joeylittle
Sponsor
I agree that it's good to not hop on a bandwagon. I disagree with evaluating whether or not someone is abrasive - it's pretty subjective. Dogging is also subjective. Insisting on being right, that's easier to observe as a behavior, but then, I still go back to the only power I truly have, which is to state my mind, if it matters to me - and then walk away.
I think that when people have been trapped and powerless in situations (which is super-common for trauma survivors) it's very hard for them to remember that walking away is actually an option - because it probably wasn't, when the trauma was occurring. Walking away is very easy on the internet; harder sometimes in real life, but still, it's always an option - even if it's to walk away for 10 minutes, or walk away mentally but not physically.
It's also hard when people have been silenced, either as part of their trauma or as a result of it, for them to accept silence as a healthy alternative to argument. But, a mission to change someone's beliefs will always fail. You can put your view on the table - that's stating your mind - they have to choose to pick it up.
You can force change on someone's actions, if you're endowed with the ability to enforce a rule. Even so - and I'm sure anyone who has to set or maintain rules as part of their daily life - if a person doesn't want to accept the rule, they just won't. No amount of coercion will make them care, or change anything about how they are functioning. The rule exists to stop them - it doesn't necessarily change them.
I'm really wary of group-think, anywhere. I can think of a few members who will think I'm full of bullshit when I say that...but as much as I wish there were some such thing as a basic human consensus point - there is not. What it means to be respectful, what it means to be kind, what it means to be humble, what it means to be tolerant, what it means to be strong...at least, in life, individuals can try and organize themselves into groups that have roughly similar understandings of these concepts.
The internet is the largest plaza in the world, where virtual roads all converge, and virtual communities form. Those communities are sometimes driven by shared values - and sometimes by shared topic.
Certainly MyPTSD is a community that shares a topic. It's why I believe things get so heated around diagnosis conversations...the one and only thing we can all claim to have in common, truly, is PTSD. But values? Those don't all line up. And so, inside the site, people often gravitate naturally into those smaller groups where they see shared definitions of what it means to be (fill-in-the-blank).
That is what a clique is. And they are where group-think comes from.
When the clique decides to speak with a unified voice - as in, 'you are inappropriately insistent' - they are wrong, because they are levying a moral/values-based judgement as a group in a place where the majority of people are non-grouped. In other words - it's not the group's call to make, as a group.
When individuals choose to speak their mind, well, that's always allowed. Opinions are like assholes, everyone's got them, and they have a right to use them.
And when individuals share their opinions/worries/concerns/frustration with the people who can levy change (staff) - it's incredibly useful, because seeing one member rack up reports is a hell of a lot more useful than having that same bunch of members gang up on an unpopular or controversial or annoying (to them) opinion. That's very specific to the site, but in environments where the thing people have in common isn't values so much as topic, it's usually the case.
And..that would be my very large comment on why moving as a group only works when the group has come together with a big bunch of shared values.
The site's values are pretty clear, and also, pretty loose. It's why 'take what's useful, leave the rest' is such a helpful action statement. And it's why I know there are posts/posters who 'are allowed' to remain when bunches of people think they should have been gone already. People are going to have shitty days. Often, while they are here. If they can re-regulate, if they can close the keyboard, if they are engaging in the reason why we are here - PTSD - then they have a right and have a voice. If they can't, they get a restriction. If they repeatedly can't, they get removed.
And it's especially easy on the internet to practice this shit, because no-one should be so invested as to be unable to say their piece, and walk away. It's really strange to me when grudges develop in online places like this. Just not liking people, that I understand. But actual grudges baffle me. Why would you hold a grudge against a set of words and a one inch square picture, when the only person who suffers from holding the grudge is the holder, not the subject?
And, off the soapbox.
