I thought this thread is about this guy: Man sells left TESTICLE for $35,000 to buy his dream sports car There are Asians too. Don't forget them.

Taking the expression "I'd give my left nut to..." rather literally.

As I've stated earlier before, more sane people leaving will just turn more of the forum into the alts. Most of the PM threats and no-life downrepping seems to come from there and leaving is giving them the win.

As to the GG thread, again, it can be revived or parallel topics can be discussed as long as we keep to the rules more strictly. Won't be too hard for most people if both sides just refrained from name calling, which seems to be spark most of the time.

As to leaving, I know you'll be back sooner or later, if nothing else but to lurk. No one leaves a forum and doesn't come back and lurk. Until then, enjoy the break!

And the times when hate speech was a subjective matter are long gone too - it's become a lot more than just that.
A tool, now used to disregard everyone else including those act from the example that we know of it, or you either abuse the term until it is unrecognizable like Gears Of War or it's lost in the vacuum of time without anyone caring from the action being hate speech, like Remember Me, or everyone acts on behalf of it like it's CROSSED, use at your own discretion and the definition of it, or we get this three.

To say GOG or The Users have a fault is already not calling the issue for what it is by not pointing the exact reason it even happened. If we don't learn from time, then there is no point in trying to defend your desicions based on them, no matter the idea.

Except that at the moment it's the reasonable, sane people leaving. Emob is anything but "serially offensive". Aside from the occasional inappropriate joke, his posts were generally rational, common-sense ones. He was never involved in the shit-throwing fuck-you-no-fuck-you arguments. I, for one, I'm not happy to see him go.
Ditto.

I disagree. I think the sane have been gone for a long time and being here over the last year goes a long ways towards proving one's insanity.

Indeed. :P

Add this to the fact that I haven't reported anyone in over a year (and that was for someone calling the Holocaust a good idea) and have NEVER filed a ticket to have a thread closed, and we are dealing with the very embodiment of rational. XD

I said I was happy when the GamerGate thread closed, not because I want to censor people, but because I'm wasn't fond of the fighting. One thing I know as an American is I don't have the right to not be offended, but I can choose to not take part in certain things. I'm fairly new here and as an outside observer, it seem there are ill feelings permeating in many threads and you can feel the tension between certain users sometimes even when they're talking about a game. Overall, this forum at the moment gives me an impression of a tense atmosphere of social and political conflicts rather than a game and entertainment forum. It's what I observed, I'm not forcing people to change their tune. Though this situation isn't helped by certain people who 'shit post' and seems to derive joy from creating reactions. So I stick to certain threads that are more lighthearted.

I suggested before I don't mind the forum having civility and decorum section and a separate wild west section, of course I was accused of censorship. Though I don't think this is the right direction of approach for GoG as a business either.

I have to agree with this statement. I think the forum in this case owned by GoG is private property and they set the rules, if I don't like them I will go elsewhere. Of course, there are abusive mods who selectively delete threads/posts, if I can't agree with the decision I have no choice but leave. This is a bigger issue with YouTube since they are basically a monopoly, but at the moment I have a decent selection in term of internet forums.

Anyone leaving because "oh no, there will be no more freedom from consequence for posting rasist manifestos and trolling!" is hardly sane.

I basically had to delete my Facebook and all social media accounts during the Trump election because people turned to shit.

The new head of The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development thinks the pyramids were built to store grain.

What I see happening here in the forums is along the lines of this. People come here and express themselves freely whether it is friendly and civil or hostile and uncivil. Some think they have an entitled right to express themselves ad infinitum on any topic with any viewpoint in any manner they choose without any repercussion as to how they conduct themselves under the banner of "freedom of expression" and with complete disregard to the stability of the forums or towards others. I'm not pointing fingers at anyone in particular but merely highlighting the observed phenomenon itself.

This is roughly like patrons of a restaurant or Walmart or something engaging in conversation in various topics while within the restaurant or Walmart. Sure, they have freedom of expression to discuss amongst themselves and with other patrons, however they need to do so in a respectful and civil manner that does not boil to the point of a huge dispute breaking out causing civil unrest throughout the restaurant and people throwing food at each other or fist fighting in the isles about political/religious or other topics. When the staff of the restaurant comes to the tables or the manager of Walmart arrives on scene and asks the customers to please keep their behaviour civil or they will be asked to leave, this is what any rational sane human being would expect. The people in the restaurant/store behaving in that uncivil manner are disrupting other customers who are there to eat/shop and enjoy a healthy experience as a patron of the given establishment, they're not there to listen to people arguing and fist fighting and going into boiled full fledged war in the place about any random topic they choose under the premise of "freedom of expression".

This is GOG's restaurant/department store, and we are the patrons of that store. Like the above examples I gave, we are free to communicate amongst each other while in that store on a variety of topics so long as it is non-disruptive to the other customers of the establishment, and if any of us are unable to act civil in this manner under the course of business here, then GOG has every right to ask us to leave the store immediately. In the real world in a restaurant or storefront if people behaved the way that many do here they would absolutely be at a bare minimum asked to leave the premises by the a manager or employee for disrupting other customers and their business itself, and if the people refused to leave and started arguing with them about it, they would call the police and have the offending people removed.

The right to freedom of expression that people enjoy in countries where that is the law of the land does not translate into the right to say anything about anything anywhere you want with impunity and without any repercussions, nor does one's freedom of expression require anyone to listen. There are consequences to one's actions in society, especially if they are uncivil. The people who want to share these expressions still have their right to do so from a megaphone standing on the roof of their house, on their own blog or other platform, but when one is on someone else's property and behaving in a manner that is uncivil and disruptive to others, the owner of that property can and often will ask people to conduct themselves in a civil manner, and if they do not do that or perhaps know how to do that, they will generally be asked to leave or removed by force. A bouncer, a police officer or whatever it takes. That is how society works.

The internet has bred people into thinking they can express themselves wherever they wish however they wish like it is some universal right they have merely for being alive. This is not the case.

If people want to shout off on any topics they want to in any manner of speech desired whether it is civil or not, go sign up for a blog on blogspot.com or wordpress.com or elsewhere, this is not the place. Anyone can get caught off guard and dragged into heated discussions at times, but is all of our personal responsibility as members of civilized society to either police the way we conduct ourselves in public, or to expect that some form of authority or another will step in to remind us to do so at a bare minimum, or to remove us if we're unable or unwilling to conduct ourselves accordingly to maintain law and order.

The majority of customers want to enjoy their meal or shop without getting stabbed by the fight going on at the next table or going deaf from shouting about things that should not even be transpiring in the shop at all to begin with. If people really want to engage in heated hatred and pointless angry hostile debates, do that where it is designed and intended to be done - in the comments section under Youtube videos.

$0.01 CAD

So what, it's not like this is more ridiculous than the claims of most religions, and it doesn't have any dangerous repercussions for formulation of policies.
Maybe US liberals should concentrate on things that actually matter (like promoting a serious anti-war movement...which they totally failed to do during the Obama years, to their everlasting shame), not on trivia like this that makes them feel good about their own tribe.

Agreed.

And it's not only the internet, the whole (western) world has grown colder and more toxic. People are generally more wary, distrustful and even paranoid - and I can't blame then when the "elite" gets away with even more blatant lies and scandals. "If they can do it, why shouldn't I?" - and so any solidarity, any working together for some common good is undermined as every one tries to cheat and steal their way through life as good as they can. And this dividing people is further heated up by the "-ism" movements, the working poor are picking on the jobless, the natives are hating and fearing the immigrants, the anti-racist hate the people who fear immigrants, the feminist hate the male population, the masculinists are hating the feminists, ... you name it. We live in a society that is more and more consisting of front-lines and trenches.
People are constantly at each other's throat and of course the internet is the biggest cesspool of all this discord of course, because words travel fast here and the perceived anonymity encourages even more extreme expressions and trolling.

Everybody seems to be on edge and more aggressive - and at the same time extremely thin-skinned. An explosive mix. So while the overall tone has grown colder and harsher, on the other hand some jibe or joke that would have been shrugged off a few years ago might now lead to a violent response.
[url=http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Pyramids_(Civ2)]That's essentially true.[/url]

Actually lol'd at this ;)

Well written and reasoned as always :)