I was part of the group that got banned yesterday, and I need to apologize to you all.
I have seen people mention previously that sometimes mods take upvotes for agreement, but I haven’t trained myself to stop the reddit habit of voting on “food for thought” things, useful-addition-to-the-conversation-but-not-my-pov posts, and placemarkers in active threads, and there aren’t downvotes here to easily mark the shitty stuff I want to come back to and learn from. I should always be opening things in new tabs instead.
I foolishly upvoted this comment as a “food for thought” comment and planned to come back to the thread yesterday evening to find it and read the responses and learn from them. instead my upvote counted as agreement and got me banned, which I know is my fault for not adapting to site culture and not foreseeing how that would be interpreted.
I totally understand, feel like the worst kind of fool, and spent my ban time thinking about what a piece of shit I am. far worse than that is the thought that any of you might think I agree with that comment, so I am posting here to apologize profusely and publicly for my upvote. I’m really, truly, terribly sorry, and idk what to do to about it except fuck off and try not to be such a fuckhead in the future.
explanation (not excuse) for those who care to understand why
I live in Ohio, which is immersed in the kind of chud culture that comment was talking about – I see my formerly borderline leftist little brother slipping into it, and it kills me. it’s a point of view I remember seeing a lot when I was in DSA and not liking then, but I lack the information and wisdom to effectively articulate my problems with it. I very much want to understand what to do about it and how to talk about this stuff with people who believe it, but I get why it was offensive and shitty to mark it for myself in a way that would default mean “this is good” to others instead of pushing back on it at all or just opening it in a new tab to look at later. I’m very sorry about doing that.
I didn’t open it in a new tab because I’m pushing triple digits of tabs open and knew it would be easy to find later because the Amber bot was inflating the comment activity. I keep forgetting to be judicious with my upvotes because I’m AuDHD and unlearning a decade of reddit habits is hard.
you didn’t know that was why I upvoted it, it just looked to you like a bunch of your alleged comrades liked that post, and I was one of them. I hope you can forgive me, but I understand if it made you think differently about me. I get it, and I’m just really, really sorry.
as soon as I figured out that I was banned and why, I sent a version of this via DM from my old account to an em_poc user who is very near and dear to my heart, but I don’t feel right only apologizing to one person when so many of you could have been hurt by my upvote, hence this post. I’m sorry that my apology to the rest of you wasn’t that immediate, but I was worried that posting it from my old account would be seen as ban evasion and make my contrition seem insincere.
I appreciate very much the kindness and compassion so many of you have shown me, and it is devastating to know that I have repaid it in this way.
I’m very, very, very sorry.
please heap your scorn and excoriation here.
Hey, you shouldn’t feel bad. People are going to start conflict over shit no matter what, and obviously this was something people were already stewing over so it was probably inevitable. And probably healthy for it to be talked about now instead of later.
And also, I think your phrasing raises a big concern I have. Moderation actions shouldn’t default to being punishments. The treatment of them like that is one of the numerous things about sites like this in general that really makes it stressful to use as someone with RSD. It makes absolutely no sense to me that the norm is to see users breaking rules as innately deserving of purposely being inflicted with suffering, when they can always be genuine mistakes or happen for any number of reasons.
If anything should come from this discussion, it should be how hostile Reddit type websites are for neurodivergent users. Upbears and/or upvotes are genuinely part of this and the inciting incident of this struggle session is one example why. Everyone makes mistakes, and a button designed specifically to increase the influence of a comment with literally no checks or confirmations to prevent mistakes is a horrible idea because of that. It is absolutely true that anyone shoved in front of a Reddit type site is going to upvote any number of terrible things, because it’s literally designed to encourage maximum engagement.
Not to mention how the feeling of seeing a comment with tens or even hundreds of times your own’s upvote/upbear count can perfectly represent the feeling of a room angry at you for screwing up and committing some sort of social faux pas without knowing what it is! I do not understand why neurodivergent comrades do not bring this up more. The experience of upbears is just, intrinsically uncomfortable outside of the sparks of dopamine you can get from it. It makes the site more fun 20% of the time but the other 80% it perfectly replicates the feelings of group bullying and disgust that permeated many of our lives.
exactly! it still allows the exact same kind of dynamics to develop that the removal of downvotes was meant to prevent. Instead of downvoting trans people, shitty users can just purposely upbear everyone else except trans people. And so on
make the upvotes public then
It’s discouraging when a person asks a genuine question and it’s 'under’voted and the reply is upvoted more highly, like it’s an implicit message saying that you are less valued for asking questions and wanting to learn. It’s worse on r*ddit but the same thing happens here. It’s one of the reasons I got into the ‘upvote first read second’ habit to because I’m like i feel sorry for people whose comments/posts are seemingly overlooked. I’m unlearning that habit now though
I feel very much deserving of punishment and suffering, especially considering this point of view
It’s not my place to judge or comment on what seems to be genuine anger from someone who has every right to feel that way. But I really, really don’t think their comments apply to you as much as you think they do. It’s hard to emphasize how immensely important intersectionality is, and while it’s within every right for someone to refuse to organize or even have solidarity with a privileged group they feel has hurt them (and objectively has on a collective scale), even with such a large one, that does not give them the right to pass moral judgement on random individuals they don’t know and especially not you specifically. It’s not your fault such strong systems of racism exist and so many white Americans, even marginalized ones, continue to perpetuate them. It’s too big to be your fault. You are not ontologically evil and it is physically impossible for you to be, and if I can say so myself, you seem perfectly innocent if not outright virtuous. You shouldn’t feel bad, and you don’t deserve to be punished.