But what I got was dogpiled by a gang of self-righteous bullies. Parroting a bunch of thought-terminating clichés, and hurling bullshit accusations that had nothing to do with anything I actually said, or anything I've ever said, here or anywhere.

Life is too short to deal with that kind of networked idiocy. So I'm going to say this once, to anyone who thinks this is an acceptable way to carry on.

(2/?)

What if it was someone you care about, who you knew as a perfectly lovely person before they started hanging out on that dodgy gaming forum, or wherever they picked up the bigotry brainworms? What if it was your best friend since school, your sibling, your parent, your *child*?

Maybe then you'd think twice about whether it's good advice to tar and feather other human beings as bigots, and deny them all social contact with anyone not also pegged as a bigot?

(3/?)

@strypey

I think a better way to describe a real world way to do the "just ostracize bigots" method would be "it is not your job to educate bigots".

That allows people who don't have the emotional fortitude, vested interest, or the time to try to fix a bigot move on. At the same time, it allows space for those who are strong enough, care enough, and have the time to give it a go.

In my experience, when I leave public comments, it's not because I think I can change a bigot, but because I hope to catch someone reading along who is not yet a bigot and show them a different side.

You cannot change a bigot. That is a fact.

Only the bigot can change themselves.

But that doesn't mean you can't be a guiding light or a reminder to a bigot that their way is not the only way. That doesn't mean you can't be an example to disprove the stereotype.

The idea of "just ostracize them" is to prevent their ranks from growing. It's a way to stop Nazi bars from forming. It keeps everyone else safe but provides no escape for existing bigots.

It's part of the solution but not the whole solution. I'm sorry your other thread went off the rails. With authoritarian fascism being mainstream right now, everybody's nerves are frayed and finding a soft target for that constant outage everybody is feeling means folks are lashing out more than ever. The time for polite conversations, for many people, is over. We've entered an era where assuming bad faith keeps at risk communities safe. And this is what it leads to: friendly fire.

(1/?)

@jrdepriest
> I hope to catch someone reading along who is not yet a bigot and show them a different side

Exactly. There's no such thing as a hard bigot/ non-bigot binary. As the identi-moonies themselves often remind us when it suits their argument, we're all walking around with *some* bigotry brainworms.

The key is to provoke each other to question those brainworms, at every opportunity, so we ask ourselves if we really believe in our heart of hearts what they whisper.