I've heard this statement or something like it many times on DU over the past few years in regard to the trolls, incessantly argumentative and rude regulars, and other disruptors at this site.
The most recent example was in this thread here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2109579Other posters in this thread told the OP: "Just put these folks on ignore" (implying that the OP was childish), "Assholes exist...decline to respond", "Let it go", "Get off the internet and do something", and "Don't take it personally".
The idea here, I suppose, is that the biggest problem is the fact that the OP is upset about rude statements. From this perspective, yes, the OP putting all of those people on ignore or finding something else to do that doesn't make her so mad is certainly a good solution. She may become less upset after logging off or whatever.
But is that really the problem? And is this really the point of DU: a bunch of individuals whose primary goal in internet discourse must now be ignoring and avoiding internet bullies?
What about our community? Sure, it helps the OP to log off and do something else for a while, but what about the rest of us? Are we ALL supposed to log off every time some asshole troll disrupts threads with horrible comments? And if everyone but the trolls logs off, where does that leave DU as a whole? If we want to address this problem which affects all of us as a whole, we need to start addressing it on a social level, not an individual level.
Allowing these people to continually disrupt the board is hurting us, and by extension, our ability to work together on the causes we all care about. And remaining silent about this problem, or "just ignoring them" is the same thing as tacitly approving it. Furthermore, every poster that someone puts on ignore is out there starting flame wars with 500 other people, and it's still hurting all the rest of us, because we can't find any actual information or reasonable discourse in between the flaming threads with the flaming posts. And it's hurting us by making us angry and mistrustful towards our fellow DUers.
Individual ignore lists are not an adequate solution to this community problem. And it isn't just or pragmatic to make the victims assume the responsibility for other people's bad behavior - the victims being everybody here at some point or another.
We need to start placing responsibility and solutions on the shoulders of the posters who are causing the disruptions, whether they have 15 posts or 5000. If someone is constantly in the middle of or starting every flame war on this site, they need to be banned, even if they've been here 5 years. If someone is posting inflammatory non-progressive statements in an obvious bid to rile others up, they need to be banned. This kind of discourse is not free speech, and it's not debate. It's the internet equivalent of yelling "FIRE" in a crowded theatre.
And all of us need to pay more attention to our language usage in our posts, and to our own motivations for writing anything. Are we really trying to engage in reasoned debate so we can learn something about the world, or are we just posting to insult, wound or demonstrate our superiority to another poster? If it's the latter, why not think twice before responding?
Thanks for listening.
:rant: