendcircle I'd be pretty pleased if all my friendtypes in said circle could take a lesson on wherever we might all e-adrift.

One example I'd like to raise was: on IRC yesterday when Loather mentioned how sick she was of "All About That Bass" constantly playing on the radio. Elps posited that at least on the surface, it is about body positivity for not-skinny ladies, which is great, but Plaid and I countered that it still frames "big is good" in the context of "men still want to tap that" at its best and "men like you better than skinny bitches" at its worst. General eventual conclusion: The song is a good step forward in some respects but that doesn't negate the dog shit stuck to its metaphorical heel.

My general conclusion from that about something I and other people with a "social justice" bent need to quit doing: Trying to resolve stuff (role models, ideologies, music/film/games/books/other media, particular words, average joe internet people) as either good or bad.

I can understand wanting to reduce things down to simple Dos and Do Nots because I'm (generally) averse to hurting (what I admittedly do arbitrarily perceive to be as Good) people and I fight anxiety at the prospect of fucking things up, especially social things. It'd be really convenient if a bunch of universal rules popped up and if we stuck to those we could avoid hurting anyone we ran into, ever - but of course rules (unwritten or not) about what's "acceptable" (especially in social justice-y topics) will vary heavily depending on the social dynamics and composition of the group discussin'.

Anyway that got a bit personal and leading into a look at the issues which arise with my style of moderating, which I want to cover in a separate post for readability or something. I never like talking about my wishes for the community because they invariably sound condescending, but I want to be friends with well-rounded people, and I'd rather the people I have around me now fulfil that criteria rather than trying to seek out new ones. It's hypocritical given the above context, and thus potentially naive as hell, but I want y'all to be good people (or, at least, to make sure your actions are good or generally work to make the world around each of you a better place).

I'm never actually sure how, per se, to do the above, because I get nervous about being manipulative of people and am also aware that I can actively and passively do bad (and have done so in the past, and later tried to justify it through my leadership position).

But yeah tl;dr if any of you think I'm a cool person at least part of the time and think I have good things to say, please when people talk about a Thing to acknowledge its multifacetedness and the validity of both its good and bad points and how it's a combination of those, and a discussion like that doesn't have to conclude with a unanimous agreement that it's Good or Bad (or more usually, that the people who believe it's Good are Wrong or vice versa)

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I'm gonna make inroads into this exam pile for half an hour, maybe, then I'll actually share the good stuff Wheat wrote for me a monthplus ago