Only Fools Try to Elevate the Conversation

Everyone has trouble seeing themselves clearly and what they are doing different from other people, plus other people routinely don't know the whole story of what x action was about or what it accomplished. And it's nigh impossible to figure it out after the fact. 

I spent years in online forums as the only hobby I could fit into my life for an excessive number of years. Going back and reading a dead written record of a conversation later ALWAYS lacks certain details of context such that it fails to convey some of the nuance as to why people replied the way they did when it was a live conversation. 

Trying like hell to figure out the order in which the comments occurred and timing is extremely hard after the fact even IF it's part of the written record and it may not be. The enormous effort involved likely won't get you close to really understanding why people did what they did at the time AND you likely won't know if there were deleted comments that were part of it.

I've also participated in public meetings in a small town and then read articles in the news about it or information on the website run by the organization. There's a ZILLION social details not included in ANY public record of ANYTHING.

No, no one mentioned in writing anywhere when the owner of the charity gifted me some cheap trinket he brought back from the Taj Mahal in front of everyone at the public monthly meeting, including his sick and elderly wife whose death he was waiting for. The Taj Mahal is only the literal biggest monument of a man's love for a woman anywhere on planet Earth, a detail I shared with my sons while we cynically discussed all the reasons I wasn't going to keep the damn thing.

So the scope of the problem is vastly worse than what most people imagine with quips like "History is written by the victors."

I've been DRAGGED on forums REPEATEDLY for being the person who CHANGED the conversation and started the productive part of it that got the person what they needed for which they were grateful. But all too often there was nothing but open hatred for me, the person who gave them that intentionally and knowingly because I could.

I'm a woman and me being willing to both publicly look like an ass and also take a topic seriously got MEN and others on HN to say "Yes, we are up for taking this conversation of bras or women's breasts seriously as an academic topic meriting discussion in earnest and not hubba hubba nice tits and also not eschewing saying anything because we don't want to be seen as saying hubba hubba nice tits, so silence is golden and who cares that means women's topics often are not discussed at all here."

This is part of why representation matters. As a woman on an overwhelmingly male forum, I sometimes was able to get the ball rolling on female-centric topics that otherwise would have gotten little or no traction, such as this post about Improving breast reconstruction surgery with a web-based survey which was getting almost no response until I chose to reply, which is not something OBVIOUS after the fact from reading the existing written record in part because the time stamps now appear as merely DATES, so it's no longer easy to go "Oh, this was up for x amount of time with only one or two replies until SHE commented, and then the conversation exploded."

Here is the text of one of the replies to my comment and I'm posting it here because this ugly reply to me was flagged to death and may not be visible to just anyone because of technical aspects of HN:

Ugh, sometimes I wish I could double downvote some comments, or that there was some "come on, at least have some decency" moderation here. I mean, of course, you, a random internet commenter with no medical knowledge whatsoever knows better than a plastic surgeon who deals with patients every day what information those patients need most to make better decisions about what is, for many of them, the biggest decision they have to make about their bodies in their lives?

"As a woman who gets tired of some people acting like I am only a sex object and the only parts of me that matter are the parts covered by a bikini"

What a petty, misanthropic way of looking at the efforts of someone who is doing their best to help people (not just 'people', women, specifically) at often one of the worst points in their lives. I hope you just wrote this comment off the cuff and regret it after re-reading it after your coffee, because if this is really how you feel, I feel truly sorry for you for being such a bitter, nihilistic person.

The entire reason that survey got traction is because I commented but if you read the comments now, the record suggests the post author was thrilled to pieces with the amazing wonderful experience of posting to HN except for that one fly in the ointment, DoreenMichele, some petty bitch whose take on things the world would be better off without.

Please notice how this ungrateful butthead has a green handle. That means the account was NEW and he likely had absolutely no idea I was the highest ranked openly female member there and the ONLY way his breast survey had ANY hope of getting traction on this sausage fest forum was if I gave it my blessing and said in essence "This is a topic you people with penises can discuss respectfully. I say so."

And then the flood gates opened while people openly pissed on the person who opened them. 

Something not on the written record is that I replied at some point to all this stupid hatred being aimed at me and stated that I replied precisely BECAUSE it was getting no meaningful traction and there was a history of me have the power to get the conversation going and I linked to this discussion of bras and the very first comment there -- MINE under a different handle -- as evidence and talked a little about what happened there.

I deleted the comment because I didn't want to make it about me and because you can't make misogynistic jackasses respect you anymore than you can successfully insist your husband actually love you by screaming in his face or I would surely still be extremely happily married. Replying to their shit in any way only puts a focus on the pile of manure, so there's no record of that comment and exactly what I said.

That kind of thing also happened a lot to me on Metafilter as well and the homeschooling email list tagmax, one of the lists run by tagfam.org.

That breast survey was being largely ignored until I said something, then other people were willing to engage with it in earnest because the highest ranked openly female member took it seriously and gave them feedback in earnest and the author gave glowing feedback to the entire community for how overwhelmed they were by this amazing experience AND if you go back and read it, it looks like I'm some petty bitch everyone wishes would STFU.

No, the butthead author didn't email me and personally thank me or even seem to realize I'm the reason they got this amazing experience. They implicitly seem to agree with everyone else that I'm some sack of shit who should keep my bitchy opinions to myself as the only way I can improve the world.

I KNEW I was influential on HN BECAUSE I'm openly female and consciously and intentionally USED that fact to promote meaningful discussion of female-centric topics without promoting my views as the ONLY politically correct take on such topics and without making the discussion about me.

Other people don't see it. AT ALL. 

These days, it no longer matters what I do on HN, it's nothing but abusive disrespectful pointless bullshit anytime I say anything and I've stopped participating.

I think they probably wish I would come back because they know my absence is felt by the moderating staff and anyone who wants quality discussion there. I think that in part because I was ASKED to repost this piece 89 days ago when the original post was posted by me seven months ago and I seriously doubt that HN is THAT desperate for content.

What they are desperate for is quality participation by WOMEN members who aren't man hating bitches openly there for the express purpose of pissing and moaning about feminist bullshit.

But I'm almost certainly NEVER going to return. I've had enough of people openly pissing on me and telling me to get a real job and quit my bitching while they eagerly repost SHIT over and over written by Patrick McKenzie and line his pockets and simultaneously tell me "You can't make money as a blogger (you STOOPID cunt)."

It's a waste of my time to participate and it no longer accomplishes anything at all remotely constructive.

No, the designated whipping girl isn't capable of fixing it. That's not how social stuff works.

Coming back and saying "Yum. I love eating your shit." won't elevate the conversation ever again nor in any way improve my life.

The only silver lining is I now feel free to tell my utter and complete lack of audience what I REALLY think while I wait to die of poverty. 

So, yay?