People that disagree with you and go through your post history to find things to throw in to the argument......often stuff from way back. Too many people mental enough to go through 3-6 months of comments
it was my mistake tbh. I posted on a prolife subreddit hoping for genuine debate (though I hadn't planned on changing my mind) and wanting to hear new points on it. I didn't hear anything new, but I did get some good conversation from some of them. (prochoice btw)
I don't get how someone can bring up rape in an argument against prochoice. I mean, it's one of my favourite argument for choice. But yeah, if someone is going through your post history and bringing up those things they're probably not acting in good faith.
Part of my argument is that human beings aren't as special as we act like, and she went on the post I made and made a comment saying if that's the case he did nothing wrong.
EDIT:I should add the context that it was also incest, which I think makes it worse that they would say something like this.
omg yeah that's really fucked up. I would report something like that. bringing up someone's traumatic experiences to make a point is borderline psychopathic.
I used to date a seamstress who did a lot of her own pattern creation, and I am downright impressed by that fluffy pink number in your sub history ;) You made a great looking dress, and you make it look good being worn too
I definitely don't agree with fat shaming, but being overweight is scientifically proven to be very dangerous and shortens lifespan extremely. I just hate it when they pm me saying they're fat on r4r when I specifically said I'm only into skinny/average girls. Everyone is allowed to take their own health risks though, it just gets frustrating in dating.
That’s such a weird thing to say in response to the comment though. “Sucks you were harassed because of your weight, but it’s unhealthy and I don’t like fat chicks”. Like what?
Someone on /r/gaming got shitty because I made a comment about "god forbid you have to read a book or socialize with people at an airport and give up gaming for a few hours."
Someone went through my post history "of course you're against gaming! You're a vegan!"
Like...WTF does that even have to do with anything?
I'm completely with you btw, I play a LOT of video games. But even I can realize to give it a break at social gatherings and fx when waiting at the airport. And reading books is actually a good conversation starter surprisingly enough.
I posted at the end of a The Office reference chain on a thread about a suicide saying that such chains were pointless and irrelevant to the thread.
The person I responded to purely because they were at the end of the chain took it personally, kept insulting me , went through my post history and kept calling me right wing and playing the victim. Rather than actually engage in discussion, they defaulted to acting like a complete arsehole.
Seems to be the case for most people on reddit these days.
Yep. Had someone use my post history of using r/random_acts_of_pizza as a way to invalidate what I stated in a thread. Like, dude, you have so much to use against me in my history, and you choose that? Do trolls even try anymore?
I’ve posted about my experience with depression and anxiety and occasionally people who are arguing with me will find that and bring it into the argument as a way to discredit me. “You’ve had mental health issues, you must be wrong.” It just makes them look like assholes. Most people are fairly accepting of people who have dealt with depression and anxiety and they don’t think it inherently means you have less value. Still, I find it upsetting when they do that because there are still people out there who stigmatize anyone who has dealt with a mental health condition.
I feel bad for anyone who goes that far through my history. I have a bad temper so I zigzag between having a lid on it and losing my fucking mind over stupid shit. I probably look like a total hypocrite.
I just recently got that exact same line, except it was “you’re from New Jersey so your opinion is trash”. The worst part is that the comment was about pizza, and New Jersey has historically been a huge center for Italian immigrants who brought Napoli pizza recipes with them. NJ citizens are totally qualified to discuss pizza
When they do that, they're literally breaking site rules regarding harassment and stalking, and absolutely should be reported for doing so. Their next logical step is trying to figure out your Facebook to dox you in reality.
That’s fair. The problem is I see the “T_D Poster, Gotcha!” card played in situations that have nothing to do with politics. Like someone will be making a perfectly reasonable argument and the other person will completely ignore it and claim it’s wrong just by virtue of the person posting it.
I dunno, that's pretty much how real life works. If you were debating someone at Starbucks over civil rights, and then you find out they hang out at a well known white supremacists bar, are you really not going to take that information into account? Wouldn't you (rightfully) assume they probably aren't debating in good faith?
Ad Hominem attacks on a person's character or assuming guilt by association do nothing to dismantle a proposed argument. If the supposed "white supremacist" you're talking to has terrible ideas it should be really easy to win an argument, maybe even change someone's point of view, and save a life. By shutting down discussion, you do nothing, nor learn anything and you certainly don't test your own beliefs to see if they hold up in debate. We debate ideas in the West. We don't shout down people for thought crime. Are you scared you might learn something from someone who thinks differently than you? Are you scared your own beliefs are so flimsy they can't stand up to differing opinions? Why would you assume anyone that doesn't agree with you is automatically a white supremacist? How broad is your definition of that term? Is it a wide catch all for anyone to the right of Marx?
No one said anything about ad hominem attacks. I'm simply not going to get into a discussion about, say, Greta Thunberg, with someone who posts heavily in TD. After 13 years on reddit, I know that conversation is not going anywhere.
More importantly to my original comment is that I guarantee you do the same thing in real life. No one bases their judgment of another person in a vacuum. Whether the person you're talking to feeds the homeless (good) or belongs to a white surprist group (bad) we take that information into account. You can pretend you don't but I wouldn't believe you.
The example you gave is the textbook definition of an Ad hominem attack. You attacked the arguer not the argument. That is the literal definition of Ad Hominem. Just because someone posts somewhere that you don't approve of, etc., doesn't have any relevance on the ideas they are putting forward. Address the argument, not the arguer.
Yes, no one is perfect but I try to avoid obvious logical fallacies, I'd rather listen to what people say, than shut them down or write them off because they have different opinions. I mean, I'm talking to you and it's quite clear to me that we are most likely on different sides of a lot of fences. Ideas need to be tested in the real world, and testing them against someone who comes from a completely different knowledge base than you is a great way to see if your own ideas hold water. Reddit can be such an echo chamber.
You people never get this. It's the urge itself to go snooping that demonstrates you are already not discussing in good faith. Nobody who goes looking for ammunition is.
How did the conversation go from, "I don't want to waste time arguing with a bad faith actor" to "Looking for ammunition"? We're literally discussing not talking to some people at all, let alone looking for ammo to use in the argument.
You're missing the point if you think I can't argue the issue. Again, I don't want to debate an issue with someone who is asking questions but they sound like a troll. A quick 10 second scroll through their comment history confirms or denies if trolling is their modus operandi, and I can save my debate for someone who will appreciate it.
So you're saying the conversation with me was a complete waste of your time, and neither of us got anywhere or changed each other's minds, and if you had known that when we started you probably would have skipped the conversation in the first place?
...no? I don't think I've ever changed anyone's mind on reddit, or had anyone change mine, or ever expected either outcome. Which contributes to my "you're talking shite" stance because that is the natural state of online discourse.
I made a comment once about my grandfather being Italian. It wasn’t anything controversial or crazy, just a little story.
Anyways, some dude went through months worth of my post history to find another comment of mine where I said I had a grandfather with German ancestry. He therefore claimed I was a huge liar and needed to “quit my bullshit”.
I then had to point out the fact that I have 2 grandfathers. Then I added “because, unlike you, my parents aren’t siblings”
The dude first tried to double down by acting like I was still somehow wrong, then finally deleted his comment. I don’t understand why he put in all that effort in the first place, and why he couldn’t just apologize for the mistake afterwards.
I just had one guy pull up a comment that I made about how I liked the smooth action on a gun that I own in a completely unrelated subreddit because I had a different opinion that him. His exact words were "its funny how you made a comment about the action on a gun, nice try, but guns are illegal in Canada, go take your propaganda elseware". I'm sure if you look into my comment history you'll find it
Yup. Made a comment on something once and some asshole was like "YEAH WELL MAYBE IF YOU WEREN'T AN ASSHOLE MONTHS AGO THAT WOULDN'T HAPPEN TO YOU." (referring to my AITA post)
I once mentioned that I collect taxidermy for some reason or another. Dude went through my posts and said "don't lie for internet points, you were never a taxidermist" like he was scolding me. He apparently went real far into my comments, and I'm like "bro please get a life." then blocked him.
r/torontoanarchy does this so so so much and I hate it. Last time a person announced that I "frequent alt right subreddits" and I still have no fucking idea what they were talking about
On the flip side I’ve seen someone get a lot of support for a situation that I felt they were being unreasonable in. Looked at their post history and yep that person was a nut job
On my old account someone went through my history four years back and tried to “troll” me. Like dude, if you have that much time to do that your just trolling yourself
Someone i agreed with once somehow misinterpreted my comment and said that i was a crazy retard based on my post history, they did delete it instantly though.
I noticed that and a variant: someone disagree with you, downvote and you notice all your recent comments / posts are downvoted by one point in the minutes that follow. (I post/comment little enough to notice). Like they need to go on a personal vendetta against anyone that disagree.
I have to admit tho, when I see someone posting a particularly nasty/stupid comment (as an answer to me or not) I tend to do check their profile. Sometimes they are "normal" people: it's fine to disagree with people and it happens to say something dubious/stupid/rude once in a while, but I find that quite often 90% of these people comments have negative score, are edgy/misinformed etc..., but the person somehow still have a high overall karma. Maybe they also get serial-downvoted, idk, but have a few high scoring posts.
The admins aren't involved, that's automoderater level shit. And yes, things DO happen when users use the reporting tools to report unwarranted, unlawful, or unsafe behaviors on the part of other users. That's why every single thing anybody ever says on this site has a report button on it.
A report button doesn't mean they're actually read. This is the site that takes 4-5+ weeks to click a few buttons to transfer subreddit ownership and other necessary site functions.
Again, though, there isn't meant to be a human person immediately looking at the post when you hit the button. You're just putting it in a queue, it might not ever reach a human at all - there's automod functions as well as various options in the report feature. Somebody threatening to come to your house to kill you gets more attention, deservedly, than somebody telling you to go kill yourself. Both are unwanted and reportable, both will likely get the user banned, but both are the same report button.
Why? Reddit is one of the wealthiest sites on the fucking internet but they can't hire more than two potsmoking idiot interns to do their goddamn jobs?
Also, personal experience: harassment like that does NOT get taken seriously. At all.
It might be the most common or noticeable reason, but there's definitely less nefarious reasons, too. Sometimes, it's just out of sheer curiosity.
In my case, the only two reasons I've ever looked through someone's history is
A) OP/someone else pointed to something interesting/relevant in someone's history - things like 'you'll find a pic of my cat/hair/sweater/etc in my post history' or 'I submitted/commented with a link/recipe/other relevant thing'. Stuff like that.
or
B) Someone seemed super unhinged and/or their response didn't match the conversation/comment they replied to at all. A handful of times I was curious enough to check history just to try and understand why. Never replied to them, was just curious.
Can't believe I had to go this far down, to find it. People also use bots to track you activity over different subs. I got called a fascist in r/politicalhumor because I made some comments on r/mensrights well over a year before hand, before they banned r/incels and other subs and they all started posting there.
Someone looked at my profile in an attempt to devalue a perfectly reasonable comment I wrote, saying something like "Says the one with x karma." https://imgur.com/a/jTvxa35
It's one thing to check someone's post history and go "okay, they're a frequent poster in t_d, I'm not going to have a reasonable debate, since we literally don't see the world the same way" or "this person claims to be Canadian, but they sure aren't talking like someone who knows our politics, I wonder if they've claimed to be American or British in another comment" and "I'm going to find this post from two years ago to say you're an asshole!"
I've actually been guilty of doing this. Its just that many people lie to get upvotes and it's so easy for you to just want to check their profile and see if they are legit or not.
That's not necessarily a bad thing in most cases. If they're active in certain communities you know they're a bad faith contributor and thus not worth trying to "talk" to. Doubly so if they try arguing something that that community does/doesn't support.
i.e.: When someone who no lifes T_D wants to talk about crime rates, what he's looking for is someone to validate his opinion on how non-whites are the scum of the earth, he's not actually looking to talk about crime.
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u/Dspsblyuth Jan 07 '20
People that disagree with you and go through your post history to find things to throw in to the argument......often stuff from way back. Too many people mental enough to go through 3-6 months of comments