The Cloak Room is not so bad.

[Captainant 27625]

shot:

4 minutes ago, slorch said:

Our facts are the facts.

Any deviation is a troll move.

#CR these days.  It's not worth the fucking discussion.

chaser:

On 1/18/2024 at 7:43 AM, TwiceHorn said:

It's what all the CR critics do.

The initial attempt may have been made to argue in good faith, but their media sources are always absolute shit.

Erstwhile CR posters "do their own research" and within a matter of minutes have debunked the basic point of argument, or at the very least the most outrageous aspects of it, e.g. Biden lied.

It's not trolling, per se, but it is a strident argument, followed by a pantsing, followed by mumbling and departure of the poster.

It's amazing how that pattern works.

Nonetheless, I don't really love calling it trolling or attempting to crowd source the poster.  People come on the sports boards with ill-founded hot takes all the time, get pantsed, maybe catch a few negs, and that's it.  The pantsing is sufficient.

 

[Celery Man 20931]

6 minutes ago, slorch said:

Our facts are the facts.

Any deviation is a troll move.

#CR these days.  It's not worth the fucking discussion.

 

I basically post in one thread and still catch jokes for it as it is seemingly so out of my persona to support public education...allegedly.

You’re not entitled to your own facts dude. You get tripped up over the idea that one “side” might be consistently wrong, which is what you’re going to do here, but the conversation is about bringing falsehoods into a conversation and then crying busy when they are challenged with truths.

[Brian Fantana 6678]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Just really weird to see you get so animated and hard headed about this and refusing to see the facts. Did a croot complain or something? I've seen people get immolated on the football board wayyyyyy worse

Not only that, but he's trying to gaslight us into believing that no meaningful discussion is happening on that thread, when it absolutely is. It only got derailed by the stupid post his friend made. There's still good discussion happening right now. @Neonmoon even laid out, very respectfully, why LHL was wrong in his thinking just a few hours ago.

I don't get it, he usually has a pretty level head about stuff like this.

[Da Fino 2772]

The response to that thread is like if I saw my father or child getting pantsed while getting in over their head and tried to come fix it for them. Really weird. 

[Guest]

45 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

You’re not entitled to your own facts dude. You get tripped up over the idea that one “side” might be consistently wrong, which is what you’re going to do here, but the conversation is about bringing falsehoods into a conversation and then crying busy when they are challenged with truths.

LOLz.

Certain( approved)  versions of the truth.

If you dispute our truth, we'll just take a vote on it.

See, it's the truth!!!

Edited January 19 by slorch

[Celery Man 20931]

If you were capable of independent thought like you think you are, you’d do it instead of these stupid fairness heuristics.

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

If you were capable of independent thought like you think you are, you’d do it instead of these stupid fairness heuristics.

Fact: 3 illegal immigrants drowned at Eagle Pass.

Surly fact: Hot Wheels murdered 3 migrants.

 

There's your fairness.  Get over yourself for crisesake.

Edited January 19 by slorch

[Celery Man 20931]

Nuance like that is what makes slorch slorch.

[Neonmoon 38129]

3 hours ago, Celery Man said:

I can understand the desire to make the board welcoming to everyone. It just doesn’t work for a politics board in today’s political environment where one side lies about virtually everything. Challenging those lies is necessary - ignoring them is how we got to now. Make a right wing echo chamber, ban all politics, whatever, but right now you’re twisted up, I don’t know how people are supposed to ignore him when he keeps coming back, and you’re blaming the people refuting falsehoods for derailing the conversation.

From the other thread about declining revenue and/or increasing users. It seems like there is a profitability issue. There was discussion of the “CR echo chamber” as to why this place isn’t more profitable. I remember a link to an SEC rant page discussing as much. A known poster using a sock handle with 4 posts championed that narrative. Might have been Rex or GRHorn. Who knows. 

I believe this is at least part of the concern 

The political boards on SEC rant and Texags are pure qAnon garbage bins. Therein lies the rub. Is it possible the majority of college football message boards skew that way? I wouldn’t be surprised. 

 

[safe sex 11696]

[Celery Man 20931]

i assume that the profitability issue is one facing all niche messageboards, even ones with fairly heavy traffic like this one. I don't think that the solution is in catering to to the "I can't help but look at the politics section and also I am a giant fucking pussy about it" demo.

[Brian Fantana 6678]

Ol' fatty rolled up in the thread literally just to troll, but I bet imma won't have anything to say about that. It's the rest of our faults!

[Anastasis 23457]

7 hours ago, immamac said:

I think going no secondary sources would open up the discussion quite a bit we can try that. 

primary sources only meaning direct quotes from involves parties or official communications from agencies. Actual legislature and proposed legislation links etc. 

I think that this is the right direction. In my opinion, turning off twitter embeds in the CR would be the single greatest improvement. Direct links to primary source material (preferably), or secondary sources/analysis with posting of the content behind spoiler tags. If you want to discuss the content of the material, than do so and use your own original thinking in the process. It is not perfect, would require some modest level of effort, but would clear out a lot of the nonsense and dis/misinformation. People could of course work around it, but honestly twitter is one of the worst things that has happened to the series of political discussion boards we have inhabited together over the last two decades. An honest assessment across the CR would land on twitter embeds as being the most common source of dis/misinformation in the discussions.   

Edited January 19 by Anastasis

[Captainant 27625]

17 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

An honest assessment across the CR would land on twitter embeds as being the most common source of dis/misinformation in the discussions.   

I don't disagree that Twitter embeds were and are a terrible source of good information, but contemporaneously it was the best way to find out what was happening in our government. Like, cabinet members found out they were fired via Twitter for fucks sake lol. 

I do think more stringent rules on sourcing would go a LONG way to cutting back the bullshit, but that doesn't really fix the underlying problem of folks just ignoring facts and defending it as an opinion. And it wouldn't really have prevented the LHL situation since he just refused to address any of the court filings or well sourced reporting that directly refuted his """opinion""" from the national review 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

So instead of getting a link and a blurb, or a quote in a tweet or bluesky or pick your source it would be necessary to have a subscription to the newspaper that posted in X. 

Yeah that's fucking stupid.

[hayden_horn 11362]

the funniest bit is how all yall act like yall are moderated in any real way.

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Then who is sending all the bitchy emails to imma?

 

[Brian Fantana 6678]

15 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

the funniest bit is how all yall act like yall are moderated in any real way.

Imma barged into the thread and demanded everyone stop doing something that no one was actually doing and since doubled and tripled down on it.

No one is complaining about being moderated, we're baffled at why he did all that.

[royiv 9246]

I think we're going to need clearly defined toxicity guidelines after one of the resident trolls showed up in the offending thread. 

[immamac 42835]

47 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

So instead of getting a link and a blurb, or a quote in a tweet or bluesky or pick your source it would be necessary to have a subscription to the newspaper that posted in X. 

Yeah that's fucking stupid.

No. You would link to actual quotes or videos or clips that aren’t overlayed by a narrative. Or specific links to legislation on a .gov website. 

6 hours ago, slorch said:

Fact: 3 illegal immigrants drowned at Eagle Pass.

Surly fact: Hot Wheels murdered 3 migrants.

 

There's your fairness.  Get over yourself for crisesake.

This is closer to reality than it is hyperbole. That’s what some of you are missing. 

I fucking despise Greg abbot and think that what’s happening at the border is absolutely fucking insane. He didn’t kill 3 migrants though. Is there some level of argument you can make that he’s got some level of attribution to the circumstances that led to their deaths? Sure. Is he a huge piece of shit making the situation worse instead of better (I think so, but some people debate this). But the way that the conversation goes is exactly this. Greg Abbott fucking murdered those mother fuckers. Drowned them by his own (metaphorical) hands, fuck you if you don’t believe me here’s all the proof. <insert links not showing Greg Abbott murdering anyone, but being a shithead>

it’s toxic to the definition of the word as it relates to online toxicity. It’s not some fad fucking word of the day it’s unhealthy for everyone all around and it’s not constructive in any way. 

im not worried about the profitability of the site. The site makes plenty of money. NIL, community events and all the shit that isn’t the actual website are what caused it to show a fiscal loss because we are tied to calendar year and not August to August where we would show a negiligible profit as I usually balance the budget to as close to 0 as possible to avoid paying taxes on profit that I intend to distribute as NIL or reinvestment into the community in the form of activities etc. 

Im worried that we don’t add any fresh perspectives, our users are legitimately dying off and not being replaced and the parts of the site that used to keep people around that were fresh is now a main contributing factor for them specifically not sticking around for anything but drive by football takes. 

[Brian Fantana 6678]

11 minutes ago, immamac said:

But the way that the conversation goes is exactly this. Greg Abbott fucking murdered those mother fuckers. Drowned them by his own (metaphorical) hands, fuck you if you don’t believe me here’s all the proof. <insert links not showing Greg Abbott murdering anyone, but being a shithead>

Link?

[Captainant 27625]

It's incredible how much you are misrepresenting that thread and it's discussion, imma. A couple of folks have had hot takes that Abbott is directly responsible, but that's not the focus of the discussion. It's mainly just debunking LHL's talking points from "the right source". 

You still haven't linked a specific grievance or problem post, you're just repeating the same "well it's JUST BAD, ohkay??" and repeating your misrepresentation. 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

Link?

Page 1 should suffice.

 

[Guest]

Additionally, the more you motherfuckers insist that you aren't a certain way, confirms the living fuck out of you being a certain way.

 

Your acknowledgement is not required for it to be so, nor am I necessarily asking for said acknowledgement.  But when you try to counter claims that there is bullshit going on, and there is, it's eye-rolling crazy that some of you are in bigtime denial.

 

Just fucking own it. or don't.  In the end, it matters not- however, it is absolutely contributing behavior to the negative culture in CR.

I guess it really doesn't matter if it straightens out.  yeah team.  yell for your flag.

 

 

Edited January 20 by slorch

[cactusflinthead 27598]

You mean the quote from the Governor that he wants to shoot people?

[immamac 42835]

Guys fucking stop acting like anything that’s happening in that thread is at all good or healthy. It’s outrage city. 

[royiv 9246]

7 minutes ago, immamac said:

Guys fucking stop acting like anything that’s happening in that thread is at all good or healthy. It’s outrage city. 

An innocent mom and her two children drowning isn't outrageous? Aren't you a father?

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Which outrageous bullshit is ok to point out? There's a lot to pick from.

 

[Celery Man 20931]

are we talking about what happened to LHL or slorch's tangential example of hyperbolic criticism of elected officials?

[hobbes2702 13028]

1 minute ago, Celery Man said:

are we talking about what happened to LHL or slorch's tangential example of hyperbolic criticism of elected officials?

No one knows. 

[G650 14229]

This thread is like the twilight zone lol

[hobbes2702 13028]

Just now, G650 said:

This thread is like the twilight zone lol

Does anyone understand imma’s position at all here? Someone please explain

[Captainant 27625]

46 minutes ago, slorch said:

Page 1 should suffice.

 

Just to reply directly to this: there's nothing "toxic" in page 1 and it's all well sourced discussion including direct quotes of the governor. Youre trying to do the same LHL did in just posting a headline and ignoring that reality doesn't back you up. And then getting weirdly self righteous about it, of course. 

[Hate 20106]

Imma, just delete the CR and ban any user that has more than 20% of their posts there. Problem solved. 

[Brian Fantana 6678]

1 hour ago, slorch said:

Page 1 should suffice.

 

Ok, now point to something specific to back up your claims.

[YGIFS 19449]

50 minutes ago, G650 said:

This thread is like the twilight zone lol

The one where everybody's the same, but like one dude is different?  

jerry/ Oh George, they were all like that!

[Anastasis 23457]

2 hours ago, immamac said:

No. You would link to actual quotes or videos or clips that aren’t overlayed by a narrative. Or specific links to legislation on a .gov website. 

Precisely this. The political boards were not perfect. Far from it. But the integration of the Twitter like social media feeds to the discussion board format was a big step backwards imo. 

Edited January 20 by Anastasis

[Anastasis 23457]

3 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

the funniest bit is how all yall act like yall are moderated in any real way.

Frankly that’s part of the problem. When you guys try to do it, it comes off as inconsistent and capricious. Because it is. 

[immamac 42835]

Because you are all act like a bunch of spoiled entitled brats. 

it’s legitimately not hard to see how the thread in question is completely fucked, yet here we are with a bunch of people saying they are protecting the truth and the thread is worthy of outrage because reasons. 

bitch, we make puns on this site about people that get murdered or die. Stop acting like this is some fucking sacred line you are all defending and like anything you fucking say here is gonna change anything about the situation. I’ve tried to mobilize people to vote, get involved with actual change and be about it instead of talking about it, but in reality all most people here wanna do is bitch and complain that the world isn’t perfect and it’s all fucked because of some sleazebag piece of shit politician like it’s something new. It’s not new. None of this is new. 

all I did was tell people to move on and they acted like it was the worst thing that had ever happened. I didn’t lay down the law and say leave him alone. I didn’t say next person to do something gets banned. I said this guy is a real human that people were off base and to ignore him and move on. That’s it. That’s all I fucking said and everyone acted like I came in and said maga is great and lhl has god tier opinions and alternative facts. You all literally manufactured the drama and proved to be toxic then doubled down acting like a bunch of mean girls in high school.

thats the problem. It’s not funny. It’s not good. It doesn’t add anything. It’s a major detractor for everyone including yourselves. Yet here we are. 

[cactusflinthead 27598]

24 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

Precisely this. The political boards were not perfect. Far from it. But the integration of the Twitter like social media feeds to the discussion board format was a big step backwards imo. 

Yeah @THUJONE posting stuff on Twitter and here is a damn crime.

It's not that it's x or bluesky or Facebook it's because it's saying something that you don't agree with or a source you don't like.

The most recent being the report about football and NIL and it coming from the NYT.

Edit: imma goes off again. 

Edited January 20 by cactusflinthead

[Anastasis 23457]

3 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

Yeah @THUJONE posting stuff on Twitter and here is a damn crime.

It's not that it's x or bluesky or Facebook it's because it's saying something that you don't agree with or a source you don't like.

The most recent being the report about football and NIL and it coming from the NYT.

Edit: imma goes off again. 

I am talking about the CR in particular you dolt. I would handle the sports boards differently for a variety of reasons. 

[Celery Man 20931]

It seems inconsistent to underline that this is a site where we make vulgar and tasteless jokes in your argument that we should be kind and gentle with morons in the cloak room? Honestly I think that that is what throws people here - if you want to create a safe space OK but why here for this specifically?

[cactusflinthead 27598]

Ok it was the NYT in football. Why would the ones that objected to its citation there give it any more credence in CR?

[cactusflinthead 27598]

9 minutes ago, Anastasis said:

you dolt

I'm going to overlook the ad hominem attack, but it's the same contradictory behavior Celery just cited.

 

[Anastasis 23457]

44 minutes ago, cactusflinthead said:

I'm going to overlook the ad hominem attack, but it's the same contradictory behavior Celery just cited.

 

In celery’s example you are the moron. 
 

Look, I don’t give a fuck about the cloak room being a rough and tumble place. You miss me with any fucking complaints about ad hominem. It’s par for the course in that sub and has been for a while. Certainly it is something that could be addressed, but as stated by the mods they don’t really moderate that board. My suggestion is to remove programmatically the major conduit for dis/misinformation to that sub. I am sorry that you take that personally. I understand why though. 

[hayden_horn 11362]

what i mean by yall aren't moderated is that we barely fucking moderate anything aside from hate speech and blatant trolling/shit posting. yall know when you do it. we certainly do not moderate viewpoints or opinions and i'll have real words with anyone who thinks differently. i don't take much seriously, but i do believe in the ethos of this community. i can also believe that ethos might change over time, especially when we start talking in decades-long timeframes when major societal changes are also happening. that means, hey, yeah, we started off telling each other to die in a fire, but then someone real got hurt, and that stopped being funny. so we stopped doing that, pretty much largely as a community.

most of the changes tried, failed, succeeded, abandoned, tried something else, etc, have all been with a fuckload of input from this community.

so, think about this place as that, if you will. 

i think that's what @immamac was getting at in the cloak room post. 

now, it's my unvarnished opinion that he picked the absolute worst example of behavior to point out bad acting on the other side, but here we are. 

the main problem is that we have a larger civility problem in this country. we talk past each other too much, without realizing that someone is on the other side of that equation. i do it all the time on here. i've been fucking terrible about it in the past, and i've done plenty of regretful things. my way of atoning is to walk forward and try to do better. 

and that's all immamac wanted, i think. 

but the real problem with cloak room is what goes unsaid as much as what goes said. what the poster in question did was pretty much the definition of trolling. add into that the obvious and not-so-obvious misinformation posters, and patience is low for bullshit.

"oh hey guys, i'm new here, but i have strong opinions about this discussion, and i strongly disagree with your BROAD ASSERTION A. look at this dodgy as fuck ass source i'm presenting as truth! behold BROAD ASSERTION B"

"uh, hey new guy, that site is some partisan bullshit looney tunes crap. got something legit to back that up?"

"oh, man they told me about the cloak room and you guys and how disingenuous you are!"

"no, really, new guy, please back up broad assertion b."

<new guy disappears>

"no, hey, new guy with strong opinions and shitty sources, can you back up that broad assertion b?"

"oh, hey guys, i've been busy. let me type up five posts not backing up broad assertion b. hell, i might not even mention broad assertion a at all, because, i don't know"

"no, new guy, all you have to do is answer the questions, you stupid fuck."

"i think i'm being bullied."

immamac enters room, sees guy bloody on the ground, "jesus, guys, he's already dead"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP OVERREACHING MODOWNER WITH OBVIOUS BIAS"

"no, new guy, bullshit source aside, please back up broad assertion b, or we have to conclude you are a troll"

"yep, i'm being bullied, and everyone warned me about the bully piles in here, so i'm not going to even bother re-asserting or acknowledge BROAD ASSERTION A and i'm the fuck out of here, deuces, libfucks!"

BOARD BLOWS UP IN RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION FROM EVERYONE OVER TERRIBLE MODERATION EVEN THOUGH NOTHING WAS ACTUALLY EDITED AND NOBODY SUSPENDED

i mean, what the actual fuck.

yes, the thread was derailed, but it was not derailed by an honest attempt at a trade of opinions.

it turned into a shitfest because new guy poster brought piss to a shit fight. you can't show up with flat out bullshit, present it as fact, then throw up your hands and blame everyone else for not understanding your intent.

that's gaslighting yall.

sorry, immamac, i'm with you on sentiment, you just picked a weird as fuck situation, imo. 

 

 

[Brian Fantana 6678]

1 hour ago, immamac said:

Because you are all act like a bunch of spoiled entitled brats. 

it’s legitimately not hard to see how the thread in question is completely fucked, yet here we are with a bunch of people saying they are protecting the truth and the thread is worthy of outrage because reasons. 

bitch, we make puns on this site about people that get murdered or die. Stop acting like this is some fucking sacred line you are all defending and like anything you fucking say here is gonna change anything about the situation. I’ve tried to mobilize people to vote, get involved with actual change and be about it instead of talking about it, but in reality all most people here wanna do is bitch and complain that the world isn’t perfect and it’s all fucked because of some sleazebag piece of shit politician like it’s something new. It’s not new. None of this is new. 

all I did was tell people to move on and they acted like it was the worst thing that had ever happened. I didn’t lay down the law and say leave him alone. I didn’t say next person to do something gets banned. I said this guy is a real human that people were off base and to ignore him and move on. That’s it. That’s all I fucking said and everyone acted like I came in and said maga is great and lhl has god tier opinions and alternative facts. You all literally manufactured the drama and proved to be toxic then doubled down acting like a bunch of mean girls in high school.

thats the problem. It’s not funny. It’s not good. It doesn’t add anything. It’s a major detractor for everyone including yourselves. Yet here we are. 

It REALLY shouldn't be that hard to provide an actual example of what exactly happened in that thread that you're so aggrieved about. It has been asked of you repeatedly, by multiple posters. The fact that motherfucking slorch is the only person siding with you should give you a big hint. Sorry, but his bullshit response is not adequate and neither are any of yours on this particular subject.

Your buddy acted like every other moron that waltzes into the CR, threadshits, and then refuses to substantiate their idiotic claims, instead running to a moderator to solve their problem for them. He got pushed back on, pretty fucking tamely by Surly standards I might add, and simply can't handle it, and for some reason this specific instance has driven you completely insane.

HE ALSO STRAIGHT UP ADMITTED THAT HE ONLY CAME INTO THE THREAD TO TROLL.

Seriously, what the fuck are you even arguing about here? That we shouldn't bitch and moan every time Greg Abbott does something stupid? Is he not the governor of the state we live in? Is the Cloak Room not the right place to do that?

c

[aggie08 21481]

1 hour ago, immamac said:

all I did was tell people to move on and they acted like it was the worst thing that had ever happened. I didn’t lay down the law and say leave him alone. I didn’t say next person to do something gets banned. I said this guy is a real human that people were off base and to ignore him and move on. That’s it. That’s all I fucking said and everyone acted like I came in and said maga is great and lhl has god tier opinions and alternative facts. You all literally manufactured the drama and proved to be toxic then doubled down acting like a bunch of mean girls in high school.

Dude, no you fucking didn't. If you had said, "Okay, everyone has gotten in their licks. Let's move along before this thread gets even more derailed" the pushback would have been minimal. That's a perfectly understandable position.

But, instead, you absolutely validated his position by telling us that you know him in real life (meaning?) and that he's just offering a "differing opinion." For a poster who has a history of using dubious sources (The Right Scoop, for fuck's sake??), refusing to back up his claims, and then falling back to "slimy echo chamber!" when confronted.

There are absolutely times that CR can lazily default to "But Trump" when presented with valid criticism of the left, but this wasn't one of those times. He was looking for exact kind of confrontation that he got, and you know it.

I've never once said a damn word about the moderation of the site until now. I think you guys do pretty great work in what's largely an unwinnable job. Who am I to criticize? But the only one doubling down on a bad position here is you.

Edited January 20 by aggie08

[Brian Fantana 6678]

@hayden_horn I think the problem with your timeline here is this guy is not new, I believe it was pointed out in the thread that he has done exactly this kind of thing before in other threads.

[Poester 109]

They always eat their own, it’s clockwork.