The Attack Mentality
Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2014 3:48 am
The issue I have with the room is the change of mentality of the users.
The original intent of the site was to bring people together to have interesting conversations with the under-riding theme that most, if not all, of the members were either disabled, had disabled family or worked with disabled. Disabilities was not the subject, it was our bond. We welcomed the few non-disabled if they too could add something interesting to the conversation.
This has changed; the bond is broken.
We now have 3 types of people who enter the room and they're all working at cross purposes. One type comes in looking for romance/cybersex. They only talk in private and blatantly violate the safety rules and influence others to do the same. When things go bad, the blame the site rather than their own stupidity. They add no value to the group. The next type is the public speakers. They only talk and never listen. At times I have quietly muted them completely for months at a time and they never even noticed. These people added no value to the group.
The third type is the conversationalists. This is the type I stayed for. Some are friendly, some are curmudgeons, some are well educated and others not. We talked about ideas, not about people. We all found a way to get along (or at least pretend to.)
What has changed is that some of the conversationalists began to become xenophobic elitists. Every new person was put under suspicion. I'm not talking about people asking 20 questions (which I did not like), I'm talking about the "GET EM!!!!" crowd. Waiting for someone to make an honest mistake (because they mistype or are not native English speakers) and then everyone goes into attack mode.
I watched this last week with an engineering student. People were tossing out all sorts of accusations about the student and I could refute each one of those accusations by quoting the log back. Logs aren't magic. If I can read it in the log it is because it was stated in public. If I can read it, everyone should have been able to read it too, but they were too busy planning their attack to notice what was being said.
Tonight I saw it again. A foreigner mistyped something. If you actually looked at the entire sentence, it was plainly obvious what his question was. But people attacked him without taking the time to understand. Everyone branded him a pedophile which he clearly was not. He apologized profusely for the misunderstanding but nobody cared. Then someone else made a joke in regard to another user and then blamed the new person for saying it. After that, these same people misquoted the new user which really did make it sound like he was a pedophile even though he never said what they were quoting him as saying. Nobody cared. GET EM, he's not like us!!!!!
About a month ago a user quietly came to me to tell me about something he saw as very racist. I reviewed the logs carefully, noting what was said, how it was said and specifically WHEN it was said and the history of who supposedly said it and I came to the conclusion that his emotions got the better of him. He was already upset and there was no way I could talk him out of what he thought he saw, even though the logs showed otherwise. Him I respect because he brought it to me privately. Afterward, everyone remained friends. That’s how it should be.
Others aren’t so nice to me. I get the most vile hate mail every week from people. People spread false rumors about me and the room itself. People blame the bad things that happen on me and say I should have warned them even though the rules are posted so they must be read and they are warned every single time they enter. People accuse me of banning or not banning people based on how much they donate. Let me tell you all something about that. Few people actually donate. Out of all the people who came in last year, people donated $280ish I think. That number is off the top of my head so could be a few dollars plus or minus. As for me personally, I added another thousand dollars out of my own pocket. There is no profit in this site. Consider that before you accuse me of playing favoritism or living off your largesse.
I don’t know what else to add to this other than how disappointed I am in how something we spent 17 years in building can be torn down by so few so fast.
Daniel
The original intent of the site was to bring people together to have interesting conversations with the under-riding theme that most, if not all, of the members were either disabled, had disabled family or worked with disabled. Disabilities was not the subject, it was our bond. We welcomed the few non-disabled if they too could add something interesting to the conversation.
This has changed; the bond is broken.
We now have 3 types of people who enter the room and they're all working at cross purposes. One type comes in looking for romance/cybersex. They only talk in private and blatantly violate the safety rules and influence others to do the same. When things go bad, the blame the site rather than their own stupidity. They add no value to the group. The next type is the public speakers. They only talk and never listen. At times I have quietly muted them completely for months at a time and they never even noticed. These people added no value to the group.
The third type is the conversationalists. This is the type I stayed for. Some are friendly, some are curmudgeons, some are well educated and others not. We talked about ideas, not about people. We all found a way to get along (or at least pretend to.)
What has changed is that some of the conversationalists began to become xenophobic elitists. Every new person was put under suspicion. I'm not talking about people asking 20 questions (which I did not like), I'm talking about the "GET EM!!!!" crowd. Waiting for someone to make an honest mistake (because they mistype or are not native English speakers) and then everyone goes into attack mode.
I watched this last week with an engineering student. People were tossing out all sorts of accusations about the student and I could refute each one of those accusations by quoting the log back. Logs aren't magic. If I can read it in the log it is because it was stated in public. If I can read it, everyone should have been able to read it too, but they were too busy planning their attack to notice what was being said.
Tonight I saw it again. A foreigner mistyped something. If you actually looked at the entire sentence, it was plainly obvious what his question was. But people attacked him without taking the time to understand. Everyone branded him a pedophile which he clearly was not. He apologized profusely for the misunderstanding but nobody cared. Then someone else made a joke in regard to another user and then blamed the new person for saying it. After that, these same people misquoted the new user which really did make it sound like he was a pedophile even though he never said what they were quoting him as saying. Nobody cared. GET EM, he's not like us!!!!!
About a month ago a user quietly came to me to tell me about something he saw as very racist. I reviewed the logs carefully, noting what was said, how it was said and specifically WHEN it was said and the history of who supposedly said it and I came to the conclusion that his emotions got the better of him. He was already upset and there was no way I could talk him out of what he thought he saw, even though the logs showed otherwise. Him I respect because he brought it to me privately. Afterward, everyone remained friends. That’s how it should be.
Others aren’t so nice to me. I get the most vile hate mail every week from people. People spread false rumors about me and the room itself. People blame the bad things that happen on me and say I should have warned them even though the rules are posted so they must be read and they are warned every single time they enter. People accuse me of banning or not banning people based on how much they donate. Let me tell you all something about that. Few people actually donate. Out of all the people who came in last year, people donated $280ish I think. That number is off the top of my head so could be a few dollars plus or minus. As for me personally, I added another thousand dollars out of my own pocket. There is no profit in this site. Consider that before you accuse me of playing favoritism or living off your largesse.
I don’t know what else to add to this other than how disappointed I am in how something we spent 17 years in building can be torn down by so few so fast.
Daniel