c/neurodivergence isn’t being moderated at all lately. Three months ago there was the great post from NoOnesLazyInLazyTown@beehaw.org concerning ableism against people with NPD, and the amount of toxicity I saw in that thread was shocking. Some great people pushing back on the ableism and hate there, but I couldn’t believe those hateful comments were being left up, or the sheer volume of them.
Yesterday I posted a new article I wrote also concerning NPD, hoping I would get the same kind of positive response I’ve gotten from Beehaw in the past when talking about neurodiversity. But instead I saw nothing but hate, personal attacks, and vicious toxicity. This isn’t the kind of discourse I come to Beehaw to see, and I don’t think I’m alone.
Looking at the community history, it looks like the post volume has dramatically reduced since immediately before that first NPD post. I’m not surprised people are avoiding the community, I don’t intend to use it anymore either if what I received yesterday is going to be the norm.
The modlog of this community hasn’t been touched in 7 months, and the only comment removal visible at all is tagged with the removal reason “stupid comment”, which I frankly find quite ironic.
Can we please have some actual moderation on this community? If there is absolutely nobody else who can volunteer their time then I’d even be happy to do it Myself.
this whole thing has been a mess so, here are some bullet points of what we expect going forward.
most immediately: both sides of this are going to have to make peace with being uncomfortable. it is Grail’s right to argue the premise that there is ableism against people with NPD; but, it is also the right of everyone else to disagree with that, and to disagree with it for personal experience reasons. if that’s a problem for you, don’t engage with this stuff and block people, full stop. genuinely: do something else. this is our third discussion on this subject and i have seen exactly zero minds changed as a result on either side, so i doubt you’re going to be the first if you’re obstinate enough.
if you would like more elaboration on the line we take here, please see our essay On Content Removal, and specifically this section:
However, from a pragmatic standpoint: Beehaw is ultimately a public space - curated as it may be - and you will be exposed to content you neither agree with nor feel comfortable with as a product of that. This is perfectly fine. It is also fine to disagree with some things we allow here that you personally would not. These are normal parts of existing in public spaces with other people and using services that are not your own respectively. But that also means you must be willing to compromise or take personal action to protect yourself sometimes - our moderation cannot and will not guarantee a completely agreeable space for you.
From a logistical standpoint: we simply cannot privilege your personal discomfort over anyone else’s, and we cannot always cater specifically to you and what you want. Your personal positions on right or wrong are not inherently more valid than someone else’s when weighing most questions of how we should moderate this space. There are often plenty of people who do not feel like you that we must also consider in moderation decisions.
secondarily:
- it is understandable that neopronouns (especially of the sort in play here) give people trouble, but if someone politely asks you to use their pronouns/corrects you on what their pronouns are then we’d request that you either do that or just disengage entirely. this seems pretty straightforward. you especially do not need to give your opinion on the validity of them, because it benefits nobody.
- same deal with the word “narcissist”–if someone doesn’t want to be called that personally, honor the request, find some other agreeable word to use between you, or just don’t argue and move on with your day. there are undoubtedly more important things you could be doing besides getting into an argument over whether this is a proper ask to honor.
this is our third discussion on this subject and i have seen exactly zero minds changed
FWIW, I haven’t read the previous discussions, and this one changed my mind in a few ways, so that’s something, which leads me to…
don’t engage with this stuff and block people
Technical question 1: as an alternative to a full block, is there a way to “soft block”, or tag, or whatever, some people, to act as a sort of CW?
if someone politely asks you to use their pronouns/corrects you
I think part of the issue here, lies in what different people consider to be “polite”.
Technical question 2: what is the policy about mainly submitting links to own posts on external sites? Some places would see that as “self promotion”, but I could see the value of keeping a canonical source for one’s exposés. What is the stand of Beehaw in that regard?
Wrt technical question 2, I don’t personally believe this should run afoul of self promotion guidelines. This was not a monetized service, just this person’s personal thoughts.
I think this method actually works really well for having more in-depth discussions, so you can have a lot of background information in a longer form piece that lets you keep the post itself about a tighter discussion, rather than being a text dump. It’s also more useful as a method to use for reference elsewhere.
I’ve been considering doing this for some of my posts, I just don’t have a blog myself. :p
Good point about monetization. There could still be issues like political or religious views, though.
It would be nice to have some guidelines about stuff like topics, frequency, whether there should be a summary of the link content included with the post (like in the case of news), and similar.
I used to keep personal pages and blogs since the 1990s, but lately got fed up with the constant spam and intrusion attempts, and health issues didn’t make it easier. I’ve been considering at some point migrating everything to markdown on something like GitHub Pages, with the added bonus of revision tracking, and just linking to it in whatever way… with forking as a solution to the bus factor.
Technical question 1: as an alternative to a full block, is there a way to “soft block”, or tag, or whatever, some people, to act as a sort of CW?
Not ideal, but Sync for Lemmy premium (ultra) has a custom tagging/highlighting feature. Not sure about other apps. It’s subscription or a large lifetime payment. But there is cloud syncing (and other features).
Thank you. I have no wish to silence discussion on the matter, I’m more than happy to talk about the issue with people who disagree respectfully. I only have a problem with the kind of people who call Me slurs and misgender Me because I stick up for disabled people and have an unusual gender. And I can see you’ve removed a lot of those comments, so thank you.
I went and looked at your cited post, and am confused what you are upset about. People disagreeing with you? People thinking an argument for Donald trump in the name of inclusivity is absurd?
I also noticed that you claim yourself to be a narcissist, and find it somewhat ironic that you choose to try and take down/over a community over a lukewarm response to your narcissism argument, being quite narcissist yourself in doing so.
That being said any unmoderated community should be assigned to (a) new caretaker(s).
“Symptoms include an excessive need for admiration, disregard for others’ feelings, an inability to handle any criticism, and a sense of entitlement.”
In talking to folks with various axis ‘disorders’ it’s important to remember you are talking to a person, not a series of diagnostic criteria or symptoms, get to know them and understand why they think the way they do, working with them instead of against them and worsening their trauma.
Us ND folks aren’t all the same and symptoms of a very understandable reaction to trauma are not our entire personality, thanks!
I’ve upvoted your post because I perceive you as respectfully voicing your opinion and mentioning supporting observations. I don’t get these vibes from @Grail@aussie.zone’s rants at all.
Inclusion and tolerance are important, but I feel like @Grail@aussie.zone is abusing these concepts. And that may or may not be a part of their diagnosis (who could even tell for sure), but the point is, people can’t expect everybody around them to accommodate each and every aspect of their state of mind all the time. Just as @Grail@aussie.zone has a right to voice an opinion (withing the boundaries set by the community’s rules), so does everybody else. And that means people have a right to disagree with each other and/or call out obvious BS.
TL;DR: This is generally an extraordinarily tolerant community, but most people here are not therapists or psychiatrists looking to do pro-bono work.
I’m ND myself, thanks! The person I was responding to seemed confused as to why the poster is so upset with folks having mild disagreement with their statements, and I provided context.
While I would like to have a discussion with you, I’m going to have to ask you to use My preferred pronouns. I use capitalised pronouns, as it says in My bio. That means you call Me “You” instead of “you”. And please don’t call Me a n*rcissist, that word is a slur and should only be used by people from within the community, not by neurotypicals.
Respectfully, I dont read anyone’s bio. If you ask me to use your preferred pronouns in interactions with you that’s fine with me, capitalization isnt a pronoun though. (How would that even apply in verbal communication?)
Narcissist isnt a slur, it is simply the proper word for a person with certain pronounced character traits which amount to a narcissistic personality… In fact your whole reply reads like a bad faith or troll response on second read.
Lastly I am neurodivergent myself, having ADHD. Not sure why that matters anyway
If someone from an affected community is telling you that something is a slur, perhaps it might be better to listen to them as they are likely to know more about it than anyone else.
Those with NP had a very understandable reaction to trauma and it is a shame how they are treated by the rest of us neurodivergent folks not least because it isn’t actually useful in helping them out and just worsens the reaction to trauma.
There are ways we can all work together though and one of those is talking to and listening to folks with NP or any of the “axis of different ‘disorders’” when they tell you something is a problem.
I have friends with various ‘axis disorders’ and they know exactly what they need and how they can be helped, after all of this kind of trauma reaction comes from abuse, a lack of understanding and lack of love. Do you think more of that will be useful?
I don’t know about the moderation but the “negativity” is because your take on narcissism being an ableist slur is nonsense. I can’t tell if you’re actually seriously deluded or just a very commited troll. You’re not going to find much traction getting people to feel sorry for narcissists, especially Trump. But hey, maybe you can go to Truth Social, I’m sure this would play well. You can tell all the fascists how intolerant the left is.
And you shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near moderation.
You and I probably agree on more things than we disagree on, but I feel you are being unnecessarily mean towards Grail. If you don’t like their posts or you disagree with their fundamental points, simply stop engaging. See Alyaza’s comment on this thread.
*You, I use capitalised pronouns.
And please stop spreading lies about My opinion of Trump. I don’t claim him as one of us, I don’t want to be associated with him, and I don’t think he deserves help. I can respect a respectful disagreement, but lying about Me and nisgendering Me isn’t kind.
Can Grail elaborate on why Grail uses capitalised personal pronouns? On one hand, I want to respect Grail’s pronouns and am open to the fact that maybe I am simply uninformed on the topic or something to that effect. On the other hand, I am hesitant to refer to someone with capitalised personal pronouns since that has historically only been used for deities and royalty and comes with a hefty, hefty subtext of power. Can Grail elaborate?
I’m also curious. I tried reading their medium post on it and it didn’t have an answer other than we people capitalize gods pronouns in Christianity
I just posted about that yesterday
Cluster B personality disorders have a heavy stigma because of the abusive behaviors so common to the disorders.
It’s hard to have a neutral conversation about NPD if you have been traumatized by someone with NPD or other PDs. Personally, I will usually distance myself from anyone with cluster B traits to protect myself since those behaviors are very triggering for me. That’s more about me than it is about them.
I also understand that personality disorders are some of the most painful disorders to have in virtue of the great human pain of the world taking issue with something that you are and can’t easily change. If you’ve got NPD and are in therapy, working on your behaviors, and striving not to harm others with your hurt, that’s commendable!
When people complain about narcissists, they’re probably complaining about abuse perpetrated by narcissists. It’s an important distinction that isn’t commonly made. Nobody wants to devote care and understanding to somebody they see and unlikely or incapable of reciprocating. But that’s an asshole assumption to make.
It’s pretty disheartening to see a community that’s big on inclusivity respond judgmentally and FWIW, I’m glad you shared the article. At the same time, I would strive not to take the backlash personally.
