The fact you can't tell anyone to go f themselves online anymore without getting banned is absurd and sad
YouTube? Deleted comment. Twitter? Banned, Reddit? Shadow banned and blocked Xbox live? You get kicked out online mode despite you are PAYING for it. You can't express your anger or hate towards other people without some kind of freedom.
No I'm not saying that RACISM or serious accusations should be allowed, but a simple "fuck u" gets you eliminated. Is depressing.
It's also not like getting banned for petty reasons is anything new. Forum ops, chat admins, moderators, etc all create and control the communities regardless of any corporate entities who own the website as a whole wanting to keep things PG for advertisers. Many of them do so because they themselves got kicked out of somewhere else. If you go into Big Jim's forum and post a bunch of hate about Big Jim, expect Big Jim to ban your ass.
I said nothing of the sort. The first part is accurate; the petty mods who ban people just for disagreeing with them are children and play by children's rules. How you came to the conclusion that I am suggesting that is the best way to do things, though, is beyond me. I simply stated the reality.
People have always cared about being insulted. Being a kind person is a fundamental survival instinct. Humans are social animals, and rely on trust. Sometimes people might say egregious things and there's some room to sternly tell them that they are wrong, or even that what they are saying is harmful.
But this desire to be derogatory to other people just because you disagree with them isn't healthy. I completely understand the appeal of telling someone to choke on a wet bag of turds when they say they're pro-life or anti-gay-marriage or something, but that doesn't get you anywhere. It's just you losing control of your emotions and saying something stupid and getting yourself into trouble.
If someone has said something that upsets you, and you want to say something to them about it, take the time to articulate what the problem is and why it matters to you. Take the high road, and let them be the one to cast the first stone. Then you can report them and get them banned instead of giving them the satisfaction of doing it to you because you broke first.
The real pro move is to learn to just roll your eyes, and walk away.
Or block them, and walk away.
It makes certain angry-on-the-internet types so so SO mad when you just shrug and ignore them, but alas, it's a lost art since everyone likes being mad about everything all the time now.
I agree to the least extent. I agree that when people express their hate, it doesn't bother me. However, I'm a smartass. I always have something to say about everything, which, fairly, I should work on. But I'm also a pretty skilled smartass. I've resorted to translating the smartass statement and then taking it word-for-word serious. It upsets people so much
Well you can hate plenty without saying "fuck off". You can stalk them and report anything they say that plausibly crosses the line. You can play passive-aggressive games. You can downvote. You can argue in poor faith.
Plenty of hateful ways to express yourself within the bounds of the rules. It's arguably the path to success.
I don't encourage insulting, but the most durable ones (and, by some peoples' definitions, more tolerable, often because they appeal to some kind of truth) are usually the oddly creative/specific ones. For example, there's the famous Shakespeare line "I'd engage a battle of wits with you, but I see you're unarmed". Basically what Dirty Harry and Sgt Hartman do. In contrast, you have things like the "F you" and the "a**hole" which just seem like you're throwing what you can find.
Have you considered that your anger can have consequences for people on the other side, and that this can even be harmful - and that if you feel disgusted or upset about something it doesn't always give you the right to express that anger directly at someone?
I mean, I want to be sympathetic, I get how a corporate and sanitized internet can feel wrong and changes the kinds of community that are possible, e.g. young boys on Xbox live were known for saying vile things and riling one another up (as boys commonly do), but as someone who was also present in that culture at the time, not everyone felt at home or comfortable in that environment, and the bullying and culture often made me feel like I couldn't enjoy those games.
Sometimes tolerance and civility is a small price to pay in exchange for making spaces accessible to other people. That said, I'm not sure every space needs to be like this - so again, I want to be sympathetic here.
There's a saying in my mother tongue that goes like "say what you want, hear what you don't". Even in situations where you need to have a more coarse tone, having some level of finesse to the words sent would help not just in not getting sanctioned, but also on getting past people's defenses more easily.
Being told how to express yourself under threat of having the power to express yourself taken away appeals only to the cretins. Unfortunately the cretins are in the majority. They eat crap and smile.
What a mystery. Abuse upsets people, and upset people leave businesses where they get upset. And those businesses ban the abusers?
What. A. Shock.
Let's pretend this isn't online space and is, instead, say, the local deli. People go there to get food and see that a fellow customer likes to abuse people. The staff of the deli do nothing about it. So now people stop going to that deli and go somewhere else. (Note: not just the people being abused, but people who witness the abuse going unchallenged by the owner.)
So let's go over the decision-making process:
Say "meh" and let the abuser drive off multiple customers. (Lost customers: >> 1)
Ban the abuser from the premises. (Lost customers: 1)
Which is the approach that doesn't kill the business?
Now jack up the paint job, insert an online space, lower the paint job. Do you think the calculus is any different?
And in case you think people don't leave because of this kind of abuse, I dropped Twitter (loooooooooooooooong before Apartheid Manchild was its owner!) despite only rarely being the recipient of abuse. It was the culture of abuse that was everywhere, in practically every thread, that made me decide Twitter was a festering shitpile. (Again, even before the Manchild took it over.) Sure the abusers were a minority, but they were basically in any thread that was in any way public. And that just wasn't the vibe I was interested in.
I was writing something like "I understand but here's why it has to be this way", but then I read comments about not wanting to take the high road and how being nice gets you nowhere. So instead: when I was a young adult in the 2000's, angrily telling someone to "go f themselves" face-to-face might get you punched in the mouth. Someone who started swearing at everyone whenever they were angry was labelled an asshole. It's not like I spent those years in a weak, no-confrontation, "let's hug instead" environment either - my friends and I just didn't put up with regular disrespect. I'll stop there because I don't want to glorify violence - there are better ways to deal with insults and we didn't fight often. Most of the time jackasses just didn't get invited anymore.
My point: online, anonymous communication removed a lot of social and physical consequences of confrontation, but that doesn't make being nasty alright. You may say, "It's just a f you", but your comments make me think that being nasty is the intent. Not trying to shame you but if I'm right about hurting others being the goal then: yeah, admittedly that's not rare anymore but you can do better.
Also you say being nice doesn't get you anywhere. I'd ask: when was the last time you told someone to f themselves and they were like, "Oh, I never considered that. You've won me over." Trading insults online leaves everyone angry and encourages inventive cruelty so the other person is hurt more. Anger is natural - we all feel it and I need to self-censor all the damn time. But there are better ways to deal with being angry, and even to reduce the amount of time you spend angry.
Language is contextual, hanging out with your buddies, telling them the fuck off is perfectly fine. They can lean on your shared history, your colocated activities, and the relationship is stronger than just the language.
Online, everyone is a stranger, so the hostility in the communication is the entirety of the context. Moderators, famously, don't want hostile places that people don't want to be in. Allowing open hostility, just encourages drive by hate and brigading. Not a constructive dialogue, which is what most of us are actually here for. Human interaction.
So- fuck you, go to 4chan if you want to yell at people, and externalize your self hate.
People have started treating online spaces as ones that should have some modicum of decorum and lack of abuse. Its not a surprise. Just be a kinder, less hateful person.
Wow. The unnecessary negativity in online communications is one of the worst parts of the Internet. But a small reduction in negative bullshit that's allowed actually depresses you?!?
It's messed up that you're being downvoted. It's strange to think that most of us never cross the lines established by the censors. They like having a daddy-cop to tell everybody how to talk.