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"But no politics"
5 years ago
I belong to a Pokemon-related Discord server and I just want to gripe about something.
Earlier this evening, I was in and out of conversation, when someone made a mistake and dropped the 'r'-word in self-deprecation. Regardless, I and several other people jumped on it with negative reaccs and admonishments, until one of the higher-role people came at us with "no politics". Not really understanding why, I asked what he was talking about.
He asserted that the word is apparently up for debate (it's not) and the idea that certain pundits were talking about it made it political. I came back at him with, "You might as well say Pokemon is political, then, 'cause video games being falsely correlated with violence shows up on the stump pretty frequently." It appeared to work, as he didn't respond for several minutes until the conversation shifted.
I followed up by asking in the suggestion channel for an explicit policy against hate speech for the server, but was rebuffed by a mod who told me to "follow the Discord community guidelines" and pointed me to a link. The link did say that servers can't be created for the specific purpose of hate speech and discrimination, but individual incidents appear to be left to the discretion of the server owner and their designees.
So several hours later, I was somewhat surprised and fairly annoyed by seeing "no politics" friendo not only chatting, but actively leading a discussion about COVID-19 and policies like mask mandates, immigration limits, and closing of borders in the original channel.
Apparently that's apolitical enough (being policies enacted by politicians) to be discussed, but simply denouncing hate speech is too much. No, it's more revealing what *kinds* of things make people uncomfortable to call out and have on the open floor. It's disheartening, aggravating, and since this server is the best source I have for information about this particular spinoff (my favorite incremental game to date and one of my longest-played), I really don't have anywhere else to go.
So, I will have to take small steps. Die Arbet halt.
Earlier this evening, I was in and out of conversation, when someone made a mistake and dropped the 'r'-word in self-deprecation. Regardless, I and several other people jumped on it with negative reaccs and admonishments, until one of the higher-role people came at us with "no politics". Not really understanding why, I asked what he was talking about.
He asserted that the word is apparently up for debate (it's not) and the idea that certain pundits were talking about it made it political. I came back at him with, "You might as well say Pokemon is political, then, 'cause video games being falsely correlated with violence shows up on the stump pretty frequently." It appeared to work, as he didn't respond for several minutes until the conversation shifted.
I followed up by asking in the suggestion channel for an explicit policy against hate speech for the server, but was rebuffed by a mod who told me to "follow the Discord community guidelines" and pointed me to a link. The link did say that servers can't be created for the specific purpose of hate speech and discrimination, but individual incidents appear to be left to the discretion of the server owner and their designees.
So several hours later, I was somewhat surprised and fairly annoyed by seeing "no politics" friendo not only chatting, but actively leading a discussion about COVID-19 and policies like mask mandates, immigration limits, and closing of borders in the original channel.
Apparently that's apolitical enough (being policies enacted by politicians) to be discussed, but simply denouncing hate speech is too much. No, it's more revealing what *kinds* of things make people uncomfortable to call out and have on the open floor. It's disheartening, aggravating, and since this server is the best source I have for information about this particular spinoff (my favorite incremental game to date and one of my longest-played), I really don't have anywhere else to go.
So, I will have to take small steps. Die Arbet halt.
