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.
As far as I can tell, you and the other person in question have accounts of about the same age, with yours actually being a bit older.
If you are talking about this:
The way the post is written, it is not clear whether she was aware of who you were until that moment and this part would imply that at worst, she was aware and was trying to give the benefit of the doubt and not fight at first:
But something about your comment:
Set her off. Why, I don’t know. This appears to be where the exchange breaks down and you decided that she was someone who was trying to misrepresent and slander you on purpose, and so you should respond in kind. You could have as easily said, “I misread and thought X was Y.” Personally, I still don’t understand what the “reading error” even was because you don’t seem to have said that.
(In another post in this thread) you take a dig at her even in the process of trying to say it’s her who is holding a grudge? And please don’t say I’m trying to cherrypick, I’m reading to see if you explain the reading error and this is the sort of thing I find.
And this to an admin.
Is it comradely to make sweeping proclamations that condemn others as trolls, abusers, and/or thugs over your personal reputation in one exchange on the internet? I’m sure it sucks to feel painted as the sort of person you despise if you only meant well, but I’m trying to put this in perspective. This isn’t a committee for the afterlife banishing you from eternal paradise, it was a temp ban on an internet forum. This could have been a thread where you explain what the misunderstanding was derived from and that you want the record to be clear as to why you were never intending to come across how you did; or a thread where you politely ask for clarification as to what the misunderstanding was, if it is not clear to you. Instead, you have been very confident in a strong “you message” that others are mistreating you and actively intend to do so, with mind-reading and a singular shaky interpretation of their words and actions as the primary evidence behind your claims.
I know enough about how internet exchanges can go to know that it’s possible for you to be in the right here, while still going about it completely the wrong way, in a way that makes matters overall worse. I’ve had to learn that lesson before, in other online places. I’m doubtful this person or anyone else in this thread is the bad faith attacker you think they are and not just part of a misunderstanding with things getting heated, but either way, your approach to this says a lot that is demanding and accusatory with little to back it up in substance. If that is your way of resolving the feeling of being targeted by targeting others in kind, recognize that it’s what you’re doing and learn to put it aside for those you want to be comrades with. If anyone deserves a chance to resolve a misunderstanding, it is them. It’s not always fair. Sometimes you have to be the more patient one and do what you can to deescalate. Find someone you love and get a hug, then give this another look; I mean that literally, or figuratively if there are other things that help you more. Make sure you feel safe and loved. I mean nothing demeaning by this either. The point is to ground yourself, to ensure you can approach this from a position of clarity and readiness to handle the conflict without escalating unnecessarily. Take care.
Which makes it strange for the admin to raise account ages as a factor doesn’t it? Why would it matter what age the account was? People should be treated with respect and given thebenefit of the doubt regardless of their time here.
Yes, this is the real root of the entire issue. I’ll make that clear in another response. Stick around and see what happens. Maybe update your opinion. But at no point was any benefit of doubt given to me by her.
Because the classic “genuinely curious” redditism is always a lie, every time. There was no “genuine fucking question” as she put it. It was all a set up to throw a tantrum instead of simply correcting the mistake.
At that point I was already attacked and she was dreaming up scenarios, putting words in my mouth and asking loaded questions. Yes you’re right, this is exactly where it was escalated.
Yes. I don’t see the issue with this. It’s the only theory that makes her tantrum make sense, and as you’ll see shortly, she’s very sensitive about her kiddie porn for a very good reason.
That admin was repeatedly dishonest, insulting and was threatening to deny my right of reply in a comm created for this purpose. It’s just bullying and denying a simple process would be a lowlife thing to do.
No, I do not consider this person to be a comrade of mine, and you shouldn’t either. This is just a “No u r” response to my valid question.
This is an effective perma ban. How do you think I could possibly continue on here having been baselessly labelled as a racist with a target on my back for vindictive and emotional admins?
I am self assured in my righteousness because I am me, I know I am not racist, I know I was not toxic and I know I was attacked. These are things I can’t not know. You’re damn right I’m indignant.
I had plenty of time to think about this and decide on this approach. Give the admins an opportunity to explain themselves and they failed this simple matter, being completely dishonest throughout.
I honestly appreciate the thoughtful way you’ve approached this. As I said above, I calmly and rationally decided that this was my only recourse. Give the admins a chance, they embarrassed themselves. Two tried to misrepresent the order of events, always erasing the abusive and toxic way I was responded to, the third has indulged in a new fantasy about me being ableist about dyslexia to add to me being called racist and transphobic. These conceited idpol attacks are so incredibly immature and the first refuge of a scoundrel.
I cannot find anything regarding them raising it as a factor, especially not in a way that would imply you were treated unfairly for it. You seem to be the only one bringing age account up in this thread. I don’t know why you don’t simply quote the evidence of stuff if it’s so important to what you’re saying, unless you don’t actually have any.
Again, this is mind-reading, not evidence of anything.
And you continue to make insulting insinuations about her, even as you try to say you’re the one who is being bullied.
I read nothing bullying. Only disagreement with you. If you consider someone not agreeing with you to be bullying, then it’s no wonder you are having the out of proportion response to this that you are having.
Then don’t try to gotcha an admin by asking if it’s “comradely” behavior when talking about how another user acts.
That’s how you feel about it, not the reality of the situation. Tbh, I had forgotten it even happened until you made this thread and if you were truly concerned people would remember and hold it against you, you could have simply made a thread clarifying your side of the story, as I already stated. Instead, you have chosen to make it about attacking others.
Incorrect. You can know you don’t intend to be racist, first of all, but you don’t define whether your behavior is. That’s only something that people among groups subjected to racism can fully judge properly. Else white people would just be able to say “I’m not racist” and they’d get a pass, even as they do obviously racist things. And to the other points, even more so, “I was not toxic” is your personal judgment on the matter.
I cannot see how this is what you did. From where I’m standing, you came in guns blazing, accusing people of things and throwing around words like abuser and thug.
Yeah I mean, I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and you are using it to trash talk others more, while refusing to budge an inch. I see nothing embarrassing from the admin posts of the sort. I see them taking time they did not have to take, to walk through what happened, and explain their reasoning. That you call any of this “idpol attacks” only gives me reason to think that the original accusation of racism was touching on something real. I should have made that connection earlier, tbh. Sometimes the people most sensitive to being accused of racism are sensitive to it is precisely because they haven’t unlearned their racist inclinations (sometimes ones they are unconscious of). I imagine this is the part where you’ll decide I’m a bully/thug/scum/scoundrel as well now too, since my judgment is not in favor of your actions.
Excuse me? do you want me to remove the A in my name so we can settle this real quick?
I gave you a proper factual response, at no point was I being disrespectful. You’re the one that kept insisting you did nothing wrong and wanted a full apology, and started calling us bullies and other names with every reply we made to you. You disagree with the way we see the situation that transpired and that’s your prerogative, but don’t start dragging people into this because you feel wronged.
I never threatened you with anything. I said if we had wanted to prevent you from raising up a point, we would have banned you permanently and deleted your posts. Since we didn’t do any of this, then we were not trying to “bully you” or “banning [you] without right of reply” like you proclaimed in the OP. What do you not understand about this conditional? I will gladly explain it differently if you want me to.
Do you sincerely feel threatened when you’re still commenting in this thread? Be for real and stop trying to play victim of the mean power-abusing admins. Everyone tries it after they get banned and nobody buys it. You received a 15-day ban and it expired 11 days before you made this thread.
I wasn’t emotional at any point, and I don’t get where you saw that. I explained neutrally time and time again what the events of your ban were and what the rationale was behind it. You’re the only one that disagreed with our version of events and kept demanding an apology and other concessions from us after your appeal was denied.
It’s exactly because I’m an admin that I stayed factual and rational throughout the exchange. There’s a power imbalance between you and me because of this status difference and we are mindful of that, but don’t expect me to remain casual beyond this point when you’re calling me a lowlife without even being brave enough to say it to my face. It’s up to you.
Here’s your first lie:
Complete bullshit lie and any honest reading can see that. Completely erasing her abusive response to me.
Second lie:
A re-ordering of events, where the user’s loaded question raging response is painted as being in response to my calling out of the loaded questions.
Then after I call this out you tried to weasel out of it by saying:
Pathetic. Then you have the gall to try to accuse me of what you were doing:
I was giving the only truthful sequence of events. As soon as you were caught out you pretend you were referring to the entire conversation, as if that makes any sense.
And then to top it off, you ignore my corrections and claim everything else is off topic:
Now that the A is off. You sir, are a liar. You tried to paint me as the instigator instead of responding to an attack.
Making up a lie about what happened, getting caught out and then just dismissing everything is not disrespectful?
Next you refuse to answer my three questions because I’m "asking tons of questions."
Third lie:
Ukraine levels of lies.
Fourth lie:
That is not what the phrase implies and you know it. Liar.
You’re very fond of this line aren’t you? This is you again with the same line to someone else:
…as you silenced someone and gave them the same Smircula responses. It’s basically, “You’re lucky that’s all we did to you!”.
Does this kind of thing make you feel like a big man?
You both bullied me and banned me for 18 days without right of reply. You silenced that other user. The fact that you didn’t do it permanently doesn’t change this fact.
You started out looking for an excuse to deny me a right to reply:
… so I already felt like I was about to be arbitrarily silenced at any moment. That is a threatening feeling.
Sounds like you’re experienced in this and enjoy your work in banning users and lording your power over them.
And as I demonstrated in this thread, you lied every time and evaded when caught. That’s not neutrality.
You absolutely did not. See above.
Fifth lie, a new one now.
I did not call you a lowlife. My direct quote:
Not much fun being called names is it? Not that you even were. Now imagine you were banned for weeks directly after. Try to have some empathy. Do you think I’m doing this for fun? None of this is enjoyable for anyone but I always stand up to bullying and unjust treatment. Hopefully you’ll think twice before your hair trigger ban goes off again and I save someone else from this. Hopefully you as a group of admins take some lessons.
You’re really bad at this. You showed yourself up badly and you’re digging further. You should stop representing the admins here. You act as a group and you’re embarrassing them.
Now put the A back on and go and do some useful Admin work like taking care of your child porn problem with my abuser fantasising about raping underage kids as I pointed out elsewhere. Eager to see what happens there, I’ll check back tomorrow. You see I have actual evidence of that unlike you ever had for any of my accusations.
Has this all been worth it? The problem with being a bully is that eventually you pick on the wrong target.
You have no power over me anymore. If this is my last comment then fine. Nobody else is going to call you out because they fear you and see the repercussions and how extreme and immature admin is here. So you can continue to pretend everyone is on your side here and just forget about it if you like.
Oh so the A is off? But you also decide when it comes back on? Bro I didn’t even get started.
But sure. Let’s start with this:
So you understand conditionals just fine when you’re the one doing them. Glad we cleared that up.
Let’s talk face-to-face now then. I think you’re being a petulant child and I think if this were anywhere else you’d already have been banned and done. And I think we should do that too at this point. You got banned for 15 days, nobody likes it, but it happens. You’re the one who brought it back up, everyone else on the site had already moved on. You could have also contacted us privately.
“Bu-but… you would have banned me and silenced me if I had contacted you in private!” I’m sure you will say. You keep bringing up this point but nobody’s buying it because we don’t shut people up for posting and appealing their ban. And the fact that you were able to find a similar line in another thread is proof that we don’t silence people but let them hash things out instead.
You wanted to stir up trouble to go out with a bang as so many others have tried before you, and when you saw that it didn’t go in your favor, you started throwing insults around and picking fights hoping something would stick. Bro, everyone’s looking at you with embarrassment right now just wishing you’d shut up and let this go. Nobody agrees with you and trying to imply that another user in that thread somehow “felt pressured” to delete their comment when you sincerely have no idea is just embarrassing for you. Nobody’s being fooled by your antics, we’re just looking at you with concern. You said you were going to delete your account but are still replying here, because at this point for you it’s not about establishing the facts, it’s about destroying this community as much as you can so you can hopefully leave your mark.
You’re not the first to try this. You’re not doing anything new or clever and you should stop before you embarrass yourself further.
You’re just making a scene and it’s getting old. You’re trying to get a rise out of people and the only reason I’m feeding your victim complex is because you decided to attack me directly, and I don’t let myself get pushed over by salty punks. You’re still unable to see past my admin status, however, as evidenced by your comment here. This isn’t me talking to you as an admin, this is me talking to you person to person.
You’re tiresome. You’re throwing a tantrum and I want to put you in the closet for a few hours so we can get some peace and quiet. You’re conflating so many different things that you just appear to be rambling and nobody can follow your point along. No admin banned you for ableism like you implied in one of your last comments; your ban reason was for toxicity and this is in the modlog. Only two admins participated in this conversation, the word ableism was raised by a user who’s not an admin, but you claimed “a third [admin]” stepped in.
Why are you even still doing this? Clearly you’re over this community, so just log off, no?
“Oh I’m so oppressed boohoo look everyone the admins are oppressing me by ummm not banning me before that incident and not deleting my comments” this is just getting concerning dude, let it go.
Okay, so “will you also stop beating your wife” is a very common edgy reddit response. Cool. Does that make it okay to say? Are we allowed to say the r-word because 100 years ago it was a common medical term, or can you accept that as the such theoretically advanced and superior 10,000-views-reddit-moderating-marxist-leninist that you are that you were out of line and should have picked your words more carefully and that this temporary ban was essentially telling you to do just that.
You overreacted to someone who was perhaps not the nicest but whose comment did not warrant admin action under our rules, and you’re salty about that as if that’s our collective problem. Take some responsibility for your actions and grow up, stop expecting the entire userbase of this website is going to wipe your ass every time you make a mistake. I’ve told you several times now exactly what bans you got from whom and where they applied and you still don’t understand, not because you can’t follow a sequence of events but because you don’t care. It’s not about who issues what ban, it’s about trying to take as many people down as you can with your sinking ship.
And surely as the great marxist-leninist that you are, only next to Lenin himself while us lowlives are only fit to wipe the floor behind your every step you knew already that we don’t delete people’s comments without good reason precisely because we’re not here to clean up their mistakes and they need to take responsibility for what they say, both the good and bad.
You talk about your “harasser” but they didn’t even show up in this thread. I don’t intend to speak for others but I can assure you with 100% certainty there’s a good amount of people who came upon this thread without knowing you were ever banned and coming out of it thinking “wtf is larkin on about.”
Like come on this is getting comical. I give you the slightest pushback and you come back with an entire essay trying to paint me as a power-tripping mod because you didn’t get your way. Look at the modlog. We’re one of the more hands-off instances in terms of bans, comments deleted, and posts deleted.
And you know the best part about this? You’re still not getting banned, not from me at least. Because we have an internal policy that if an admin is implicated in a confrontation that could lead to a ban, that they don’t issue a potential ban themselves. I’m bolding the word potential here because apparently you have some issues understanding other people’s examples. You’re still free to use this website, you’re still free to post comments on this topic or wherever else, and you’re still free to say whatever bullshit you think will salvage your reputation after you destroyed it entirely by yourself until someone else decides they had enough of your headaches and bans you permanently. 2 years down the drain because you couldn’t just say “I don’t understand why I was being called toxic, when in my opinion the other user was being just as toxic as I was” and somehow you still think it’s our job to wait on hand and foot for your outbursts when you undid everything by yourself. And so, I refuse to be dragged down with your sinking ship. It’s your mess, you fix it.
Make a fucking report and stop being a petulant child. As the moderator of your super cool subreddit that gets thousands of views I, well, I don’t even understand why you’re here in the first place when you’re apparently such a good mod over there, but surely you understand that people need to report content so that the mods can see it because they don’t have eyes everywhere, or do you have trouble with this example too?
that was my experience, and when I explained it, this person immediately went into a megalomaniacal rant about how I’d revealed myself to be part of the conspiracy. you have a truly admirable amount of patience, and I’m sorry you have to deal with people like this.
At a certain point good faith runs out and I have to achknowledge that Larkin is simply just doing ‘DARVO’, deflecting all criticism and making himself look like a victim.
Thankfully they are really bad at it. There is an astonishing refusal to self-reflect, let alone self-crit. They already have all the answers and anyone who disagrees with their conclusion is just part of the conspiracy against them. Not to mention the massive hypocrisy, where they accuse everyone else of lying about them and yet put words in the mouths of others constantly.
All this anger over…a pretty minor ban honestly. Like even if we take what they are saying as 100% true and the mods are just power tripping, then they can just take their lumps and come back, or leave entirely. It’s not a big deal to be banned from an internet forum for a whopping two weeks.
I am unsure if this is comming from paranoia or immiturity, or just delusions of gradure
I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouths but that was my impression, that even people who came across looking at both sides equally (as we did too in the adminship, we re-evaluated the case and came to the same conclusion we did back then) and tried to explain this to him agreed that his comments were out of line. This is not a judgment of values and I tried to get this across to him, I’m using the most neutral words I can to describe the sequence of events as faithfully as possible, but he doesn’t want to get it 😵💫
And mine. I didn’t know about the ban or the thread that caused it but I was curious. I tried to work out what happened and explained the problem in the original interaction.
Now I’m an immature scoundrel. Or might be. Or would be. I lost track of what was conditional on me impersonating a mod or an admin or both.
Hey, when I delete my account, will my comments disappear? Just want to know if I need to hang around any longer than I need to.
You don’t even have an explanation for why you do this. It’s just so you can wield power over people. It doesn’t achieve anything else. It gives you pleasure. Do you think I “cooled off”?
How? I was banned from the site for using a common expression remember? In response to an attack. You already admitted this. How could I have contacted you privately? Why would I? So you could ignore it and nobody else would see your abusive behaviour?
There is no appeal? There’s only this kind of thing? You silence people whether it’s permanent or not. This is just mincing words.
This all sounds like a you problem. If you keep seeing these assholes everywhere…
It was old yesterday.
I told you yesterday, I wanted to give you the right to reply.
In the context of someone asking loaded questions it’s always fair to say. There’s more to online fora than reddit you know?
Jesus.
I can’t believe you’re doubling down on this. It’s the most pathetic excuse for a ban I’ve seen in a long time.
Hallelujah! Finally we got there! The first acknowledgement from anyone that I wasn’t alone in the exchange.
Skipping the paragraphs of ranting.
I fucking KNEW this is what you’d come back with! You have a real problem with paedos on this site. Deal with it. This paedo was paranoid about their kiddie porn being criticised and carried a grudge for 8 months about it. This is all that this entire thing has been about. I can’t actually believe that thread is still up and the users not banned. I’ve already reported it to you. Leave it up by all means and endorse it.