Introducing the Current Affairs/IMHO forum

I honestly don't understand how it hasn't got to the point where something has been done about it. It's not even a case of a few posts here or there lost amongst the ocean of new posts constantly appearing in the forum, you can open most threads on the first page and find examples.

Look, anyone can see from my post history that I don't try to hide my opinions on it. But that's only because I left the site years ago when AH was looking like it was going in the direction CA firmly occupies, now. I've reported people but I don't want to fall afoul of abuse of the reporting system because if I was to report all the examples I'd be trying to fight back the tide with my bare hands.

And that's part of the problem: often it isn't just one post, it's a body of them, built up over time that exposes a person's views and once you've seen how racists try to couch their views (as I, sadly, have during my time on Reddit), it's much easier to see them here.

To say nothing of the fact that it really isn't just racism. Homophobia, transphobia, you name it, you can find it there. Doesn't the allowance of things like that on a site that maintains an active LGBT forum kind of... sit at odds with each other? How many people are missing from discussions in the forum because it's so hostile to anyone that deviates from the very narrow norm accepted by so many regulars of it?

There's a place for robust debate and the candid sharing of opinions and I'm not arguing CA shouldn't be a place for that. But I also don't think people should be able to get away with race-baiting in the name of being overly lenient as regards free discussion.

Emmet, I get your point, really I do but to give an example from Reddit: there were communities like "coontown" and "chimpout" (itself part of a network of communities called "the chimpire") devoted to the worst, most overt kind of racism you can imagine. When they were banned... the racists didn't disperse out onto the rest of the site. Some did, of course, that's unavoidable, but most just left the site or stopped posting those things.

It's saddening because I've used Boards for so long and it's a shame to see it turned into this. Is there really nothing that can be done?

<snip>

It really is time for a racist/xenophobe sub forum where topics involving "dem foreigners" and "dem blacks" can be discussed in terms that they are comfortable with. While greatly reducing the white noise of hate on the rest of boards.

It would also be a good self reveal Let's see how many of the usual gang of suspects would actually be ready to declare what they are?

Overheal wrote: »

This being locked makes no sense

https://touch.boards.ie/thread/2058090358/1

.

It made perfect sense to close it. It was about racist cops in a different country, and racist cops exist in every country. At the moment this site is basically becoming an adjunct of the US culture wars. This does matter when it influences policy over here, or Europe, so the George Floyd affair eventually became world important, but not every racist statement about black people in a country 6000 miles away is all that important over here.

You are from America, if I am correct, so could you not post on a US site?

Which is why I second the idea proposed on that thread that we create a sub forum for US current affairs. Topics would include the banning of US sitcoms, or problematic statues being taken down in San Francisco, or the campaign against confederate statues, or that US comedian who was banned, or the US journalist who was fired, or the apology from that US TV host, or the last blackface incident in the US, or whatever. There will be plenty of threads.

( Some of these could also be in Television forums or whatnot but there is less traffic there and more sanity).

Only when the US culture wars seep out into influencing Ireland, the UK, or Europe should we elevate these topics out of the US subforum. The banning of confederate flags in Nascar goes into the sub forum, the banning of the cork GAA use of the confederate flag goes into the top level forum.

This would curtail most of the right wingers into that forum, and the Americanised left who wish to talk about racism in the US, and not much else.

This seems to have worked with American politics in the electoral, rather than the general sense, as the threads on the US elections are confined in Politics for instance, to their own sub forum.

EDIT:

Actually I am wrong, the subforum seems to be dead but the US posts are marked with a [US] in politics, that might help people stay away from them. I know I stay away.

BarnardsLoop wrote: »

So that's it, eh? How many people have brought to attention that CA is slipping into an alt-right cesspit? And still nothing's done about it? Is Boards really that desperate to keep membership numbers up?

What happened to this site? No, really, what the hell happened? You allow fake news, conspiracy theories, every vile insinuation about certain ethnic groups (I'm sure I don't need to say which) to go by without so much as a warning. Give it another ten years and I damn well guarantee you, Boards is going to be in the news and not for any reason you might want it to be.

This is your site. If this is the way you want to run it, fine. Just at least have the decency to come out and say it. At least now I have enough posts to say this in Feedback. I'm out. When some knuckledragger torches a building again and it's found out they were radicalised here, I don't want to be associated with the site.

*Opened another account immediately

BarnardsLoop wrote: »

So that's it, eh? How many people have brought to attention that CA is slipping into an alt-right cesspit? And still nothing's done about it? Is Boards really that desperate to keep membership numbers up?

They won't even address the issue.

I'd love if an admin could give an honest answer to the following:

Are you happy that CA has become a racist cesspit? I mean, is it something that you're happy to stand over, or are you at least slightly ashamed?

pjohnson wrote: »

Its really gone even more of a cliff than usual. Could do with adding "Foreigners/Trigger Warning" to the sub title. Two threads about skin whitening and a is "fake tan racist" thread.

But loreal are removing the word "whitening " from their products. Nobody made it up , its happening .

Pintman Paddy Losty wrote: »

This cancel culture is ridiculous. No one can seem to point to any racist posts. Just go on about there being an "undercurrent" of racism. It's silly.

Mods and admins want to keep the wrong opinion folk, the racists, the far left crew, the communists and everyone else in one place together for the benefit of everyone else in the other forums and threads.

I see no problem with that. It's a good idea.
Closing it down or maybe even continuing to over mod one set of views is likely to cause all of these people to spread out into the other forums.
They don't want that. I understand

This is it wrote: »

What do you expect when you ask a loaded question?

It's not a loaded question. It has become a racist cesspit. And the admins have allowed that to happen. I'd genuinely like to know whether they're happy or ashamed of what their inaction has led to.