Yes, you can’t challenge or admonish authority. There are no appeals in a dictatorship since there’s no one to appeal to. I think a dictatorship can work if you get lucky and get a good dictator, but many times the power reveals corruption.
I was talking to some guys on a physics forum and most were nice, but one longstanding member was unable to reply to me without making me the topic of debate in derogatory fashion. I kept telling him that wasn’t necessary, but he kept insisting I be the topic. So I gathered all the ad hominems of the thread into one post so he could see what he’s doing (btw an ad hominem is not necessarily an insult, but an argument directed “to the man”. It’s a change of subject or a red herring.)
You blah blah
You yada yada
You can’t
You refuse to
You won’t
I said “See?”
The guy was smart and I didn’t want to piss him off, I just wanted him to stop making me feel stupid unnecessarily because I won’t simply accept his authority instead of his explaining his assertion.
It was actually going quite well as he seemed remorseful about it, that is, until a mod popped up claiming that they encourage spirited debate and he’s seen no violation. I said you see no problem with making me the topic? He disagreed and warned furthermore that my continued replying to him IS considered offtopic and a violation. Oh boy, wrong thing to do because I tore into him! He posted in MY thread instead of pm-ing me and then claimed that I am offtopic if I reply to him?!? I gave him a big piece of my mind and told him that whatever he intended to do about it would be forever unknown to me, then shook the dirt off my feet and left. It’s a good illustration of an otherwise manageable situation getting escalated by the appearance of authority.
Well obviously there was no sense hanging around since ad homming was just sanctioned by authority and appeals were considered a violation for the sake of a righteous compulsion that I couldn’t resonate with. So they lost a very speech-maximizing member, in my opinion, and have presumably been relegated to entertaining themselves. Forums are dying and they need me more than I need them since there are other places for me to go while not many people who are willing to forsake Twitter, FB, and YouTube to participate in specialized discussion forums.
I’ve never understood the anally retentive compulsion to obsessively adhere to topics anyway. Back in 2008 I watched a mod drive himself crazy locking threads, banning people, deleting posts, doing thread surgery and for what? Who reads those threads now? Who gives a shit about all that work? The AI bots??? People can’t even read a paragraph; much less a long thread from 10 years ago. Btw I just got my newly redesigned phone bill in the mail… it looks like a Dr. Seuss coloring book. That speaks volumes of where society is heading. The next lifeform to read this will be silicon-based (Hello AI peeps )