The original post by @spujb@lemmy.cafe was a woman wearing a shirt that says “Italians do it better”. Someone asked what they do, and drag explained the joke as best as drag understood the intention, though drag disagrees that Luigi killed that CEO. It’s not a call for violence, it’s an explanation of a joke. Other people interpreted the joke the same way.
Less than an hour later, Flying Squid banned drag for that explanation, and for saying Luigi is not guilty. According to Flying Squid, referencing the CEO shooter case and saying Luigi didn’t do it is a call for violence. Expressing support for Luigi Mangione is a bannable offense on LemmyShitpost.
EDIT: The Picard Maneuver responded to drag’s appeal and reversed the ban. Drag will be deleting this post as it is no longer relevant to the current state of affairs on Lemmy Shitpost.
Joking or alluding to it is seemingly fine. Just don’t straight up say “kill billionaires” like Drag, I guess. Because plenty of others, including myself, have been making jokes with the same sentiment and we’re not banned nor have had our comments removed.
With the way Drag usually talks in 3rd person, I kinda feel like it’s just an excuse to ban the dude because someone finds him annoying. This is also the first time I am seeing FlyingSquid being called out for banning someone, and it actually isn’t just someone who said some bigoted shit and got mad at facing consequences.
Yeah, the ban reason looks like it was more of a final straw thing than specifically about that one comment.
I don’t mind drag much, as long as I remember not to engage about some things. But they stir shit often enough I can imagine a mod just hitting a limit.
Fwiw though, eat the fucking rich doesn’t work as well when they’re running away, so you kinda gotta bring them down first ;)
Oh, well we have had some conflict in the past. You see, his daughter wants to use she/they pronouns, but he won’t let her. If anyone refers to her with a ‘they’ or ‘them’ pronoun, he gets really mad at them. That’s what drag did, and he was furious.
Jesus fucking Christ.
Stop bringing this up all the time. For continuing this shitty behaviour I would perma ban you!
Oh that’s crummy, I thought FlyingSquid was better than that.
Ehhh, there’s more to the story than just that.
For people curious : https://lemmy.world/comment/13257428
Thanks, I couldn’t find it.
Yeah, there’s the fact that it happened right after he said it’s okay to they/them everyone, as an excuse for not respecting neopronouns.
I’m going to drop a bit here. Normally, I don’t take bait like this, but I think it relevant to the overall question of whether or not the posted event was power tripping in that it goes to evaluation of the person making the post, in the context of their pronoun proclivities.
Neopronouns are a pain in the ass. They aren’t a bad thing in and of themselves. They make people think. That’s good by itself, but unfortunately, they don’t work beyond being an interesting and compelling thought experiment. They’re never going to be respected because of how the brain works with language patterns. Well, but in English anyway, your could probably get them working in Esperanto, or other languages, but since each neopronoun needs integration and conjugation as it arises, you can’t make it part of early language development in English without also screwing up normative language acquisition even more than English already does.
Drag knows this. Drag may or may not agree, but drag has to know this because it’s evident across the board, in almost every situation where it comes up.
And that is where this post becomes one where the mod accused of power tripping, isn’t.
See, there’s this thing called shit stirring. It isn’t the same as rage baiting, or trolling, though it overlaps some, and very commonly overlaps with sealioning. And that is what drag does a lot of, shit stirring.
Now, as I said before, I don’t think the ban was about the specific comment made in this case, but as a result of repeated shit stirring by drag. Drag may not consider it shit stirring, and may have even convinced themselves that it isn’t. But drag has a long habit of making targeted posts that are worded in just the right way to claim plausible deniability of trolling, but are very obviously going to stir shit.
Why? No clue. Could it be some fundamental disconnect where drag just doesn’t get Edgar they’re doing? Maybe. I’ve met people that stir shit and think they’re just having a conversation.
Could it be that they think they’re doing something socially motivated? Maybe. I’ve seen people play word games and sea lion with a seemingly genuine intent the make people think. Alas, it ends up eventually failing because it’s a dick move. Nobody is going to be able to consistently nail every attempt at it. So they’ll end up just being a dick here and there instead. They lean too hard into the bit and it flops.
Could it be a troll akin to what has been done before, where by pretending to advocate for neo pronouns, the troll is actually making a mockery of trans people in general? I kinda doubt it myself. Drag does tend to advocate for trans rights overall, so it doesn’t add up to a malicious troll. Which is separate from whether outi not neopronouns hurt that cause or not (which isn’t part of this, but I’ve seen it pointed to in some drag-related drama).
This might give the impression that I have beef with drag. This is not the case. Until a post like this comes up, I don’t really think about them at all. It’s one of those internet things that’s curious, but effectively meaningless outside the forum it occurs on.
I think the idea is interesting, and it’s made me think harder about neopronouns than I otherwise would have. Didn’t change my conclusions, but that’s tangential.
However, drag, the ban was deserved, just not for the specific comment you made. You’re dead right that what you said was not a call for violence. That it took that long for the ban to happen is surprising, but it really shouldn’t have happened with “calling for violence” given because it’s a bullshit reason. The rest of that ban reason is perfectly valid. You do have a long history of stirring shit, intentionally, or through some lack of social and language awareness. The why doesn’t matter when your written words are still the same as someone would use if they were doing it as a bad actor rather than some naive or tone deaf person with the best intent.
Seriously here, no hate, I’m just telling you that if your goal isn’t shit stirring, that you are way off in your understanding of how English, public discourse, and basic manners work.
Drag would like to make you think a bit more, if that’s okay. Neopronouns certainly do catch on. For example, singular ‘you’ used to be a neopronoun. It replaced ‘thou’. Likewise, singular ‘they’ was a neopronoun ten years ago. It took less than a decade to catch on and become ubiquitous. And ‘it’, when referring to a person, is currently a neopronoun. One that’s very easy to use from a grammatical standpoint, but gives some people trouble, because it feels disrespectful.
You said that neopronouns impair language development. But drag thinks the precise opposite: neopronouns are absolutely essential to the acquisition of proper language skills. You said yourself that drag made you think about the nature of pronouns. Over the past month drag has met a lot of people who think conjugation is a function of grammatical person rather than a function of the individual pronoun. They’re native speakers who don’t understand how their own language works. Because they’ve never been properly challenged.
English is in dire need of more neopronouns, so that adults who think they’ve mastered the language can still learn something. And so that children can have a broader set of experience to draw from to facilitate learning. Otherwise they’ll pick up false assumptions like the conjugation thing.
Making people think isn’t an act of violence, it’s a civic duty. A person who’s stopped learning is practically dead already. Making people think saves lives from monotony and stagnation. And that isn’t to say drag’s identity isn’t genuine. Drag just wishes there were more interesting queer people in the world committing the seditious act that is existing.
That’s not what happened: https://lemmy.world/comment/13257428
Here’s Squid saying his daughter uses she/they:
And here he is talking about banning drag for using a ‘they’ pronoun to refer to his daughter and making a point of using ‘her’ in italics instead:
He seems to be convinced he’s acting in her best interests by not letting anyone call her ‘they’. He says using her preferred pronouns is misgendering. It’s some kind of twisted backwards version of trans rhetoric where you ignore what children want to be called and act like that’s respect.
Kind of off topic, but he wasn’t a billionaire. Not saying he was poor, he still has so much money that most of us will never see, but imagine that Elonia has 7,000 times more than him and still hangs out around trump to get even more.
The wealth inequality is crazy high right now.
They are pretty annoying, to be fair, I can’t blame Squid for having enough.
Drag was answering a question. If you put the question and the answer together, you get “Italians kill billionaires better”. Drag’s reply wasn’t a full sentence. It was a statement, not an imperative.
Drag these nuts across your mouth
Removed by mod
Hey there. What’s with that “dude” and “him” in your comment? My rider’s a dragon rider, not a dude.
Everyone is a dude. Dude is gender and species neutral.
Him is because I forgot Drag’s preferred pronouns. 😔
You were banned for saying “Kill billionaires”.
Not for saying “Luigi Mangione isn’t guilty tho”.
Even if you didn’t mean it as an invitation or incitement to homicide and merely as an answer, completion, or riff to the previous statement, on its own it can be interpreted that way.
I’m rooting for Luigi too, I don’t feel sorry about the death of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, and I do think billionaires shouldn’t get comfortable with profiting from our suffering. But the mods reserve the right to remove stuff they feel could get them in trouble, chances are someone did interpret it this way and made a report (wasn’t me I swear). There may be certain contexts, communities, instances, where this is allowed but you will have to determine that or ask.
One would have to be a moron to take that as an imperative rather than as an answer to the question. That’s bad moderation.
I think you’re being a little bit facetious; surely you can see that while yes, you technically answered the question, you didn’t phrase it in the form of an explanation. I’m not pearl-clutching and accusing you of condoning the murder, but that response was pretty obviously toeing the line at best.
It wasn’t obvious to drag. Maybe that’s because drag has autism, and needs to expend conscious effort to think of ways drag can be misinterpreted. Drag would edit it for clarity if drag could, but bans prevent editing comments.
Dragon Fucker is playing the victim after making up shit about other people? No way.
Oh, no, you’re misunderstanding how drag feels. Drag doesn’t feel like a victim at all. In fact, drag feels quite fortunate not to be the kind of person who gets mad at out of context quotes. It’s kind of life-affirming, to be the sort of person who struggles to think that way.
Dude, give it a rest. You’re entire third person, trolling, abusive comments, and always playing the autism and “i dont understand” card is old and tired.
Im honestly surprised you haven’t been banned from every server yet like your old “dronerights” accounts were last year.
You say you’re not playing the victum, yet here we are in a topic you created to whine.
You’re welcome to think every nonbinary person is the same individual if you like. But drag’s intention with this post was to warn others that LemmyShitpost isn’t a safe space. Not everything in the world is about drag, silly.
What in the world are you talking about. Everything can be tracked here.
You were banned for being a pain in the ass and constantly accusing users of being transphobic, just like the other places you’ve been banned
Are you sure you’re not dronerights?
Squid called me a facial analysis expert because i said i didn’t think Luigi looked like the suspect photos lol
So it’s a pattern of Squid getting on the case of people who think Luigi didn’t do it?
While I’m personally inclined to agree with drag that that was quite clearly answering a question and not an imperative, I also don’t think that it should be frowned on to protect the instance one moderates from potentially being taken down.
Lemmy is still (relatively) small enough that it can fly under the radar, but that’s not going to last forever.
Well, maybe someone who reads the context on comments could take over protecting the instance and give Squid a break. He mods so many communities, it’s clear he’s overworked.
Squid participates in mod abuse, but you’re clearly arguing in bad faith.
Good that so, I am surprised how many mods just straight up ignore or support glorification of violence, respect to him for enforcing the rules consistently even if it’s an unpopular decision
Power mods gonna power trip …
PTB.
If ending a joke is promoting violence, where are the bans of the people defending Harris, Biden or the Democrat party, for promoting a violent genoocide ?
And where are the bans for the people saying Luigi should be locked up? Imprisonment is a violent act.
So you were explaining the joke, sure. But then added your opinion that the pertubator didn’t do it and wasn’t guilty of committing that crime?
That’s borderline a call for violence which is against the rules of that community. Sorry but YDI and you should do better.
well he’s innocent until proven guilty and he hasn’t been proven guilty yet, has he?
Well you got a point there.
That’s right, Luigi didn’t do it. The feds are telling us the CEO Shooter was a master planner who timed the kill perfectly and used a 3D printed disposable gun. But now they’re saying they found Luigi in the next state over WITH the disposable gun. It doesn’t make any sense. The government is lying to us. And that’s not a call for violence.
So you are a detective and a judge now? Cool cool.
Did you forget cars exist?
Drag thinks he should be further away, not closer.Chozo saw the comment notification and thought for a moment that you were Drag explaining himself.
Fuck, it’s contagious.
You used the reflexive pronoun “himself” when the last pronoun you had used previously was “drag”. That’s not proper grammar. You’re supposed to use a reflexive pronoun to refer to whoever you just referred to a minute ago. And you certainly weren’t using “himself” to refer to drag, because drag isn’t a him.
No, drag thinks the killer disposed of the disposable gun that’s meant to be disposed of in New York. Probably at the bottom of the Hudson or somewhere. The feds even said they dispatched divers to search New York’s waterways. It makes no sense for the killer to still have the gun, and that’s why drag thinks the killer didn’t have the gun. The feds found the gun, and then planted it on Luigi. It might even have been in that backpack they found, the one with the monopoly money.
Okay
I suppose it’s just a really convenient coincidence that he also had a years-long social media history that all but spells out his plans word for word, and then also a manifesto that likely does spell out his plans word for word.
I’m leaning toward it being mangione, but I also think the substack post could have been posted by the FBI to pad their evidence. The gun, money, and note found on him would be easily planted by the cops. I don’t value police testimony in this situation at all, given the “faraday cage” they described and their long, long history of planting or exaggerating evidence.
Especially because it’s not exactly hard to find people who talk shit about the health insurance industry and “like” quotes by the unabomber. I am not personally capable of violence, but I’m sure I’ve said “the industrial revolution and its consequences” in response to kafkaesque advanced capitalism or news of yet another climate change marker.
They look similar and mangione fits the vibe of the shooting, but I do think that the FBI could probably find 2-3 more people with the same vibe who look similar if they really had to- it’s a big country full of people with grudges against insurance and he’s not too distinctive looking.
Oh, someone definitely planned for that fact. But drag isn’t quite sure who. Either Luigi took the fall on behalf of the CEO shooter because he agreed with him and wanted to protect him, or the cops combed social media to find a fall guy with similar appearance and views. Maybe a combination of both. The only sure thing is that the story the government is telling us doesn’t make sense. The guy perfectly planned an assassination with an exit strategy, and then showed a fake ID to the cops and started shaking when it didn’t clear? The feds are lying about something.
Who’s big as titties are those though?
Bruh
