Hey, everyone. Hope this post finds you all well! A few days ago, PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS opened a comm request thread to name the community formerly known as The Dredge Tank. Now that it’s been about 4 days and the votes seem pretty steady, we’re rea-
“STOP THE COUNT!!!”
“Mr. President, she’s talking.”
As I was saying, we’re ready to call the vote. Nobody’s been happy with counterpropaganda, and we’ve heard you loud and clear. I’m excited to announce that Slop. is now open for all the posts you’d have previously posted to The Dredge Tank.
El Chisme continues to remain the new space for posts that would have been at home in The Dunk Tank.
In case anyone’s confused about this, I’m gonna give a really quick explanation so everyone’s on the same page with what’s going on with the Tanks. The names of The Dunk Tank and The Dredge Tank have racist origins. The moderators of those communities agreed that the names of these communities should be changed. Unfortunately, while Lemmy allows the display names of communities to be changed, it does not currently allow the actual comm names to be changed. In order to change the names of these communities, we would have to shut them down and re-open new comms under new names. The mods of the dunk tank and dredge tank requested the name c/gossip. While there are some legitimate arguments being made relating to misogynistic societal perceptions of that word, the mods include women and enbies who disagree and specifically requested this name. I feel that this situation parallels the initial pushback that was experienced with disabled in which users voiced concerns that this name could be ableist, but the moderators of that community are themselves disabled and specifically requested that comm name, verbatim. Along with this name change, the mods felt that slightly expanding the scope of the community and simultaneously lowering the bar for the previous Rule 8 would allow users to post about more minor public figures as well as more major ones. This was seen as an expansion of the community’s role, allowing posts to the new Dredge Tank replacement (counterpropaganda) to become a little more focused. We communicated this poorly, but the intention was to have users offer a sentence or two countering the reactionary take shown in the screenshot. Given how things spiraled from there, we’ve taken a step back from changing any of the rules during the switchover from The Dredge tank to Slop. We’re trying to take time to let everyone breathe without changing too many things too quickly, but we also want to actually make sure people can get back to posting. Hopefully you’re all okay with this pacing, lemme know below.
EDIT: thanks to @niph@hexbear.net for pointing out that this post didn’t include the descriptions of the comms.
Where am I supposed to post…?
Slop is for what the old dredge_tank was like. Roast anonymous reactionaries to your heart’s content!
Gossip for an informal discussion regarding people with power / notable / tools of power
Counterprop for a formalized discussion regarding reactionary people no matter how powerful/notable.
In upcoming admin updates:
-
I’ll post some analysis of mistakes and missteps that were made in recent days, including some of the context that led up to those errors.
-
I’ll offer a clearer and more complete explanation and description of the ongoing site culture issues that have been previously mentioned. These were poorly communicated before, but I’ll do my best to explain both the issues at hand as well as the importance of dealing with them.
The last few days have been really confusing and frustrating for a lot of people and a lot has happened. This is not an appropriate place to reopen, re-litigate, or rehash the struggle session. I will not be debating either the struggle session or the subjects of the upcoming admin update posts here. Please refrain from doing so as well.
“Folks, we’re feeding the fish their slop, they’re tremendously hungry, incredibly famished. And look: I get to feed them. They say: Mr President, please feed the koi fish, its din din time, and it is! I get to do the little shaka-shaka with the can, and they’re happy, they’re eating -they’re eating- out of the palm of my hand, and they’re getting so big and so strong. Look at all these koi fish! I bet they won’t have any issues finding -finding- a special someone. And it’s wonderful, it’s great. Greydon Carter could never be a tremendously effective keeper of fish. His party is not so hot, and all of his betta fishes are dying! But Lyudmila’s letting me feed them, and I’m doing a tremendously great job, and a looot better than what Sleepy Joe would do!”
Why Gossip instead of the dunk tank?
Because there was ample evidence of the dunk tank, as a term, being an abhorrently racist term that killed people, whereas gossip is a tool that has been vital to marginalized communities demonized by the patriarchy over time. The site has recently committed to addressing the issue of misogyny on the site and lemmy at large. The moderators of the gossip community are dedicated to reclaiming Gossip as a means by which a group of marginalized people can commiserate over those that wield the power which oppresses them or are willing tools of it.
description of torture
This instrument called the scold’s/witch’s/gossip bridle was an iron muzzle that locked onto the women’s head and mouth, pressing their tongue down to prevent them from speaking.
Gossip as a gendered term
Origin of Gossip
History of Gossip
Evolution of Gossip
I’m certain that I read in some statement, I don’t recall where, that the term gossip was chosen specifically because it was frivolous, to emphasize the frivolousness of the posts there. Now it’s said that this is all about reclaiming the term for marginalized people?
It isn’t either one reason or the other, there were multiple people desiring gossip for different reasons, and the full reasoning was not adequately communicated. We are currently working to overhaul both the decision-making and communication process to prevent this from occurring in the future
But aren’t those two reasons contradictory? It honestly just seems from the outside like “gossip” was chosen because the mods felt that tank posts about celebs were becoming frivolous rage bait, and wanted to give a dismissive label to that kind of content, didn’t foresee the misogyny issue, and are now taking the reclamation line because they refuse to admit they were wrong.
To be honest I have some sympathy for the stance that the million “Musk is stupid” posts per day were frivolous, but you need to realise that the majority of complaints are (and have been throughout this debacle) about
It’s about the way issues have been handled more than the content of the problem. The arguments about the content of the problem are easily comprehended and have been politely discussed by everyone. The continued insistence on imposing a generally unpopular decision is contributing to the impression of (3).
Having said all that I do want to say thank you to both admins in this thread for making massive improvements and an effort to communicate better. I think your most recent formulation of the intended content of the new comms works well and should be pinned somewhere more prominent than in Nth level replies.
OH MY GOSH! I just knew I was missing something when I made the post, but I couldn’t figure it out. Sorry, been really scrambling lately to make this right, and I need to pace myself a little so mistakes like this don’t happen! Ok, back to the start of this comment, and then I’ll go add the description of the communities to the main post
Multiple different people had different motivations for endorsing the proposal.
As one of the women who both endorsed and approved the proposal, my support was based on reclamation. Reclamation of the word gossip is very well-supported in even mainstream feminist circles to the point that I honestly thought it was common knowledge. Gossip has been badly maligned by patriarchy, but we have taken the word back because it’s important. I wanted to create a more positive and fun vibe that would be less alienating insular in order to bring more leftist women and queer people to the site. A good example of the energy I’m hoping to give a leftist perspective on Hexbear can be viewed on r/fauxmoi, a gossip space on Reddit where I’ve seen some surprisingly good takes and even occasional leftist analysis. My secondary intention was that hexbears with unexamined biases and internalized misogyny might examine these, around the word gossip itself, perception of gossip as an inherently feminine activity, and the acknowledgement that dunking on Elon in the_dunk_tank is the same activity as celebrity gossip.
I’m really sorry about these. If I could undo them, I would. I suddenly needed to take a mental health break from site administration due to some personal life events last week, so I wasn’t able to be the one communicate our changes. I had to come back early from that break to help communicate this better after it went poorly. I’m sorry I wasn’t here communicating to you all.
TC69 definitely shouldn’t have been “put into the driver’s seat of a moving car,” so to speak. She should have come back as a user or honorary admin without moderation tasks for a while to get reacclimated to the changes between when she left and now. Alaskaball’s bit of fighting with their own account is really funny in a vacuum, but it was very poorly timed. They should have made it clear they were doing a bit instead of leaving everyone (including other admins) unaware and horrified, especially considering the state of the admin threads at that point.
The mods and admins have always been in charge of steering the direction of the site. Current motivations are to reduce some of the negativity and toxicity on the site and to become a more inclusive and comfy space for women, people of color and ethnic minorities, and queer people.
I’m gonna go add the explanation of the comms to the post. Thanks again for the reminder!
deleted by creator
Different mods had different reasoning for desiring the name. Both things can be true at once
deleted by creator
I hope this comment will be my sole involvement in all of this, but this doesn’t explain why specifically choose the word ‘gossip’ - which you yourself point out has a history of being used to humiliate women - and not any less controversial option, aside from ‘the moderators are dedicated to reclaiming the word’. You also seem to be conflating engagement in the activity and using the word as a name for the activity.
I don’t think that this is a good time for the mod team to stand their ground on this issue, as opposed to, for example, holding a vote on whether or not people are okay with the name.
Gossip is a bad name for the comm. It will mostly have content thst is in no way gossip and it isn’t a play on words, just the wrong word. It seems to me that the most likely impacts would be for people to post less and for mods to have to do more work as dunk content that was supposed to go there gets posted other places.
“celebrity gossip”?
idk idc i’ll probably block it regardless if i haven’t already
how is it not gossip
I will admit that I did not know all this about the history of the word gossip.
But while I respect the goal of reclaiming terms in general, as a woman I really dislike the name nonetheless. It might be my own internalized stuff, but having spent a lifetime listening to gossiping being ridiculed and having had to actively distance mysels from it to be taken seriously, I feel like if this reclaiming was to be done, it should be done by women only first.
Also gossiping and the dunk tank just vibe very differently for me. Gossiping isn’t nearly always an act of condemnation, it is often just social knowledge transfer and socializing. The tank was crearly something very different. If gossip is most often understood as an activity that women do then making a place like the tank be gossip makes gossip look bad, I hope this makes sense.
I wrote and deleted like 5 posts musing on this subject trying to approach it from a neutral perspective but ultimately decided that it would be too concern trolly coming from a saltine man. I have a hard time believing that the term gossip was every truly a positive term and as I tried to look into the details the sources were all very ‘trust me bro.’
In a similar vein I’m kind of curious to hear black opinions about the name dunk tank. I feel like dunking is one of the safest ways to conjure empowering black imagery, even directly over white people, that the racism archeology required to bring up the problematic usage of the word doesn’t override the positive imagery associated with dunking (which I have to assume that 99+% of people were imagining when they saw that comm).
This is all with the caveat that I don’t actually give a shit about changing the name of the comms or anything, they’re all arbitrary placeholders whose significance is an artificial construct of the people interacting with them (very similar to gender). That said, however, I am now heavily invested in slop. Do not change slop. I don’t care if it turns out that the word was invented by Hitler time traveling to collaborate with King Leopold to create the most effective racial slur ever, I will burn this fucking place to the ground if it gets changed.
sure here’s mine. while “dunking” does make me think of basketball the “dunk tank” is very much the thing you try to dump clowns into at state fairs in my mind. i used to love to watch clowns get dunked as a kid I was low key devastated when I learned the history. just saw one this weekend and thought “uhg”.
uhhhh… no. and yeah that is a bit weird vibes wise I gotta say. like if we tried to use an image of Black basketball player dunking on a cracker that would be off considering the vibes of the former dunk tank. its mostly white people dunking on other white people. it would be giving
I found it be pretty hard to approach as well as I fully contradicted even myself on my own understanding of it in only two comments.
What I am seeing here is the way people have very different understandings of it depending on lived experience and even the context where it gets applied. Not sure if that makes the choice good or bad. It still doesn’t seem to align much with the tank though.
But I too am ok with it, if this is what the community decides. I do think peoples concerns about it should be addressed.
Yeah, I did post a little about my spectrum traits being super bothered by the conflation of gossip and whatever the old comms were. It feels like incredibly imprecise use of language to try to claim that it’s a 1:1 replacement name but at least I understand where that comes from and can accept that it doesn’t bug most people like it bugs me.
Maybe it’s that this is more interesting to me than the election shit or whatever fucking mod seppuku is going on everywhere, but this has captivated my attention. Obviously focusing on middle English terminology is way more eurocentric than this site should strive for and anybody who thinks that Britain in 1000 AD was anything but deeply patriarchal is fooling themselves. Regardless of how socially beneficial the activity was, it’s extremely difficult to imagine that the term used to describe [thing women do] from that place as being a positive one.
I’m very curious about the deeper origins of the word ‘gossip’ as well as the analysis of the similar act that it described/describes in other cultures around the world. I’m sure Eastern traditions are similar because this is a deeply human practice but I wonder what the social connotations are around it historically and at present. I’m sure there are also significant differences in how it’s viewed in African and indigenous American traditions as well. Maybe by the time I’m done looking at all that I’ll come back here and everything will settle back into posts of toothpaste tubes shitting out piles of beanis
I think a gossip comm should be used to verify rumors and information that people are uncertain of. I think having it as a comm is important, and just treating it as a replacement for dunk tank does a disservice to what role it could serve, while inaccurately describing the niche it’s trying to fill.
This is what gossip is, yeah.
I grew up in a very small rural village community and the gossip around there was always community chatter. But I have to add that it was often very damaging to for example marginalized communities as well. And a tool for bullies. So I am not entirely sure if it is a term that should be reclaimed because of the way gossiping has worked in the real world at least in the protestant west.
But, like, “Gossip” is not what people did in the dunk tank- they dunked on people. We should definitely have a name that doesn’t have racist origins, but it should accurately describe what people use the com for.
Yes! Please continue to dunk on people in c/gossip. These two words describe the same activities!
i support the name gossip. it’s like a reclamation of the term. healthy gossip is vital to social bonding, especially in marginalised communities, and i think its exactly what the slop people want actually is. and tbh if men feel uncomfortable “gossiping” or participating in a community called gossip, they might need to reflect and self crit. you can whine about celebrities all u want, but ultimately it’s still a form of gossip, and u might as well accept that. and accept that u are participating in an activitiy stereotyed as feminine, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Hey, you’ve got it almost exactly! My goals in supporting the name gossip were to reclaim the term and to help offer a little push to users who need to self-crit on their discomfort with gossiping.
I’m not sure that gossiping should continue to be stereotyped as feminine. Everyone gossips. We were all already doing it in the tanks!