EDIT: Two responses from admins who dishonestly reframed the events of my ban and apparently refuse to explain it. Apparently “long time users” get different treatment.
EDIT2: The reason was finally given that “Have you stopped beating your wife?” in response to someone trying to put words in your mouth and ask loaded questions is a banworthy set of words. Incredible I know.
I would like explanation for the thinking that led to me being recently banned and branded a racist.
I was randomly attacked by a bad faith troll who later let slip that she was bearing a grudge based on some other encounter from 8 months ago. The attack consisted of an attempt to paint me as a racist for this simple and honest reading error.
I am a principled Marxist Leninist, active in real life and any reading of my contributions will support this and refute this slur on my character.
I can, at most, stretch to forgiving the ridiculous idea that I was the one being “toxic” here, and not simply holding up a mirror to the toxicity of the troll who attacked me for an innocent mistake, fantasised about me doing hypothetical racist things, asked me loaded questions and tried to put words in my mouth to fool credulous onlookers.
What I cannot ever accept is the allegation that I somehow engaged in “racism” anywhere in this interchange or in any of my other comments in the years I’ve participated on here. I deserve an explanation as to what you think you saw as racist in any of my comments.
I expect a complete apology, a clearing of my name and censure against my attacker and abuser. Those involved shamed themselves with their actions. You have an opportunity to make amends and undo that injustice you’ve inflicted.
I run a large ML forum with weekly views of tens of thousands and I recognise exactly the temptations you’ve allowed yourselves to succumb to of abusing your power for a false sense of righteousness based on petty bullying and unfair treatment. I know that I’m not the only one who’s been a victim of this on lemmygrad.
The contributors to this forum deserve better moderation and better judgement from the admins in general. The current process of banning people without right of reply is abusive and dishonourable. That can be a separate discussion.
I clicked into this thread on a whim. I don’t know you or anyone involved in that thread. I don’t know anything about the substance of the original topic in that thread. What I see in that thread begins with you posting an aggressive, insulting reply to the original post. The OP replied to you in a neutral and reasonable tone disagreeing with your initial accusation. Your next response is what got removed, and from what I can see here, it was once again an inflammatory and disproportionate escalation. Yes, I’m familiar with the expression you used. No, I don’t believe you intended it to be taken strictly literally. No, I also don’t believe you chose that specific expression without the intent to escalate and provoke. It is only after your comments that earned you a ban that I see anyone engaging with you in an adversarial way.
What I see from you in this thread is an unwillingness to self-reflect and an absence of humility. You seem to demand that everyone evaluate your words based on how you claim to have intended them, but evaluate everyone else’s words based on perceived slights as only you infer them. Anyone whose review of that facts fails to align with your subjective personal experience is immediately accused by you of engaging in an intentionally dishonest conspiracy against you for some unknowable reason.
Again, I don’t know you, I’m not invested in this, and I don’t intend to engage with you about it. I would encourage someone in your position to take a break and reflect on what about your recent behavior might be causing everyone I see in this thread and the linked thread to have the same shared negative experience interacting with you.
What I see in that thread begins with you posting an aggressive, insulting reply to the original post.
An offhand remark mocking redditors? Come on. You’re coming in and seeing what you want to see. That comment is perfectly normal.
The OP replied to you in a neutral and reasonable tone disagreeing with your initial accusation.
This is where you show yourself up. She attacked me, completely out of nowhere, that’s what happened. You show your lack of honesty here. It’s very hard to take you seriously now. This is where anyone discussing this falls down. Nobody is willing to be honest about this part. Two admins tried to lie about it and skip over it as if it didn’t happen, it’s the exact crux of the issue. You just tried to paint over it as a neutral and reasonable tone. You’re insulting my, and all other readers’ intelligence with this shameless lying. Do you think anyone is really fooled by this?
I’ve read through this and the other thread.
The issue in the original thread is that you said something insensitive about someone who is clearly writing English as a second language, mixing multiple languages, or is perhaps dyslexic. It’s not mere misspellings in the screenshot. It seems to be an obvious mixture of two languages or unrecognisable misspellings.
We know it’s the former, now. From the context that was always more likely. The OP spoke of the screenshot as if it was intelligible, suggesting the unknown words were knowable to someone familiar with at least one of the regions in question.
Saying anything negative about either ESL-English or dyslexia, etc, is going to rile people up. Given how clear it was one of these options, it’s easy to understand why someone who spotted the ESL factor would respond to you with the implications of what you said. If someone would make such a comment about someone mixing two given languages, would they also mock other aspects of other languages or uses of English? The user responding to you was probably upset that you would comment on the language at all, and subsequently followed the logic through in their response. From that perspective, they weren’t loaded questions. The questions followed directly from your words.
Your response may be a common response to someone asking loaded questions. I’ve heard the phrase before. The problem is threefold. First, the response to you about other foreign languages written in the alphabet was almost certainly not loaded questioning (or trolling), for the reasons above.
Second, following from the first, your idiomatic response reads as doubling down on the message in your first comment, reinforcing it and it’s problems.
Third, you can’t expect international or ESL speakers to understand idioms and phrases like the one you used. Such words will be read literally. And the literal reading of the phrase you used doesn’t sound great. Assuming that English speakers from around the globe will understand idioms that are well known but mainly to native speakers of a particular location will lead to miscommunications like this one.
Then to the point about racism. If someone has interpreted the initial exchange as I’ve sketched above, what other conclusion are they to draw? You made a comment about the English skills of an international or ESL speaker, albeit framed as website-specific but that seems irrelevant. That comes off as racist. (If not that, then an insensitive comment about someone who may be dyslexic, which is not racism but ableism.)Then you gave the impression of doubling down on your initial message rather than reflecting on it’s real implications.
I don’t think you’ll like this interpretation but it and others’ responses flow from that first comment you made about the language in the screenshot.
