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A Quandary, with Bonus Vagueness
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?
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?