House Keeping: Another Banning

Although things get heated, no one has the right to behave like a creepy internet weirdo, getting unwarrantedly, aggressively sexual with female commenters.

And when a coblogger tells you to chill out, he's speaking for me, effectively. That's a bad time to double-down on weirdness in some jagoff attempt to prove you're "too tough to take an advisory."

That is a good time to take the night off.

If you defy his caution, you just earned strike two, and strike three will depend on my mood when I hear of it.

This site is not, in fact, "Race to the Bottom, and the Lowest Common Denominator Shall Make the Rules for Everyone Else."

I will enforce a certain standard of behavior, without regret.

I have stated this position repeatedly: In real life, we exclude weirdos, assholes, and racists from our daily lives. The Coalition of Assholes, having been excluded from all decent society in real life, continues asserting that in this one place -- the Internet -- they are free to flout social conventions and common courtesy without repercussion.

Because, Free Speech!!! B-b-b-but you can't exclude me, I've been excluded from everywhere else, this is all I have left!

Yes. There's a reason for that, but no, that doesn't mean the rules are different due to some hardship clause.

You also have "free speech" in real life but that doesn't obligate anyone to hang out with you or let you play their reindeer games.

Free speech is a right, but there is another equally important right that the Free Speech whiners never want to talk about: The right to Free Association, and to set the rules for one's clubs, and exclude those who do not fit the club or do not abide by the rules.

Stop telling me about your rights of "Free Speech" and start observing that other people have a right to Free Association.

And if you're going to be a dick, don't expect to be invited into the gang.

Let Me Explain This: We hate this.

No one likes these confrontations. No one likes having to play Den Mother or School Principle or Blog Nag.

We hate that. No one likes doing this. That's why some borderline stuff is ignored -- because we'd like to pretend it didn't happen, for the sake of avoiding confrontation, scolding, and drama.

So when someone is roused enough to overcome their reluctance to step in, that means a commenter has done something special.

And that means that the coblogger (including me) giving the warning is already upset to be forced into this unwanted position. To be forced to have to start talking about rules and common courtesy and the history of racist caricatures and the rest of it.

That means that what is usually ignored has become too aggressively anti-social to be ignored further, and the person issuing the warning is already pretty damn put-out that he has to lecture an adult as if that adult were a child.

And that is really a bad time to double-down on cutesy "can I touch the line this much?" games and catcalls and the rest of it.

A warning is a warning. Take it as such. It's not something anyone likes doing. If a warning has been issued, try to look past ego and consider "Maybe that was out of line and unnecessary. Maybe I've had a little too much to drink. Maybe I'm letting a little too much private-life anger stink up everyone else's day."

Please stop with the reflexive list of rights believed to be possessed and consider duties and responsibilities, and the counterbalancing rights of others.

posted by Ace at 04:21 PM

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