New Rule: Replace the Word "Lynch" in Games

[Albert B. Rampage]

Censoring flavor from speech doesn't erase past horrors.

Banning words, especially that are not meant as insults, just makes people want to use it more.

If you tell your kid not to date before high school, that's the forbidden fruit that they will be obsessed about the whole time.

I think it's a clumsy administration move, personally. Equality won't be won by limiting vocabulary and enforcing thought crimes.

People should understand there is mafiascum culture and outside world historical culture and the context difference.

[Albert B. Rampage]

This feels... Weird. Like a word being taken out of the dictionary because some people didn't like it. The word 'bitch' still also means a female dog despite its other meaning. I don't get why people are trying to take away the reference to the trials held back in the day because some other fuckwits also used it for other means.

Lynch on Mafiascum would never be associated with the other deeds done to racial groups. Words exist to a community like language. It doesn't mean anything racist here, so why should it be banned? It's like banning Spanish in a Hispanic community because it makes people not feel included. It's stupid.

Exactly. Context matters. The admin team seems out of touch with its users on this one, feeling a sense of responsibility for events beyond their scope.

We're a community with a specific culture, terminology, and understanding, our own humor, etc.

I would appreciate if there was an explanation of a history of racism on mafiascum that spawned this infringement on free speech. Help me understand if this site has been a bastion of white supremacy or something without my knowing.

As an ethnic minority, I'm insulted by overblown abuses of power that are ostensibly for mutual respect but end up just being an attempt to destroy a respectful, humorous and stylised internet culture based around forums, a form of communication that is antiquated and dates back to a time where strangers had complete freedom outside of the taboos and social pressures of religion, government, higher education, and other authorities.

[Albert B. Rampage]

I think it's a pretty brave move to tell an established community that they can't use one of their most common pieces of jargon

Acting out of fear isn't brave. The fear of being perceived as racist should be tempered by an open and accepting community of people who gather around for a hobby, outside of political and cultural clashes.

This is really the same thing as religious people's fear of being perceived as sinful in our parents and grandparents culture, so they would tell their gay kids to pretend to be straight or talk and behave a certain way because being themselves was forbidden lest everyone in the family be perceived as "sinful".

This isn't so much of the NFL kneeling as the communist party burning books, if we're talking about metaphors. Even though the books may be imperfect, acting against it through power sends an authoritarian signal.

[Albert B. Rampage]

There are no harmful words, only people with harmful intentions.

[Albert B. Rampage]

the only time I have seen the word lynching in the news is when Jussie Smollet, a leftwing black actor on a minor TV show, staged a crime for which he was the victim of a lynching, because it would inflame the world and give him leverage on his contract negotiation. So this guy bribes two of his friends from Nigeria to put a rope around his neck.

At some point, the fire you fight fire with is the one that ends up burning everything down.

[Albert B. Rampage]

There are no harmful words, only people with harmful intentions.

as someone who has had harmful words hurled at me previously in a way that was damaging, i strongly disagree with you.

The admin team will do nothing after I report actual discrimination, but then go around to change the entire mafia language in order to not seem racist.

Any complaint I make is met with "reports are not discussed". What the fuck is wrong with this system? What do I have to do to call attention to actual harmful intentions?

[Albert B. Rampage]

zoraster has done less than nothing to address my concerns which I've brought up twice with him. I find this hypocritical, political and self-serving.

[Albert B. Rampage]

If a gay person pretending to be straight were as easy as typing "eliminate" instead of "lynch," then yes, it would be similar. The difference between the two situations is scale; what is being asked here is very small, whereas in your example, what is asked is very large.

Scale has nothing to do with soft censorship.

Ordering your child to not hold hands with a same sex human being under threat of being disowned, but you're "allowed to be gay behind closed doors", is extremely demeaning.

As this policy is demeaning to the moderators.

I don't pay for this private site, I respect the intention but I think it's misguided.

Where I take it personal is that if I report an actual injustice with bad intentions, zoraster doesn't do a single thing about it because it doesn't affect him.

[Albert B. Rampage]

The origin of the word scum is racist against black people.

In 1586, the phrase “scum of Africa” showed up in the Christopher Marlowe play Tamburlaine, this marked the first known time scum was used as an insult, though that trend would be frequently repeated elsewhere after this: “These are the cruell pirates of Argeire, That damned traine, the scum of Affrica.”

Mafia invokes ethnic Italian criminals.

Why change one and not the others?

[Albert B. Rampage]

I'm looking forward to ABR and Blair also arguing for overturning the ban on using the n-word.

I look forward to admins trying to ban the word scum, a derogatory word that originated with classifying Africans as ‘a low, vile, or worthless person or group of people’.

The word scum is extremely problematic, yes, but there was a different historical context to its use. Present day, and inside our community, scum doesn't mean that.