Members here make occasional reference to other discussion groups and/or forums (fora?) that they frequent. I’m to lazy to look for an example, but if you enter terms like “Boogiemonster” “other” and “web personalities” into the search box at least one should surface. Since skepticism is neither a hobby nor a job, I expect that members who are keen on web interaction will necessarily also turn to specialist or general forums on things that they actually do. Or maybe not. Lets see. Where do you go to chat with like minded or, sometimes more interestingly, opposite minded individuals? Only if you want, and just for interest (the interest for busybody snoops like yours truly, that is ;)) you can list your favourite forum-type haunts through the years. Mine are:
I am actually desperately trying to cut down on web surfing and have a life instead…
Well, I’m on Facebook, for one thing. I have found that the trick with FB is to only have FB friends that are actually also your real friends in real life. That helps to reduce the feed.
And then I hang out at artist’s fora, like this one:
I am daily reader of Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy column. Even though he sometimes irritates me with his obsessive political correctness.
And then the blog of an American pal of mine; he’s a fellow skeptic and writes very interesting articles about all manner of things. I met him on an anti-creationist Yahoo group:
This is why one inhabits various online personalities: No googling is going to take you to my other haunts, since BoogieMonster is an alias that I created specifically for this forum. If you do find another BM it’s not me. Sorry.
I visit mostly skeptics, Slashdot, and Reddit (No I’m not listing sub-reddits). I don’t have a posting account at reddit though, I just lurk there. I am a bit active on slashdot though.
Back in the day I frequented some IT-related fora but they’ve disappeared since.
As you can tell I take my public anonymity very seriously. I do belong to some mailing lists that discuss fringe things that would not be pleasant to have public knowledge (much like being an atheist). As such I have alias email accounts to subscribe to some of them. It makes it difficult to build trust in some communities but at other times I thank my lucky stars nobody could trace it back to me.
The only mailing lists I belong to publicly are: one related to MBTI (yes, I know, but I was young then and made friends along the way) and one relating to experimental airplanes.
Dude, in that case I applaude your handle! (In my OP, I was actually referring to our in-house forum search box, which would have hopefully return this post http://forum.skeptic.za.org/off-topic/community/msg32206/#msg32206 in which you mention having other web personalities. That’s all. :/)
I have a friend that is a staunch Reddit follower, but have only visited once or twice myself. Maybe I should have another go. The wetcanvas forum sounds very interesting too, and I’ll check it out for sure.
Well, this is why “Faerie” is a good handle. You likely will spend hours to find me if at all. I belong to a couple professional psychology, coaching and lib forums, most of which I only frequent when I receive an alert to something I flagged for interest. Oh, and if they have toolboxes on offer for free. THEN Im active for a couple days. Mostly I dont bother to post, unlike my younger me, Ive overcome the urge to debate an issue.
By Zues, you remind me of my S/O… whats next, restoring a car, fitting and turning or welding some obscure artwork? One thing is for certain, Majin cannot claim that you are boring!
I check in to other skeptics and humanist forums and like lurking around some blogging and news platforms from time to time, though I’m thoroughly gatvol of the ongoing theist-atheist debate, it’s always the same misconceptions, same arguments and the same dishonest bullshit, what really makes me angry is the toxic herd mentality of both sides, atheists keep on claiming some kind of intellectual superiority, but yet pull these scientistic nonsense by claiming science has all the answers or that somehow TOE & TBBT proves that god doesn’t exist, while the the theists who do take part are always the more fundie sorts.
I checked into https://www.sacsis.org.za from time to time and was sad to learn that they stopped publishing in June already.
Perhaps, like Jacques notes in one of his recent articles, I obsess a little too much on certain topics too. But I’ve always loved the debate.
I’m just tired of the toxic environment this online debate creates, it seems nearly always to be between hard core fundie creationists and anti-theists and it takes a lot of effort too cool things down enough to get to a point where you can actually have a meaningful and fun debate.
I just think that these people on both sides know at some level that they are full of crap. Both the bible puching homophobic creationists and the oh so clever fake scientist anti-god squad trying to combat the ideology of creationism with that of scientism and neither side showing that they’re actually interested in debate as they are in flinging feces around
That’s true. Few people (including yours truly) can argue about something that they feel strongly about without letting at least some emotion bleed into the debate. And emotion leads to put downs and insults and fuzzy thinking. The chances of two dispassionate individuals crossing swords on a given website is as close to zero as to make no difference.
Then again, would any debate really be enjoyable if it didn’t also pluck an emotional string?
Well that’s also not what I’m saying, of course emotion is a powerful tool to use to unnerve you’re opponent, especially in a real world live environment, and it’s good to point stupidity out. Mostly we kinda know that we’re not going to change our opponent’s side nor they ours when it comes to this particular subject, but there are still plenty of room to learn from each other and perhaps see something from a different angle, but what I saying is that these toxic online environments between fundies and creationists vs atheists and ant theists isn’t even about making a valid argument or having your views challenged, it’s become too emotional and it’s more about entrenching yourself in your own views than it really is about actually thinking what you’re saying.
And why is the god question and evolution seemingly the only issue these two sides always care about?
Well the god question is imminently interesting. For some.
And (some) theists deny observable reality by denouncing evolution. And it can be fun to try an argue against that extreme level of stupidity. For a while.
I have seen extremely little of atheists saying a) science have all the answers and b) evolution and the tBBT disproves god. I have seen a lot of theists claiming atheists make those claims, but they always find it hard to back that up for some reason.
Then again, I only frequent 3 such sites.
I used to have this as a signature: science may not have all the answers, but all the answers we do have, comes from science.
