actually you can just not have a politics thread on the pokemon website and apply rules like we do for several other topics, good thing charmflash is here to save the day from evil censorship moderator Eve though... get a grip LOL
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Serious The Politics Thread
- Thread starter Oglemi
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i don't know, there's an awful lot of communities i'm in that say "don't post porn" and people simply don't post porn. they don't need to have a thread or a channel for it, they simply enforce the rule when needed and it's almost never needed. why can't we do the same thing with politics? are there that many people whose self-control abilities are so degraded that they literally cannot resist politicsposting at the drop of a hat, wherever they are, no matter the rules? if so, do we really need such people in the smogon community? i myself have very strong political views and a pathological lack of self-control (thanks adhd), but i don't go around yelling about politics unprompted
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even someone like me has the good sense to not barge into a normal conversation and go "listen up, i've got some opinions about the gaza strip and i'm about to make it everyone else's problem". it's actually shockingly easy to just not bring up politics
People who don't ever come into this thread just randomly showing up and saying "Nuh uh you're not allowed to have a politics thread" is so funny
Some Smogon staff consented
The people who talked here consented
But random fuckin OU thread people did NOT consent and apparently that's a major problem
Like what is your goal here lol do you actually think not letting people talk about this stuff strengthens community? How about all the times this community is already political on a daily basis?
I love the sanctity of the Smogon community which has always been clean and always built community, for sure. The guy who called me an ableist slur came back from a quick ban and was dickrided by the entire community (including some staff), but I can't talk about politics because it's "not building community".
Sometimes I feel like the "community" some mods on this website want is basically just their friend group (so mostly mods, and people who will be mods in < 3 years) talking on the threads, when that just isn't what open forums are. Other people are gonna talk here about things that aren't what you want in the Off Topic section of the forum. Sorry!
Some Smogon staff consented
The people who talked here consented
But random fuckin OU thread people did NOT consent and apparently that's a major problem
Like what is your goal here lol do you actually think not letting people talk about this stuff strengthens community? How about all the times this community is already political on a daily basis?
I love the sanctity of the Smogon community which has always been clean and always built community, for sure. The guy who called me an ableist slur came back from a quick ban and was dickrided by the entire community (including some staff), but I can't talk about politics because it's "not building community".
Sometimes I feel like the "community" some mods on this website want is basically just their friend group (so mostly mods, and people who will be mods in < 3 years) talking on the threads, when that just isn't what open forums are. Other people are gonna talk here about things that aren't what you want in the Off Topic section of the forum. Sorry!
a colleague was talking about the trump assassination attempt at work the other day
unfortunately, it seemed he didn't read the company policy
i immediately reported him to HR for breaking the code of conduct by sharing pornographic material in the office
HR referred the incident to his boss, who happened to be me
now he's walking out of reception yelling profanities at me and saying i'm on a power trip
i just wished him the best of luck in his future career and went on to replace him with my nephew
think twice before you talk politics in my company
unfortunately, it seemed he didn't read the company policy
i immediately reported him to HR for breaking the code of conduct by sharing pornographic material in the office
HR referred the incident to his boss, who happened to be me
now he's walking out of reception yelling profanities at me and saying i'm on a power trip
i just wished him the best of luck in his future career and went on to replace him with my nephew
think twice before you talk politics in my company
what im getting from this discussion is that the people want a porn thread ?
I am the person who closed the original thread (to widespread approval) and a Cong auth, I'm not "randomly showing up", this is just not at all an environment I want to take part in on its own merits (because it sucks).
I don't play OU or post in OU but ig maybe this isn't directed at me
Letting people talk about it in this environment leads to frankly horrible things being said and has directly negatively affected the mental health of several people I know, especially those more directly affected by the topics at hand. I really don't think Smogon is capable of holding a thread like this right now.
Pls elaborate
Yea no I'm against slurs too, might surprise you but I think that individual should also be gone if you're accurately describing what happened. Both things should be gone! Idk how this was meant to be a gotcha
? What kinda fanfiction
I want to clarify ahead of any interpretations that I do not say this conspiratorially. I think it's just a human nature thing. When you see people that talk to mods a lot on this site, they generally become mods because they trust each other.
That's a normal part of forums and just in general, how people operate. I also think it's normal to mostly want to talk to your friends (no shit), but it just rubs me the wrong way to have the thread be mostly fine for months (if you think this is bad, literally use any social media), and frankly not much bad has really occurred.
Frankly, only after the argument caused by the mod shit, did this thread deteriorate so quickly. Frankly, a lot of the OU thread people coming here, has made it worse! We aren't even having a real conversation, and we've quickly devolved from mostly long, several paragraph posts, to 1-3 liners really quickly.
I'm not saying we NEED to have a Politics Thread. But it was fine. And I think we should just go back to it, and people who don't like it read it, the old mods who are fine with it keep modding it, and it's fine. There really wasn't a problem.
You complaining, both in the SV OU discussion thread and here, won’t change things. You’ve been explained to numerous times how this is not the correct representation of events.
I really don't think we need to have this convo again, the baseline is that Smogon doesn't need a thread like this. I think the conversation that Charm is alluding to from chaos was applied to the off-topic forums/smogoff as a whole (I think specifically smogoff/shitposting), I don't recall the politics thread being addressed directly, but maybe there was another convo that took place directly following its initial closure I missed.
It's been brought up specifically in the past to close it (multiple times) and it's basically been deemed relatively harmless in its existence and an avenue for people to vent about things. But the thread doesn't need to be here. If SS ultimately decides to close it down, it'll be closed. I personally have no great defense for it.
It's been brought up specifically in the past to close it (multiple times) and it's basically been deemed relatively harmless in its existence and an avenue for people to vent about things. But the thread doesn't need to be here. If SS ultimately decides to close it down, it'll be closed. I personally have no great defense for it.
Okay, so go back to not coming in here, that's fine. You don't have to like every thread.
I was more talking about Joycap/DaddyBuzzwole/I think I saw Viivian. No shade to all posts made by them (except Joycap ig), it's just weird that all of this attention was thrown on this thread from people who never talk here to calling for it to die. When literally it was fine.
Every community makes political choices. The next paragraph is one! It is not people saying their ideology out loud and directly explaining it, but it is political in nature due to how people treat certain things.
Smogon Forums will always be political because every forum is political because every person is political. Like I don't think is hard to comprehend.
The "gotcha" or whatever you wanna call it is the thing you just said "plz elaborate" on. The community makes political choices, especially through the people we keep around. What is the requirement to truly be banned? What is bad enough, what isn't? What is good?
It's also a critique of you talking about the sanctity of the community. The community isn't special, it has its ups and downs like any community, and it has people all over the place. There isn't some special moderating magic you can make to get everyone to get along, or facilitate only good conversation, or to have no arguments about these types of things.
Either they erupt in threads, people make these arguments off the site (which changes how they act *on* the site), they're expressed through forum rules, etc. The Smogon Community isn't an exception. You can't just stop political conversation, and you can't stop people from disagreeing about these things; all closing the thread would do is not give an outlet and let people actually talk about these things in a more moderated setting.
(WATCH YOUR MOUTH)
im very not into highly-ideological 'debates' myself but the anarchist library linked above has a lot of great stuff, including a lot that it is much more practice-oriented, for example in relation to the minneapolis uprising in 2020 for those living within the so called us https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/minneapolis
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You were complaining repeatedly that “CTC should have been perma’d” even after a mod stepped in and explained why he got the punishment he got.
I’m saying that representing roughly 5 people telling you that “CTC was unbanned based on a mod decision, go challenge that with the mods if you want” as “dickriding” is just…not correct?
Also, not sure why you decided to baselessly insult me.
Yeah, and that is actually exactly my point: saying that he shouldn't is a political thought. Deciding how much bigotry someone can do before they get banned is political, that is a great example of "passive politics" in the sense of a community.
Any opinion on that is political.
The "dickriding" in question was that he made a thread where he basically said "I should be an OU council member" and said a bunch of shit that basically everyone dickrided, including some mods that are from the OU thread.
How can you come back from a ban and instantly say "I should be on the OU council", have people take it even halfway seriously, and then you expect me, the person who was called that, to not find that extremely uncomfortable and really shitty?
I actually didn't think it was an insult but ig looking back, yeah that's my bad. I saw it as more of an action, really. I don't have any qualms with you as a person, to be clear.
minor clarification, ctc wasn't unbanned based on mod decision, he was unbanned because the 60-day infraction he was given ran out. technically the length of infractions is based on moderator discretion, so it's sort of a distinction without a difference, but it's not like the mods got together one day and said "you know what, let's unban ctc", they made their decision on the length of the ban when they gave him the infraction
it probably has something to do with how long and unhinged his post was. people probably skimmed over that part
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With all due respect to anybody whose mental health has been negatively impacted by participation in this thread (I certainly don't blame anyone for feeling poorly about the things discussed in this thread/the current political climate in general), I don't think this warrants closing the thread. Individual users are responsible for practicing the mental self-care that is appropriate for them; if your mental health cannot support viewing or posting in this thread, you don't have to do so. The existence of a politics thread does not mean that anybody is obliged to participate in it.
There must be mods that are obliged to at least moderate the thread though but I don't know if Eve was talking about them or regular posters.
Personally, i'm of the mind that discussing "politics" is very healthy for someone to do. In my experience, talking to both the people who you share your views with and those you don't lets you create a better, deeper understanding of what you believe in yourself or open the gateways to it (such as recommending someone a book to read), as well as a clearer image of why those who are against you oppose your views (sometimes you may even find out you agree with it partly). I just think it's one of those things that let you evolve as a person if there's civil discussion. It may not always happen, but it's not like the majority of discussions here are not minimally civil
Obvious exaggerations about people who like having such discussions on your post aside,
I'm also of the mind that a lot of the things in your daily life are inherently political, even if you don't perceive them as such, because politics isn't just government stuff, elections, economic theories, and whatever else falls under the umbrella of people usually consider "politics"... when discussing something about your stances on something you saw or heard happen with your friends or family, chances are you probably have discussed your politics
I think something like a genocide should induce outrage in 100% of the people who live in the time it happens, and often outrage is something you process by speaking about it to other people. It's not directly your problem, but if it was, wouldn't you want others talking about it and offering help to the best of their ability? Especially something of this magnitude? That's only ignoring all the precedents it creates that may or may not come to directly affect you or someone you know in the future
Not really sure how to convey this, but i really don't like this way of thinking. If you don't want to hear about it you can always just not interact with it, although i think imposing a ban on talking about ongoing things around the world and anything that can cause a divide between a community in general is just not the way to go (regarding post #2627)
Again, can't really put this into words very well, but i think it creates a sort of "toxic positivity" bubble if you avoid everything that doesn't "strengthen the community" (not necessarily the degree it's on atm though) and try to abstain from speaking about such things. Both good and bad things will inevitably happen and discussing them gives you the aforementioned better understanding of the situation and everything connected to it, possibly changing someone's (or even your own) perspective on a topic and the way they act going forward for the better... this isn't just an online forum thing, it's very well reflected in people's real life, as you said yourself with a group of people being mentally affected
Regardless, children will still be ran over by tanks and whole cities will still be turned to dust by bombs in the name of "peace" whether we talk about it or not, so we expose others to what we think is right and wrong, explaining why, in the hopes that one day a good part of the world shares our views so that as many people as possible can live happily
I am not saying you need that sort of convincing, just that others might and that change can begin with ourselves, despite those who argue in bad faith
Yes, people will disagree, some will be impacted heavily by what they read, (admittedly avoidable) community drama will exist, and insults of varying degrees will be exchanged. Should we really give up on civil discussion and the betterment of yourself and the world around you that (hopefully) comes from it because of that? I get that it's not just one time a politics-centered thread has been closed for whatever incidents caused them to, but i personally think that despite all the aforementioned bad, good is also achieved alongside it. Users change as time goes on too, so it's not like the focus on negativity is a mechanical, cyclical thing that is simply doomed to repeat itself as long as a thread like this exists
Given all that, i really don't think closing this thread will have a substantial impact for the better of smogon. Instead i think dealing with situations as they arise is a better way to do it, but i also understand that it may take it's toll on the moderators after a while
i hope everything in this post is coherent, i'm writing this half awake after a day at uni. sorry if i said something stupid
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i dont rly think this thread is significantly worse or better than the rest of smogon, tho to be clear i only am or have been in a few smogon servers so i def dont have a comprehensive picture whatsoever. 'horrible things' have been said at some point in almost all of the smog servers ive been in, lgpe is the only exception prob [not counting user(s) banned within 2 minutes after showing up etc] and thats kind of a unique case with the combination of who has been there + being a comparatively very small server in general. smogon is in many ways a horrible and violent place, not because it is unique but because it isnt. fascism on smogon, as elsewhere, "represents one piece of a much larger resurgence in global fascist political thought and mobilization". the politics of nazism are endemic to our society, "there are hitlers everywhere and there’s hardly a single table in white euro-america without a nazi", and smogon is not somehow magically exempt from this condition. we all live within the imperial world and therefore we are all capable of reproducing imperialist violence, ideologically and/or interpersonally.
ultimately, conflict is a necessary part of community. and conflict has the potential be very productive, but ofc that depends on how it is handled. obv i have repeatedly voiced criticisms over particular ways conflicts were dealt with over the course of this thread, for which i was briefly banned, dont need to 'run the tape' again. this thread is also far from the only place in smogon where i would harshly criticize the way various conflicts have been dealt with (or not dealt with as the case may be), including as high up as senior staff as has been mentioned before and including other situations that ik u are well aware of in detail eve, such as quite recently me being muted in a smogon server for quoting/paraphrasing testimonies from the minneapolis uprising and then being banned shortly thereafter without explanation. so i dont rly understand where u are coming from in attributing all the 'horrible things' u referred to and all the violence etc that we have each seen people we care about endure to the politics thread, when some of these 'horrible things' have rly not even been connected to either politics thread at all, others 'started' there but then were primarily escalated elsewhere, etc.
there are also other issues like "friendship politics" (engaging with someone's actions based primarily on social relationships, rather than the actual substance of what they are saying/doing) that i think is relevant to mention here bc 1 it is an example of a right-wing political tendency that tends to be much more pronounced in other smogon spaces than it is in this thread (has been a major influence in every smogon conflict ive experienced or seen except for some of the conflicts in this thread) and 2 to elaborate on how political violence in smogon operates through a variety of mechanisms, rly cant be simplified to '"explicitly political" spaces intensify the opportunities for right wing mobilization' (tho certainly in some instances they do have that impact.)
i overall have no particular position about whether we "should" have this thread, and i have no influence over the decision so not rly focusing on it anyway, but i think it is certainly understandable why some people such as ant4456 may feel that not having this thread would actually make right wing political violence in smogon even worse, as it would take away a space for addressing it, even in the context where the unfortunate choice is made to explicitly ban us from discussing specific instances of such violence bc it can still (potentially) be a space for working through the underlying issues. (ofc i still strongly oppose that 'policy', and the potential value of keeping this space would be much greater if there is an opportunity to reverse that policy 'at some point in the future').
btw eve it also might be hard for some ppl to know where u are coming from in asking to close the thread when u havent engaged with any of the preceding conflicts, like i obv didnt have that sort of reaction myself but i can kinda get where ant was coming from feeling like u were j a "random" staff person asking the thread to be closed when as far as they knew u didnt necessarily care abt any of the conflicts that have happened here or about what any of the people involved have gone thru etc + given the one line post w no explanation format.
but ant hopefully u can shift ur view of where eve is coming from based on the subsequent posts/interactions (independently of your strong disagreement wrt closing the thread)
ultimately, conflict is a necessary part of community. and conflict has the potential be very productive, but ofc that depends on how it is handled. obv i have repeatedly voiced criticisms over particular ways conflicts were dealt with over the course of this thread, for which i was briefly banned, dont need to 'run the tape' again. this thread is also far from the only place in smogon where i would harshly criticize the way various conflicts have been dealt with (or not dealt with as the case may be), including as high up as senior staff as has been mentioned before and including other situations that ik u are well aware of in detail eve, such as quite recently me being muted in a smogon server for quoting/paraphrasing testimonies from the minneapolis uprising and then being banned shortly thereafter without explanation. so i dont rly understand where u are coming from in attributing all the 'horrible things' u referred to and all the violence etc that we have each seen people we care about endure to the politics thread, when some of these 'horrible things' have rly not even been connected to either politics thread at all, others 'started' there but then were primarily escalated elsewhere, etc.
there are also other issues like "friendship politics" (engaging with someone's actions based primarily on social relationships, rather than the actual substance of what they are saying/doing) that i think is relevant to mention here bc 1 it is an example of a right-wing political tendency that tends to be much more pronounced in other smogon spaces than it is in this thread (has been a major influence in every smogon conflict ive experienced or seen except for some of the conflicts in this thread) and 2 to elaborate on how political violence in smogon operates through a variety of mechanisms, rly cant be simplified to '"explicitly political" spaces intensify the opportunities for right wing mobilization' (tho certainly in some instances they do have that impact.)
i overall have no particular position about whether we "should" have this thread, and i have no influence over the decision so not rly focusing on it anyway, but i think it is certainly understandable why some people such as ant4456 may feel that not having this thread would actually make right wing political violence in smogon even worse, as it would take away a space for addressing it, even in the context where the unfortunate choice is made to explicitly ban us from discussing specific instances of such violence bc it can still (potentially) be a space for working through the underlying issues. (ofc i still strongly oppose that 'policy', and the potential value of keeping this space would be much greater if there is an opportunity to reverse that policy 'at some point in the future').
btw eve it also might be hard for some ppl to know where u are coming from in asking to close the thread when u havent engaged with any of the preceding conflicts, like i obv didnt have that sort of reaction myself but i can kinda get where ant was coming from feeling like u were j a "random" staff person asking the thread to be closed when as far as they knew u didnt necessarily care abt any of the conflicts that have happened here or about what any of the people involved have gone thru etc + given the one line post w no explanation format.
but ant hopefully u can shift ur view of where eve is coming from based on the subsequent posts/interactions (independently of your strong disagreement wrt closing the thread)
Hello everyone. As I'm sure we're all aware, tensions have been running a little high lately in this thread. That's why I decided to give all of us a fun activity to do!
Introducing: The Smogon Politics Thread Tier List Maker!!!
https://tiermaker.com/create/smogon-politics-thread-users-17048682
I figured this would be a great activity to strengthen the bonds between the users in this thread. If you ever see a take you personally disagree with, feel free to move them to the "OBJECTIVELY TERRIBLE PERSON" tier (or whatever alternative you so choose.) I'm sure we'll all have a blast making tier lists.
If you make one, feel free to post below. Also, here's mine! If you're in a spot you disagree with, feel free to take that personally. I'd love to have a friendly discussion with you on why I think that way.
Introducing: The Smogon Politics Thread Tier List Maker!!!
https://tiermaker.com/create/smogon-politics-thread-users-17048682
I figured this would be a great activity to strengthen the bonds between the users in this thread. If you ever see a take you personally disagree with, feel free to move them to the "OBJECTIVELY TERRIBLE PERSON" tier (or whatever alternative you so choose.) I'm sure we'll all have a blast making tier lists.
If you make one, feel free to post below. Also, here's mine! If you're in a spot you disagree with, feel free to take that personally. I'd love to have a friendly discussion with you on why I think that way.
Idk, I just don't think smogon is a necessarily unified community in the first place for the politics thread that has around 4-5 veterans and then an extra 3-4 posters that come in sometimes to ruin the community. At most the regulars just get beef with each other, but that also happens in every thread on here with activity at some point. Bitches are fighting every other day in the ou thread and the topic is much less serious than the ones we have in here lol. But I don't think the politics thread getting rowdy is going to influence someone in the CAP threads, or off topic, or folks who go to pet mods or official tiers or tournaments. Obviously not going to act theres not some overlap, but how much of smogon is people having their own bubbles and never meeting folks outside of their bubble's forum threads? I don't know a single person from the ru-pu forums even though they're one click away from the ou ones. The influence of this thread will mostly reach folks who are in cong and care enough to click here and the mods, which is not a lot of people (until finch closed the ou thread lmfao.)
Edit: teh you need to add the usernames I'm icon blind AND stupid, I don't remember half of these people :(
Edit: teh you need to add the usernames I'm icon blind AND stupid, I don't remember half of these people :(
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