A Note on Hate Speech and Criticker's Abuse Policy

[Velvet Crowe]

If the site allows us to rate and review Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will (and obviously it should!), there's no reason not to include a "film" by a doofus so bent on owning the libs that he'll fly all the way to Africa to interview rural tribes just to ask them about gender roles. Way too (unintentionally) funny for anyone to be offended by, I hope (PS I've only seen clips, I'm sure there's stuff in it that makes cherrypicked leftist academics look accurately ridiculous too).

I must have missed the thread in question, but I can't even think of any particularly extreme views ever being expressed on here, or even any right-leaning ones aside from ShogunRua with his boilerplate Twitter reply-guy talking points. Nothing you wouldn't find on any other social media site. It begs the question of why a site dedicated to assigning abitrary ratings to movies feels the need to reassure us that it is "fully committed to progressive values", aside from the obvious fact that that's just what every business, corporation, non-profit, institution of any size really, feels obligated to do in the year 2022 (well, more like from 2017 onward).

I don't think anything in his post indicated he was going to remove any films or what have you that's "racist" or "racially insensitive" or what have you. By that metric, a great many movies, many of them classics, would have to be removed and it's not like a lot of progressive academia don't watch this stuff anyway as a basis for their cultural critique. You can watch "Birth of a Nation" and not sympathize with its views at all. He's moreso referring to posts and mini-reviews, but he's definitely being vague on what this entails.

Personally, I've seen a fair number of people express anti-progressive views on this site beyond ShogunRua but never anything I'd call explictly racist. I don't even take issue with these people in question. ShogunRua is abrasive and I tend to think he makes a lot of hyperbolic strawmen and ad-hominems, but I wouldn't say anything he's done is worth a ban nor do I think he's necessarily wrong to say a lot of what he has, even if I find his views questionable at times. If the goal is combat racism or whatever, banning people from speech doesn't really accomplish much nor should we act as if these people are speaking without reason on something, even if I fundamentally disagree with it. I'd call for a ban like that if I thought someone was being overly hostile towards someone to the point of harassment and bullying, which I can't really think of any of that happening on here from memory; even if it's been pretty borderline at times.

I personally don't post on the forum much anyway mostly because the activity is not that great and the topics usually don't interest me, but as it is now I don't view Criticker as a hostile place to anyone based on any of the reviews here.

[overrated]

If the site allows us to rate and review Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will (and obviously it should!), there's no reason not to include a "film" by a doofus so bent on owning the libs that he'll fly all the way to Africa to interview rural tribes just to ask them about gender roles. Way too (unintentionally) funny for anyone to be offended by, I hope (PS I've only seen clips, I'm sure there's stuff in it that makes cherrypicked leftist academics look accurately ridiculous too).

You do get that like, 40%-45% of the people in your country basically agree with Matt Walsh on this, and there is currently a massive legislative push along these lines?

It begs the question of why a site dedicated to assigning abitrary ratings to movies feels the need to reassure us that it is "fully committed to progressive values", aside from the obvious fact that that's just what every business, corporation, non-profit, institution of any size really, feels obligated to do in the year 2022 (well, more like from 2017 onward).

Letterboxd has it in their terms of use:

https://letterboxd.com/legal/terms-of-use/

Conduct: You must not use the Service to promote, engage in or incite hate, violence, discrimination or intolerance, including based on race, age, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or other protected attribute. We reserve the right to remove content that has the potential to harm communities we consider worthy of protection.

and community policy which says the same thing. Any online community of a certain size kind of has to have these ToS in place to avoid liability and bad PR about extremism, as we see with social media constantly. Progressive values are a pleasant sounding catch-all term for this that is abused by companies (Happy Pride Month!), but maybe in this case reflects the site admin's actual views?

Nobody wants films on Criticker to be removed, or prevented from being submitted. I don't particularly want anyone banned, or posts deleted. I get great use out of the site by myself, and will continue to do so. Selfishly, I just want my experience of the site to be improved somewhat by not having the forums endlessly regurgitate the same tired political arguments every time I check them. If all of that can be shunted off into its own corner, knock yourself out, spend 20 pages debating what makes a woman if you can stop yourself from spouting hate speech while doing so.

[JakeAesthete]

I mean, I mostly just dropped by to make a joke about Matt Walsh going to Africa, but go off I guess? I almost never look at the forums on here, and now I remember why.

If the site allows us to rate and review Birth of a Nation and Triumph of the Will (and obviously it should!), there's no reason not to include a "film" by a doofus so bent on owning the libs that he'll fly all the way to Africa to interview rural tribes just to ask them about gender roles. Way too (unintentionally) funny for anyone to be offended by, I hope (PS I've only seen clips, I'm sure there's stuff in it that makes cherrypicked leftist academics look accurately ridiculous too).

You do get that like, 40%-45% of the people in your country basically agree with Matt Walsh on this, and there is currently a massive legislative push along these lines?

For what its worth, I live in one of the most liberal cities in the Unites States, and I can assure you that people on either side of the political aisle can be just as self-righteous, obnoxious, and narrow-minded as the other. Live around NPR tote bag woke liberals and Antifa LARPers as long as I have and you'll understand why some people choose traditionalist Catholicism, although that's really neither here nor there.

As for the trans stuff, it's pretty much beyond my jurisdiction/none of my business, although I do have questions esp. when it comes to children, plus the fact that this whole thing literally wasn't an issue a decade ago (now I'm not saying reading Judith Butler has made anyone trans, but half-digested Judith Butler disseminated among an impressionable peer group via Tumblr? There's something going on there).

It begs the question of why a site dedicated to assigning abitrary ratings to movies feels the need to reassure us that it is "fully committed to progressive values", aside from the obvious fact that that's just what every business, corporation, non-profit, institution of any size really, feels obligated to do in the year 2022 (well, more like from 2017 onward).

Letterboxd has it in their terms of use:

https://letterboxd.com/legal/terms-of-use/

Conduct: You must not use the Service to promote, engage in or incite hate, violence, discrimination or intolerance, including based on race, age, gender, gender identity, ethnicity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or other protected attribute. We reserve the right to remove content that has the potential to harm communities we consider worthy of protection.

and community policy which says the same thing. Any online community of a certain size kind of has to have these ToS in place to avoid liability and bad PR about extremism, as we see with social media constantly. Progressive values are a pleasant sounding catch-all term for this that is abused by companies (Happy Pride Month!), but maybe in this case reflects the site admin's actual views?

Nobody wants films on Criticker to be removed, or prevented from being submitted. I don't particularly want anyone banned, or posts deleted. I get great use out of the site by myself, and will continue to do so. Selfishly, I just want my experience of the site to be improved somewhat by not having the forums endlessly regurgitate the same tired political arguments every time I check them. If all of that can be shunted off into its own corner, knock yourself out, spend 20 pages debating what makes a woman if you can stop yourself from spouting hate speech while doing so.

Again, I was mostly just pointing out the absurdity of obligatory progressive virtue signaling, which I'm less mad about than merely bemused. However you want to phrase it, and whether you think it's a good thing or not, I think we can all at least admit that "the Great Awokening" as our buddy ShogunRua put it, is a real phenomenon, for better or worse. I personally don't see what would be so wrong with an avowed value-neutral online space, but we're way beyond the point where I can expect that, since at some point Gen Z (I guess) internalized the idea that "the personal is political" (which, like most concepts, has a kernel of truth however misinterpreted) and took it to mean that everything has to be ineffectually politicized at all times. Whatever. I'm old enough to have seen every (counter) cultural space transformed in to a designated "safe space" which I personally find very corny, but also at least I got to live through the pre-woke Vice Magazine era. If the kids want to be corny that's their problem, I'm just an aging hipster watching movies in his apartment after all.

Anyway, I would be totally cool with just locking this thread so none of us have to think about this shit ever again. Discourage all non-movie related political speech on here, period, as far as I'm concerned. Criticker doesn't need to facilitate the same sort of conversations as Twitter, after all. Honestly I'm not sure why the forum side of the site exists at all.

[AFlickering]

the more Greatly Awokened a forum becomes the more it puts me to sleep, which is why i still spend the most time on metal boards despite them being populated by a sizeable portion of the most ethically and intellectually questionable degenerates on the internet. those places tend to be stuck in 2002, a perfect 'safe space' from the horrors of the twitter era. that said, while i adore this site and have gratitude for mpowell and co. running it the way they have over the years, it would be almost impossible to make the forums more boring than they already are, so go nuts i guess.

[JakeAesthete]

I do think it's sort of funny that the most enthusiastic response to this has been from a 49-year-old who works for Conan O'Brien (and who you might think has better things to do than lurk on a dying movie website).

Meanwhile I'm over here writing up a business proposal to Peter Thiel, asking him to back my site that will allow users to review movies as un-wokely as possible. For now I'm calling it UnScene, but I'm open to suggestions...

[overrated]

For Thiel you just need to include some dorky Lord of the Rings reference to get the money spigot flowing, I would suggest an embedded clip of Eowyn's "I am no man!" moment front and center in any presentation. Affirming traditional binary genders, etc etc.

[AFlickering]

I do think it's sort of funny that the most enthusiastic response to this has been from a 49-year-old who works for Conan O'Brien (and who you might think has better things to do than lurk on a dying movie website).

Meanwhile I'm over here writing up a business proposal to Peter Thiel, asking him to back my site that will allow users to review movies as un-wokely as possible. For now I'm calling it UnScene, but I'm open to suggestions...

call it Critickhim to emphasise its strong masculine values, logo can be the same as here except if you look really closely there’s a faint imprint of jordan peterson’s face in one of the slides.

[Velvet Crowe]

I actually didn't know he was banned. Kind of unwarranted, ngl. I also think it begs the question what it actually accomplishes?

[AFlickering]

yeah, in that case some clarification is needed. lord knows i’ve given shogunrua my share of shit over the years, but banning him based on that thread would be absurd, unless it turned nasty after the point i last read it.

[iconogassed]

It's good to see the new policy is already bringing the board together