I don't accept the George Carlin-esque shrug that internet communities are doomed to spiral and that no meaningful progress can be made. We've spent a few 1000 years sending letters and publishing/orating arguments for others to critique. But for some reason there's a prevailing idea that because the internet is full of so many trolls and idiots, it would be impossible to cultivate such a thing online.
Well, it wasn't any easier in the past. I don't see why we should shrug and presume it can't happen now on the internet. The "leading horse to water" comment is nihilistic baby talk. Why bother at all? The reward isn't based on how many people will fail to "get it" along the way. Even knowing that the % of success is low, you continue trying because the payoff is worth it. The few % that gets it outweighs the 100s that do not get it.
And since time is flowing, even among those who do not "get it" at first may "get it" down the road. Converting someone's way of thinking is not done by a single debate won or a party defeated at a certain election. It is a gradual process that takes time. I'd like to think we have some people who are willing to play the long game and work toward those hard goals.
Evilore said above:
That's the other side of this. Getting lost in the "seriousness" of it all and drawing such hard lines is itself a sort of betrayal of the spirit of community. One can focus so much on the "war" that you lose the point of hanging out with anonymous strangers on a videogame forum. I'm not here to win a war or to see a viewpoint prevail above others. I'm here to meet people and to sharpen myself. Political topics happen to be a very direct way to sort certain people from other people, in terms of that "honestly presenting yourself" thing i mentioned in the last post, so there's value in wrestling in that arena. But at the end, I'm here to find strangers on a videogame forum, people who like games and who have a curiosity about the hobby.
Low success rate is irrelevant if the effort invested is low and the payoff is high. Patrolling the borders for who shouldn't be in needs to be tempered with family life and laughter. Otherwise are you really a part of the "community"? I'm not here to be an instructor or to gather to myself "acolytes". I take the more direct route by simply posting my thoughts which hopefully resonate with others and help sharpen them, too. I've met a ton of nice people on GAF. My method seems to work pretty well for me so far. I think I've helped change a few minds, too, not to "my side" or to "my ideas", but to open minds to the simpler notions of honesty and mutual fact-finding. This results in more honest ideas being posted, more honest discussion taking place, snowballing in a positive way, flushing out the subversives as things ramp up and their masks slip.
I'm glad that you're one of the few willing to talk about the meta of how to maintain a good community.
Compromise. I'm going to flex my writing skills and keep this as short as possible, because I think so much of this is wrong, or outright presumptive to your particular biases.
I don't see any proof that your particular methods bear fruit, nor that a society in a decline trend, ought to be rewarded with much more than honest nihilism, on or off the internet. I likewise reject that simple honesty with each other, regardless of whether it's taken to heart, is a bad starting place. I believe it to actually be more effective than playing into biases and nonsense and trying to 'red pill' but without an ideological basis -- rather rejecting them out of hand, and promoting possible self-introspection. If that doesn't take, that honesty will reach others, especially in this connected age, with a bystander and a town hall for every debate.
The hundreds of years of critique and debate that you mention, were from better, smarter times, and indeed, we've seen many such instances of this, before the fall of an empire, yet, it did nothing to slow the descent of that empire. I think humanity runs in cycles, and is self-governing. As discussed earlier, some ideas have to reach their full conclusion, bad or no, to be understood. When things get bad enough, the best of humanity finally comes out. Conversely, when the best of humanity creates an age of prosperity, the worst of humanity comes out, and the cycle restarts. Nobody ultimately has much power to sway this, simply being able to do what they can.
We are in an age of the worst of humanity, and that's not limited to the left. An age of spoiled brats that have never know struggle, never understood why truth was a necessity, and raised with the luxury of a Me Me Me approach to everything. On top of the existing bias flaws in humanity.
Your optimism is born out of an age that no longer exists, where new lows appear every day. A demonstratable trend.
As such, insulting someone for practicing a form of hopeful nihilism -- strive for the best, do what you can with respect to your own time and mental energy, but expect the worst, is not only unnecessary, it's also out of touch.
I'm also curious to find out what going to war, winning sides, acolytes, and half the nonsense you mentioned, has to do with allowing people to express themselves, even if uncouth, during this trying time? I feel like you need an editor, because these posts are ballooning over you gish-galloping in a dozen different unrelates subjects.
