This thread seems WAY too tangentially related to our quiet Treklit corner of the internet. Seems a pointless and rapidly devolving opportunity for needless offtopic conflict…
Are writers moving over to Mastodon?
- Thread starter bdub76
- Start date
No.
To bring it back, I want to say how much I've enjoyed this community and its welcoming, involved, and author-filled forum. The insights by the authors have helped me appreciate a lot of the books that I might have otherwise had a shallower understanding of and also give a lot more information on the background of.
I used to be hugely devoted to theforce.net literature fandom and this filled a hole that my falling out of it had. Plus, everyone is just so friendly.
I used to be hugely devoted to theforce.net literature fandom and this filled a hole that my falling out of it had. Plus, everyone is just so friendly.
I think, we're experiencing a great tech reset. Meta is having issues. Twitter is having issues. Snap is having issues. It's like we're finally seeing another iteration of social media, which is exciting. Anybody remember MySpace? How about newsgroups? I'm hoping this next iteration is an improvement over the previous, rather than a step back. So I was curious what the writers were doing.
There's no such thing as whiteness because a skin tone is not an ideology or a religion. My skin color has nothing to do with anything.
White supremacy does exist but white supremacists are extremely rare. They are so rare that you'll probably live out your entire life without ever meeting one unless you deliberately seek them out. Because everyone hates them, white supremacists have no influence on society, despite what the far-left may think. When someone gets called a white supremacist on the internet, it's usually because they stood up against anti-white racism or pointed out facts that contradict the far-left narrative.
As for white privilege, all groups have advantages and disadvantages. White people have a much higher suicide rate and incidence of cancer than black people. They are more likely to be homeless. Using "white privilege" in a conversation is just a way to dismiss someone's opinion because of their skin color.
By the way, I didn't have an insular upbringing. I went to a very diverse primary school with Greeks, Africans, Afghans, Indians and many other ethnic groups. I grew up thinking that was completely normal.
Marginalized groups have the same rights as everyone else in western societies, so I don't know why they are perceived as victims in desperate need of more representation. Just because there's less of them in the community than some other group doesn't make them victims.
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To bring it back, I want to say how much I've enjoyed this community and its welcoming, involved, and author-filled forum. The insights by the authors have helped me appreciate a lot of the books that I might have otherwise had a shallower understanding of and also give a lot more information on the background of.
I used to be hugely devoted to theforce.net literature fandom and this filled a hole that my falling out of it had. Plus, everyone is just so friendly.
I think, it's super cool that the writers are here. I wasn't expecting that when I joined.
So this thread did end up emulating Twitter. How disturbingly meta.
First things first.
I can't believe I'm reading this here. The notion that you can try to reframe hate speech as some kind of "valid criticism" is beyond the pale. You have earned an infraction for racist trolling. Comments to PM. You also appear to have a misunderstanding of what white privilege is, but this isn't the place to get into that.
And on that note, I would like to remind thread participants to stay on topic for the thread, which is the Star Trek authors potentially leaving Twitter for Mastodon, or other social media sites. This isn't the place to discuss how Twitter operates, or what changes are being introduced to Twitter, or whatever. I am going to unlock the thread, with the understanding that we will stick to that narrow focus. If we can't, then I may have to close it permanently. If you wanted to discuss the goings-on at Twitter, which is a valid discussion topic, I would suggest starting a thread in Miscellaneous. (Although spoiler alert: racist rhetoric will get warned there, too.)
Sorry for temporarily locking the thread without warning; when I saw what was going down, I wanted to limit further damage before I had a chance to address.
First things first.
I can't believe I'm reading this here. The notion that you can try to reframe hate speech as some kind of "valid criticism" is beyond the pale. You have earned an infraction for racist trolling. Comments to PM. You also appear to have a misunderstanding of what white privilege is, but this isn't the place to get into that.
And on that note, I would like to remind thread participants to stay on topic for the thread, which is the Star Trek authors potentially leaving Twitter for Mastodon, or other social media sites. This isn't the place to discuss how Twitter operates, or what changes are being introduced to Twitter, or whatever. I am going to unlock the thread, with the understanding that we will stick to that narrow focus. If we can't, then I may have to close it permanently. If you wanted to discuss the goings-on at Twitter, which is a valid discussion topic, I would suggest starting a thread in Miscellaneous. (Although spoiler alert: racist rhetoric will get warned there, too.)
Sorry for temporarily locking the thread without warning; when I saw what was going down, I wanted to limit further damage before I had a chance to address.
Warning if this is too off-topic. It's a bit long.
America is a big country.
I feel like we all suffer from some variation of confirmation bias. It's hard for us to imagine that, outside of our experiences, that the world can be such a dramatically different place to the way we live. It's posts like this that are a good reminder that I have seen and experienced stuff that just flat out do not make sense to people from other places.
Rather than try to explain, I'll actually share what I mean by way of a couple of stories. On the internet, the Onyx Path Forums, I was discussing all the Nazis that I had to deal with in my area. I talked about my encounters with them and how nervous they made me plus a few times I'd gotten in altercations plus my disagreements in the family about owning a firearm. I'm a pacifist.
Halfway through the conversation, a guy laid into me about how I was misusing the term Nazi. How it was despicable that I applied the name of a real life evil (and extinct) organization to my political enemies and I should be ashamed of myself for diminishing its power. How he didn't call Democrats Nazis or progressives or whatever he thought I was that and I shouldn't do that for Republicans. Not apparently aware I was an anarchist and that 90% of the people in my area were Republicans.
And that, in fact, I was referring to Nazis.
Specifically, I was referring to the white supremacist gangs and militias in my area. Guys who openly refrred to themselves as white supremacists, Nazis, and had themselves covered in tattoos while flying the flags. In Ashland, Ky, there's about 15 separate organized militias and compounds in my immediate area. Gangs aren't composed of black people or Hispanics but Neo-Nazi organizations as well as white supremacy is the binding ideology for the drug trade in meth as well as prostitution. If you ever watched JUSTIFIED you'd actually see how white criminal gangs function in my state.
The guy was genuinely CONFUSED by my response because the idea white supremacy was a living, breathing, and dangerous criminal ideology that people were killed over was something that he couldn't parse. He even denied it was a thing and that I had to be making it up or something I had no experience of. When, in fact, a Kroger I occasionally visited had THAT year had a spree murder of black citizens.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/kroger-shooter-pleads-guilty-federal-hate-crimes-and-firearm-offenses
He didn't believe me when I said the Kentucky State Fair had banned Neo-Nazi booths and KKK paraphernalia for sale (because that was a big gathering of them) in 2018. Yes, 2018. Its something they're still appealing.
https://www.courier-journal.com/sto...items-banned-kentucky-expo-center/2003010002/
For a lot of people, white supremacy and white terrorism is a boogeyman made up. For other people, it's a daily part of their lives that they fight against with protests, letters, and sometimes their lives. I'm glad for the places where it's not a problem.
EDIT:
Whoops, sorry!
I saw the post by the mods only after I posted. If you want me to delete it, I happily will.
America is a big country.
I feel like we all suffer from some variation of confirmation bias. It's hard for us to imagine that, outside of our experiences, that the world can be such a dramatically different place to the way we live. It's posts like this that are a good reminder that I have seen and experienced stuff that just flat out do not make sense to people from other places.
Rather than try to explain, I'll actually share what I mean by way of a couple of stories. On the internet, the Onyx Path Forums, I was discussing all the Nazis that I had to deal with in my area. I talked about my encounters with them and how nervous they made me plus a few times I'd gotten in altercations plus my disagreements in the family about owning a firearm. I'm a pacifist.
Halfway through the conversation, a guy laid into me about how I was misusing the term Nazi. How it was despicable that I applied the name of a real life evil (and extinct) organization to my political enemies and I should be ashamed of myself for diminishing its power. How he didn't call Democrats Nazis or progressives or whatever he thought I was that and I shouldn't do that for Republicans. Not apparently aware I was an anarchist and that 90% of the people in my area were Republicans.
And that, in fact, I was referring to Nazis.
Specifically, I was referring to the white supremacist gangs and militias in my area. Guys who openly refrred to themselves as white supremacists, Nazis, and had themselves covered in tattoos while flying the flags. In Ashland, Ky, there's about 15 separate organized militias and compounds in my immediate area. Gangs aren't composed of black people or Hispanics but Neo-Nazi organizations as well as white supremacy is the binding ideology for the drug trade in meth as well as prostitution. If you ever watched JUSTIFIED you'd actually see how white criminal gangs function in my state.
The guy was genuinely CONFUSED by my response because the idea white supremacy was a living, breathing, and dangerous criminal ideology that people were killed over was something that he couldn't parse. He even denied it was a thing and that I had to be making it up or something I had no experience of. When, in fact, a Kroger I occasionally visited had THAT year had a spree murder of black citizens.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/kroger-shooter-pleads-guilty-federal-hate-crimes-and-firearm-offenses
He didn't believe me when I said the Kentucky State Fair had banned Neo-Nazi booths and KKK paraphernalia for sale (because that was a big gathering of them) in 2018. Yes, 2018. Its something they're still appealing.
https://www.courier-journal.com/sto...items-banned-kentucky-expo-center/2003010002/
For a lot of people, white supremacy and white terrorism is a boogeyman made up. For other people, it's a daily part of their lives that they fight against with protests, letters, and sometimes their lives. I'm glad for the places where it's not a problem.
EDIT:
Whoops, sorry!
I saw the post by the mods only after I posted. If you want me to delete it, I happily will.
My mindset is to not focus on what has happened. I'm more interested in the future. Have you noticed the vehicles in the Fast and Furious movies have no rearview mirror? Look forward. No reason to discuss problems with Twitter.
What's more exciting are alternatives and where we go from here. Mastodon is one alternative. There are a lot of others too.
What's more exciting are alternatives and where we go from here. Mastodon is one alternative. There are a lot of others too.
I get that this is a longer post, and you were probably working on it before I posted. But also, admittedly, we tend not to like it when we ask people to drop a subject and the subject continues. In addition, it isn't really fair to the other posters, since they can't reply to anything you bring up. I do feel your apology is genuine, and this was just a timing issue, so I'm not going to take any action on it. But please consider this a friendly entreaty to be more careful of this in the future.
To everyone, let's please stay on topic.
Thanks for being understanding. Much appreciated.
Quick update: I'm still waiting for my account at CoHost.org to be activated; there appear to be roughly 5,800+ folks in line ahead of me. I'm still not sure what I'm doing on CounterSocial. However, I did finally succeed in setting up a Mastodon account. Those looking to follow me via that protocol can do so at @davidmack@wandering.shop
With Facebook and Twitter, that would be "inception."
Boards and list servers take a bit longer, but they aren't immune unless somebody is enforcing reasonable, fair rules of civility.
But to get back on topic (I, too, just now saw the mod post), THIS is the best place for meaningful dialogue with ST authors.
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Russia will give you 3 dollars to change that post so that it is nicer to Russia,
It's a trap.
Although, if Mastadon allows you to sell one more more book: Worth it.
Let's all just go to Tumblr. They have the nicest, pro-every-Trek people. They're just a lil' odd and very gay and shippy of everyone. Diane Duane and Una McCormack are already there. Here's my Trek one.
Oh they're allowing the Gorn again, as of last week. So, ummm, be warned.
