Finally got a staff post in the constructive thread about the astrology thing, and apparently you ARE allowed to bag on astrology but the staff precogs closed the thread for precrime since it was totes about to turn into a bully-fest:
Locking a thread doesn't mean all discussion of that situation is banned. If it did, my contract would be void and I could finally be free, because at this point everything would've been banned.
The thread was locked because staff felt it was about to be a magnet for bullying. Basically:
The people mad about the astrology stuff give off real "I want to be mean to something I find stupid but I'm afraid Im not allowed to" energy
Let us be clear. It has always been okay to criticize irrationality, and we have consistently upheld the forum as a space to criticize major and world religions, even in contentious political threads.
However, we have also always maintained that it is not okay to dehumanize people for their irrationality. It is not okay to presume that an irrational belief, or even consciously partaking in a culture that is spiritual, means that person will definitely become a Q Anoner. It is also not okay nor fair to project the abuse you have suffered from individuals with irrational beliefs onto anyone and everyone who may believe in or participate in anything remotely spiritual. And since I've seen it, it is also not logically consistent to carve a niche out for Native American belief systems, since we're on the topic of irrationality. If all of it is bullshit, it should all be fair game, and if you know good and well we're not allowing you to go around calling religious Natives "dangerous," we're not about to allow you to do so for anyone buying crystals or mentioning horoscopes. You're adults. We expect you to recognize scale and context.
Finally, nothing we do is a cause to take up revolutionary arms against a fascistic regime. Nothing we do is a deep conspiracy that needs stalking and weeks/months old screenshots to uncover. No one topic we lock automatically sets a precedent for a prohibited topic from that point going forward. All that this bad faith speculation does is compound upon our workload due to having to address these ironically baseless claims and increase the presumed divides between staff and members by positioning us as some evil Big Bad that needs to be toppled.
Calm down. Take a breath. Go play some video games.
Be still. It's gonna be alright.
Also, apparently, Scientology and the beliefs of indigenous people have to be treated with the same level of respect otherwise you're logically inconsistent. how are they so bad at this.
And, because I swear it has to be in their fucking staff guidelines, can't get through a mod post addressing a current community concern without again reminding us how unfair literally everyone else is to poor staff at all times. Then the kind of condescending closer that seems mostly targeted at making people mad via telling them to calm down.
Then:
If this is the case, why is there a whole Herman Cain Award thread which is nothing but people laughing at people for dying due to their irrational belief that Vaccines are evil? I'm not trying to post this as a "gotcha" or anything, I'm genuinely curious what the line is for "OK, it's perfectly fine to dunk on these people"
Because astrologists as a whole aren't committing suicide from delusion and trying to keep a plague around to punish people they deem as inferior.
This is why I said we should be able to separate basic context and scale of different situations. Not every spiritual belief is equivalent in its harm.
which unless there's actually a MAGA sect literally stating they aren't getting vaccinated because they believe COVID is deadly and the vaccine is effective but they want to get it to kill the minorities, seems to just amount to "well no the stuff WE think is bad is ok."
I still can't believe this is the stance of administration of this forum. There could be members on this board who have family members, whether they agree with their beliefs/stances or not, who are having their graves danced on by other members.
Every person on Earth has relatives as a biological necessity of existence. If we moderated this place based upon whether or not contentious individuals and groups had family, we would have to blanket ban negativity.
Yeah it's too bad you couldn't just ban the grave-dancing form of negativity where you celebrate death; it's too bad we exist in the no-nuance zone where the only choices are 'mock the dead' or 'never say anything negative'.
Brainchild apparently done posting because of it all:
I wish this thread was more prominent on this forum, because if it were, I probably wouldn't have made my thread regarding my frustrations about discussing religion, superstition, and/or pseudoscience.
Now that I can see other members actively discussing it here, that's good enough for me (if my thread hadn't been locked, I would've requested it to be locked upon realizing this).
That being said, I'm done posting on this forum. Not because I think era is a bad forum, but because the moderation style just feels a bit too dogmatic for my tastes. I will continue to frequent/lurk here for news and to read interesting discussions, but I don't want to participate in discussions that don't allow people to be transparent about their opinions regarding ideas. I'm all for protecting people and making sure everyone feels safe, but I fundamentally disagree that the same protections should extend to epistemological discussions. Of course, that's just my opinion and everyone is free to disregard it. Just thought I'd give my two cents.
Cheers
