The thing that I wanted to highlight is that any "angry white man" is some other thing first and foremost if they present themselves as a problem. The angry hick is an angry hick, not an angry white man. We never talk about the problems of white culture, it is always an issue with some other sub-culture within the context of white men. The ferguson protesters were just black, and then we hear calls to address the issues with the black community. When black people get angry, men or women, it's a problem with black culture. When white women get angry, they're too emotional. When white men get angry we don't have anything to say, unless we can pin the problem on something other than what has become the white male victim complex (I'm not saying no one is talking about these things, but we need to get a lot fucking louder about it.) None of this would matter if there weren't real consequences to letting white male culture run roughshod over our political policies and our social environments. Maybe the answer isn't the stupid generalizations that get applied to everyone else; maybe we should talk about the issues of white men within the proper context, but then let's be consistent. Let's make sure we're having a conversation about the particular white men that are causing problems in our society, and not just pretend that "conservative will be conservative" is some kind of answer. When you can't so much as have an online community without bigotry leaking out of every topic like an overstuffed sack of hatred, there's a real problem. When users of color/women toss up there hands and say "fuck this, it isn't worth it," there's a real problem. And that doesn't begin to address the public policy issues that literally have life and death consequences.
Thanks for the perspective. My perspective is that of a middle income suburban white dude. We should, and need to, be having these conversations. Online communities are just the places where people like you and me can have these discussions. Let's get to work.
Hubski is one of the few places where something like this is even a possibility. It was pretty upsetting to see the shitstorm that took place a few days ago. Making a statement about it is important, in my eyes, because this place is special and keeping it special means speaking out when unacceptable abuses come spilling onto our feeds. You can't necessarily make the idiots disappear, but at least you can say, "Hey, I'm on your side, even if that doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot." Keeping this community enjoyable to a diverse group of people is the only way we're going to get to see those viewpoints. Without those people speaking for themselves, and knowing that they matter to us, we're left to guess at what their perspectives might be. We all lose in that case.
What shit storm? Have only been spuriously checking the site this week as I wanted a break.
A handful of users left because the environment for them was too toxic, too negative, however you want to put it. It happened more or less right in front of all of us, but for the most part we didn't really notice until it was too late. I'm not strictly sure if everything went down on husbki alone, but certainly part of it did. Here's a snippet of the dramski, but it seemed to have been all over the place.
Fuck. 8bit and minimumwage? That's upsetting. I don't know if I can blame them. Sometimes being on the Internet gets my blood boiling as well. One of the reasons I've taken a break from the site the last few days is that I felt I was posting a little too much and having a few too many sticky discussions.
Yeah. Maybe they're going to start playing piano, or learn Go, instead of spending time trying to correct idiots on the internet, but for those of us that are here to wind down and write/read a little bit in a civil and thoughtful place, it's a loss. Hubski is a cool place, but fuck me if the internet doesn't have some serious problems.