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8 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1/ Watching a debate on conference "Code of Conduct" right now reminds me how determined people are to disagree, readily misinterpreting innocent statements instead of trying to be empathetic to what was really intended.
2/ Instead of being guards against toxic behavior, half the CoCs I've seen are examples of toxic behavior. Instead of things like "please no smoking" they are of the form "we'll kick you the fuck out if you light up, asshole".
3/ Not one of the CoCs I've seen have actually addressed the problem they claim to solve. Can I wear a hat with the President's campaign slogan? Can I quietly joke about "dongles" with my friend seated next to me?
4/ Such things are controversial and lead to unending debates, leading to the only clear thing that CoCs forbid are already clearly forbidden without CoCs, like harassment, disruption, and illegal behavior.
5/ For those who are intent on toxic behavior, CoCs become how they do it, either justifying bad behavior because the CoC doesn't explicitly forbid it, or using the CoC to disrupt/harass people by claiming otherwise innocent behavior is forbidding by the Coc.
6/ So this is an example of what the top tweet in this chain was about: people are determined to misunderstand. It's a deliberate twisting of what I say/mean into something absurd. 
7/ Nobody has really figured out how to solve our problems. Is wearing a political slogan of the President going to get me kicked out? Well, obviously the answer is "no" phrased that way, ignoring how much people get upset over MAGA hats.
8/ But being that people do get upset over MAGA hats, is wearing one deliberate provocation that'll disrupt the conference? Probably yes, in which case such people should be kicked out. But this creates a Heckler's Veto, that by getting upset over something bans it.
