...because they're also cunts and actually agree with the cult in many ways?
(while I was typing this up, I saw you replied directly. So consider this a reply to both)
I wanna be open-armed, but this is essentially the case.
Folks are upset that ERA is melting down, but this is just one in a long series of meltdowns. Such meltdowns always result in a wave of returners wringing their hands and wondering how it all went so wrong. It very much resembles the behavior of someone who has escaped a debilitating addiction, a toxic relationship, or a cult.
However, should these returners wish to avoid hardship in the future, will they challenge the underlying assumptions that led to ERA in the first place?
Are they questioning their own susceptibility to following the herd? Are they questioning the chain of events that led to the 2017 blowup? Or are they just pissed that the power-tripping mods have finally stepped on
their particular toes (whether it was a specific gaming thread, or an OT community, or whatever)?
i think it's mostly the latter. And at the end of the day, that's fine. It is just a gaming forum after all. I'd happily take people who are disenfranchised with Too Serious Everything Is Political and just wanna talk about games.
My hope is that somewhere in each of the heads of the returners, they are keeping an eye out to prevent it from happening again on GAF instead of re-importing the mind virus.
I'm well aware of the things you listed. I'm also familiar with the ERA Defense Brigade on GAF that has consistently played Both Sides™ and But Let's Give Them A Chance™ since the blowup, which is more obnoxious to me, personally. ERA is a quarantine board, but the people who come here to run interference for it and/or talk down to GAF and tell us how our community "really is" rubs me the wrong way. To put it another way, it's one thing to be suckered, but it's another thing to believe your lies and then come here to rub it in the old community's face. I joined GAF a few years ago because I observed that the crazies (the same mods who banned an older GAF account of mine) had vacated. I'm no genius. If I could figure that out...
Without reading too much into motives, I have to agree that a some returners "actually agree with the cult in many ways", like you pointed out. Fleeing ERA isn't going to get most to reconsider the #metoo slander campaign that led to the 2017 split nor reconsider the anti-GamerGate sentiments from several years earlier. Hopefully GAF can be like a psych ward to them, helping them to deprogram and return to sanity.
