• TimewornTraveler
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    3 hours ago

    so I’m not interested in this conversation but I do need to acknowledge that you’re misusing the term “gaslighting”. it matters. disagreement, or sharing a perspective you don’t agree with, is not gaslighting.

    gaslighting refers to a specific form of domestic abuse by which the abuser attempts to control their victim by making them doubt their own faculties of perception, question their grasp reality, and ultimately become dependent on the abuser.

    in other words, if you say it was great weather yesterday and i say “what? were you in the park at noon? the weather was so hot!” that’s not gaslighting. that’s having a different experience. likewise if you ask if I went to the park and i say “No”, but i really did go, that’s not gaslighting. that’s called “lying”. lying is not, in itself, gaslighting.

    now if you say “but i saw you! you were carrying a green parasol!” and this were true but I went and threw out the green one and got a yellow one and replied “no you didnt, i dont even have a green one, this is my parasol it’s clearly yellow, are you sure you recognized me? maybe you are having some brain damage, let’s make an appointment and get you checked out” that’s getting closer to gaslighting. hey, that’s actually sort of similar to what you said to me, although I dont think you were gaslighting me, i think you were just being a self-righteous american jerk.

    I know this is irrelevant to what you were hemming and hawing about with that other commenter and you probably won’t care, but this matters way more to me. please don’t misuse words that we depend on for understanding IPV

    • LarmyOfLone
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      1 hour ago

      I was wondering if gaslighting was the right term to use, but decided to use it anyway. Maybe it is not appropriate here, maybe I’m hypercritical of your words, but I’m very much aware of what it means.

      Gaslighting is today used in political context because of Donald Trump. Definitions change. And I think it fits here maybe not specifically because of what you said, but for the context. It is not the first time I heard “reddiquette about upvoting never existed”. It’s not just 1984 style historical revisionism, it’s self-righteous american jerks like you LOUDLY screaming “NEVER HAPPENED! LOL WHAT, ARE YOU ON COKE?” (paraphrasing you here, might have gotten your words slightly wrong)

      If you look at other replies, you now also see a moving of the goalpost: It was just the monoculture of neckbeard circlejerks. Or it was just some “purists” who argued about it. But it’s always been this way.

      Except I was there (3000 years ago). I’ve seen comments not downvoted that were disagreeable but well stated. Sometimes it still happens. They were not made invisible because they contributed to a discussion. I remember it. And it’s still in the long forgotten, now hidden reddiquette. Threads exists where this was argued about. Your comment is just wrong and it is rude. I am not insane.

      Even when the fascists loose, they win. Gaslighting is now a routine tool of the liberals to reframe their narrative. Liberal was at war with Tankie; therefore Liberal had always been at war with Tankie.

      I also see four lights, so maybe don’t take my post too seriously.