Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
All posts ð’€­ð’‚—ð’† 's posts Post Back to profile
Top-level
ð’€­ð’‚—ð’† 

the specific discourse is about CWing discussions of racism, & basically everything i've seen about it has made sense to me, but i don't have personal experience with this!

i hope client-side filters will resolve most of the tension on both sides of this conflict! the people who need to complain about racism are also the same people who most need a break from hearing about it, because they are the ones who are exposed to it & know it intimately

10 Nov 2022 at 15:53 | Open on eldritch.cafe
3 comments
ð’€­ð’‚—ð’† 

CWs are a great example of a technical tool provided by the fediverse that can be really powerful as a force for social good, but whose very power and flexibility means that it can do damage if it's not used with careful thought

so let's be clear: i'm not suggesting "oh just do whatever", but instead saying that the appropriate way to use CWs is so context-dependent (and context here isn't just toot content but also dependent upon the people seeing it and *when* they are seeing it, what else is going on, et cetera) that any hard and fast rule about when to use CWs will be reductive

folks on the fediverse have over time come up with an intuition about when to CW, and i think most of us are pretty good at using CWs to avoid annoying or triggering our friends & to try to maintain a healthy & happy timeline. new users will need time to figure out how to do this.

my own rule of thumb is pretty simple: do i expect some of the people i care about to be mad at me if i post this without a CW

CWs are a great example of a technical tool provided by the fediverse that can be really powerful as a force for social good, but whose very power and flexibility means that it can do damage if it's not used with careful thought

so let's be clear: i'm not suggesting "oh just do whatever", but instead saying that the appropriate way to use CWs is so context-dependent (and context here isn't just toot content but also dependent upon the people seeing it and *when* they are seeing it, what else is going...

10 Nov 2022 at 16:11 | Open on eldritch.cafe
ð’€­ð’‚—ð’† 

discourse about norms is not rigidly prescriptive. people coming in are overwhelmed by cultural differences, and are looking for a quick heuristic to avoid conflict, and a good quick heuristic in this case isn't really possible? other people are using this opportunity to try to reason about their own intuitions and get feedback. we tend to do this collectively during influxes of new users, since seeing norm violations reminds us to think about norms.

so, if you're a new user: people who are discussing existing norms are not necessarily trying to shame you! (if people are trying to shame you, you'll *know*.)

read the discourse & inform yourself, and try to understand how *you* want to behave, based on knowledge of how the people you respect & care about would like to be treated.

discourse about norms is not rigidly prescriptive. people coming in are overwhelmed by cultural differences, and are looking for a quick heuristic to avoid conflict, and a good quick heuristic in this case isn't really possible? other people are using this opportunity to try to reason about their own intuitions and get feedback. we tend to do this collectively during influxes of new users, since seeing norm violations reminds us to think about norms.

10 Nov 2022 at 16:14 | Open on eldritch.cafe
ð’€­ð’‚—ð’† 

there are always a handful of very loud people who will treat their specific hangups as universal rules & try to convince you to act a certain way without justification. you don't need to simply accept their decisions -- which is good, because they disagree with each other. but also, they deserve some empathy too, because the very rigidity that makes them difficult to deal with points to real pain

decide who you want in your life, and once you have decided, make those people comfortable around you.

there are always a handful of very loud people who will treat their specific hangups as universal rules & try to convince you to act a certain way without justification. you don't need to simply accept their decisions -- which is good, because they disagree with each other. but also, they deserve some empathy too, because the very rigidity that makes them difficult to deal with points to real pain

10 Nov 2022 at 16:17 | Open on eldritch.cafe
Go Up