and go on. I often engage taking the "liberal" position on a lot of left/liberal disputes and don't find it to be especially acrimonious.2/2
Replies
I suspect Stancil is right that it's really just a a relatively small number of ring-leader accounts generating a lot of the harassment style interactions where mobs form. I definitely have seen a couple dozen accounts show up in all sorts of contexts pulling in abusive interactions.
sep 2, 2025, 4:00 pm • 1 0 • view
I think that Will's (admirable) willingness to absolutely get into it with everyone all the time probably makes his experience non-representative but as you say maybe people would get into it more if they didn't have to worry about being flooded with harassment.
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 3 0 • view
The problem is that they have friendly interactions with some of the bigger accounts that have popular followings with 1 or 2 degrees of separation, so a solution like "simply isolate them" doesn't work.
sep 2, 2025, 4:02 pm • 1 0 • view
yeah there are like 10-20 big “respectable” accounts who are totally on board with Stancil harassment, so you can’t fully escape that kind of thing and you have to tiptoe around them (I’d say some names, but I’d rather not for this reason)
sep 2, 2025, 4:04 pm • 3 0 • view
I didn't even mean Stancil specifically, who is his own Internet phenomenon. I just mean there's prolific posters who I see all the time show up in mentions of other accounts drawing in a dozen+ or so hateful replies from their followers as serial offenders. They just like being abusive.
sep 2, 2025, 4:08 pm • 3 0 • view
I've said this before, but I'd be shocked if at least some of them weren't domestic abusers in their personal lives. Solving this without a moderating system that allows you to rack up offenses and eventually suspensions/bannings is difficult. It distorts the social environment.
sep 2, 2025, 4:10 pm • 2 0 • view