A Quandary, with Bonus Vagueness

[lizvogel]

Attempting to anonymize this sufficiently to avoid specific wank. Hopefully it hasn't resulted in complete incoherence.


I have an account on a certain forum, let's call it Forum C. Forum C is everything I want; people doing a thing I'm into, some of them at a more advanced level than I'm at, with an active and viably-sized participation pool. It's basically what I've been looking for for ages.

It also has a dominant political attitude that makes me deeply, deeply unwilling to post or participate there.

I also have an account on Forum B. Forum B is not everything I want; it has little snippets of what I want, and probably some people who could teach me a thing or two, but its focus is something adjacent at best to what I'm looking for. I'd feel comfortable enough posting there, but there's never a conversation I have enough to contribute to for it to be worthwhile.

I spend a lot of time on Forum C reading interesting discussions and having responses and wishing I felt comfortable joining in. I spend a lot of time on Forum B looking in vain for a thread I have anything to say about.

The thing is, Forum B also has a dominant political attitude. It's not mine, any more than Forum C's is. And yet, I'm willing to overlook the more extreme examples on B in a way that I'm not on C. Part of this is that some of the extreme-viewholders on C are moderators, and their views are explicit policy (in demonstrated practice if not spelled out in so many words in the rules), whereas the mods on B, whatever their personal opinions, adhere to a strict free-speech approach. Partly it's that if I say something contrary to a type-B-whackjob, I can reasonably expect them to disparage my opinion in that thread, and maybe have less patience with me on some other thread in the forum, but it stops there; if I say something contrary to a type-C-whackjob, there's far too much possibility that they'll hunt down my social media and harass me there, try to get me blacklisted with RL aspects of our mutual interest, etc.

(I should add that neither forum is a monolith; there are people holding a wide range of political views on both forums. I wouldn't know about C's de facto standard if someone hadn't been having what I considered a perfectly reasonable conversation that was shut down explicitly because "we're not going to talk about" something that didn't toe the right line.)

Forum C scares me. Forum B... bores me?

And yet...

I read something today on Forum B that was just plain wrong, started to formulate a counter-argument, then shook my head and let it go, because the crazy person wasn't going to be persuaded by anything I could say. I'm willing to make that concession on Forum B, which I support and like in principle but which does absolutely nothing for me. Why am I not willing to do the same on Forum C, which would fill a number of needs I dearly want to fill if only I could bring myself to participate there?

Principles are important, I believe in standing for principles, but... am I just hurting myself here? Is it worth hurting myself in this particular way, instead of getting what I can out of Forum C and quietly averting my eyes from the crazy people, just as I do on Forum B for far less reward?

I can do the dance to get by on Forum C. Can I still look myself in the mirror afterward? I'm not sure.

(I'd probably be less tormented about this if I could go play on Forum A, but Forum A has been down for months now. Whatever social outlet I was getting there, it's not available now and I'm not making bets on when it will be.)

So, internet person who's reading this, what do you think I should do? What would you do, in similar circumstances? And why?

Comments

[green_knight]

I think the unwillingness to wade into cesspits is something that comes with age and experience.

Someone Was Wrong On The Internet the other day (is persistently wrong), and I made one carefully designed comment, which promptly got deleted by the forum owner for not being fawning enough, and I will now rant in my own space when I have the time and otherwise let it go, because I am old and jaded and I know from experience that nothing good will come of wading in deeper.

I have been getting some of my social connection needs on reddit lately. Parts of it are a cesspit, and some of the people are toxic, but there's a lot of surprisingly frank and deep discussion, and being [completely random username] is rather liberating. (Still struggling with rejection, still struggling with people being dicks, but overall, it's not a bad outlet.)

[lizvogel]

I've been looking at reddit a bit, but the level of discussion is not what I'm looking for, at least in the places I've been. Are there particular subreddits you'd recommend?

Completely agree about cesspits. The problem is when it's not all a cesspit.... Imagine a lovely back yard, with seating areas and a barbecue and a volleyball court, and it's all absolutely fine as long as you're careful to step around that one reeking hole in the ground....

[duskpeterson]

"there's far too much possibility that they'll hunt down my social media and harass me there, try to get me blacklisted with RL aspects of our mutual interest, etc."

Well, that's a consideration. Because you can't necessarily know what will trigger people online. Elsewhere in cyberspace, I've made what I thought to be a rather mild comment *at my own account* and have been viciously attacked.

That's one reason why Dreamwidth is the only place where I post these days. I concluded that I wouldn't announce my opinions to strangers on a city street corner, so why do it at a giant social media site where strangers could verbally attack me? (Dreamwidth is a smaller community and provides its users with tools to stop drive-by attacks.)

I do feel for your dilemma, though. I live in a lovely waterfront small town . . . and I've had to cut off three taxi drivers from making bigoted remarks, one of them about my companion. (The taxi driver didn't know Joe was my companion.) In all three cases, the taxi drivers took the hint, but it does leave me on edge. Yet it's a nice town!

So I'm not sure what to advise except maybe to seek out forums with good moderation tools. There must be more forums out there you'd like?

[lizvogel]

Yet it's a nice town!

There's always gotta be someone who pees in the pool, doesn't there?

So I'm not sure what to advise except maybe to seek out forums with good moderation tools.

Moderation is actually part of the problem; "you don't get to disagree with my received wisdom" is a demonstrated mod approach on Forum C, and shutting down a polite, on-topic discussion because someone transgresses a particular political orthodoxy does not create an environment I'm comfortable participating in.

There must be more forums out there you'd like?

The forum in question is for a very specific interest, aimed at exactly the level I'm at with it. If there's another one like it out there, I haven't found it in many years of looking.

[duskpeterson]

Re moderation tools: Good moderators are a blessing, but I was more thinking along the lines of being able to control data in case of attacks. Like, I can screen and delete comments at my Dreamwidth blog; I can't do that at the big social media sites.

But if this is the only forum that you've been able to find on this topic, I guess that leaves you with few choices, alas. The only other alternative I can think of is switching forum conversations to one-on-one emails or PMs whenever possible.

[lizvogel]

But if this is the only forum that you've been able to find on this topic,

Oh, fsck anonymity: it's a writing forum. Of which there are eleventy-billion and one out there, yes, but this one is (1) specifically for my genre, (2) exclusively for people who have made professional sales but aren't "big names" yet, and (3) big enough and active enough to get a good conversation going and keep it going. #1 is rare in my experience; #2 I don't know of any other examples of. And #3 has been the demise of many an otherwise-promising forum.

But 1, 2, and 3 are also the problem, because if I get into a discussion and someone decides I'm not being social-justicey enough or in the right way, it could have significant professional consequences for me. And switching to one-on-one communication would require me to be active enough on the forum to have conversations to switch and for people to know who the heck I am, which puts me right back in the potential line of fire.

(Just to head off the obvious tangents: No, I'm not looking for a space to be an asshole online. I generally figure everybody should live how they want to live, and as long as they're not hurting anybody else, that's their business, not mine. But I don't think "No, a major genre publisher should not be de-platformed" or "No, the guy who started that attack should not win a Hug0 for it" are asshole opinions. And yet, those are views I would not be comfortable expressing on said forum.)