Ask The Tropers

There's also this ATT where they seem to be trying to weasel support for vague Nazi apologia. Well, less weasely is saying "the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht isn't a myth because I say so."

Any one of these I can totally chalk up to just being wonky and wanting to avoid a knee-jerk "Nazis are bad" YMMV entries, but all of them in a week is... problematic.

EDIT: Jesus Christ, I hadn't actually looked at the Ass Creed Valhalla discussion. He actually tried to make the "it's rude to call anyone a Nazi unless they were part of the National Socialist German Workers' Party" card. That's literally the same argument Stonetoss made in defending their Alt-Right Nazi apologia.

Also equated the calling a German soldier a Nazi to calling a black man a member of the Black Panthers, implying that, uh, the Black Panthers were as bad as the Nazis.

v I don't blame someone for buying into the myth of the Clean Wehrmacht. I do, however, blame someone who knows it's a myth and disagrees because they say so. That is active ignorance.

^I also reacted to their posts in that thread. It wasn't so much because they seemed to be whitewashing the Wehrmacht (not the Nazis), because the Clean Wehrmacht myth is very widely spread and they're far from alone in perpetuating it - and, to be fair, they were discussing claims on the line of "all German soldiers were Nazis" which are also not true. It was more the way they presented their arguments as established, well-known truths, despite them flying in the face of what seems to be consensus among historians.

I expressed similar concerns about them as well. I remember Mimic saying something along the lines of wanting to lock or discard the Black Lives Matter Movement page back when it was in development because they feared it would be a soapbox for "SJWs" while potholing Political Correctness Gone Mad a few times, and that was their first instance of doing that that I can recall. This is very problematic, as they're setting themselves up right out of the gate as being an anti-SJW, with all the dogwhistling that entails.

^^ As demonstrated in the discussions about racism and immigration on the other Discussion pages, flying in the face of historical accuracy seems to be a commonality in their arguments. It just so happens that the specific inaccuracies they are arguing coincide with white supremacist and Nazi myths and apologia. I could buy that they don't realize it does, but it does nonetheless.

^ I think that was somebody else, actually.

^^ I just checked and they have no posts in that TLP.

^ Right, thanks for clarifying. I rechecked the original BLM draft and Mimic never participated in it at all. I'm trying to remember which query that was that had the soapbox thing because I know I discussed it with Warjay, but now my memory's getting fuzzy.

They removed the worst parts (most) of their discussion because “it wasn’t necessary for the conversation”. This was after you started the query here. Make of that what you will.

That's because I'm tired of this. I don't even know why I got involved. I already know that conservatives have absolutely no voice on this site. You all are going to do whatever you want to do no matter what I say. And especially since I literally don't care at all about Watch_Dogs and I only ever watched other people play Assassin's Creed Valhalla and don't really care about that either... I don't even know why I felt the need to get involved in the first place. I think I need to stop spending so much time on Ask The Tropers because I only get myself irritated.

Also, though, I legitimately do not see how Strawman Has a Point is supposed to be what you're all trying to say it is. As near as I can tell a whole lot of the examples on it are exactly what I said - the work shows the strawman as nothing more than a strawman with no valid points, but the audience thinks they have a point anyway. Some of them explicitly call Values Dissonance into play. If that's not what it's supposed to be, then it may need some TRS work.

...Yeah, regardless of everything else I think we really do need to have a talk about what Strawman Has a Point is supposed to be and what counts as an example.

Mimic, are you conflating "conservative voice" with "Nazi apologia"?

All of these discussions weren't anti-Conservative, they were anti-Nazi. With the exception of the Watch Dogs one which was based on anti-Xenophobia since the original entry wasn't even conservative (since it discussed welfare for its citizens which isn't exactly a conservative talking point).

I have literally never apologized for the Nazis. If I may remind you, the exact phrases I used for them were "mass murderers" and "tried to take over the world." The entire point that I was trying to make those other times was that the people you're talking about are not Nazis.

But actually, I should thank you, Larkmarn. It's blatantly obvious that you keep calling me a Nazi over and over because you're hoping you can bait me into a long-winded angry rant and they'll get rid of me. In fact, it's SO obvious that it made me realize how stupid I was being and that I should stop.

I really don't want to appear insulting, but...all Larkmarn's trying to do is have a civil conversation about this matter, and your attitude is making that difficult.

Sure.

Look, it's over, okay? There's nothing that needs to be conversated over. I admit it: I shouldn't have gotten involved. It was wrong of me to cause a fuss over two games I don't even care about. That's why I deleted my posts in the discussion threads. I realized that it was pointless and only making myself and everyone else irritated.

What I intend to do now is just go back to editing normally, and you can check my edit history and see that I'm not edit warring or trying to push any crazy agendas. At most I might rewrite an entry to be more neutrally worded, and I hardly ever even do that.

It's over. You won. What more do you want?

Sidestepping the debate just to clarify that yes Mimic does have posts discussing SJ Ws in the TLP, just not that specific TLP draft. I forget which one exactly they mentioned it on but it did happen. Since this is a pretty objective "yes this did occur" statement I don't want to get involved in the rest of the debate on political stances and whatnot; I just want to clear up some confusion I saw above.

Edi: Found it.

^ Ah yes, that's the one! Thanks for finding it.

I was going to make a private report because they were largely responsible for the Nazi thread going off-topic and demonstrated similar argumentative behavior on the Strawman Has a Point entry, but I didn't know if it was enough of a pattern to report yet.

If nothing else, they do tend to get very...emotional when it comes to discussing these issues. (Though I admit I got a bit emotional a couple times in the Nazi apologia thread but that was in direct response to the problem troper's responses on the thread.) I thought the wording they used discussing the Viking stuff (saying that stereotypes depicting Vikings as brutes were "as bad as the N word") was a bit unnecessarily inflammatory. If nothing else, they need to practice better decorum on ATT threads to avoid starting flame wars. I hate tone policing but it's just not a good place for deeper political discussions - it should stick to the circumstances of the entry.

Okay, I'll be serious here.

First, not going to talk about "Nazi apologia", because that's really not the point here. That's what it all turned into, but that's not the point or what the issue originally was.

Over the last couple of weeks I've seen one person get put on a watchlist, seemingly just for being a conservative. The mods even openly admitted in the ATT thread (which I can not seem to find now) that he hadn't done anything, but was getting "put on the list" anyway for expressing a conservative viewpoint.

I see people repeatedly getting reported for "editing with an agenda" and every single time it's a conservative agenda. Even though there's plenty of editors with leftist agendas who are just as rude and disruptive, but they never seem to get reported, or if they do get reported nothing gets done about it.

People also throw out terms like "alt-right" and "Nazi apologia" in a way that, at least to me, seems very overly casual, when actually those are very serious accusations that should be handled with a lot more caution. And yet there is then the double standard of everyone getting upset with me when I use the term "SJW" and saying it's "unwarranted" and we "shouldn't go there."

This site has a very blatant liberal bias is the point I'm making. And I know people probably want to tell me that it's all justified, and I'm really not interested in discussing with you whether it is or isn't justified right now. The point is, the bias is there - right or wrong.

So it got to me and I ended up jumping into several different discussions that I honestly had absolutely no business being a part of, arguing over games and videos that I didn't care about, against opinions that I didn't actually listen to, just so that I could argue against said liberal bias. That was wrong of me. All I did was irritate myself, irritate everyone else, and act like a type of person that I usually try as hard as I can to not be. For that part, I apologize.

It's become apparent to me that I can't be a part of the site's social aspects without getting too irritated and losing my temper. That's just who I am. There's only so much a person can change about himself before he bends so far over that he snaps in half.

At the same time, I also recognize that arguing to the point of a ban would just be stupid on my part. I would be punishing myself, and then you all would just go ahead and do whatever you're going to do anyway.

So my intention right now is to just go back to editing the wiki normally. You can see from my edit history that I'm not editing with an agenda or causing vandalism. I've edited for years now without being reported, because I actively try not to cause problems.

And if that's not good enough, then... well, I guess that's that then.

Do you know of any editors with leftist editing wonks to the point of deleting legit examples or vandalizing pages? Because that's what right-wing wonks typically do and it's why they get caught so quickly. Well, that or they go around adding things to trope descriptions or pages or something that are blatantly bashing certain groups of people.

My point is, it's easy to find these people because they make themselves really transparent a lot of the time. Maybe it's easier for left-wing wonks to slip under the radar since the site's users are more often than not very left-wing, but if you have examples of people who've gone on the same agenda sprees that I've discussed above from a different political angle, you could just report them, if they actually are going on political wonks that's just as bad.

But for the most part we're just trying to keep the wiki free of things like hate-speech, propaganda, and intolerance. Right-wing wonks generally are more likely to engage in these things or apologize for them.

It's usually more of the inverse. Left-biased agendas get put onto pages, which then prompts those agendas getting deleted by right-leaning tropers, and then usually added back with some sassy edit reason. But even though it takes two to tango, only one gets banned.

Again, have you examples of this left-wing bias? Stuff that is objectively biased? Because a lot of people complain about bias in terms of, say, discussing racial issues or LGBT stuff, but there's a difference between obscuring and ignoring facts to make a political point and saying "Hey, racism is bad".

^^^^ You DO realize that by using terms like "liberal bias", you're essentially strawmanning against the site in general and its policies, forcing politics into the mix, and pretty much setting yourself up as someone with an agenda against left-leaning politics. Your arguments clearly show this, and your intent to persuade people into thinking the most heinous group in history are just "misunderstood" couldn't be more obvious from a cursory glance.

And Mimic, please don't blank your posts like you did. It just looks more suspicious than keeping them up.

^^^^ I mean, at least two of the questionable examples that we discussed earlier were favorable towards a right wing perspective. The only one that is maybe favorable towards a left wing perspective is the Assassin's Creed one, and the issue with that wasn't really political bias so much as the credibility of its citations.

For a given definition of "objectively" since I know a lot of people will probably try to argue that oh, it's not bias it's just true...

The one that probably immediately springs to mind is this bit from YMMV.Epic Rap Battles Of History:

• While Adolf Hitler was decidedly Killed Off for Real in Season 3, Peter and Lloyd made a conscious decision to leave out the Hitler vs. Vader battles at live concerts in the wake of Donald Trump becoming president and the ensuing "celebration" of Hitler and white nationalism that followed. He was funny because he was an Acceptable Target, but the scene has changed over 2017, and they're both very aware of it.

Which again I'm sure some people will try to say "oh, no, that really did happen!" But... no, it didn't. Where was this nationwide celebration of Adolf Hitler? How did I manage to miss Donald Trump declaring National Hitler Day? This one was so bad that it ended up getting changed anyway.

And from BrokenBase.Epic Rap Battles Of History:

• Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton. Apart from the obvious, Lincoln explicitly telling Hillary to 'beat this dummy' and a call-back to Obama vs Romney, where Lincoln slaps Trump... and then slaps him again have caused a lot of controversy, as it blatantly showed Lincoln favoring Clinton over Trump. Clinton supporters usually concur Lincoln's bias was meant to be a warning about Trump rather than an endorsement of Clinton. By nature of being about politics, say more at your own peril.

Which I ended up removing the last bit because, you know, saying "oh, there's no bias because I never said my candidate was good, only that yours was evil!" is still bias. And of course the pothole to ROCEJ which we decided here on ATT was not good.

The other big one that comes to mind is from The Moral Substitute:

• Gab, Minds and Parler are Twitter/Facebook clones, created as a "free speech alternative" to "left-leaning" social networks. As such, it has been so far mostly embraced by the far right, including conservative voices and conspiracy theorists.

Technically true, but written to sound needlessly negative and sarcastic, and of course insinuating that all "conservative voices" are "the far right and conspiracy theorists".

I changed it to the more neutral:

• Gab, Minds and Parler are Twitter/Facebook clones, created as a "free speech alternative" to social networks like Facebook and Twitter which are accused of leaning toward the left and censoring conservative voices. As such, they have been so far mostly embraced by conservatives.

...and I guess I actually just gave a bunch of examples of times when biased edits got changed and everything was fine. I guess the point is that seeing these sorts of edits over and over gets to a person. And sometimes people decide to act like butts about it when they maybe could have just been reasonable, like making a minor edit to make the writing more neutral instead of chopping the page in half, and if they had been reasonable then everything would have been fine. I may have lost my point here.

EDIT: Also, yes, I admit blanking a post is probably not the best thing, but it seemed like the best idea at the time.

Hooookay, if we want to do this:

• White supremacy, at least in America, has indeed been more of a talking point in recent years. There is, objectively, a neo-Nazi movement. "Alt-right" only became a phrase in the 2010's. The phrasing is pretty poor / politically biased due to the Trump stuff, but the idea of the entry isn't wrong.
• As a Broken Base entry, it's fair to note that some people found the bias against Trump unwarranted and others found it justified. It could have used more elaboration as to how the base was broken, but it's not meant to endorse one side of the debate.
• The Gab stuff had a political slant and your rewrite is probably better.

And like you said, people still edited these entries to be more neutral. We have an entire cleanup thread dedicated to removing entries talking about Trump or making them more neutral, and most of these entries have a left political slant. If you see something that appears to be biased towards a political viewpoint, then you can edit it, or bring it here if you fear an edit war. You can't just complain that only right-wing biases get brought up if you don't bring up left-wing biases until you can use it for "whataboutism."

If you need an example of any actual Neo-Nazi celebration, look no further than Charlottesville. This shit really does exist and stating so isn't bias.

Well, I didn't originally intend to "not bring it up until I could use it for whataboutism."

I just tend to feel like I can handle issues on my own, but over time it got to me and I ended up doing something stupid. My explanation of that wasn't intended to try to excuse myself, it was just that - an explanation of why it happened.

Bump.

Why bump? The discussions seem to be over so I assumed the troper in question realized the error of their ways to at least some extent. Though their rants about this wiki's "bias" are still concerning.

Nothing about this conversation said "error of their ways" to me.

Okay, I decided to check back to see what, if anything, the mods had to say, and apparently some people still aren't satisfied.

So, let me make it more clear:

I'm done discussing politics on this wiki.

*Narrator voice* He didn't stop discussing politics on the wiki.

EDIT: I apologize for being snarky. I had a legitimate response in the linked thread and I just found the promise made in the above post very ironic. Point is that Mimic was concerning me for how he went right back to being heated and it seems my concerns weren't unfounded.

Or to put it in a less comedic fashion - at this point their respond to the ATT thread linked above concerns me more than its original topic, which I think has been taken care of.

Okay then...

At the time that this thread here was made, I did something that was legitimately wrong. I went and got involved in a bunch of arguments that I had no business being involved in, because I wanted to oppose what I saw as a political bias on the wiki - whether said bias existed or not doesn't matter, the point is I felt like there was a bias and I wanted to act against it. That was wrong. I had no business being involved in those threads, and I ended up derailing them. That part was wrong. Derailing the discussion was wrong. Having an opinion on politics was not wrong.

Now I did say at the time that I wasn't going to discuss politics anymore. I said that because trying to talk it out clearly wasn't working. I tried to discuss it, and I got reported to Ask The Tropers. Next thing I know people are calling me a Nazi, spreading rumors about me, making false accusations about me trying to cutlist Black Lives Matter Movement, etc. And sure, part of that was my fault - deleting all of my posts in the linked discussion threads basically opened the way for people to fill in the blanks of what sordid things I may have said on their own.

Anyway, promising not to talk about politics anymore seemed like the best, if not only, way to put a stop to that. But don't get me wrong, it wasn't just a ploy to stop the argument. I did fully intend to not discuss politics anymore.

However, I came to realize that I should not have said that. By saying that, I literally signed away my own freedom of speech and freedom of opinion. I'm not going to just not have an opinion anymore, sorry.

As for the thread linked... what I had to say there was relevant to the topic as I saw it. The point being made was "we can't indulge in both-sidesism" and the point I was making was that while I agree with that, I don't think this issue is so obviously one-sided that it counts here.

That was the point I was making.

Now, last I checked having political beliefs is not against any of the rules of this wiki. Openly expressing your political beliefs is not against any of the rules of this wiki. And expressing your political beliefs after you said you wouldn't is also not against the rules of this wiki. Even believing in quote-unquote "conspiracy theories" is not against any stated rule of this wiki.

So what is against the rules? Well, as we all know, the one big rule of TV Tropes is don't be a dick. Now, was I being a dick? Well...

• I gave my argument in a rational and polite way, without insulting anyone.
• I didn't unilaterally change any pages or create vandalism or anything because of it. I discussed, which by my understanding is the purpose of a discussion.
• I relegated it to exactly one post so as to not derail the conversation. Mewtron is the one who tried to turn it into an argument, so I specifically told them that if they wanted to talk about it, they could PM me, in order to not derail the conversation. They then continued to make post after post about it, thereby derailing the conversation themselves.

Now, as I said... I realized that promising not to discuss politics anymore was the wrong thing to do. I will not agree to just never have an opinion again, and last I checked there is no rule on this website that says that having a political opinion is wrong.

It becomes wrong when it becomes disruptive or when you're a jerk about it... but as I just explained, I'm not being a jerk and I intentionally went out of my way to not disrupt things.

So really, I'm not seeing what rule I'm supposedly in violation of here. The only thing I did "wrong" is having an opinion that's different from yours, which you insist is "picking fights." But it's not. It's just having an opinion that's different from yours. Believe it or not there are people out there who don't agree with your politics. There's lots of us, in fact. And we don't disagree because we hate you and want to see you squirm, we just legitimately think you're wrong.

If I express an opinion in a rational tone and without causing disruption, and you try to report me for it... you are literally reporting me for being a human being with a brain and independent thoughts. As far as I'm concerned, that makes you the ones who are "being a dick."

Mimic, I just reread the thread. I suggest you do too...after you step back and cool off a little. Everyone else was just trying to determine if the example actually counted as Death of the Author, including Mew, who you're accusing of continuing the argument when they were actually just responding to a non-political point you made.

You're the one who jumped into discussing the actual politics. I admit Lark brought up the politics in the first place, but the discussion moved onto the example's validity as a DOTA example by the very next post. You jumped to argue about whether or not the example was neutral, and started talking politics, when nobody else was actually interested in the politics beyond the scope of if it affected the work.

^^ We told you many times to stop and chill, but apparently, you didn't listen to us. The point of the thread (like Warjay pointed out) is to determine the validity of the example, not the actual politics behind it. Real life politics are actually irrelevant to most discussions involving works, but yet, you treat it as Serious Business regardless. If you really want to discuss politics, then take it to the On-Topic Conversation forum.

Also, accusing us of "being a dick" with that particular attitude is very hypocritical. It's not a very good outlook on your overall reputation on the site.

I’m surprised a moderator hasn’t weighed in on this thread yet TBH.

I'm not angry now and I wasn't angry then.

I was responding to Larkmarn's argument. He was reporting a troper for editing with an agenda and engaging in both-sidesism. My response was that in my opinion the issue in question wasn't so blatantly one-sided that avoiding both-sidesism was a priority. I wasn't just talking about stuff for the fun of it. I was responding to a point that was made.

Now, I did realize after I posted it that it came across as me continuing the political argument, which is why I edited my post to... well, to say what I said in the previous paragraph. But then I saw that people had already responded, saying I was "picking fights" and "needed to calm down" and I realized that with my post edited like that it made it look like I must have posted something horrible and then backed off on it. The last time that happened (that being the linked posts in this thread) it led to me being called a Nazi, so I put my post back so that people would have the context of what I actually said.

And yes, other people moved on... and so did I. You might notice I didn't even make another post there for a while, and when I did it was also on the topic of whether that was a legitimate example, and I brought up the example of Orson Scott Card. If it were up to me, it would have ended there, and I'd be off playing Minecraft right now. As far as I'm concerned, this was never a fight, or an argument, or even a debate.

Mewtron is the person who brought it up again, not me. Mewtron is the person who brought back this thread again - complete with snarky one-liner even - not me. I'm literally only here right now because other people clearly want to discuss this. So I'm discussing it.

But rather than discuss it with me and try to work things out, you just want to try and pin all the blame for everything on me. You claim that I brought up politics out of nowhere, when the opening post was pretty much literally "hey guys, politics!" You claim that I was the one who kept the fight going when I very blatantly stopped the fight and specifically told people if they wanted to discuss it then they could PM me, and then they brought it here instead to try and get me in trouble.

And now you want to tell me all about how angry I am as if you have a wire tap in my brain and know what my emotional state is.

But I'm not angry. I'm not now, I wasn't then, and I don't plan to be angry about this in the future. As far as I'm concerned this isn't a fight and it never was.

I'm not fighting. What I am doing is explaining myself, and making sure it's absolutely clear to you... my days of apologizing for having opinions... and of getting gaslighted into taking the blame for things other people did... are over.

^^ They've said before that they tend to ignore longer ATT threads, since they tend to just devolve and lose the point.

^ A few things:

• Mew's post was not political. They brought this back because it looked like you were sliding back into old habits. Yes, they were unnecessarily snarky, but that's it. Their actual post on the thread however was just disputing your interpretation of DOTA.
• I already admitted that Lark made the thread about politics. The issue is that nobody else was. Nobody wanted to discuss the politics, nobody really cared about them except if they could qualify as DOTA. Even if it wasn't your intention, you jumping in to discuss the politics specifically did come across as, well, the exact behavior we called you out for last time.
• Nobody's been "blaming you" for anything except for your own behavior. IDK who claimed you were trying to nuke the BLM page or whatnot, but that's not going on tonight. All we're reacting to is your continued focus on politics. Because you keep making it about politics. You did this on the TLP, on Discussion pages, and of course, on ATT. What we're trying to get you to understand is that these aren't the places to discuss politics or to "fight the Liberal bias"- it's the place to solve wiki issues and make reports. You're not the only one who has the tendency to turn things political, but you do get very vocal about it and fail to see how you might be overreacting and bringing up politics where the discussion isn't necessary or even relevant (again, thinking about the TLP stuff). Again, there's OTC if you want to talk politics, and you can start ATT or Wiki Talk discussions if you think this site is biased, and we will hear those thoughts out, but you gotta understand that your insistence on discussing these things even if they're only tangentially related is concerning to a lot of us. That's why we bring these things up. Not to accuse you of being Literally Hitler (TM) or to demand you let go of or apologize for your opinions- but because you're so stubborn about these things and so willing to just jump into politics at any point.

Okay, you know what?

I already said this, but I'll say it again.

I never made anything about politics. At best my post was tangentially related to politics. And I haven't mentioned anything political even once since that one post, or in this thread. And I already told you that when I realized that post was coming across as too political I tried to change it but couldn't because people had already responded to it.

I'll repeat this again: as far as I'm concerned there is no fight here and never was. I'm not trying to fight your liberal bias. I'm not trying to be heard out. I'm not trying to discuss politics with you. I wasn't then and I'm not now. If I had my way that would have ended at 6:48 PM yesterday and I'd be playing Minecraft right now.

But you keep pushing this. You keep trying to turn this into a thing, even though I've repeatedly told you it's not. And you're sitting here talking about how I'm "always making it about politics" when, you know what? Actually, I've never made it about politics. I respond with politics when other people are talking politics. And I haven't pointedly discussed politics at all since I said I wouldn't last December... even the post yesterday was only tangentially related to politics at best. But no, I'm always making it about politics. And you keep saying that, and keep saying that, even as I continue to not make anything about politics.

... you see why I say I feel like I'm being gaslighted?

So, you want to know what I really think? I think you do have a liberal bias. And I think that, even though I try not to bring it up, yeah, I still have political beliefs... and you hate that. You hate that an openly conservative person exists on your site. But I haven't done anything wrong, so they can't just get rid of me without first admitting that, yes, being a conservative is a bannable offense. So instead you're trying to provoke me into flipping out so you can have an excuse, all the while telling me all about how much you'd love to hear me out even as you sit here steadfastly refusing to hear me out.

I mean, if I'm wrong, then why is that Larkmarn can make everything all about politics constantly - and is actually still making it all about politics on the YMMV.The Mandalorian discussion page, and no one cares... but I post something tangentially related to politics and I get "Mimic, you're doing it again!" like I'm a toddler who just shit his pants again. And now I'm literally sitting here, on trial for something even you admit never happened.

So, tell you what... how about this...

You yourself admit that I did nothing wrong. I've repeatedly said that this isn't a fight and never was. We're only here right now because you're keeping us here trying to turn this into a thing and trying to make me... like, I don't even know what the heck you want me to apologize to you for, if it's not literally just "having opinions you disagree with"...

...so if you don't have a bias, and I'm wrong about why you're doing this, then you can prove it right now really easily by GETTING OFF MY BACK.

Gonna need to request a mod lock soon. This is getting way too heated.

Yeah, let's just stop this now. The staff is deliberating internally about this issue.