Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[Eric Cartman]

Remember how Reagan's popularity tanked after he was the target of an attempted assassination?

More recently, remember how Trump's popularity took a nose dive?



I'm not an American, but I've never got the sense the general population would be happy with handing power over to the winner of a Royal Rumble

[benji]

Liberalism doesn't beat fascism and you aren't going to vote it away.

Please ignore World War II. (And all the countries where it never won any elections.)

[HaughtyFrank]

I'd love to see any evidence of "Black people" especially the ones on ResetERA.com sayin those things about Fetterman or Hogg before 2023.

The "Opinion that all Black people share" newsletter is unfortunately not reaching us.

[Eric Cartman]

Remember how 'murica submitted to superior extremist Muslim authority after getting pwnt on 9/11?

[Eric Cartman]

These violent delights have violent ends

- Some cishet white male coloniser

[benji]

There are clearly some ridiculous people on this forum who demand too much of a random Era mod and are always willing to read anything they say in the worst possible way. The thing is, you also do this to us. Not just you, I've seen staff do it from time to time all across the years I've been here. In fact, this is something that users have brought to this very thread over and over again. They constantly feel that y'all are doing this to them.

Could be literally any staff member they're talking about who routinely acts like this

Maybe we should ask B-Dubs:

Dubs in the Constructive Community Discussion thread:

The problem is that some of you feel like being jerks is totally justified because you feel "in the right" and that it gives you free rein to be a jerk.

"Sorry, you need to die rather than vote for genocide." -

[HaughtyFrank]

Was Jan 6th really so fucking long ago that retardera actually think normalising political assassination is going to work out in their favour?

You can always tell how much people love political violence when they instantly turn around and declare it a false flag that was orchestrated by their opponent to make them look bad. Tankies did the same with the recent Israeli shooting

[DavidCroquet]

I'm not disagreeing with anything you're saying. But I think it's okay to say that while this kind of scenario always bites BIPOC the hardest it sucks for everyone who is putting in the work and not getting the benefits that someone who can come in with that head start just gets right off the bat.

I think it's a little bit dismissive to go "everyone is getting screwed" in a topic that we all apparently recognize hurts by BIPOC people more, especially when the video the topic is framed around was done by a Black woman.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/luke-bateman-booktok-drama-a-book-deal-with-no-manuscript-pretty-privilege-and-publishing.1200561/post-140569221

Exmod Volimar trying his hardest to not get banned (the magical words "dismissive" have been spoken) for daring to tell Nepenthe that a publishing deal like this kind of screws everyone over who isn't famous.

Edit: I spoke too soon

I'm recognizing how much it hurt BIPOC in pretty much every post I make but if you want to call it dismissive because I think that these kinds of deals hurt all authors who don't get the benefit of having 100,000 followers when they're trying to negotiate a book deal then go ahead. I'm not though. And I'm not going to put up with having you say that I am when it's factually not true. Since I can't ignore an admin, please do us both the courtesy of not addressing me anymore.

Volimar testing the newly-minted ZeoVGM Gambit...lets see how this fares in such a dramatically different theatre of conflict.

[DavidCroquet]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/luke-bateman-booktok-drama-a-book-deal-with-no-manuscript-pretty-privilege-and-publishing.1200561/#post-140569530

As someone that wants to start an inclusivity-first publishing company in the next couple of years, this sort of thing really makes me hesitant to do so. Even thinking about how hard it'll be to try and fight the publishers capable of doing this sort of thing makes my head hurt. I don't have the money to just throw at authors in the hopes I hit the jackpot and get a great return. Instead, I'm hoping I can get authors that would be happy to sell just enough copies to break even. The business details are very much still in the pre-pre-planning stage though, so who knows at this point.

I'm also a few years out from starting a commercial real estate business for black indigenous trans women. I'm thinking I can sell lots that are like...super tiny, just big enough for a dog house, so that the underprivileged can afford them. But I'm discouraged by the existence of standard realtors selling human sized plots of land with homes on them. Obviously, this is all pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-pre-planning (I'll need to at least shower first, and I haven't done that in a week) but really who can say what will happen in 8, 10, 35 years from now when I'm getting started?

OR:

[Alpacx]

Was Jan 6th really so fucking long ago that retardera actually think normalising political assassination is going to work out in their favour?

Too lazy to look up gun ownership rates by party lines but I think I already know how that goes...

[benji]

I'm sure I've said it before, but I appreciate/respect your posts Nola and wish more people would take the time to read/understand them.

Response to...
https://www.resetera.com/threads/taylor-lorenz-somebody-needs-to-do-it.1199367/page-5#post-140569839

Which often led to infighting on the left too. Where people still rooted in an ideals first politics on the left would feel obligated to hold him account on drone strikes, or his questionable pre-emptive rightward conciliatory negotiating practices, his deference to neoliberal arguments, or talk about how he marketed himself as a visionary New Deal reformist but governed as a neoliberal institutionalist and incrementalist.

This fracturing further gets exacerbated with Bernie's run in 2016 where it did really feel like it created a formal fault line for where the left orientated anti-Bush, anti-Iraq War coalition could collapse and sort into.

Progressive Institutionalist pragmatists vs New Deal/Socialist Reformists.

People still believing Obama's type of governing incrementalism and neoliberal pragmaticism was the best path to win elections and reach the largely shared ideals like UHC, social justice, ending Citizens United, immigration reform, safety net enhancement etc. Pointing to things they viewed as validation of that like the ACA, CHIP, and Obama's blue wall. Others on the left believing that that particular approach conceded too many arguments and principles to the right unnecessarily, was losing focus on the ideals, losing focus on the hunger people had for big reform, were becoming too captured and comfortable to the corruption of moneyed influence, and was imperiling larger systemic stability and party credibility by ignoring the systemic issues and immiserative sentiments that were manifesting from decades of neoliberal capitalism under both parties.

...

People on the reformist left argue defeating Trump shouldn't come at the expense of sacrificing principles like opposing genocide or require bending the knee on social justice or long held ideological projects like UHC. That the Dem Party as an institution has fallen from grace and that to actually build lasting support requires challenging the Dem institution and forcing it to re-orientate a return to class based economic based messaging, civil rights, and directly speaking to people's material conditions in bolder ways.

So when these two things come into conflict you get a lot of institutionalists reflexively wanting to scold leftists to fall in line and stay on message. Which for obvious reasons is shared by party elites, Dem centrists, and lots of media allies. Implied within that attack is that Dem Party messaging is 1.) correctly and optimally fine tuned for the present moment and even if not it's what we have to live with for now so therefore 2.)message discipline and total support for party candidates is a non-negotiable. Not voting for Biden/Harris becomes the highest crime imaginable. Even the act of voting non-committed in a symbolic primary or protesting the genocide is called into question as potentially being an in-kind benefit to helping fascists.

In the process they have backed into an unofficial alliance with resistance neocons, Israeli genocide defenders, centrist and right wing Dems, and moneyed interest groups that want a politics that pushes back out the anti capitalist/anti imperialist/leftist ideals regaining currency within the population and cements the Democratic Party into the Corporatist Party vs the Republican Fascist Party. Which many Resistance progressives/liberals are more than willing to play into out of their disgust at leftists for what they perceive as being a reason 2024 went the way it did.

We can show that The Bore member Nola has no fucking clue what he's talking about when he says they've "backed into an unofficial alliance with" and then lists major parts of the Obama Coalition. And nowhere in this story does he mention that Bernie was denied the 2016 and 2020 nominations for that very same coalition.

Like what even is his fucking "story" here? That there's a more radical "left" that's constantly denied power in the Democratic Party because it's a minority? Okay, fucking duh, that's how coalition big tent parties work. It's somehow the fault of the "institutional" Democrats that they didn't want to turn their party over to people who they know will just cause it to be wiped out? Yeah, duh! That's how political parties work.

Then we have the fantasy that the "reformist left" doesn't demand the same lockstep fealty? Jesse Singal slightly disagrees with a single position. Bluesky constantly attacks Bernie Sanders for not prioritizing race. They're acting like we weren't casting out AOC a couple weeks back for supporting genocide. How is a death of a thousand cuts going to lead to defeating political opponents?

Yes, people inclined to wanting to build a coalition big enough to win a majority across the entire populace are not going to be favorable towards a group that wants to prioritize creating the smallest and most pure minority possible.

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/luke-bateman-booktok-drama-a-book-deal-with-no-manuscript-pretty-privilege-and-publishing.1200561/#post-140569530

As someone that wants to start an inclusivity-first publishing company in the next couple of years, this sort of thing really makes me hesitant to do so. Even thinking about how hard it'll be to try and fight the publishers capable of doing this sort of thing makes my head hurt. I don't have the money to just throw at authors in the hopes I hit the jackpot and get a great return. Instead, I'm hoping I can get authors that would be happy to sell just enough copies to break even. The business details are very much still in the pre-pre-planning stage though, so who knows at this point.

I'm not understanding, if your goal is to just break even and focus on "inclusivity-first" publishing (whatever that means) why does it matter what other publishers do?

[DavidCroquet]

here we go with the purity test arguments again.

Is being pro-genocide a purity test to you? Why don't you just say that? For me, I simply cannot abide such horrific and inhuman acts...in the arena of political participation only.

Now if you'll excuse me I must play Doom: The Dark Ages on my Windows 11 PC.

[Ethan]

Anybody touting UBI without costing is full of shit.

15,000/year per person with a modest phaseout rate is "costs as much as what the federal government already spends on everything else."

I don't think Era would be happy living in their utopia on $15k.

UBI actually has sort of broad support from the entire political spectrum - the left obviously see it as a comprehensive social security net, so no surprise there, but the right also see the appeal in that it dramatically simplifies benefits by completely replacing them.

You don't need to spend anything on investigating claimants or setting targets or anything like that - everybody gets a basic living wage off the bat, and if you are gainfully employed you keep everything you make after that (removing the disincentives to work trap a lot of low income social security can inadvertently create).

Most of the real world trials have been pretty successful AFAIK.
Its biggest blocker is the 'free money' kneejerk reaction, even though a lot of people already get that in terms of more complicated rebate type stuff, which is inherently iniquitous because not everyone knows what benefits are allowed at what threshholds and how to apply for them etc.

The problem is the amounts touted, which already represent an astronomical cost, don't come anything close to basic living wage. So it wouldn't replace benefits. You'd still need unemployment, disability, etc., and all the administrative stuff that comes with that.

The real world trials have indeed been pretty successful. It turns out giving 1500$ a month to 1000 people in a random town improves their life a little bit. None of those studies take into account what happens on the larger scale. Inflation? Housing? Government debt? The next president/prime minister campaigning on getting of rid of it, winning, and suddenly the infrastructure for all the other government programs not existing.

I'd be less skeptic if this supposedly magical and very popular solution had been tried once, anywhere.

I don't think the 'free money' kneejerk reaction is invalid. I don't really want a surgeon getting 15000-20000$ of public money.

I'm very much in agreement with removing the disincentives to work trap. But could it be accomplished with allowing people to stay on social security and work, until they get total revenues of let's say, 50 000$?

[Switters]

You in particular don't remember anything of note because I told you last time we talked to fucking read and I know you haven't picked up a book since then.

Regardless, those people were wrong about I/P, and I was saying as such. They weren't inherently wrong about Liz Cheney, because Liz Cheney was meant as a desperate swing to appeal to conservatives, and no one was falling for that shit.

Like any book at all? She's never specified. Not the title, not the author, not the subject, etc.

Would be a start...

[benji]

I don't think the 'free money' kneejerk reaction is invalid. I don't really want a surgeon getting 15000-20000$ of public money.

I'm very much in agreement with removing the disincentives to work trap. But could it be accomplished with allowing people to stay on social security and work, until they get total revenues of let's say, 50 000$?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_income_tax

[Jansen]

Sissy don't care

[Cauliflower Of Love]

I'm looking back on the Obama years and his big wins, and wondering how we got from there to here



Let's ask nep, oh wait.

[Jansen]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/today-is-international-burger-day-may-28th-2025.1200882/

Please... Someone send malds a hoodburger

[HaughtyFrank]

Is this Aziz first gig back since getting cancelled? I did not expect his name to ever pop up again with how low profile he has been.

I don't think he got canceled, just embarrassed. And he did a stand up special addressing it. It's a shame too because Master of None was great when he was in it, and kinda lame when he wasn't.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/good-fortune-official-teaser-seth-rogen-aziz-ansari-keke-palmer-keanu-reeves.1200747/post-140572557

"I don't think he got cancelled" *proceeds to talk about how Aziz had to leave the show he created.*

[DavidCroquet]

I'm looking back on the Obama years and his big wins, and wondering how we got from there to here



Let's ask nep, oh wait.

I like this thread because OP is like...

WOW, check out how BLUE this map is when Obama won! Could we ever even imagine such a result now?

And then Albatross pops up from his ban to point out in 1000+ words that 2000 and 2004 kinda look like 2016 and 2024. So...yes?

He's about to be banned again for not allowing doomerism to persist unchallenged. He has to know that such things are disallowed by now!

[Gamegirl Nostalgia]

I think it's a little bit dismissive to go "everyone is getting screwed" in a topic that we all apparently recognize hurts by BIPOC people more, especially when the video the topic is framed around was done by a Black woman.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/luke-bateman-booktok-drama-a-book-deal-with-no-manuscript-pretty-privilege-and-publishing.1200561/post-140569221

Exmod Volimar trying his hardest to not get banned (the magical words "dismissive" have been spoken) for daring to tell Nepenthe that a publishing deal like this kind of screws everyone over who isn't famous.

Edit: I spoke too soon

I'm recognizing how much it hurt BIPOC in pretty much every post I make but if you want to call it dismissive because I think that these kinds of deals hurt all authors who don't get the benefit of having 100,000 followers when they're trying to negotiate a book deal then go ahead. I'm not though. And I'm not going to put up with having you say that I am when it's factually not true. Since I can't ignore an admin, please do us both the courtesy of not addressing me anymore.

Volimar testing the newly-minted ZeoVGM Gambit...lets see how this fares in such a dramatically different theatre of conflict.

if this becomes a pattern against Nep then the moderation will need to crack down on it.

[DavidCroquet]

I do like B-Dubs pretending like he doesn't know who people talk about when they ask about ignoring mods, like everyone who asks hates all mods equally. You can't go into community constructive and ask "can I please ignore Nepenthe for fucks sake". Decorum demands that you refer generally to mods.

I don't think anyone is desperate block Slayven's "do ya'll remember when Spooderman married a CARROT" threads.

[benji]

I'm looking back on the Obama years and his big wins, and wondering how we got from there to here

Wins is plural, Obama had one big win. And the economy imploded to create it.

It's also like Genocide Joe's 2020 didn't happen apparently. 2012 is only "bigger" because of Florida.

[Taco Bell Tower]

Dubs in the Constructive Community Discussion thread:

Two things, this whole "we want to put mods on ignore" thing is part of why more people don't talk in here at all. I mean, damn guys. We're all really feeling the love.

Second, if I can be brutally honest, you all still blame each other for the election and so treat each other like crap. Stop doing that.

It also doesn't help that people bring their arguments from bluesky or Twitter or whatever onto Era. Or that you guys use Era as a battlefield for your discord wars.

You can't even say we don't ban people for being jerks because we very blatantly do. The problem is that some of you feel like being jerks is totally justified because you feel "in the right" and that it gives you free rein to be a jerk. The number of times I've been quoted and the person has totally misrepresented what I posted is absurd and it's largely because you guys are all on discord with your buddies and convince each other that someone is saying something they haven't actually said. Or you're just assuming that they're making the same point that someone you saw on Twitter make.

Heck, in this thread we literally had people argue that they should be allowed to be jerks.

Beyond that, it really doesn't help when you guys rush into a thread about something that should be fun and immediately try and turn it to shit. Stop doing that.

B-Dubs you have no one to blame but yourself for letting the trans mafia run the place with the longest leash of all time.

So, just to have it reiterated first, I think the request to put mods on ignore is a bit silly and not something I've ever seen on any other forum. It's very obviously something staff wouldn't feel incentivized to work on and if I were in your position, I'd consider it a bit rude as well. So I get where you're coming from here and I've expressed in this thread and the last that this is the type of reaction it's likely to generate.

So with that being said, I think it's worth looking a bit deeper into why this request is so prominent. Well, I think one of the reasons is the need some people here have to erase from view everything they aren't personally interested in. I imagine the people who talk about having 300 people blocked and who put any thread mentioning anime or comics on Ignore rather than just scroll past it make up a large number of the people asking to be able to ignore a staff member they personally dislike.

I don't think that's the only thing going on, though. I think there are also people who feel that the way moderation is handled on Era has led to a culture where they are actively uncomfortable in the presence of mods. To be clear, I don't think that's necessarily fair, especially for a lot of mods who came later, and as I said in my previous post I'm against the notion that mods shouldn't be able to interact as normal members of a community. But at the same time, it's kind of frustrating how every time this thing comes up, the blame is put solely on the users and this uncharitable interpretation is painted over them.

I'd like to point to the below part of your post for a moment:

First of all, yes. This absolutely happens. I've seen it happen to several members of staff and it's ridiculous. There are clearly some ridiculous people on this forum who demand too much of a random Era mod and are always willing to read anything they say in the worst possible way. The thing is, you also do this to us. Not just you, I've seen staff do it from time to time all across the years I've been here. In fact, this is something that users have brought to this very thread over and over again. They constantly feel that y'all are doing this to them.

The difference, of course, is that you have the power to ban people. And the power to control the accepted interpretation of this forum. Because while you may not see it yourself, there are also many users here that look to you and the other mods (especially the admins) to guide the accepted interpretation of an event or person. And while it's probably unfair to put that on any one person, there IS a power imbalance there. And it's one that I don't think you've always handled very well. It's especially frustrating to see the complaint we bring to this thread so often, that staff have a habit of interpreting the users in the worst possible way every time, being turned around and said about us. Because at the very least, we need to admit that this is a mutual problem.

And you're even doing it right here in this very quote. You seem to have this slightly paranoid interpretation that we're all on some discord server talking shit about you and getting riled up and bringing that back to the forum. Well, I'm sure some people are. I do know there are Era discords. But I'm not really a part of any of them (I think I joined a Sonic one and then never posted there), and I'd be willing to bet money that the majority of people aren't. And even for the few that do, in turn, does criticism of them mean you don't also do this? That there aren't Staff groups where you all decide what you think a user meant and how to handle it? Isn't that the very basis of the mod team? It's just that you have the power to take action based on your interpretation.

So my point is, yes, I agree that the things you describe do happen and some users are kinda ridiculous with it. But at the same time, you do the exact same things to us while ignoring the power difference. When you post a condescending dismissal of a person based on an interpretation of something they've said that isn't accurate to their intentions, it has an impact on the culture of the forum. You have more power to shape this place than we do. At the very least, until there are changes in how both sides of this forum treat each other, this issue will only continue to grow.

Hopefully this is readable and makes sense.

Alright, let's find out.  Can we put benji on ignore?  

[HaughtyFrank]

I'm looking back on the Obama years and his big wins, and wondering how we got from there to here



Let's ask nep, oh wait.

I like this thread because OP is like...

WOW, check out how BLUE this map is when Obama won! Could we ever even imagine such a result now?

And then Albatross pops up from his ban to point out in 1000+ words that 2000 and 2004 kinda look like 2016 and 2024. So...yes?

He's about to be banned again for not allowing doomerism to persist unchallenged. He has to know that such things are disallowed by now!

Wins is plural, Obama had one big win. And the economy imploded to create it.
It's also like Genocide Joe's 2020 didn't happen apparently. 2012 is only "bigger" because of Florida.

Uh, excuse me, we have decided that the answer is racism. Nothing to analyze beyond that

[benji]

Yeah, nobody was racist against Barack Hussein Obama.

[HaughtyFrank]

Yeah, nobody was racist against Barack Hussein Obama.

Yeah not quite sure I follow the logic. So racists sat on their thumbs when a black man ran for president, then sat on their thumbs again when he was reelected but then decided to finally come out and vote when Obama's turn was up.
They make it sound as if Obama was on easy mode when he was absolutely not.

[benji]

Yeah not quite sure I follow the logic. So racists sat on their thumbs when a black man ran for president, then sat on their thumbs again when he was reelected but then decided to finally come out and vote when Obama's turn was up.
They make it sound as if Obama was on easy mode when he was absolutely not.

Then sat back out when the Black man's Vice President ran with a Black woman. Before coming out again.

[benji]

The real problem, and I've explained my theory on this being part of why PoliGAF/PoliERA/ResetERA.com in general is the way it is, is the assumption that 2008 is the correct "normal" and was going to be for the foreseeable future. Rather than it's an outlier of all elections since 1984, and the other elections are the norm, which it is and they are.

And that 2008's outlier status is easily explained: it happened two months after the Great Recession kicked off. You can even see it on the polling graph:


Everybody forgets that McCain responded to it by suspending his campaign and demanding everyone run back to DC to have meetings with him and Obama even though they were just single Senators. And Obama just sat there and said nothing* generically supporting whatever Congress and the President came up with while McCain tried to act like he was already President and needed to run the country himself. McCain looked nuts. And suspending the campaign meant the media had to fill time, which they did by interviewing Sarah Palin. So he kneecapped himself twice.

*which allowed him to seem ambiguous on TARP