As I write 3 out of the top 4 threads have a bit of an anti Islam / religious theme
I was always taught to avoid discussion about three things - politics, religion and sport with people you don’t know well.
For all newbies / those who have been on the site longer (but aren’t the old lags with history) how about we try and drop 2 out of the three - but not sport?
Out of the 300+ members it’s mostly the same faces posting - why? - discuss / post new topics - esp you newbies…
Political threads are boring but I suppose I should take an interest
I would advise everyone to read or listen to Trigger Warning. It has completely changed my attitude on the thing, but to repeat a couple of points the book makes
a) freedom of speech is freedom for the thought you hate
b) there are no buts, or it’s not freedom of speech
Those are some purist views, and honestly quite difficult to reconcile day to day.
A particularly interesting day to start the topic. We’ve seen one of the worst aspects of it, hateful trolling, inflicted on Leslie Jones to the point where she’s left Twitter and a right wing commentator has been permanently removed from the service for leading the charge.
Surely there’s more banter to be had about fat Sam rather than which deity I should. / should not believe in - if at all - don’t you think it’s getting tedious?
Not read it Pap and quite frankly I’m not sure I’m in the mood to be challenged that way, too much heavy shit going down at home. Hence why I tend to steer clear of these threads (oh and the fact that I can remember Barry’s tendencies from the Dark Side and I don’t really wanna go there again).
FWIW though, I’ve always found the free speech issue to be a pretty thorny one. It’s always seemed the right thing in theory, but as I’ve always detested bigotry and racism, I find I can’t really side with complete freedom for people to say whatever they wish. My missus is half Nigerian and we have three mixed race kids, so there ain’t likely to be any budging in my stance any time soon.
You’ve got the right of reply, and furthermore, you’ve got the right to vote. If I saw anyone make crappy arguments about the driving factors behind your opinion, I’ll shoot them down myself. Appreciate that a lot of people are new around here, but we do moderate based on downvotes, when not purposefully engineered by bletch or bear. If you don’t like something, don’t be afraid to downvote it.
We do lock/delete threads here if they’re obviously going downhill, as we demonstrated with the “is Barry a racist” thing.
And FWIW, I think many of Barry’s threads are utter shit. That’s why they get tagged with Man Shouts At Cloud.
And you’ll have to add Pap, I never whinge, grass or cry and the shit thrown at me and I am not arsed, I didn’t ask or request anything to be taken down or amended. Freedom of speech is paramount, people not liking what they’re reading and it being actually true is different to blind hatred.
Out of the 300+ members it’s mostly the same faces posting - why? - discuss / post new topics - esp you newbies…
On this bit specifically, the culture here is different. There isn’t any glory, as far as I’m concerned, in starting threads, unless they’re fantastic. In the earlier days, I got sick of starting threads because I was sick of seeing the avatar up there.
You joined up dudes; it’s your agenda to set as much as anyone elses, but there is a culture of post beating thread here, and threads being quite long.
I actually quite like it. We started up during a very interesting time in British history. We’ve got these huge, coherent threads which often descend into bickering, but can be read start to finish. Always thought it a shame we ended up with so many EU threads - and may make efforts to reconcile them in future.
