I remember the first exodus back in 2017. I was away at a conference over that long weekend, so I was offline for most of it, but I remember checking in on my tablet and just being overwhelmed with threads of drama that had all happened while I was offline.
It took a bit of catching up on exactly what had been going on, and it felt like the meme - the too late owl, or walking back into a burning room.
That seems to happen a bit while I’m away. Twice I’ve been on holiday and we’ve had chaos elections over here, and I’ve come back from holiday to work drama as well. I’m not going to stop talking time off, though.
Anyway, I’m rambling, but of course I headed on over here. I stopped starting new threads over at the other place, and a load of us went with blank avatars in protest at the bannings. I tried to keep up with both forums, but it was too much and I got overwhelmed by all the threads, so I just dialed it back a bit.
Anyway, I’m just glad we’ve all still got a place to hang out. The café is an interesting and weird (in a good way) spot, where I’ve found good people, interesting links, and it’s well worth the time spent. I like our little hang out spot here, and I hope we keep it going.
At this point, if this was a real café, I’d order more tea and a slice of cake.
I often wonder what it must be like, to not have your credibility, intelligence, etc nor the worth of your very existence questioned daily, and to go without being bullied in some way/shape/form. That’s what it’s like for all of us who are not straight white men.
And guess what?
There are a lot more of us.
Those who use their priv’lij to oppress, and support other oppressors are the little men - not in stature, but in their hearts, their humanity, in their lack of empathy for their fellow peoplebeings.
I feel safer here than at BoingBoing. I’d like it to stay that way.
Yes, it doesn’t feel good to be excluded. I wasn’t included in any of the lounges or rolling DMs at the old place. But exclusion is part of life. We all have separate groups of friends that don’t get along. Anyone who says they haven’t complained about one friend’s behavior to a different friend is lying. We all have different circles of trust for different people.
It’s also important for people to have a private place to discuss things online with our online friends but not every random person who logs in. If some of that is people discussing how others not in that particular group are making them feel, that’s an important safety feature. Certain kinds of stealthy misogyny can’t be caught any other way. Women do this all the time IRL, to keep ourselves safe. And sane.
Can such private spaces enable bullying of people not included? Yes. Have they? Really doesn’t seem like it happened at BoingBoing and certainly not here yet. If anyone thinks such a thing is happening, please do message a mod or @LockeCJ.
Another principle that was established at our founding (and yes, I was there, under a different name) was that Elsewhere would be a fresh start, where we could leave old conflicts behind and enjoy each other’s company.
What happened at BoingBoing is over. Talking about it is part of the grieving process, but please remember to Be Excellent To Each Other while we do it.
Yeah I got invited in the middling parts of this story. No idea who repped for me and no idea if anyone was like on the fence or kept a frustrated peace about it. Thanks though to anyone who did?
IDK… humans build trust or lend it on credit and empathy is hard (people often only have empathy for people like themselves for one thing)… both aspects cut in all directions to some degree. Having felt both the pain of exclusion and scrutiny and the effects of a dedicatedly toxic ego-wounded warrior online a time or two… I’ll take the pain of scrutiny.
Since they weren’t official, the only thing that made the pseudo-lounges a pseudo version of the lounges is that they made an effort to include most of the regulars who were missing having that space with one another. Beyond that, they were just group DMs. We’re all allowed to make group DMs with whoever we want to talk more with.
I have no idea how many people actually did on BB. But I have been in some and it’s really nice to have a space to share things specifically with people you trust instead of the whole internet, and that’s speaking as someone fairly privileged. Denouncing it as cliquish feels deeply unfair, and I hope making close friends will not start being frowned on here, especially since as I said it is open to anyone.
People are allowed to be self selecting about whom they choose to engage in conversation.
Yeah, I gotta be honest; the recent influx of so many newer members makes me wary… especially since so many don’t seem to even begin to grasp the very real necessity of maintaining a safer space for everyone who isn’t straight, White, cis, and male.
Lately I constantly find myself thinking (because it just keeps coming up, over and over again) about how the web has, in every possible way, failed to live up to its promise, or turned out to be the opposite of what was promised, or some monkey’s paw version, where we got what was promised, but in a warped way. In the early days there was all the utopian talk of the web being democratizing (and a force for organizing democratic movements), educational, providing alternatives to corporate media with a diversity of information and sites available, allowing niche creatives to generate a living and marginalized populations to create communities. Instead it’s been anti-democratic, allowed fascists to organize, spread disinformation, has not only privileged corporate media but increasingly only the most low-effort sort of work is financially viable (with AI slop being the logical end result), search engines are making it impossible to find anything (but those corporate sites), and while marginalized folk have formed communities online, they’re susceptible to online-organized harassment and corporate/government surveillance and repression, which the web makes easy.
Well hello, member of Elsewhere Cafe, which was started in parallel with the pseudo-Lounges by members of the same group at the same time and is similarly selective about who’s invited to join. I have some bad news for you…
I can assure you, the BB BBS would have been a very different and less safe place over the years if active community members* had not set up those DMs when the official Kvetch and Rube Lounges were shut down. The official moderator recognised the value in allowing us to continue venting, developing strategies to counter anti-patterns, and identifying problematic users (to be clear, Ken explicitly opted out of participating in the pseudo-Lounges himself).
Also, the programatic nature of the old official griping Lounges led in part to their demise. When persistent trolls attained Regular status and saw they were being discussed, three of them in particular (Max, 44, and Medievalist) immediately complained to TPTB about being “cliquishly” called out by other Regulars on (respectively) their white nationalism, spreading of NRA talking points, and clueless racism/sexism.
[* many of whom also were later appointed Leaders and probably assistant moderators.]
I may have missed upthread, but the original name for the site was happymutant.space, until it was pointed out to me that the parent entity of BB is Happy Mutant LLC or some such. After voting, elsewhere.cafe became the official name.
As I recall, he called jlw a “party-pooper” for deleting his joke comment.
I believe one of the justifications for the ban was the perception that it was just a joke/stunt account.
The loss of the official lounge was one of the motivating factors for creating this place, along with the expectation that the rest of the BBS was next. It turns out I was right, just off on the timing by ~7 years.
To be clear, it is the explicit intent here to be the best or better than how BB was, not to recreate it, with a specific interest in being better for those groups which are consistently undervalued and overlooked in other communities. Please accept my genuine apology for the situations where we have come up short in those goals.
I don’t see how you are responsible. It’s up to the user to decide with each post whether they will contribute to the community, or say horrid and/or unconsidered/thoughtless shit.
I’ve only hit the
on one user here, but a couple currently do have between 2 - 2.5 ‘strikes.’
Exactly. This is how “missing stairs” are usually identified in communities that strive for inclusion and diversity (e.g. SFF conventions, academia), long before official action is taken against the creeps (if it’s taken at all). The same went for BB BBS, where we had several missing stairs who were allowed to stick around for many years despite making other members of the community feel unsafe.
From what limited engagement I’ve had here, you and @tinoesroho – supported by the active members – have done a marvelous job maintaining those goals. I hope that new members will take some time to read/listen, get the vibe of the place, and understand that it’s a venerable establishment that doesn’t need new leadership.
