I was dunking on a recruiter from a PMC earlier, he shared a promo for a ghoul activity and I posted an article about the Israeli strike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital today in response. It’s in a big group chat with some people I know but mostly strangers. A guy I know (who is otherwise cool and has good politics) made a pretty tasteless joke, and another dude who I don’t know told him ‘kys.’ Now, this stranger is someone who has the right intentions and he’d previously commented in support of Palestine and whatnot, so I’m honestly more on his side than my own friend’s. However, I really wanted to stop a friendly fire struggle session from starting because I think it’s most important to call out the actual ghouls, not leftists who make bad jokes or use off color humor.
I stepped in and said I agreed that it was definitely not the right time and we have no right, as privileged westerners, to make jokes about genocide as if it’s “gallows humor” when we aren’t even the ones on the gallows. But I still called the stranger out on going on the offensive on the wrong person. It kinda just aggravated the dude further and it feels like I did something really counterproductive. On the other hand, I did feel frustrated when this dude could easily have jumped on the recruiter guy with that energy instead of an irrelevant bystander. Doesn’t help that it attracted attention from some redditoids who started taunting the guy and getting more reactions out of him.
Feel like maybe I was biased and shouldn’t have defended my friend when his joke made light of an active genocide and made someone uncomfortable. For the record, he just made a bad pun about Doctors without Borders, he didn’t say anything reactionary. Still wildly uncalled for.
Maybe I’m overthinking.
Bless you - you are probably going to be doing damage control in leftist spaces for the rest of your life, like me.
Haha yeah. My friend who made that bad joke does a lot of organizing (honestly, way more real work than me) and he’s very often getting in trouble, though usually with libs, not fellow travelers. I’ve gotten used to being a more diplomatic voice.
I find in online spaces with strangers, ignoring negative behavior can be a highly effective method of dissuading further offenses. Obviously, if you’re moderating a space, the decision matrix changes (if you trust your mod team, the report button is a nice option). But if you’re just a lowly user, replying often just puts a spotlight on the bad behavior – which draws more attention to it and usually makes the author feel like they’ve been backed into a corner, that the only move is defense. (It’s not the only move of course; the author can usually just ignore the whole thing or, if they are really out of options, do some public self-crit). When it is someone you know, a private message in a friendly tone can go a long way. Who knows, maybe they end up removing the offending post themselves. You find out by talking.
If it helps, I’m sure people paying attention noticed that you were trying to mediate for the better. Most users don’t comment (lurking is underrated, posting is overrated).
Thanks for the insight. I felt a little impetus to intervene because they did tell my friend to kill himself which was a step over the line for me. Maybe I would’ve done better to let them sort it out and not take sides.
Ultimately, you know the situation better than I do. Standing up for your friend is nothing to be worried about.
I think the situation describes how three people are coping with the situation:
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The person who is engaging in a degree of denial or keeping things at arm’s length using humour
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The person who is angry that nobody else seems to be taking this as seriously as they do
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The person who has accurately identified the systemic factors which have brought about the current situation and which enable them to persist
Nobody is in the wrong here. It’s just that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between the disparate ways of coping with the situation and responding.
I think to play the role of peacemaker in these kinds of situations is to reconcile yourself with the fact that you’re probanly going to end up being disliked (at least temporarily) by all parties involved.
I don’t mean to armchair quarterback you here but I think next time around when something like this comes up, it usually works to engage with equal measures of empathy and a sort of assertiveness and an accountability call-in with the person who got angry.
Always lead with empathy:
“I get why you’re upset that they made a quip about ‘Doctors Without Bodies’ and you’re right to be angry about it because it seems like nobody is taking this seriously. They are acting from a place of self-interest and that attitude doesn’t do anything to address the situation. Maybe they’ve reached a point of compassion fatigue or they are burnt out by what they’ve seen and this moment could be a wake-up call for them to change their attitude but getting aggressive with them is only going to make them double down. Being aggressive with them is also acting from a place of self-interest in its own way and it doesn’t do anything to improve the situation but rather it risks alienating an ally and making them more likely to disengage from this in the future. Meanwhile, there’s a person who is actively enabling this genocide right in front of us and instead of focusing on them we are engaged in slapfights amongst ourselves because we are acting from a place of self-interest. If we are more concerned about being right than dealing with the situation then all we are doing is setting ourselves up for the ego kick to be able to say “See - I told you so!” when things inevitably get worse. Palestinians deserve better from the world and they deserve better from their us.”
Basically “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed” + a call to refocus on shared values and what is agreed upon to be the actual important issue at hand.
Chances are that this person is also burnt out or they’re in the process of burning out but they might just be a toxic asshole. If it’s the former then you’re basically role modelling to them how they should have responded to the person that made the joke by engaging with empathy and calling them in, and you’re doing that by engaging the angry person with empathy and calling them in over their response. If they’re a toxic asshole though they’d probably just start aiming their anger at you for speaking up.
Ultimately, you did your best and it didn’t work out. Communities are comprised of people and you had 1/3rd of the control over this situation - even if you did everything perfectly, 33% isn’t a passing grade and you were relying the other two parties to contribute at least a half-assed effort to get it over the line.
Don’t be disappointed that you tried, be disappointed that others didn’t step up because they were acting from a place self-interest. Both of them let you down here.
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