I might be way off the mark here but the more I think about self crit and my own neurodivergence (maybe I’m been a bit black and white about this) the idea of having a sub where people go to self flagrate over their mistakes to signal to us they are reformed?
I dunno chat.
I’ve lurked here a while and while some of the drama on here has been funny or sad or anger inducing, at no point did I ever feel satisfied reading a self crit post. I never felt “oh the sights clean now time to make an account”.
I butted heads with incels on here immediately and while those people genuinely made me uncomfortable i don’t wish to see a selfcrit from them. In fact it would frankly appear disingenuous and virtue signally to me.
Like if people get called out then it’s on them to go do the homework, I don’t expect to have to mark it though. The people I butted heads with about that incel thread got comments removed and temp banned. That seems reasonable to me. I’ll die inside if I see a self crit on it.
I dunno I think there’s a lot of neurodivergence on this site, myself included. We try to make it a safe space for everyone which is great.
I think what I’m worried is that a culture exists on here where if a ND makes a mistake, they may feel cut off and left out from a community they need for socialising and support unless they make a self flagrating post further signposting their mistakes.
There’s a very niche and cool silly culture on this site. For a lot of ND people who don’t have supportive irl group I can’t imagine how it would feel to make fuck up and then feel locked out or lost this clique. I don’t think making a new account is the answer either because people’s accounts and history are representatives of who they are so to lose that for some might be like losing their identity as well. Maybe I’m projecting here but if I really embarrassed myself and didn’t think people would talk to me as much on here because of it and that the only way to fix it was a self crit post. That’s scary.
And then when i see self crit posts I feel like “damn nobody needed this, it feels uncomfortable to see this” like them getting dog piled and a temp ban wasn’t enough punishment.
Like it felt maybe relevant when the admins/mods did some self crit on their behaviour but like they run the site so that kinda makes sense (not really)… or it might have if they all did it, so far I only saw like a few and even then it felt uncomfortable to read their comments.
Clearly they made a mistake and having to convince faceless terminally online people that they had the sites best interests at heart was sad to watch given they clearly did care cos of the graft they put into the site.
I dunno I don’t see the point in this comm personally but I’m bored, my tamagotchi just died and I have always kinda thought this since the comm appeared so like yeah, let me know what I’m missing because I’m not the world and obviously my single view will be bias and full of holes or missing context.
Until then the sub feels a bit like 
asking cheaters on fo76 to write an apology letter and it feels like a bit of a toxic power dynamic to have it on the site kinda looooming as an example of what happens to the naughty hexbears.
Edit: lmao I’ve deleted and undeleted this twice cos I’m scared of getting grief but then I’m kinda proving my point doing that so I’ll be a big girl and leave it up.
Honestly every time I see a post on selfcrit I’m just kind of like “…OK?”, so I can relate to this to some extent.
I can’t really imagine myself posting to selfcrit any time soon. I am certainly going to be ignorantly wrong plenty a time, I’m going to cause offense plenty a time, but the way I generally handle causing offense is to apologize for the offense caused to the parties so offended, and the way I handle ignorance is to have faith that later behavior will demonstrate on its own any development of character. Should I ever feel the need to spill paragraphs over some error on selfcrit, then that critique must be of use for people in general — it must be something educational that is best taught with words, and with myself as the case study. The simple fact of reform does not warrant public broadcasting.
The actual posts on selfcrit, on the other hand, have tended to feel like self-flagellation carried out as a formality to show reform, coming across as disingenuous “virtue signaling” at worst, and just strange and uncomfortable at best. As you have said.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
“We Will Talk of Nothing Else”: Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
I think you’ve put it a lot more concisely than my yapping in the post 💪
Like I waffle a lot cos I’m scared that if I don’t try and vocalise every nuance I’ll get dog piled so to be blunt and maybe a bit reductive: self crit doesn’t feel like reform, it feels like public punishment/bullying behaviour/hazing and any catharsis from having confirmation someone has addressed their views feels soured by the public spectacle of it.
That “waffling” or “yapping” as you call it is very understandable, because there’s different ways people will respond to that sort of anxiety of being misunderstood and “dog-piled”, aren’t there? I used to regularly meet with someone who stuttered a lot, you know, so I’d say I’m already fairly used to people taking a while to convey an idea that I would myself convey in much less time. So whatever side of myself that is bothered by such a petty thing, is very easily hushed by the more rational side that knows to be patient with different types of people with different anxieties.
So I don’t think “yapping” is something that someone should be self-deprecating about, necessarily, because you’ll take as long as you personally need to convey your ideas, right? But being self-deprecating is maybe itself an understandable product of that same anxiety, isn’t it?
Hmmmm, I would say that maybe a number of people feel like posting selfcrit is more “mandatory” than it really is. So I don’t know if it’s bullying behavior “per se”, but if people end up feeling like there’s expectations being placed upon them, that this is still something that should be addressed. But this is just the impression I get.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
“We Will Talk of Nothing Else”: Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
I am literally anxiety incarnate.
I don’t even know where I inject it into my day to day life so my perception of self crit as an expectation I do worry is me being that white girl empath trope and then projecting my anxiety onto that situation.
Yeah bullying is maybe not the right word, it feels like the enforcement of a power dynamic in a social space like making examples of people but then I don’t know who’s more terminally online, hexbear or me for seeing that where maybe it is or isn’t lmao.