J’adore le différance á Jacques Derrida

So, here’s the thing. There’s a difference between a space allowing people that don’t look or act like the people already in the group and accepting those people. In some places, inclusiveness ends as soon as you get in the front door. Tildes is one of those places.

Now, don’t get wrong, I don’t think most of the people at Tildes are intentionally malicious or anything like that. And any large influx of people like the kind that would have happened with open registration after what went down on Reddit is going to cause mistrust and, sometimes, hostility. That’s just human nature. The difference is Tildes is intentionally protective of its culture.

This came about by both a) restricting the development of niche (or minority) communities, and b) limiting invites so that the small trickle of people who come in are assimilated more easily. That culture–like so many of these types of places–started with mostly white men of privilege from the tech sector. All the good and bad that comes with that is going to propagate in such an environment.

Even if Tildes didn’t originate in a culture that has a reputation for being homogenous and abrasive, this setup would still have lead to a certain type of group-think. Dismissive, and a little bit short on empathy and active listening. Martin Luther King Jr. talked about negative peace, where there wasn’t open hostility, just an absence of tension (as opposed to positive peace, which is the presence of justice). This is not dissimilar.

This comment chain on Tildes is an example someone else shared.