For the Love of Intentions!!

[Girl_On_Fire]

Wasn't able to quote directly from weatherboi so I'll just copy and paste:

It could also be because said offender has a pattern of being offensive and continually entering a gray area, playing devils advocate or plays the innocent uneducated community member. I think that may be what you mean by "honest belief that someone is trying to start an argument" I would like to focus on that. What do you (general you)think that is all about?? What is it that keeps a community member poking at the sore??

I don't like the sentence, "plays the innocent uneducated community member". I think this makes too much of a judgement on the part of the "general you". I agree there are plenty of people out there who like to start stuff just to start stuff. For no other reason than to pull the pin on a grenade and watch the chaos. I'm also sure there are plenty of other people (like myself) who genuinely don't realize when they're being offensive in a post due to lack of education, misunderstanding, etc. The sentence implies that everyone knows better and I think this is one of the primary reasons for the jumping of the gun that goes on in some of these threads.

For people like me (and I'm not the only one, I've seen it on other posts I didn't start) it can be like being sucker-punched in the stomach to see a vehement response filled with exclamation marks and accusations and all-caps.

That could send a young, naive, uneducated, socially-clueless, and/or what-have-you person running for the hills right away with no dialogue actually having transpired. Trust me when I tell you from years of experience, this is incredibly damaging and confusing.

Again, not everybody is genuinely clueless. However, in my line of thinking, unless the thread topic starts with something like, "I Think all Queer People Should Die" it would help to take a deep breath and ask a few questions of the person before taking out the verbal hatchet.

Think of it this way, if somebody really is trying to start something, they'll get bored pretty quickly by benign responses and questions and escalate immediately. Then you'll know how it was meant and will be able to respond accordingly.