We have a lot of angst online for failure to understand this distinction.
Take a basic scenario:
Good person gets called out for doing shitty things vs bad person getting called out doing shitty things.
What's the difference?
In terms of the shitty things? No difference at all. Doing shitty things is undesirable.
Where to go from there?
Personal judgement, and that's where the real personal attack actually is.
Frankly, failure to grok that diminishes the value of an actual personal attack while also at the same time marginalizing discussion on behavior that is or may not be shitty.
And here's a variation on that for you, just for shits and giggles:
You know, I've heard other people say you are a dick, but never believed it until now.
LOL
Where did I get that one?
My wife said it to a policeman who had just got done beating me up in my driveway because I would not allow access into my home without a warrant. Yes, I grinned. Got the message across without actually speaking to them as a person.
Truth is, their action did all the telling necessary.
One last variation on this:
Say we've got a racist handy and they do or say something basically racist.
We could declare, "you are a racist!" and render personal judgement and trigger a whole bunch of discussion that won't get anyone anywhere, but it may be gratifying.
Or, we could say, "that comes off as racist, are you sure you want to go there?" Or some variation on that.
The difference, while subtle, is in the former case we've made a personal judgement that is hard to get away from, or past.
The latter is speaking to behavior. People can make different choices later on, entertain advocacy, even ask for help having never been judged. Getting past that is an order easier.
...all of which is why people dislike personal attacks!
Who likes being judged? I don't.
And there we are back to this whole thing. Nobody judged anyone. They communicated how behavior comes off to others and that's it.
Since there was no judgement, no personal attack, all it really boils down to some feedback that the commenter can use to make different choices in the future, or not, no worries at all.
This meta discussion, is unfortunate, but worth it, if any passers by take away the difference.
Budgets are stretched thin as it is. They have only three ways to spend the taxpayers' money for prisons: More walls, more bars, more guards. My uncle wrote the state senate two times a week for years requesting funds, they couldn't ignore him forever. But getting out, he couldn't believe how fast things move on the outside, like the world went and got itself in a big damn hurry.
This article waxing poetic about the bastion that is journalism, taking down the big guy. Oh please. What we've seen is that journalists are not allowed to take on certain topics or the big guy, unless it's an enemy of their own big guy. They act more as media relations than journalists. And mainstream media has really lost its mind and jumped the shark over the last few years. Might be harder than they think to recover reputations.
Just hours ago, I had posts shadow removed from r/nba, ya sports. All well within rules, but not acceptable for whatever reason, and that's their right(maybe should only be for staff not sub mods though to shadow,) but it sucks. Makes a platform even if it's the only game in town pretty unusable. When I commented in said thread that they were shadow banning many comments, I got the 2 day ban :) I've commented before here, that shadow banning is very underhanded even if effective and especially infuriating when your content is fine which are most of my experiences. So then at some point you have to wonder about what even gets out vs what all is mined, and used however. Just populate the platforms fully with bots and marketeers I guess and let them talk amongst themselves. Maybe we can give those bots and marketers the right to vote as an extension of corporate personhood. The interesting thing is how you have zero recourse, not to say you should or have any right, but you were likely in the middle a discussion with another person/people and you are now to look the fool with removed content and no ability to respond. Shady business, but luckily sports in this case.
update nobody wants: I took other's advice and contacted the mods and reported like the private message suggests. Somehow that was "evading the ban" which got me a permanent site-wide ban. I never logged in to any other account or posted on the banned one in the sub banned from. It makes no sense. Did they just take a sub mods false word on this? I would have thought that's something determined in code pretty easily. I'll respect this though and not use their service, and talk truthfully about them to anyone who will listen. I understand they are a ycombinator company, so please don't ban me here too for sports wrongthink and being critical of a once really good platform.
