Forum has less input from Threads then a year ago.

[Tarekith]

That happens when drunk tourists are in charge

[beats me]

If I posted the things I’ve posted in this thread a year ago I would have gotten a PM from a mod trying to convince me things are overall better now as a result of the crackdown. So it’s good to see they’ve at least lightened up on telling me to lighten up.

[Tarekith]

And here I was just about to send you a PM too.

[Angstrom]

The mods are drunk because they are locked in the metaphorical pub with no exit but for the metaphorical window. It is very difficult to open metaphorical windows without another window opening type of metaphor. Also it seems the metaphorical pub is on the second floor for some reason, and there is a ladder but it has a broken step, the ladder is also certainly a metaphor but everybody is too drunk to figure out what it represents. There is plenty of metaphorical beer though. Nobody wants to question that too much.

[Forge.]

Definitely mostly due to the banning of talking about anything interesting - in "the Lounge", it just became dull. Part of the global trend towards never saying anything that might slightly offend anyone, which has culminated in the election of the Donald because people feel relieved that he's an ass who doesn't care how many people he offends.

Why the snowflakes would click on the "Lounge" if they only want inoffensive Ableton only posts then complain about it makes me think of the people demanding that we completely change the structure of the language to remove gender specific pronouns. A new level of absurdity.

You remove the personalities of the actual people who make a place and take away the right to free speech then you suck the life out of a community. It has become a fantasy land of palatable, flavourless grey mush and Corporate McOpinions. Not to mince with words.

Either that or it's just because there's no like button. Oh yeah, and posting labelled video links is a PITA.

Steve Hughes Offended

On Being Offended: A Compilation - A compilation for the rejection of the culture of offense. Featuring Christopher Hitchens, Peter Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins, Penn Jillette, Louis C.K. and Jim Norton

George Carlin - Political Correctness is fascism pretending to be Manners

PhD gives up trying to reason with SJWs - gender neutral pronouns

Milo Yiannopoulos - Free Speech vs. Being Offended

[Angstrom]

Hmm, I dunno.
Do you remember the ass clown who went after Nebulae when his wife had a life-threatening condition. He mentioned it on here and one of the idiot-alts decided to deride him for it. Even chased him around threads and was IMing insults.
Now, call me the worlds oldest snowflake ... but that guy was a cunt who deserved a stabbing never mind a ban.

So, I don't think its the locking down of topics which to blame for the death of this place as an initial timidity.
Ableton became offended by a few posts / posters, and some of it rightfully so (see above), but there was a thought in Ableton that an officious moderation policy was not the Berlin thing to do. History being what it is, the official line was "do what thou wilt be the whole of the Law, but please be less of a cunt about it"

Unfortunately cunts will be cunts, and they certainly were - which led to the forum being put in a cellar and the door being boarded up. And here we all are. In a cellar with the conversation dying off.
No door, no light = death.

Personally I favour the Benign Dictator model of government. Trolls are the belligerent drunk tolerated by the middle classes not wanting to cause a scene. Me, I prefer a nice stabbing. Keep the peace. Kill off the troublemakers for the good of the general population.
You can see the problem Ableton might have with this strategy though.

[Forge.]

yeah I know, I copped it too. Old b0unce was some kind of sociopath. That's the Internet I guess, and as they got more popular the gobshite proportion increased with it. It's hard not to miss the days when you didn't even need to sign in, it was a lot more fun then. But that was pre Facebook/Twitter/Smartphones which seems hard to imagine now.

But like that Jim Jeffries gun control thing, a herd moves as fast as it's slowest member and the odd fuckwit ruins it for the rest of us. Surely it's better to just ban the sociopaths. It seems the tolerance was extended to them, then when it eventually got too much everyone else was punished. There really only ever was a handful of them though in my mind, in fact usually not more than one or two at any time. They didn't need heavy handed moderation, just to notice who the arse hats were and delete them. They'd only come back so many times, even b0unce gave up eventually.

Last year I was researching Internet uptake and the rest of the 'developing' world is coming on line fast, mostly because of smart phones. In 2014 it was something like 15-17% for the whole of Africa, and 24million just for India, and 29M for China... in one year. And Youtube was up to 65 years worth of video uploaded every day. It's definitely a different world now. When you consider the iPhone 1 was released only 10 years ago this year, it's staggering really.

I always thought I was one of the techy ones, and sometimes I feel like I'm having some kind of acid flashback when I hear the gibberish that's becoming normal language. Googly-ogly boggly twittery Tindery Netflix and bollocks. And the excessive need for passwords every bloody minute has brought me close to breaking things. Frequently when I get the urge to listen to or watch something I end up spending so long trying to get one temperamental device to stream to another and recognise blue-tooth or whatever that I end up forgetting about it. I'm really expecting the growth in Vinyl to continue because we need to get away from using computers for everything we do. I'm certainly sick of them.

So there's my over-40 rant for the day.

[TomKern]

George Carlin - Political Correctness is fascism pretending to be Manners

PhD gives up trying to reason with SJWs - gender neutral pronouns

Milo Yiannopoulos - Free Speech vs. Being Offended

Political Correctness is fascism?
"SJWs"?
Hyperbole much?!

Please be reasonable and stop being offended when others use their free speech rights to express opinions you don't like

[Forge.]

just putting what was on the Youtube. Take it you're not familiar with George Carlin. And did you watch the SJWs one? Quite staggering the sense of entitlement demanding a whole language is changed on their behalf and attacking a psych prof for trying to reason with them.

[steko]

Forge. - the useful idiot of the far right… Not for the first time.

Yiannopoulos - seriously???

[mikb]

George Carlin - Political Correctness is fascism pretending to be Manners

PhD gives up trying to reason with SJWs - gender neutral pronouns

Milo Yiannopoulos - Free Speech vs. Being Offended

Political Correctness is fascism?
"SJWs"?
Hyperbole much?! :roll:

Please be reasonable and stop being offended when others use their free speech rights to express opinions you don't like :)

Fascism = Being offended when someone publicly doesn't agree with you or even has the audacity to stand up and talk back when all you did was pouring your hate of others and their freedoms into the world.

[TomKern]

. And did you watch the SJWs one? Quite staggering the sense of entitlement demanding a whole language is changed on their behalf and attacking a psych prof for trying to reason with them.

So what?
They have their opinion and the prof and you have another.
History will sort out the victor of that dispute.
Our languages have always been changing and always will.

And at a minimum the "sense of entitlement demanding..." would have to have a lot more institutional violence behind it before your "fascism" hyperbole becomes valid. If that should ever happen, you can be assured I'll stand with you to defend freedom of speech.
Until then chill, and let that grave injustice pass.

And no I did most emphatically not watch that video. You putting SJW as a derogative adhom in the description made sure of this.

[[erm]]

That's enough guys, this kind of talk is exactly the reason we implented more moderation on the forum. There are more appropriate venues for this kind of talk.

[TomKern]

^That answers the threads question doesn't it?!

[Forge.]

Forge. - the useful idiot of the far right… Not for the first time.

Yiannopoulos - seriously???

"not for the first time"? News to me. Most of anything I've ever posted on this forum has been more 'far left' than anything, and 2016 was a revelation for me when I discovered how much more offensive, arrogant, and conceited the so called 'left' were after 'Brexit', as kindly demonstrated here with the "useful idiot" comment. Quite an eye opener that was, because the most insults seemed to come from the people who felt absolutely certain they had the moral high ground, which seemingly gave them immunity to say what they liked about the "stupid, dumb, old, redneck, racists" that apparently made up the 17M odd who voted for Brexit, and maybe 10 times that who voted for Trump.

Not sure if you just reacted to the mere mention of Yiannopolous, or the actual short video I posted where he explained why offensive people are needed, and I absolutely don't agree with a great deal of what he says, but I think he's absolutely right about the need to say it, because there are some really insane prevailing ideas that have been developing that are very dangerous to the 'enlightenment' ideals of freedom of speech and thought. It's really like the pendulum has swung too far the other way. I have become utterly disillusioned with the so-called "left", because the original ideals seem to have been replaced by a kind of mob, vigilante style thought policing.

Out of interest, did anyone who commented actually click on any of the links I posted?