A Few Thoughts on Forum Conflict

When I first joined CC, I remember being overly impressed with how little conflict there was in the Singles forum. I had frequented another Christian forum long before I became active in the Singles forum here and there was always a ton of conflict there. Here it felt incredibly peaceful compared to over there. Now of course, the Bible Discussion Forum has always been a war zone, but Singles for the longest time was relatively serene. I have noticed over the past year or so, though, that the amount of conflict here has increased substantially, and people who used to never fight are now very on-edge.

I put a lot of value on self-awareness, and so I just thought I would take a moment to share what I see as the root cause of a lot of this conflict. You can look back at any thread where there was dispute and see the same patterns over and over:

Person A posts a reply.
Person B replies to Person A, somehow disagreeing with or criticizing their post.
Person A responds to Person B defensively, often rudely.
Person B fires back.

This goes on until someone decides to drop it. Sometimes Person C will jump in to defend Person A or B.

I think we can all agree that forum conflict is unavoidable every now and then, but it is exhausting and discouraging if it is happening all the time. Here are a couple of things that have helped me in matters of conflict or potential conflict online:

-Only worry about what you can control. You can't control how the other person responds, or whether or not the other person responds, but you can control whether or not you respond and how you respond.
-Respond, don't react. If you find yourself firing back out of heated emotions, give yourself time to gather yourself before responding.
-Be okay with disagreement. People are terrible at disagreeing online nowadays. When someone disagrees with you, it is not personal. It means they see things differently than you do. There is nothing wrong with that, and you would be surprised how easily it is to move on with life if you are willing to just accept disagreement for what it is.

Hopefully being able to see one of these disputes coming before it breaks out will help make this subforum a more peaceful place once again. As with any of my posts, take what you find helpful and feel free to leave the rest. The less we bicker online, the healthier it is for us. I believe that conflict online is one of the main reasons why there are so many people dealing with depression and anxiety nowadays. Let's make this a healthier environment for all of us

Unfortunately the inability to deal with disagreement is not just online. It's a cultural shift I have observed (but have no idea how to do anything about) for years. Discussion is an art that seems to be mostly forgotten lately. You either agree with me or not, and if you do not agree with me you are really stupid and an idiot and probably autistic or something, but I definitely don't care what you have to say because I know I'm obviously right.

While of course I agree completely that cutting down on conflicts would be great, I also found it interesting that you said you saw little conflict in Singles when you joined in 2013.

I could be wrong about this, and anyone who remembers that time is welcome to correct me, but I think 2013 to around 2016 was pretty unique.

Not only did we have a regular group of several people who would regularly write threads (producing a wide variety of perspectives) or make posts, but many of those same people (20 or so) also used to meet regularly in the Singles chat room at that time--sometimes almost every night. I think there were still plenty of conflicts going on, it's just that people were able to talk about them in real time and sometimes with their own voices, so everyone could hear the tone and intention behind their words. This same group of posters was also here for a fairly long time, so I think the disagreements died down after people got used to each other's personalities.

These days, the forum group seems to rapidly change every few months, which I think makes it harder to get a feel for who people really are.

I think this made a huge difference in helping people to understand each other and work through conflicts, especially since it was a pretty regular group that got to know each other fairly well. I also think a lot more people took their disagreements to PM rather than staying in the open forums. For example, you'd ask Person A, "Hey, I saw your post, are things ok?" And they'd say, "Oh yeah, Person B and I PMed for a while, but we worked it out."

However, there were still plenty of conflicts going on behind the scenes.

In fact, when a small subset of regular Singles members met in person in 2015, those were some of the challenges that were discussed--the fear that if some members met in person, a face-to-face confrontation might turn ugly very quickly, and choices were made to try to prevent those issues from happening.

I just didn't want to give off the impression that Singles was some sort of utopia. Again, I could be wrong, but I think that period of time was something that could only be replicated if there was another large group of regular members who posted and wrote threads regularly, and were able to talk to each other about what was posted on a regular basis.

Of course, this doesn't mean that a goal of more understanding and less conflict isn't worth striving for.

Another factor seems to be the BDF posters have started traveling around. It used to be that they mostly stayed in the BDF and rarely strayed, but now they're all over the site. And they bring the same mentality they have in the BDF to the rest of the site. That increases conflicts as well.

There was a cool little community going on here during that time for sure. You make a great point about how conflicts were able to be better handled in private because people were friends with each other off the forum too. That type environment creates some pretty cool dynamics.

With that said, I don't really have any expectation that those dynamics be recreated, although it would be great if they were. I think my OP addresses this community in its current context, though, as well as any other social media context really, with the goal being that more people would be self-aware of how they react and respond to posts that "trigger" them. As Christians we are called to be different than the world, and yet so many Christians engage on social media like the rest of the world. I think highly enough of the people here to think we can be different.

How the forum used to be years ago:




And how it is now:





NOTE: no pokemons were harmed in the making of this post..

This is an excellent point.

I am by no means trying to distract from the opening points about being aware of our own triggers and doing the best we can to do our part in keeping peace, but I also thought that observations such as Sub's can also help us understand more about the root of some of these conflicts.

The site as a whole used to have a lot more people posting threads, and I think that kept people busy/entertained within their favorite forums. As the number of threads have gone down, more people are crossing over into other parts of the forums in search of interesting things to talk about. This can be great for meeting new people, but sometimes also brings an influx of some whose sole intention is to start or participate in conflicts, which raises the number of arguments in other parts of the forum.

I know that I also sometimes I forget what people are going through. There have been numerous times I followed an angry person's posts and found out they were going through a really rough time and were taking it out on everyone else. Some were also coping by using drugs and alcohol, so many times when they were posting, they were under the influence of a substance that might have made them impossible to reason with.

I'm thinking of a couple of members in the past (who are no longer here, at least not under those names) whose posts I followed out of curiosity and then found out (as they shared these things publicly) that they were posting while drunk and/or smoking crystal meth, or perhaps were dealing with an illness for which they couldn't afford medication.

I'm certainly not saying this in judgment--everyone has a story and we all need Christ, but I was actually glad that they shared these things because it's made me a little more hesitant (sometimes! Not always, but sometimes!) to comment in some of the more heated threads.

The people writing these posts might in a state where they can't exert any self-control.

Again, I'm not saying this in judgment or criticism, but just as something that might help someone better understand what might be going on behind the scenes.

The fact is this forum's not coming back anytime soon... and neither is camaraderie.

I dunno man...when I first joined in 2014 (under another name) I really liked it. Then around 2017 things went South and it got pretty boring. Last year was okay and now that I'm back I'm enjoying it once again. But it's still not as great as it was in 2014-2015.
Be the change you wanna be. If someone confronts you with a negative attitude, just let the water slide off your back. Who cares what others say online right?
Maybe if we each start doing this...CC Singles will became as fun as it used to be.

I totally disagree with everything everyone has stated. Kidding of course, I just wanted to say
something.

I am deeply offended by the fact that you disagree, so I must call into question your character, intelligence and faith.

As a regular BDF participant, and a somewhat-frequent Singles participant, I see a distinct difference between the two. Things do get a little tense here at times, but usually it's tame when compared to the BDF. I don't call that the "Bicker and Debate Forum" for nothing.

There are times when I feel like responding to a post outside of the BDF with the same directness that I use there. Usually I refrain, because I want the atmosphere of the other forums to be preserved. Singles is the 'chill coffee house' of CC. Troublemakers shall be escorted to the Exit and given the Royal Order of the Boot. I'm happy to do the booting as needed.

I had always assumed, at least a part of the reason, the site started slowing was due to the spread of the BDF virus, I'd never considered the virus spread because the site slowed. It's an interesting notion and no doubt has some truth to it. Likely it's a bit of both.

Just an observance of the last 10 or 15 years. The world as a whole has gotten more argumentative. Polarized going one way or the other and at each others throats. We can see it mainly in the political parties.

Also I've noticed that religion as a whole is also being polarized in that where most every protestant church were against Catholics (as in the teachings of that church)many are now joining with the uniting ideas that forefathers of many denominations would roll over in their graves at the agreement and joining forces that are happening now. 15 years ago I never heard anyone say that the 10 commandments were nailed to the cross when Jesus died. I also never heard so many arguments on works vs faith either.

I think it is just the signs that God's Holy Spirit is being withdrawn from a world that doesn't want to believe and we are seeing the results in peoples actions as a whole

At lease it's what I have observed.

I would love to see even in myself more in action of being like Jesus and treating people with love and respect that we all deserve you know what we were taught we should do as in Love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.

I think it's all the low carb craze that has gotten very popular these past few years. I think low carb diets make people less friendly... or maybe it's the lack of cake.

I disagree with your disagreement, sir!!! And I'm sure your doctrine is faulty-even though I haven't heard it yet!!

Oops! Wrong thread!!

I wish I had some chocolate!

I think I'm gonna have to agree with that. Humans are naturally indolent and don't want to work, which creates a problem. Then we switch to low-carb everything to solve the problem, which makes us all cranky.

Please pass the brownies. I need two before my bike ride.

...... is this about me?

Hehe.