Lago PARANOIA wrote:It's pointless trying to make the Den a safe haven, because what's been going on in the past few months has been happening to every forum. ...Peoples' politics get revealed, and the relationships we've nurtured through a shared interests become hollow.
I doubt anyone would treat this with any consideration or respect, but.
This is exactly the reason I've been quietly on an extended, very extended, hiatus from this forum. But then in a last minute twist it also isn't.
Trump got elected, fake leftist masks were dropped by prominent members who engaged in McCarthyist conspiracy smears, Clinton worship, Neoliberal worship, crazy anti-Bernie, anti-Corbyn, broadly anti-left and (for me) ultimately a total denial of the open history of the evils of American interventionism and Imperialism as a thing that has somehow even happened. And on top of that no one other than me at the time even gave zero push back.
And I was like. I can't talk to people about politics if they refuse to acknowledge you know, factual modern history.
I don't even
want to post funny gaming stories for people that would so earnestly flak for things like the endless genocidal coups sponsored by the USA.
But the thing is I might have stuck around for game rules discussion, maybe...
However the den had already demonstrated that the gaming dens principles on rules discussion had devolved to the point that as long as I was the target then "fuck RAW the gaming den doesn't DO RAW anymore" was an entirely acceptable way to thread shit me with again, zero pushback. Well to be fair fbmf gave it about one half an attempt.
The "politics problem" is everywhere right now, it is worse but it's always been there. Your local dominant clique spending months on end earnestly singing "Love me I'm A Liberal" like they actually believed it (look it up Phil Ochs was a musical saint) certainly didn't help especially amidst the drought of D&D 5. But basically the same clique or at least social dynamic had long since rendered plenty of other discussions non-viable and for me at least politics was just the straw that broke the camels back.
And for the forum, or its dominant clique it was not even a straw, it was really just the
pretext for the inevitable Frank explosion every damned one of us damned well knew was coming for at least a decade. It's not even worth denying it, anyone could see it coming.
Banning politics is neither here nor there. It probably won't hurt as long as it's not overzealous. The gaming den just had a social disruption and at this point floats or sinks based on how the social cliques fall out and whether as a result it becomes broadly MORE open to push back and interesting discussion as a result of events, or less.
I'm not sure you CAN control that, I am fairly sure the politics ban won't control it though.
More people expressing more interesting opinions or producing more interesting content might help. Half the problem is probably just due to an already shrunken active community in general. I think will even try and make a contribution, but I gotta say, I've been pretty happy with the lurking ever deeper into murk and hell, I suspect plenty of other posters are more than happy to ignore my contributions over the years and throw any amount of utterly hypocritical bile my way for even checking in during a community crisis.