The Twisted Reality of Social Media Groups & Forums

I have been active in musician Forums & Groups since the late 90s. They can be wonderful or just brutally traumatizing. Increasingly the latter. Maybe the former for a few days, or hours. But trauma is more the reality if you care about anything.

Don’t be offended, but…

Here is some of an exchange with an Admin of a group where I made a post discussing whether people felt it ok that an increasing amount of what people were posting was false, fake even. I took an example so that my post was not also false. I made it very clear that this was not personal and nor should anyone get mean. The Admin approved the post before publishing and engaged – all indicating it was a good discussion.

The discussion went really nicely for an hour or so. Sure there were a few being a bit dismissively mean but easily offset with logical argument. Lovely engaging dialog as people shared views, mostly very much agreeing that images & music posted must be real (not AI or belonging to another).

Then it changed. And it got nastier real fast. A couple of people started doing the nasty thing together and Boom! in three posts it was nuclear weapons out. Only online “nuclear” means a level of meanness only found in young chimps screeching & cavorting as they lynch passing monkeys. Horrifying. Worse in people.

The worst person took my grief over the death of my mother that morning and used it openly against me – doing the typical Woke (tyrant) thing of saying no offense but… You do realize that it is doubly offensive when you deny the right to be offended when you deliberately offend them. That is the essence of “un-gentlemanly”. Society has rules about this for a reason (or is that “had”).

When reported I got this from the Admin:

The people who don’t have manners need to be removed.

Great, Manners & Hope exist here. Then…

Let me say this, don’t be offended..
Your post has merit, but it also instigated a situation where I come in and ban both the reported and the reporter, fast, simple and uncomplicated.
No more problems.
I refuse to ban either one of you and just request you remove the post..
Can you do that for me?

I need all the help I can get.
I process over 50 reported content daily and I feel I’m becoming desensitized by conflicts that shouldn’t exist.

What this person is saying is: While rude people should be removed from his group, seeing this has caused him some discomfort, he will ban or censor me for causing that discomfort. Nothing to do with right or wrong. It is only wrong that he feels discomfort. Whaaaa! I didn’t cause anything. It was a few others who transitioned a conversation to a lynching.

This was the most active thread there of the afternoon. Possibly the single most active thread for days. Definitly the most active that was not a list your favorite XXX.

All good business, until he has to put in any effort to run the thing that appears to be an arm of his business. Normally a business hires people as their activities scale up. I note now that groups won’t bring in more Moderators etc, just complain and punish the very people they rely on for activity.

The way they punish is interesting – or more appropriately, bizarre. This quote shows that because it was inconvenient for him (remember after he approved of it – and no doubt liked the activity it brought him) he would punish the victim. In the end, I think that is all that happened as he deleted my post which had his nest of trolls switch to another of my posts where they were ratcheting up the Knights Of The Short Dicks routine. Punishing the victim only makes the victim an open target for every fool looking for a few easy points. I left.

Saint Elsig of Treason Balk

A far more creepy version of this happened in a Forum called XXXXXX XXXX. Far from the first time, a Moderator was baiting me from thread to thread. He called on me to explain things over and over. When I fronted this with him he had other moderators delete everything (except his initial salvos) forcing me out entirely. He then sends a friend of mine this:

This flamed up quicker than an LA wild fire, triggered by a post I made in response to his post.
You can see my post (and his post, plus my original post) in this thread, where I said I was mis-quoted. Only my first sentence was directed at him because he changed the context and meaning of my quote with his response. What you cannot see is Benedicts response.
viewtopic.php?f=xxxxxxxx
It was my post, starting with: “I think you totally missed my point” that (apparently) set him off.
If you believe THAT post warrants him attacking me in such an extreme way, then so be it.

I see him as a valued member of the community, but this is the second time he has gone totally off the rails over pretty much nothing, and still he has not (yet) been banned because we want to avoid that if possible.
Please have a word with him if you care about his presence here, no one is asking him to leave, and no one asked him to leave last time either.
I honestly have no idea why things escalated so quickly, he really seems to think we are out to get him for some reason.
But his response, rather than talking to us calmly and making his case, has been to trash and burn everything in his path without any dialogue to attempt to resolve the matters.

I know at least two other mods have spoken to him about this, but don’t know exactly what was said.
Again, he is still 100% welcome here, but he cannot keep breaking the basic rules here and expect no consequences. He is already being giving a HUGE benefit of the doubt, something not extended to any other forum member to my knowledge.

And still he’s off with a FUCK YOU to everyone at RT, which technically includes you (as you probably saw since you posted right after his post).

If Benedict and the other mods agree (up to YYYY in the end), I’m happy to share all his posts with you so you know what really went down.
XXXXX Audio, LLC

This is so cleverly written that it totally gaslights. Truths are moved a few degrees, then lined up with blatant falsehoods that because of the apparent truth seem acceptable. The twists and jibes are up there with the best tyrant playbooks. Painting himself as a Saint trying ever so hard to help the sad crazy person, and then signing off with a corporation credit to make himself more important: Classic.

I explained myself over & over, both publically and to moderators – not just in this event but for years (see link below). They ignored and/or deleted. Easy then to say it never happened. Thankfully my friend saw through this and posted it to me. They said they would send him ALL of the conversation, incl. all the deleted bits, but I don’t think it ever happened – or will. It would only expose them to a harder light than gas.

What Drives This?

This situation is far from unique. It is a major motivation in everything both on and offline. I see it in the kids at McWork – if there is a thought/feeling they don’t like, they close that instantly by rolling their eyes and walking away or doing their screaming chimp routine; both equally demeaning to the conversation.

A martial arts school joked about, “Ostrich Block”: Hiding your head in the sand (obfuscation) so no one can hit you. No checking to see what can be learned or changed from that event. Merely denying anything they don’t like and assuming that will make it not exist. Not a real survival strategy 😉

Totally explains as well as why those kids only do the bits of their jobs they like, denying the existence of what they don’t like. That is left for someone else – me far more often than comfortable or right (but now I am pushing back by making it harder for them to dump their unwanteds at my feet).

Social Media is driven by fear. People fear having a moment they might not like so they avoid. If avoiding is not super-easy they attack. Many “lurk” as a result of being afraid that what they show might get them attacked. The screaming chimps own the world.

The trolls are so afraid of having their own fears and weaknesses brought up on the screen in their safety helmets that they spread lies and attack everything that might cause them to wonder if they are doing it “wrong”.

Such a sad state that we are in.

Related Article: Social Media and the Great Divide – Healthy vs Un-Healthy Communities

I deliberately used the very hateful AI to make those images for somewhat ironic purposes as they are what set off the latest of these events as more and more people are showing AI or other perfected images so they feel ‘approved of’ as they fear that reality will not compete. Sadly there is a truth in that. Only we can change that. My thread sought to achieve that. The attackers were people who liked that they could control the narrative with gaslight images and similar fuzzy rules about how music should be made (badly).