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:
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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.
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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.
Gossip as a gendered term
Origin of Gossip
History of Gossip
Evolution of 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