I was in an incident that led to people complaining about me here and by extension in Ask Lemmy, one which I explained my perspective on elsewhere. Then, when sharing my perspective, I was asked by a certain Blaze to share it in YPTB, only for those in charge there to give what amounted to a signal of disregard for it and to take it elsewhere. Going by their own words, I then shared it in [email protected] as the only close alternative available, which, as a part of their own “rules subtext”, sometimes allows this, and the person, if not all of those who help with YPTB, proceeded to drop by anyways and scold me because “YTPB has specific posting guidelines in the sidebar”.

The implication here is false, at least by my definition of the word “false”, and he even alluded to that after it began to be discussed elaborately, albeit before using an appeal to the masses (story of my life) and say “most people seem to understand”, which ignores consensus of me and the aforementioned Blaze (as much as the “the truth we all wanted to speak” remark ignores not everyone had that issue). Notice how I responded with “I can spot rules broken by the other person’s thread more easily than I can spot rules broken by mine” and got only thumbs down for it and no responses, yet when I actually dissected the rules piece by piece in front of him to point out that any rule I supposedly broke wasn’t there, which even the person who recommended I make the discussion in the first place (the aforementioned Blaze) agreed was a “fair point to be honest”, the mod then delved into the concept of “unspoken rules” as an excuse for himself and said he didn’t want to “rules-lawyer”, which not only disproves what he said about “specific posting guidelines” being “in the sidebar” that supposedly explained what I did wrong, but proved a point I commonly mention about people in different places including here always being uncritical and unwilling to see things for themselves and just taking peoples’ word for things (and about that, to respond to Cypher’s last reply, intellectual =/= intelligent). A part of that is it also suggests, by extension, that the quantity of thumbs down you garner is unreliable as consistently meaning anything, unless the rule is actually to apply gladiator logic and say a thumbs down signals mercy, as indicated by the very Roman-esque culture around here. I guess all this time, I was being praised and didn’t realize it?

This idea of “unspoken rules” and “reading between the lines” seems to be a common theme here because everyone seems to think that concept is valid, and they think that whether you’re akin to an outcast is defined by the norms you follow. This makes me curious to ask… hypothetically, if I get all PTB gradings from everyone because I couldn’t read the “unspoken rules” or anticipate mod discretion, what if I were to go to the places I have authority over and ban everyone who says or has said anything positive or supportive about Luigi Mangione or what he did? Would I be able to accomplish this without being called a PTB? After all, that is how this all started, and again, that would be an “unspoken rule” on its own that can be chalked up to mod discretion, now wouldn’t it? Those are the terms.

I await your choice.