General CA trolls - it's embarrassing

bucketybuck

If you want to find the real problem just look in your feedback threads, the absolute worst posters are always front and centre here. Everybody knows who they are.

The real problem is the declining membership. When the numbers are high these busybody trolls are drowned out by the noise. As the numbers drop then they become louder, and a dozen or so middle aged men start to become the only thing anybody ever hears. Shouting down anything that goes against their own valueless opinions.

These people are smothering discussion in what should be the most popular forum.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535200#Comment_120535200

Agree with that. CGI_Livia in this thread is a good example. So they post stuff like "It’s unfortunate but this site has become overrun with bigotry towards immigrants, transphobia, Islamophobia, and racism" here, which sounds horrible, but actually it's nonsense. Really posters like that just mean that people disagree with their views - and too often, when someone challenges their views, they quietly slip away for a while.

I do agree with you that posters who just shout down things they don't agree with don't help discussion. They're not interested in discussion. Too often these days people are unable to even remotely countenance a view that doesn't align with their own (and not just on boards)

super_furry

I find myself visiting and using boards.ie less and less and the main reason is the naked bigotry and racism that has taken over the site in some of it's most prominent forums. Current Affairs is probably the most prominent alright.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535255#Comment_120535255

It's not nonsense, and its rife on this site, and in particular on both CA and AH. Bigotry is bigotry.

Those who claim they want to have constant discussions about their bigoted views, are not interested in real discussion. They just want to spread and feed the flames of their own hatred against the target of their particular bias. They're not interested in listening to other points of view or working to change anything.

And as soon as you call them out on it bigotry, they pout about "censorship" and being shut down.

There should be no oxygen given to such blatant racism, an example of which was the thread mentioned earlier. None. It should be possible for adults to have discussions without being racist. Example, the recent thread.

"Youths running amok in Dublin suburb with machetes" could have been a legitimate topic for discussion, but once the OP framed it as "African youths running amok in Dublin suburb with machetes", well, that puts a whole different slant on it and its fairly obvious to anyone with half a brain what the OP was truly getting at.

And I'll give credit to Beasty, (though god knows I've disagreed and clashed with him myself in the past), he is probably the only mod I can see who does actually act on reports of transphobic and racist posts.

cdeb

There's nonsense on both sides I'm sure.

But let's not pretend it's all one-way. CGI is one of the worst posters I've encountered for that. If you disagree with CGI on trans issues, for example, you're transphobic. But try discuss the implications of the Tavistock scandal and CGI vanishes. So when you say "They're not interested in listening to other points of view or working to change anything.", that applies to posters like CGI too. (And not just them, though they'd be the main one I'd have encountered here)

So there's an irony in CGI's complaints here.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535383#Comment_120535383

Lets not pretend that Boards.ie is not a very transphobic site in general. The level of transphobia and transphobic posting allowed here is off the scale.

cdeb

Which, interestingly, is exactly the sort of internal bullying stance which was reported by a significant number of NHS staff in the Tavistock GIDS unit which was shut down last year for some appalling practices.

You do seem to be one of the posters who tries to leverage "phobia" into a post as often as possible and think that's a point. This is the flip side of things I referred to.

There's nonsense on both sides. Leave the mods at it. They're by and large doing their best. Posters - and people in general - should try engage more in open debate rather than think anyone who disagrees with you is phobic or something or other.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535355#Comment_120535355

I reported the “African kids with machetes” as racist when it had three posts. I came back an hour or two later and it had around a hundred posts, lots of racism and some good people standing up to racism.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120534114#Comment_120534114

And all the questions about women’s sports and women’s prisons generally coming from people who never gave the slightest toss about conditions in women’s prisons or support for women’s sports previously.

eggy81

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120533365#Comment_120533365

Soo dramatic. Jaysus.

Jequ0n

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535407#Comment_120535407

It really isn’t unless you chose to interpret any different opinion as a phobia to shut down the discussion.

There are extreme posters who would fall into the right/ left wing definition but the majority of posters are not.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535508#Comment_120535508

I am one of those posters who calls it what it is. That truly bothers some people. (Their problem, not mine).

Transphobia is transphobia. Racism is racism. And so on. Why shy away from calling it what is is?

If you can't do that, then attempting to have any kind of debate is far from open. It is meaningless and dishonest from the start.

Gatling

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535637#Comment_120535637

But in the absolute majority of cases the transphobia, Islamophobia, homophobic, racist is only ever used to either shut down a discussion or to silence people,and it's the same cohort of posters in the same discussions ,who the run to feedback when they don't get a quota of mod actions on a thread

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535568#Comment_120535568

I've followed women's tennis and camogie for years but never claimed to care about sports like women's soccer or women's rugby and still don't.

My own contributions to those threads were to point out sexually dimorphic differences in muscle mass, upper body strength, torso strength (when you go to hit a ball with your arm, the power in your arms comes from your torso (if you are hitting properly)). You had no answer to the studies I posted.

All people have an interest in women not being endangered. Just because left-wing double-talkers claim women's sports as one of their special political projects is neither here nor there. I wouldn't like to see men's soccer defunded to give the money to women's soccer - but questions about basic safey on the pitch precede that.

Nicola Sturgeon lost her leadership of the SNP over the prison issue. How many ordinary Scots are subject experts in prison conditions though? Few I'd imagine. But commonsensical objections to imprisoning women in the same cell as a man won out.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535658#Comment_120535658

Well, I am only speaking for myself.

I only make reports when I think the post is serious enough that it crosses a line and deserves mod attention. Then I will report it, and I will continue to do so, because like I said - in my opinion such bigotry should receive no oxygen.

Note, as a poster we never know which mod is going to respond to a report, or how they will choose to act on a reported post. Often we never know.

I personally have never made a thread in feedback, and I think this is the first time I have joined in on a thread here. Maybe I will do so more often.

cdeb

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535637#Comment_120535637

But the Tavistock case - where a woman successfully sued the NHS for not questioning her enough when she said she was trans - shows exactly why people who "call it what it is" and label any divergence from that view as "phobic" are actually potentially extremely damaging.

Are people who say that "You don't get to be a man just by identifying as one" not also calling it what is? So we need a better debate than to label people as phobic. Which people on both sides - including yourself, it would seem - are increasingly incapable of having.

Edit - I don't mean to drag this thread into the Tavistock debate again, I should add. I do want to point out that people who dismiss those who have different views to them about certain topics as "phobic", and back it up with guff like "I am one of those posters who calls it what it is. That truly bothers some people. Their problem, not mine" are every bit as much to blame for the issues in CA, such as they are.

hayrabit

well, they were "African Youths"

even if they were Irish born and bred (maybe they are) and the Gardaí came by - after the fact - and clocked an innocent bystander (likely onlooker) and asked him what happened. If he did his best to not say they were "coloured" (the Media - going on what they're told by GHQ - never mention the suspect/s' colour in their press releases, when giving out details of a suspect) individuals, and just said: "a bunch of Dublin scangers (if Irish accents) - couldn't get a good look at them as they had hoodies on.,,, No, I didn't know any of them.!"

do yis not think the Guard would ask the witness questions re the ethnicity of the perps?

I think they would - but don't dare mention it on here

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535706#Comment_120535706

I am not and have never been involved in any discussion about the Tavistock case, so I don't know why you keep bringing this up to me. I also didn't join this thread to get into a debate about what constitutes transphobia.

Maybe you should start another thread on that, though as a rule, I actually try to avoid threads I know are or will become openly transphobic. I don't actually visit Boards with the purpose of looking for bigots to argue with. Though I will if I have to, but as a rule I prefer not to give them the oxygen they want.

And often you can tell from the tone of the opening post, what kind of response the OP is looking for. I don't engage in the "Wokeism" or "Sports" type threads for that very reason. But sometimes, transphobia or racism is simply impossible to avoid, given how prevalent both have become across this forum.

Look at the recent AH thread on the protests at Paul Murphy's home as an example. Posters simply couldn't stick to debating the rights or wrongs of protesting outside a public representative's private home, (a valid topic for discussion) without dragging in his and his partner's choice to raise their baby as gender neutral into the "discussion".

Notably, once a mod stepped in and told posters to stop making comments about the child, the thread dried up.

I have previously suggested that Boards should consider a feature where posters could put whole threads on ignore, so they wouldn't appear, in the same way they can block unpleasant posters. I would really like that, but I suppose it would lose Boards a lot of clicks.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535669#Comment_120535669

I'm not going to repeat the whole debate again here. I'll just ask you how many posts you made in your posting history about conditions in women's prisons before the trans bandwagon appeared for you to hop onboard?

I don't follow Scottish politics closely, but I thought the Sturgeon thing had to do with the issues that caused her husband to be arrested?

bucketybuck

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535407#Comment_120535407

This is the sort of rubbish that is driving people away.

Boards isn't transphobic or racist or whatever, the problem is that certain people imagine transphobia and racism behind every word and are very loud in crying about it.

Perhaps there would be more discussion in general if a loud minority stopped dragging everything back to their pet topics.

hayrabit

 I'll just ask you how many posts you made in your posting history about conditions in women's prisons before the trans bandwagon appeared for you to hop onboard?

don't know anything about any posters on here, but one can be an indifferent misanthrope and still have a sense of fair-play/right and wrong

why does one have to be an advocate - for whatever cause - to point out something that's patently messed up?? 😲

most everyone must be a "phobist" in your book Andrew 😏

hayrabit

anyone ever consider that these putative "African kids" with machetes may actually consider themselves African?

not seeing any "racism" there myself , but tis a low bar nowadays

fingers poised over buttons ready to pounce and report - would venture to say that they're annoyed the thread (likely/usually their main aim) was closed before they could get a few bans or suspensions out of it 😒

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120536004#Comment_120536004

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree on what is driving people away.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120536017#Comment_120536017

Who is trying to shut whom down now?

You do you, and I'll keep calling it out and/or reporting as and when I see fit.

You can do the same, if you think it's warranted. The report button is open to everyone.

growleaves

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535941#Comment_120535941

I never waded in on the trans prison issue myself as far as I remember(?)

However your whole reasoning is flawed.

If the public were made aware of any problems with prisons commensurate with the danger of putting a woman in a cell with a man who could kill or rape her then they would want to see those problems ameliorated too.

I didn't make this trans prison issue into international news. Nor did I suppress some crucial but under-publicised other problem about the conditions in women's prisons. I've generally just engaged with what I've become aware of.

I thought it was the reason for Sturgeon's resignation but now after an internet search I see the BBC cite it as one of the reasons along with strikes and the scandal you've mentioned, so basically it was a factor but not a lone factor.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120536141#Comment_120536141

You waded in on the trans prison issue in this thread;

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120535669#Comment_120535669

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120536112#Comment_120536112

The bar isn't actually that low. All you have to do is avoid making assumptions about people based on their skin tone.

The same thread could have been posted without any reference to race, and there would have been no issue.

It's really that easy not to be racist.

cdeb

"I am not and have never been involved in any discussion about the Tavistock case, so I don't know why you keep bringing this up to me. I also didn't join this thread to get into a debate about what constitutes transphobia. [...] I don't engage in the "Wokeism" or "Sports" type threads for that very reason."

But if you're going to, in a feedback thread, accuse people left, right and centre of transphobia, you should be able to discuss what constitutes it. While the wokeism thread does go over the top from time to time (in particular, people posting things that aren't woke at all), there's a lot of valid criticism of trans ideology in there. But again, your closed mind tells you that's ipso facto transphobic. It's no wonder you find so much to be concerned about when you've that mindset.

And the Tavistock case is important in that regard because it shows what a lot of people (yourself included, it seems) constitute transphobia (ie a man can't just decide to be a woman, or vice versa) isn't transphobia at all, and that sort of mindset has the capacity to ruin lives.

Not surprisingly though, you (like CGI previously) can't discuss that - you just want to repeat your "phobia" accusations. And that's as bad in threads as people on the other side.

hayrabit

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120536205#Comment_120536205

yes, colour is "important"

at the very least, it's an "identifier" , is it not , when les Authorities are chasing up leads/suspects ?

seen it for years on British and American cop shows - IC1 , IC2 , Male Caucasian/Latino etc

so, yes, it is important

I don't know how some of you live in the world and manage interactions with other people and situations.

Current Affairs forum is full of lots of different opinions and many of them are unpalatable to me. It doesn't cost me a thought for the most part. Depending on the topic I will challenge and engage with opposite views.

It's ok to be different to each other. The world won't stop spinning if you come across a thread filled with posts you don't like. Are some of you that precious that your very being is threatened by an unpleasant opinion? Or that if you don't agree then you must be dealing with a troll?

hayrabit

some folks on here (CA) seem to live to find posts to take exception over

;)