A conversation gone wrong, in a jif. or possibly a gif

He seems to be the carrot to Happy Fun Ball’s stick.

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I could have sworn you were talking about jlw.

Speak for yourself. I’m getting older, but it’s only strengthening my resolve. I’m sick of this shit, but nobody will change it except me. Nobody can change it except me. This isn’t the '90s, and I can’t coast on good will anymore.

That was the most tedious book I’ve ever read. Maybe some 14-year-old kid who’s pissed at his dad will find it mildly interesting, but not me. Then again, we’ve devolved to the point where whiny entitled teenager is a step up for many of us emotionally.

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Yeah, but I don’t blame him much. Assuming he’s getting paid, I think he’s doing what he can to keep his job, by herding a lot of cats while also keeping happy a management that seems annoyed when it’s not simply indifferent. (I think he alluded at one point to previous moderators saying they left because the place is basically impossible to moderate effectively?)

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Back when there was an honest TL3, he didn’t need to do that as much, because the community was more self-policing.

You saw that too?

That part confused me, because that’s not the impression I got from the bbs. Unless he was alluding to GamerGate or some shit like that, I don’t see that many problems with moderation. There are a few trolls, but not that many, and they get shot down quickly enough.

Also, what do you think when he said the bbs was “toxic” to advertisers?

Am I that oblivious that I don’t recognize any of the things he was talking about, or at least can’t relate to them directly?

BTW, it was that specific post that made me confident that oren is the carrot to jlw’s stick.

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When there is a choice between what your job actually is, and what the person signing paychecks asks for… the decision makes itself most of the time.

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Totally coincidentally, I’m listening to this at this exact moment:

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I don’t even know what to say about the other place at this point.

I just know it doesn’t feel the same as it did a year ago, camaraderie-wise.

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It was too oblique/unexplained for me to decide. The most plausible guess that I read by others was that advertisers find it so because bbs’ers often criticize the products touted in sponsored posts. OTOH, if that is the problem, all they need to do is shut off comments on those posts. Other than that, it’s hard for me to believe any advertisers would read enough comments to decide that the general atmosphere is like, fractious, and decide that’s a problem for sales of their products.

Am I that oblivious that I don’t recognize any of the things he was talking about, or at least can’t relate to them directly?

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At the risk of sounding contrary, it’s still better than it was 10 years ago.

But whenever I want to get mad at HFB, I remember that that place is literally his own business, and I get back to minding my own. He very much is trying to scrape ‘community’ off his ships hull like a barnacle, while still enjoying the conversations. I don’t see the discourse platform lasting there.

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Who?

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happy fun ball

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The JLW post about the VPN they were/are selling. Everyone jumped all over the details of the product. Especially questions about security. A new account popped-up as well that may have been a competitor and it really tore into the finer details. Then the VPN company jumped in to defend and went off the rails attacking people. The next day a calmer employee from the VPN took over. But as far as threads meant to promote a product goes, that thread was an utter shit show.

I have a feeling 99% of the toxic comment was about that one thread the other 1% is for every other product thread where someone points out the product is shitty (put the reps don’t show up and start a fist fight).

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Dammit, that acronym gets me every time!

Again, probably because Jason is neither happy nor fun IMO.

It doesn’t matter that the fake product on SNL probably wasn’t either.

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…and you can complete that thought by yourselves.

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Since you-all are hanging out here anyway, it feels more like we just moved to a nicer apartment complex closer to the park.

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I think your attempt at engaging in conversation was unfortunately doomed from the start. Jeff is highly resistant to engaging in discussion about ideas that challenge his concepts of the ideal forms of communication and community. He’s also highly skilled at deflection, using his own authority as the creator of successful software as a way of bulldozing over those who disagree with him. I mean, just look at what happened when he challenged the community on the like limit issue or the slurping GIF.

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You ought to have seen his crash and burn in a thread about the Handmaid’s Tale.

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