I know the mods like a few red meat threads for the 'base' but I'm not sure why the mods let those sort of threads run on for. Laughing at and posting I don't give a fuck style posts at people dying is pretty disgusting yes, even if their 'trumpers' and anti vaxxers.
Constructive thread apparently having a fairly active discussion about this; mods aren't participating, but the usual suspects are there defending them.
https://www.resetera.com/threads/constructive-community-discussion.270630/page-100#post-69921225It starts with:
Threads like this:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.resetera.com/threads/im-sorry-but-its-too-late-alabama-doctor-says-dying-unvaccinated-patients-beg-for-the-shot.460341/[/URL]
I really am just disgusted with how people can just come into threads like this and make jokes/post dumb reaction images to people dying. Completely misses the point of the doctor's experience. I don't understand how or why this is acceptable.
Gets some initial support:
I must say I wholeheartedly agree with you. And it needs to be said a lot more.
There are so many threads with people cheering for and even wishing for the death of other people. It was like this during the 2020 US presidential election, and it's now like this with COVID threads. I lived all my life believing that advocating for the death of other people is a step too far, even in the case of truly horrible people. You see, I always believed that capital punishment was unacceptable.
I love so many aspects of ResetEra, but this aspect in particular really makes me uneasy.
This recent thread was also like that:
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.resetera.com/threads/unvaccinated-trump-supporter-who-spread-coronavirus-conspiracy-theories-dies-of-covid-19.459765/[/URL]
Daegan, who seems extra-dedicated to stanning policy and mods any time that thread is active, jumps in to I guess make sure everyone knows it's still totally cool to wish death on people sometimes:
Let’s not equate wishing for/celebrating the deaths of individuals who indiscriminately murder from a distance and destroy whole societies with their actions (your Rumsfelds, your Limbaughs, your Kissingers) with stuff like those threads. Very different situations until you oversimplify to try to claim moral ground.
A few posts later, we've hit "actually it's fine to make fun of 'normal' people for dying of covid":
Each unvaccinated person that chooses to not get vaccinated when they safely could is doing their part in spreading a deadly virus around that has killed more than 100x the deaths as 9/11. Alot of us have dealt with family that will not be reasoned into getting the vaccine and think they're somehow immune, all while many of us have people in our lives that we love that are incredibly susceptible to the virus, or who have actually died because of the virus. I personally have a girlfriend who's extremely immunocompromised and it makes me see red when my family has the gall to come tell me about this new "research" they found on facebook on what the vaccine actually is, meanwhile my girlfriend is fighting tooth and nail against her immune system and will have to rely on herd immunity to go back outside because the vaccine only does so much for an immunocompromised person.
When people are telling others with dead loved ones because of covid that the reason their loved ones died wasn't actually covid, I can certainly understand why people have no more empathy to give to fuckfaces who would rather spread a deadly virus that kills people, than to wear a fucking cloth mask and get a shot.
People who only start caring about the virus when they're on their deathbeads are hypocrites who only care about themselves. They had all the chances and decided that conspiracy theories that get people killed are better because they don't have to wear a cloth mask and get a shot. They made their bed, now they get to lie in it.
There is a distinction between actively hoping/wishing someone dies (which frankly doesn’t matter anyway, nobody here actually has that power unless I’ve missed something) and simply being indifferent, or lacking sympathy for people whose own stubborn ignorance, an ignorance that a) is often rooted in bigotry and b) has the potential to bring harm to others around them, has caused them misfortune, even death. I feel nothing for those people. if people want to joke about them or make them into memes for being complete idiots, possibly as a way to deal with the fact that we are for the most part powerless to do anything else, that often nothing short of death is going to change these people’s minds, I have no problem with that.
At which point it turns into a discussion of their obituary thread policy (which, iirc, they'd recently modified to allow for grave-dancing):
All of this is actually in ResetEra's General Guide:
Obituary Threads
We generally do not welcome celebration or cheering the death of public figures. Members that appear to be using an obituary thread solely to post about how glad they are that person is dead may be moderated. This does not preclude sober criticism of a person's legacy or mistakes in life. We simply do not want to celebrate death. Context will matter, and some individuals have done things so heinous that rare exceptions may need to be made.
I agree with these terms, and I wish they would get enforced a lot more. For people that are and aren't public figures.
I feel that last line really is used as something very broad to allow many things. It shouldn't be.
There is nothing concrete about that policy, it all just says “may be moderated” and leaves a lot up to mod discretion. Nothing in that really conflicts with people shitting all over Donald Rumsfeld’s corpse, for example.
Let's take this opportunity to clarify the policy then. Because there are a lot of things I saw in the last few months that I'm not personally comfortable with.
The policy seems pretty clear to me. That it is something, like a lot of things, that are left up to moderator discretion and judgement in how they are applied.
No mod/admin responses in that thread since mid-June, still, but with users happy to do the justifications for them without requiring the admin team to actually commit to anything, why would they?
More and more Era seems to lean hard into "Actually, being a shitty person is ok, as long as you're only being shitty to those our enlightened community has deemed untouchable." It'd be easier to take if it wasn't always married with the smug sense of moral supremacy.
