rules for thee, but not for me

To be clear, not talking about this community, obviously 😛.

What's the point of writing down rules, if mods just do what they want? But I suppose that's the risk you take when you call someone a liar in a small community; they might be a mod.

Edit: I'm not trying to say that mods suck, they perform a useful and often thankless job. Just that it can be difficult for small communities to get a healthy number of good mods, which can become a problem.

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Yeah I don't think that's the issue, when the person who showed up to tell me and play along took the first one completely literally and the second one as sneering sarcasm. Where the goddamn mod chimes in is after a bone-dry run-down of how both were misunderstandings. Their scolding simultaneously blames me for expecting people to be psychic and also for talking down to them. How the fuck is anyone supposed to deal with that self-contradictory blend of bad-faith readings?
- Ok
- Yeah I don't think that's the issue,
  That's absolutely the issue. You were being condescending. If you can't be polite then don't respond at all.
  
  How could I be any more direct and polite with someone that confused about what I said? I'm not sneering at their idiocy and making remarks about their parentage. I walk them through a rhetorical device they demonstrably did not understand, and apparently that was the wrong thing.
  What the fuck was the right thing?
  What sequence of words do you want, instead? At this point I'm not convinced there is a right answer.
  
  Someone else already mentioned your "go on, tell me" and "thanks for playing along." Both of those offer nothing to the conversation and only exist to be condescending.
  
  'Here's what you said wrong!'
  'What should I say instead?'
  'Here's what you said wrong!'
  Over and over and over. None of you are listening.
  And it's NOT condescension, it's building a fucking comparison! It's a sixth-grade-reading-comprehension rhetorical device. It's getting ahead of an obvious yeah-but someone might make... and then someone made that yeah-but anyway. And then got mad that I told them: I agree, thank you.
  The fuck was I supposed to tell them? If there was no right answer - none of this criticism means anything.
  
  ‘What should I say instead?’
  Nothing. Leave that part out. I don't think it's the entire site that has trouble with reading comprehension, just you.
  
  'How do I correct misunderstandings?'
  'Don't.'
  Further gold from the most unforgivably hostile participant in this nonsense.
  
  You didn't ask that question. I answered the one you did. Congrats on the novel combination of moving the goalposts and putting words in people's mouths, I guess? Seriously, do you not read your own words?
  People keep telling you which parts of that conversation would have been better left out if you wanted to sound sincere, but all you do is further attempt to weaponize your feigned ignorance.
  You know damn well that you're acting like a condescending prick. Enough people have pointed out the things you could have changed in that exchange so that you didn't sound like a condescending prick. And now, here you are, acting like a condescending prick to anyone who dares to answer the question you asked on a public forum.
  
  Literally nobody has suggested any better way to say anything, despite direct questions throughout, asking exactly that.
  The entire problem in the root thread was someone going 'what did you want?!' when I said: yes, thanks. And everyone saying that was terribly rude also thinks it was disagreement. So the question of 'what else was I supposed to do' goes unanswered, and everybody piling on to say 'well not that' is making the same error that is highlighted and corrects in the root thead.
  And you in particular have nothing to add but increasingly shallow name-calling and 'well, don't.' Don't fucking talk down to me about reading my own words when you just got done declaring me unworthy of human interaction, after being shocked, shocked!, that someone would remain confused by a dozen people repeating the same mistake.
  I am genuinely disappointed in this community's moderators for not already showing you the door over the worst of your hypocritical abuse. Did you have anything more you wanted to spit before going on my blocklist and out of my sight?
  
  When someone tells you "this thing you said was unnecessary and you would have avoided the conflict if you'd left it out" a dozen times and you continue to demand answers like nobody's even responded, it becomes difficult not to treat you the way you treat others. In every one of those interactions in the thread you linked, you added something to your otherwise inocuous post that was entirely unnecessary and extremely inflammatory. These things have been pointed out to you repeatedly. Had you not said them, you would have had no problems. Why the fuck is this so hard to understand?
  Also, I'm not saying you're not worthy of human interaction, I'm just saying that nobody's going to tolerate your bullshit and you'll end up pushing all your friends and family away one by one if any of them have even the faintest semblance of a spine.
  
  Literally just don't say that. The entire rest of your comments were generally "fine" but you included hostile, unnecessary wording.
  
  'How am I suppose to make this comparison without an invitation being labeled as hostile?'
  'Don't.'
  Less helpful than you might think.
  People: the comparison is the point of the comment. And even if that was somehow the worst possible way to make it, I'm still left wondering how the fuck to de-escalate confusion, if direct agreement is enough to launch monocles from faces. If "thanks" is hostile, what the hell are we doing.
- This is the exact kind of aggression people were saying was unwelcome.
  
  Literally none of this was there. I'm annoyed at all of you - but not the guy I was talking to, in the first place. You are inferring something that was not there.
  From a bare explanation of agreement.
  Being concise didn't help. Being verbose didn't help. Being conversational didn't help. Being literal didn't help. I tried everything and all of it is still being misinterpreted as the polar fucking opposite of what I actually fucking wrote.
  
  Being concise didn’t help. Being verbose didn’t help. Being conversational didn’t help. Being literal didn’t help. I tried everything and all of it is still being misinterpreted as the polar fucking opposite of what I actually fucking wrote.
  Same here, so I'll try it your way:
  You're acting like a hyperaggressive, condescending dickhead in every single one of those comments, and though I personally agree with you, I still want to slap your teeth straight because you're being an utter prick about it.
  Just because you agree with someone doesn't mean you're not doing so in a hugely offputting manner.
  
  Same here
  Same where? You had one comment and it's just the same tutting. That's not comparable to the variety of ways I tried de-escalating with the initial guy.
  Now you want to claim you agree with me - about the widespread misreading of anything I write in the worst possible way - and you're threatening violence over that same misreading. What the fuck is this conversation?
  'You were very rude disagreeing with that guy.' I said I agree with them and thanked them.
  'Well you were aggressive toward people critiquing your rude disagreement.' I told them there was no such thing, because I said I agree with them and thanked them.
  'It's plainly these specific turns of phrase.' I have invited half a dozen people to suggest what I was supposed to do besides agree and thank them.
  'Hey buddy, I agree with you, but I wanna kick your head in for explaining how you're unhappy with all this condemnation.' This topic has been the most compelling argument I've ever experienced, against trying to be nice to people online.
  
  The way you write heavily implies that you're only out to prove you're better than anyone else without even the faintest chance of you actually being better than anyone at anything. You sound smug, arrogant, ignorant, and generally offputting. If you can't understand that people don't like that, then I suggest you learn to enjoy being alone for the rest of your life.
  Also, where did I say shit about you condemning the other person? Putting words in people's mouths is a great way to piss them off even more than you do just by opening your mouth in the first place.
  
  My favorite part of this haranguing is how y'all don't hesitate to declare I'm subhuman and due for getting bones broken, but I'm the rude and hostile one for saying please and thanks.
  This is the rudest thing you could think to say to someone, and it's over nothing.
  I can't demean your character worse than you've just done, yourself.
  
  I'll take the hit just to watch you roll around in your own verbal diarrhea
  My favorite part of this haranguing is how y’all don’t hesitate to declare I’m subhuman
  Please point out the exact sentence, or set of sentences, where I said that.
  This is the rudest thing you could think to say to someone, and it’s over nothing.
  Good, perhaps you might start to understand now that you've been on the receiving end of your own behavior.
  You've also not addressed anyone who's mentioned your incredibly condescending, snide tone. Literally nobody. Not even to be dismissive about it. You can ignore your problem all you want, but the fact is that the way you talk means you could be reading me a document saying that I've just been given $10 billion and I'd still fucking hate you. You asked why you were treated poorly, people answered unanimously, and you don't even have the wherewithal to consider the point that everyone is trying to pound through your brow ridge.
  You're the problem. Your behavior is the problem. The way you talk is, you fuckin guessed it, absolutely the problem.
  You got your answer. Accept it or don't, just do it somewhere else because nobody fucking likes you.
  
  'You were very rude disagreeing with that person,' said a whole bunch of people wrong about me disagreeing with that person.
  So I ask how I'm supposed to de-escalate such confusion, and get shit like this.
  Yeah can't imagine why I'm not endlessly thankful for this feedback.

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