That’s like saying “on a public sidewalk, expect catcalls”
No it isn’t. “Replies” are not analogous to catcalls. It is reasonable to object to harassment. It is not reasonable to expect special treatment, of which ‘never reply to me’ is an instance. I would prefer people who disagree with me with any significant frequency to not be allowed to reply to me but unfortunately cannot expect it.
Just because the structure of the community has no mechanism to prevent harassment doesn’t make it an acceptable behavior or one that I must tolerate quietly.
Repeated attempts to damage someone’s reputation are harassment of a kind I find reprehensible and a toxic influence. Taking offense is a weapon that can be used offensively as well as defensively and it is an extremely effective form of bullying, particularly when the actor has the higher status or a conducive environment.
Showing sympathy for Silas is obviously a bad social move both because you have higher status than Silas (whoops, another bad-move statement) and also project an image that is more optimised for claiming moral ground. So it is with some futility that I will point out that I quite often don’t always approve of Silas’s posts and in particular say this is an example of a reply that I would not expect anyone to tolerate. I also wouldn’t expect anyone to tolerate this.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple; there are competing considerations from the rest of the users here that I have to honor as well.
If I’m going to comment in a discussion, I need to place my comments in the most relevant place. I did not see, and still don’t see, why I should inconvenience everyone else here by putting my comments in irrelevant, hard-to-find places, just to stick to the rule of not replying directly to Alicorn.
Now, take a look at the comment I actually made. Is that a harassing remark? Even if it’s going back on what I said, it doesn’t look like harassment. Now, if I had made a point of deliberately replying to every single Alicorn comment, then I can see it be harassment. But that’s not what happened. And to demand that I not comment at all would just be bullying.
What’s more, when people were (severely) modding her down for her rather rude “Leave me the fuck alone”, I asked them to stop and explained the context.
I’ve made every effort not to respond to offenses in kind, but as always, “no good deed goes unpunished”.
Incidentally, I had withdrawn permission from Alicorn to post on my top-level posts, yet I don’t see similar censure.
Yes, it’s an obviously ridiculous demand based on an oversized sense of entitlement and an extremely fragile ego, and Alicorn could not have reasonably inferred her comments were inappropriate … but when did that ever matter?
Now, take a look at the comment I actually made. Is that a harassing remark? Even if it’s going back on what I said, it doesn’t look like harassment. Now, if I had made a point of deliberately replying to every single Alicorn comment, then I can see it be harassment. But that’s not what happened. And to demand that I not comment at all would just be bullying.
Not to address any of your other points, but my downvote on that particular remark reflected the insult to Mitchell_Porter, not the fact that Alicorn would prefer you leave her alone.
In the previous discussions, Mitchell had been repeatedly saying things like, “if no part of the system has color, neither can the system have color”, and my comment was trying to make fun of this by saying that whatever beliefs he has about symphonies (the system) must apply to violins (the part).
If I’m going to comment in a discussion, I need to place my comments in the most relevant place. I did not see, and still don’t see, why I should inconvenience everyone else here by putting my comments in irrelevant, hard-to-find places, just to stick to the rule of not replying directly to Alicorn.
And doing so would not be a problem, if you would stick to replying to/with facts like you do to every male commenter, rather than try to have some kind of pseudofamiliar conversation with Alicorn.
And doing so would not be a problem, if you would stick to replying to/with facts like you do to every male commenter, rather than try to have some kind of pseudofamiliar conversation with Alicorn.
SilasBarta has had pseudofamiliar conversations with me (on this very post, in fact) - I cannot pretend to have been paying attention to his interactions with Alicorn since the seduction community flamewar, but “every male commenter” is probably incorrect.
...although that’s not strictly a bad thing, in my opinion. It’s worth noting, though, that displaying pseudofamiliarity with someone who would prefer you did not is impolite.
What does pseudofamiliarity even mean? I’m guessing it means taking a tone more appropriate for someone you know well?
That’s about what I mean. Something like
Jeez, where’s Alicorn when you need her? We need someone to make a point about how, “Just because a woman sleeps with you once,...
is insulting on it’s face. But it would appear goodnatured, and would probably bring you closer to each other, if the person you were referring to (effectively in front of her) were your friend in the first place. That is what I mean by taking a familiar tone. But you can not possibly have missed that your prior relation to Alicorn is not one of warm cameraderie, so you can’t have meant it to work that way (or so I thought)*.
And if I actually had to explain that I will have to ask the question that I held back when I first saw your comment: Are you autistic?
*Edited because I assumed too much. My post became needlessly insulting towards SilasBarta. I hope that it is less so now.
I would say that is approximately correct—I read “pseudofamiliarity” as the tone you would take with an amicable acquaintance. Not as free as the way you would talk to a close personal friend, but lighthearted.
Alicorn is not an amicable acquaintance, and she has found conversation with you in the past uncomfortable. Even granting that you have the right to address her remarks without engaging her specifically, the jocular tone of your initial remark assumed a (pseudo)familiarity in your relationship which was not present.
I read “pseudofamiliarity” as the tone you would take with an amicable acquaintance.
(Or an acquaintance who is openly a rival, where it is a minor display of dominance and a signal to others that you don’t need to consider them a threat. Not that I think it applies here.)
That’s not surprising—posts where one is inclined to use smilies are at least pseudofamiliar.
(And—I apologize for interjecting with advice—given that Alicorn does not like you, if you are replying to her in such a tone that you would consider using smilies, you are probably being overly familiar. Jocularity is probably appropriate in other situations, though.)
(...but I would advise against cutting remarks like the one which set off this thread.)
The fact that he agreed just makes him a hypocrite when he breaks the agreement. If he hadn’t agreed, that wouldn’t make it appropriate for him to continue to bother me.
Yes, that was foolish of him and were I to have made an impulsive concession like that I would retract it before replying. But then I would continue to reply impersonally to Alicorn’s comments as though they were from any other poster, refuting those that I disagreed with or adding related insights as appropriate. (I would hopefully not make dumbass comments like “where is Alicorn when you need her?”)
Wikipedia which knoweth all says: “Harassment covers a wide range of offensive behaviour. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing.” (Emphasis mine.) And: “Example: Talking to someone excessively without permission and continuing the conversation.”
I have been seriously, actionably harassed by creeps on the Internet before. While participation on this forum should be considered an open invitation to the majority of people to interact with me, I retracted that permission from SilasBarta in particular upon collecting enough data to group him with other creeps on the Internet. I haven’t demanded that he leave the site, or that anyone else stop interacting with him, or even that he avoid making comments on my top-level posts. I want him to refrain from replying to my comments and sending me private messages, and I’m extending the same courtesy. Is this “special treatment”? Well, in the sense that I’m the only person who has seen fit to request this treatment, yes; in the sense that I want it only from one individual, yes; but neither of these things seem to make the desire to be left alone by someone I don’t want to ever talk to an unreasonable one.
Do you think I am attempting to damage someone’s reputation, or are you saying that I’d only be justified in demanding to be left alone if this demand were in response to someone libeling me?
And: “Example: Talking to someone excessively without permission and continuing the conversation.”
‘Talking to’ is an entirely different thing to replying to comments that happen to be made by you. If people are making statements here that others disagree with then those others should be free to make that disagreement.
Whether online or off, engaging personally is different to contributing to a group discourse.
Do you think I am attempting to damage someone’s reputation
Absolutely, and very effectively. Silas’s naivety when it comes to this kind of game helped. Apart from being somewhat disagreement prone, he tried to be conciliatory when you were going for the kill and was reckless when he was vulnerable to attack and needed to be impeccable.
For what it is worth I think you are being completely sincere in considering yourself a victim here. But I am less appreciative of sincerity than I once was.
I believe that you miss some of the background here. A while ago there were a bunch of posts trying to set “the seduction community” up as a great example of rationality. Alicorn and some other women objected to the way that women were treated as objects to be aquired, studied and manipulated in various ways. The discussion became somewhat heated. All the women who were involved except Alicorn, and at least one of the guys who started it, have since left LessWrong, or changed their usernames. And SilasBarta has been picking on Alicorn ever since.
All the women who were involved except Alicorn, and at least one of the guys who started it have since left LessWrong, or changed their usernames.
False. Some of them comment less frequently, and I was worried myself for a time, but the people you refer to continue to comment here.
And SilasBarta has been picking on Alicorn ever since.
No. Just, no. I have refuted arguments she’s made that I have found in error, sometimes harshly. I have applauded points she’s made. I have come to her defense, even in contravention of my own interests.
I’ve never “picked on” Alicorn; she just has a tendency to completely misinterpret what I say or take refutations too personally.
Alicorn and some other women objected to the way that women were treated as objects to be aquired, studied and manipulated in various ways.
Are you saying that there were no men present who shared that objection, or that those who did weren’t real men? Your statement implies one or the other.
Edit: I do not mean to imply any character flaw on your part—merely to illuminate the poor wording.
There were several men who supported the objections. If I don’t misjudge/misremember there were about an equal number of men on either side of that discussion. None of the men have been harassed later, and AFAIK none of the men who were on the side with the women have left.
SilasBarta had annoyed me in the past. It became irritating enough that I took the measure I did after the gender kerfluffle, but while the kerfluffle certainly did not help, it wasn’t the sole cause.
No it isn’t. “Replies” are not analogous to catcalls. It is reasonable to object to harassment. It is not reasonable to expect special treatment, of which ‘never reply to me’ is an instance. I would prefer people who disagree with me with any significant frequency to not be allowed to reply to me but unfortunately cannot expect it.
Repeated attempts to damage someone’s reputation are harassment of a kind I find reprehensible and a toxic influence. Taking offense is a weapon that can be used offensively as well as defensively and it is an extremely effective form of bullying, particularly when the actor has the higher status or a conducive environment.
Showing sympathy for Silas is obviously a bad social move both because you have higher status than Silas (whoops, another bad-move statement) and also project an image that is more optimised for claiming moral ground. So it is with some futility that I will point out that I quite often don’t always approve of Silas’s posts and in particular say this is an example of a reply that I would not expect anyone to tolerate. I also wouldn’t expect anyone to tolerate this.
The context you’re missing here is that prior to this exchange Alicorn asked SilasBarta not to respond directly to her comments and he agreed.
Unfortunately, it’s not that simple; there are competing considerations from the rest of the users here that I have to honor as well.
If I’m going to comment in a discussion, I need to place my comments in the most relevant place. I did not see, and still don’t see, why I should inconvenience everyone else here by putting my comments in irrelevant, hard-to-find places, just to stick to the rule of not replying directly to Alicorn.
Now, take a look at the comment I actually made. Is that a harassing remark? Even if it’s going back on what I said, it doesn’t look like harassment. Now, if I had made a point of deliberately replying to every single Alicorn comment, then I can see it be harassment. But that’s not what happened. And to demand that I not comment at all would just be bullying.
What’s more, when people were (severely) modding her down for her rather rude “Leave me the fuck alone”, I asked them to stop and explained the context.
I’ve made every effort not to respond to offenses in kind, but as always, “no good deed goes unpunished”.
Incidentally, I had withdrawn permission from Alicorn to post on my top-level posts, yet I don’t see similar censure.
Yes, it’s an obviously ridiculous demand based on an oversized sense of entitlement and an extremely fragile ego, and Alicorn could not have reasonably inferred her comments were inappropriate … but when did that ever matter?
Not to address any of your other points, but my downvote on that particular remark reflected the insult to Mitchell_Porter, not the fact that Alicorn would prefer you leave her alone.
Fair point. I agree that Mitchell_Porter may have had reason to object to it, but not Alicorn.
As was mine. (Also partly because I didn’t really get the joke side of it.)
In the previous discussions, Mitchell had been repeatedly saying things like, “if no part of the system has color, neither can the system have color”, and my comment was trying to make fun of this by saying that whatever beliefs he has about symphonies (the system) must apply to violins (the part).
Ahh, good analogy. I’d almost forgotten that this drama was going on in the (@#$!) monad thread.
And doing so would not be a problem, if you would stick to replying to/with facts like you do to every male commenter, rather than try to have some kind of pseudofamiliar conversation with Alicorn.
Have you been following Alicorn’s complaints? It certainly would have been a problem to somebody!
SilasBarta has had pseudofamiliar conversations with me (on this very post, in fact) - I cannot pretend to have been paying attention to his interactions with Alicorn since the seduction community flamewar, but “every male commenter” is probably incorrect.
In fact, I think Silas displays above average pseudofamiliarity.
...although that’s not strictly a bad thing, in my opinion. It’s worth noting, though, that displaying pseudofamiliarity with someone who would prefer you did not is impolite.
I agree.
What does pseudofamiliarity even mean? I’m guessing it means taking a tone more appropriate for someone you know well?
That’s about what I mean. Something like
is insulting on it’s face. But it would appear goodnatured, and would probably bring you closer to each other, if the person you were referring to (effectively in front of her) were your friend in the first place. That is what I mean by taking a familiar tone. But you can not possibly have missed that your prior relation to Alicorn is not one of warm cameraderie, so you can’t have meant it to work that way (or so I thought)*.
And if I actually had to explain that I will have to ask the question that I held back when I first saw your comment: Are you autistic?
*Edited because I assumed too much. My post became needlessly insulting towards SilasBarta. I hope that it is less so now.
I would say that is approximately correct—I read “pseudofamiliarity” as the tone you would take with an amicable acquaintance. Not as free as the way you would talk to a close personal friend, but lighthearted.
Alicorn is not an amicable acquaintance, and she has found conversation with you in the past uncomfortable. Even granting that you have the right to address her remarks without engaging her specifically, the jocular tone of your initial remark assumed a (pseudo)familiarity in your relationship which was not present.
(Or an acquaintance who is openly a rival, where it is a minor display of dominance and a signal to others that you don’t need to consider them a threat. Not that I think it applies here.)
Okay, that makes sense. I do use a lot of smilies, just to make sure the intent is clear.
That’s not surprising—posts where one is inclined to use smilies are at least pseudofamiliar.
(And—I apologize for interjecting with advice—given that Alicorn does not like you, if you are replying to her in such a tone that you would consider using smilies, you are probably being overly familiar. Jocularity is probably appropriate in other situations, though.)
(...but I would advise against cutting remarks like the one which set off this thread.)
As far as I know it didn’t mean anything until now, except as a pseudo-technical term used by memory researchers. But ‘familiar’ means roughly that.
The fact that he agreed just makes him a hypocrite when he breaks the agreement. If he hadn’t agreed, that wouldn’t make it appropriate for him to continue to bother me.
My point is directed at statements like
and
and not at the appropriateness or lack thereof of SilasBarta continuing to interact with you in the counterfactual world where he had not agreed.
Yes, that was foolish of him and were I to have made an impulsive concession like that I would retract it before replying. But then I would continue to reply impersonally to Alicorn’s comments as though they were from any other poster, refuting those that I disagreed with or adding related insights as appropriate. (I would hopefully not make dumbass comments like “where is Alicorn when you need her?”)
Serendipitously, this reply to Alicorn addresses your comment as well.
Wikipedia which knoweth all says: “Harassment covers a wide range of offensive behaviour. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset. In the legal sense, it is behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing.” (Emphasis mine.) And: “Example: Talking to someone excessively without permission and continuing the conversation.”
I have been seriously, actionably harassed by creeps on the Internet before. While participation on this forum should be considered an open invitation to the majority of people to interact with me, I retracted that permission from SilasBarta in particular upon collecting enough data to group him with other creeps on the Internet. I haven’t demanded that he leave the site, or that anyone else stop interacting with him, or even that he avoid making comments on my top-level posts. I want him to refrain from replying to my comments and sending me private messages, and I’m extending the same courtesy. Is this “special treatment”? Well, in the sense that I’m the only person who has seen fit to request this treatment, yes; in the sense that I want it only from one individual, yes; but neither of these things seem to make the desire to be left alone by someone I don’t want to ever talk to an unreasonable one.
Do you think I am attempting to damage someone’s reputation, or are you saying that I’d only be justified in demanding to be left alone if this demand were in response to someone libeling me?
‘Talking to’ is an entirely different thing to replying to comments that happen to be made by you. If people are making statements here that others disagree with then those others should be free to make that disagreement.
Whether online or off, engaging personally is different to contributing to a group discourse.
Absolutely, and very effectively. Silas’s naivety when it comes to this kind of game helped. Apart from being somewhat disagreement prone, he tried to be conciliatory when you were going for the kill and was reckless when he was vulnerable to attack and needed to be impeccable.
For what it is worth I think you are being completely sincere in considering yourself a victim here. But I am less appreciative of sincerity than I once was.
I believe that you miss some of the background here. A while ago there were a bunch of posts trying to set “the seduction community” up as a great example of rationality. Alicorn and some other women objected to the way that women were treated as objects to be aquired, studied and manipulated in various ways. The discussion became somewhat heated. All the women who were involved except Alicorn, and at least one of the guys who started it, have since left LessWrong, or changed their usernames. And SilasBarta has been picking on Alicorn ever since.
False. Some of them comment less frequently, and I was worried myself for a time, but the people you refer to continue to comment here.
No. Just, no. I have refuted arguments she’s made that I have found in error, sometimes harshly. I have applauded points she’s made. I have come to her defense, even in contravention of my own interests.
I’ve never “picked on” Alicorn; she just has a tendency to completely misinterpret what I say or take refutations too personally.
Your framing of events here is quite strong, to the point of bordering on falsehood.
Are you saying that there were no men present who shared that objection, or that those who did weren’t real men? Your statement implies one or the other.
Edit: I do not mean to imply any character flaw on your part—merely to illuminate the poor wording.
My apologies for being unclear.
There were several men who supported the objections. If I don’t misjudge/misremember there were about an equal number of men on either side of that discussion. None of the men have been harassed later, and AFAIK none of the men who were on the side with the women have left.
Your statement, once again, has clear implications which I would contradict were they explicit.
(Not true)
SilasBarta had annoyed me in the past. It became irritating enough that I took the measure I did after the gender kerfluffle, but while the kerfluffle certainly did not help, it wasn’t the sole cause.