Make Atheist Forums Great Again (Part 1)

[Angrboda]

I must confess that I thought I might have been a little over the line in a recent in-person discussion when I referred to more centrist Democrats as, "Neville Chamberlain Democrats." But it does point up a couple of things. First, you don't need harsh language to be aggressive and insulting. But probably more importantly, this isn't an in-person discussion. If you're looking for that then perhaps you should seek in-person discussions and avoid the internet altogether. In-person discussions serve very different goals, interests, and needs. Trying to impose the standards of some other social activity upon the forum is in some cases simply a stealth way of attacking something you have reasons to oppose that aren't actually the reason you are giving. That would be dishonest, and I don't sympathize with that. It might be desirable for online discussions to avoid some things that are avoided in in-person discussions, but for very different reasons than those for which they are avoided in in-person discussions. I'm not going to go into an exploration of all the reasons people avoid such in in-person engagements, but few of them are relevant here in the same way they are relevant there, and even there, there are exceptions (e.g. protest, political activism, street corner advocacy, etc.).