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Oh, that again?
Meanwhile, if not annoyed I am perturbed when "bullying" is used as if the accusation were itself a conviction. In a kingdom occupied largely by at least titular grown-ups, none of whom has a huge amount more power than any other, it's a difficult one to gauge. There have certainly been occasion on which unambiguous harassment has taken place, which would fall within the remit of bullying, certainly, but these cases are rarely totally unambiguous - which is not least why banning people for simple, personal rather than racial or sexual harassment is extremely difficult: somebody will always fail to see the behaviour as harassing. Modzero is a good example of this - where some people were refusing to acknowledge that there was a problem all the way to the airlock.
In playground bullying, a key question is often who started it - who threw the first taunt, or punch. In an environment like Barbelith, where interactions are open-ended and not bordered by such limits as the beginning of lunch break, this is famously difficult to pin down. Either one must tabulate every occurence, fiercely delimit the time frames under consideration or live in a sort of eternal peresent.
For example, Chrysis-Euxenia said in the thread from which this forked:
There are a lot of threads which I don't have a high opinion of, I don't feel it is opbligatory to piss in them or take the piss out of the thread-starter if there is an honest discussion going on. I stay out of it!
That is, that he started it, by dissing your thread on a mysterious apparition broadcast on CNN. However, mere posts above that diss was you, saying to him, in response to his suggestion that Barbelith was declining:
Yes, it is awful here at Barbelith and you all should shut it down so no else can enjoy it.
Now, why is that not where the problem started? No doubt there are a dozen reasons, each more or less convincing to different people. My point is, the term "bully" is a difficult one, because it is highly emotionally charged, and also because if one decides that one is being bullied it makes it near-impossible to take responsibility for one's own actions - bullying is such a terrible thing to experience, after all, that any response to it is justifiable. So, we get posts like:
Speak to Flyboy about his actions, Haus. He picked on me and if I am not supposed to respond to that and keep quiet while he pisses on me, then there is something wrong with that. Take it up with him instead of addressing me, who is merely defending myself from bullying tactics. Go to the source of the issue, please.
Flyboy identifies that as far as he was concerned the source of the issue was that:
Yes, it is awful here at Barbelith and you all should shut it down so no else can enjoy it.
Clearly, Chrysis-Euxenia's belief differs - the source of the issue must be Flyboy's dismissal of her statements about the CNN footage, because she is not the sort of person who would interrupt an honest discussion with a dismissive comment.
See the problem? There's no wiggle room here. |
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