I saw the thread on the javelin. As a former Equal Opportunity Officer, I can say definitively that it was race baiting. I started to report it immediately, but I was curious to see how long it would stay up before someone would delete it. It stayed up way too long.
I realize that some posters her are woefully clueless as to the racism of this post so let me spell it out for them.
Some people try to get around censors by replacing obvious racist epithets with different words. Here is how that applies to the thread that was deleted.
A javelin is a spear.
Thrower has synonyms. Search a thesaurus for synonyms for thrower and you will find a word that... when preceded by spear... is a derogatory epithet for blacks.
The OP probably thought it was funny. RACIST REMARKS ARE NEVER FUNNY. THEY ARE HURTFUL AND SHOULD BE BANNED AND THOSE POSTERS SHOULD BE BANNED FOR LIFE.
Mods rightfully deleted the thread. Hopefully, they also banned that poster for life.
This seems like too much extrapolation. I missed the thread entirely, so I don’t really know what else might have been on it. But I’m familiar with the word spear but not “spear thrower” as a term with derogatory connotations. In fact, a google search for “spear thrower” doesn’t bring up derogatory connotations unless you search explicitly for it as say “spear thrower slur”.
Spear throwing is how all early mankind hunted. We talk all the time about how humans are fantastic long distance running animals because that is how we evolved. We talk about how East Africans are so good maybe in part because their kids start running to school at an early age. It’s not that much of a stretch to ask why, when so many African tribes (unlike western societies) still hunt the old way including techniques like spear throwing, should they no produce some of the world’s best in the sport of spear throwing. Was this the thread’s point? If so, I don’t find it racist. It’s a frivolous topic for chatting about but not racist.
Of course, if the thread used other mocking language veiled in the form of a legitimate, even if frivolous, question like the above, or if the OP persisted with a term after being told it’s a slur, I can imagine it being racist, especially since it’s all too common here on LRC.
I'm not sure that the spear thrower thing was intended, but I do believe the thread was likely started with the intention of inciting debate about race. We could entertain the idea that it wasn't done intentionally, but the outcome is a thread where moderators have to very actively moderate a discussion that adds nothing to the website.
I'm not sure that the spear thrower thing was intended, but I do believe the thread was likely started with the intention of inciting debate about race. We could entertain the idea that it wasn't done intentionally, but the outcome is a thread where moderators have to very actively moderate a discussion that adds nothing to the website.
And what about the gender-baiting thread: Who could bench more - the average 13 year old boy or the average fully grown woman? What does that add to the website and why is that allowed?
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nowadays you gotta post HARD and FAST before the deletion
Back in the day you could start a troll thread and let it percolate and grow organically over days and weeks. Nowadays, you can expect the thread to be deleted within 30 minutes, so you hit it and you HIT IT HARD with everything you got. You let that thread have everything you got AND THEN SOME before it gets deleted.
And what about the gender-baiting thread: Who could bench more - the average 13 year old boy or the average fully grown woman? What does that add to the website and why is that allowed?
Just read that thread. It blatantly incited debate on gender and comments on the lack of strength in women. It stirs up sexist notions of females being weak and physically inferior to males, which has been used for many generations to justify patriarchy. It includes sexist comments such as “most women are weak AF” and “most of the women however probably couldn’t bench much more than a sandwich.” The fourth post is someone bragging about assaulting a woman! Not a single post in the javelin thread contained such insults or comments about violence. The bench press thread is clearly worse.
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10
nowadays you gotta post HARD and FAST before the deletion
Back in the day you could start a troll thread and let it percolate and grow organically over days and weeks. Nowadays, you can expect the thread to be deleted within 30 minutes, so you hit it and you HIT IT HARD with everything you got. You let that thread have everything you got AND THEN SOME before it gets deleted.
Yes - sort of a posting version of high intensity training.
I'm not sure that the spear thrower thing was intended, but I do believe the thread was likely started with the intention of inciting debate about race. We could entertain the idea that it wasn't done intentionally, but the outcome is a thread where moderators have to very actively moderate a discussion that adds nothing to the website.
And what about the gender-baiting thread: Who could bench more - the average 13 year old boy or the average fully grown woman? What does that add to the website and why is that allowed?
My best guess is that transgender people are far fewer in number and hold less power in society than black people. Saying something extremely racist is seen as worse than saying something extremely hateful towards trans people. Of course, the extremely hateful comments are deleted, but there's more leeway in general with trans people. Just guessing though
And what about the gender-baiting thread: Who could bench more - the average 13 year old boy or the average fully grown woman? What does that add to the website and why is that allowed?
My best guess is that transgender people are far fewer in number and hold less power in society than black people. Saying something extremely racist is seen as worse than saying something extremely hateful towards trans people. Of course, the extremely hateful comments are deleted, but there's more leeway in general with trans people. Just guessing though
Trans is a topic where somehow it’s a free for all on this site to say insensitive hateful things. At best it comes from a place of understandable frustration or dilemmas involving their participation in sport, but that somehow results in the majority of posts on every trans thread devolving into trans-identity-denying or similar hurtful comments. Even otherwise foaming in the mouth liberals on other topics like guns and abortion appear to somehow just not give a damn about the small fraction of people suffering from the feeling of being born into the wrong bodies.
Moderators just don’t appear to care about transphobic comments presumably because no one cares to report them coz there’s so many of them and presumably mods don’t have to do anything if no one reports.
They just took out the men with babies thread. Some epic trolling vanished as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
They just took out the men with babies thread. Some epic trolling vanished as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Yeah. We need to create LetsSprint which will naturally be better than letsrun as sprinting is better than running.
Btojos can undeleted threads, they know everything that goes on here.
They should create an off-topic board so we could have fun. I'd live there.
It would be nice to have one board with stricter mods and one with lower moderation, but it's just not going to fly in today's day and age.
The real problem imo is almost all of the board "content creators" are gone. Years ago I used to be able to name people whose posts I enjoyed reading. Now most of those people are gone, and there aren't any good replacements. There are barely any funny trolls nowadays too. Maybe it's just nostalgia, but I think these are similar problems that most message boards face, and I don't think there's a good solution.
It would be so much easier if we could just get all of the easily offended people on the Internet rounded up and put in camps where they aren’t allowed access to cell phones, laptops, online gaming, or any other conceivable connection to the web. What the internet has done in the age of social media is put a magnifying glass over these communities of incredibly disturbed individuals, and then given them a microphone. The scariest part is that they actually manage to change policy. All of these people being brainwashed by Chinese psy-op tik tok need to be put away and re-educated, and anybody who buys into the gender swapping nonsense may honestly be beyond help, I am not the right person to decide how to fix them.
So many deleted posts in a thread about the mods. This isn't moderation - in any sense of the term - it is the thought police at work.
You only call them the thought police if they disagree with you.
No, I don't. I call them that because they are the sole arbiters on what is acceptable comment and remove that which they don't like or from those they don't like. Their partiality is very obvious.
Trans is a topic where somehow it’s a free for all on this site to say insensitive hateful things. At best it comes from a place of understandable frustration or dilemmas involving their participation in sport, but that somehow results in the majority of posts on every trans thread devolving into trans-identity-denying or similar hurtful comments. Even otherwise foaming in the mouth liberals on other topics like guns and abortion appear to somehow just not give a damn about the small fraction of people suffering from the feeling of being born into the wrong bodies.
Moderators just don’t appear to care about transphobic comments presumably because no one cares to report them coz there’s so many of them and presumably mods don’t have to do anything if no one reports.
That’s all true but the bench press thread is not about transgender women. It’s about normal women.
They just took out the men with babies thread. Some epic trolling vanished as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Epic trolling on that thread? Please.
I had just written a lengthy indictment against our century and when I hit send it vanished into a trillion little electrons.
And what about the gender-baiting thread: Who could bench more - the average 13 year old boy or the average fully grown woman? What does that add to the website and why is that allowed?
Just read that thread. It blatantly incited debate on gender and comments on the lack of strength in women. It stirs up sexist notions of females being weak and physically inferior to males, which has been used for many generations to justify patriarchy. It includes sexist comments such as “most women are weak AF” and “most of the women however probably couldn’t bench much more than a sandwich.” The fourth post is someone bragging about assaulting a woman! Not a single post in the javelin thread contained such insults or comments about violence. The bench press thread is clearly worse.
But women are, on average, physically weaker than men. Should this not be mentioned?
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