My concern is that the tenor of the forum has changed over the past year or so and some good members have dropped away or a posting way less. This makes the forum less interesting and at times I am tempted to drop off too.
I agree with Rocco's post. He has stated things I have observed and feel frustrated about. I DON'T read the threads by the offenders. But they still poison the well. One bad apple and all that.
I think if you substituted a derogatory racial slur in the place of "women" in these posts, the posts would be deleted and the authors banned without question. This is certainly what happened in WP and I'm not sure why it is tolerated here.
Rocco's point about the effect this has on younger people or newcomers to AF is well taken. At 71 years of age and having lived through all kinds of hell, sure it is easy for me to ignore some people.
But someone young and new? Someone unsure of themselves? Someone for whom all this information is new? How do they know that, for example, WW ignores these offensive posts, and they can ignore them too?
Are we bending over backward to protect these long, long, long time posters who post nasty things about women, at the expense of the young, new, and vulnerable readers? What are we doing to protect them?
I have tremendous respect for the forum moderators and understand that these violations are more of the slippery slope type which are more difficult to draw the line at.
At the same time, I think this problem is far worse than the one recently raised about politics.
Yeah, I agree with this.
I often DO read the posts, because I have the curiosity of a cat and cant freaking stop myself, but honestly in many cases, you dont need to read the posts at all... the titles often are enough. Particularly in a place where many of the users are, by nature, very direct.
Overall though, yeah, the place is just... darker? I dont know how to put it. I've been here for years now and am usually always up for a chat online, but... even I'm hesitant. Heck, there are certain issues recently for me where I *really* needed support for those issues, but I dont consider this place safe for certain things anymore, so I keep those to myself. Complete with all the fun side effects that implies. A couple of times I've found myself holding back things that, when I look at them, dont have even a chance at all of being problematic, but I hold them back anyway because that's become the habit.
I know full well I'm not the only one experiencing that as well. Imagine how much worse it must be for someone who has been seeking help all over the place, cant find it, hears about this place, and then runs into that. Or just someone who thinks hey, maybe it's time to try to meet others on the spectrum, but they show up here and the first thing they see is one of the nasty threads. Or whatever.
I've been tempted to leave more than a few times myself.
Callout culture. An ideology to curb abuse becomes a tool of abuse in of itself.
That sounds like an excuse from someone who doesnt want to take responsibility for their own actions, and someone who fears change but cannot admit it.
I've heard so many complaints about "oh everyone gets so offended these days", and the absolute most baffling part of all is that in so very many cases, the ones saying that are frequently getting offended (often by the way others react to what is often bad behavior and disrespectful statements). Often, what follows is then complaints about how they've been told off in various places.
The very type of threads that
@Rocco is calling out in this post here very often have this point brought up, that "everyone is so offended all the time", because it's much easier to believe that, than it is to face up to the fact that the person's own behavior may be the issue. Why fight one's own demons when you can give them a treat and shove them back under your bed? And then yell at others for having done that.
