EDIT: Two responses from admins who dishonestly reframed the events of my ban and apparently refuse to explain it. Apparently “long time users” get different treatment.

EDIT2: The reason was finally given that “Have you stopped beating your wife?” in response to someone trying to put words in your mouth and ask loaded questions is a banworthy set of words. Incredible I know.


I would like explanation for the thinking that led to me being recently banned and branded a racist.

I was randomly attacked by a bad faith troll who later let slip that she was bearing a grudge based on some other encounter from 8 months ago. The attack consisted of an attempt to paint me as a racist for this simple and honest reading error.

I am a principled Marxist Leninist, active in real life and any reading of my contributions will support this and refute this slur on my character.

I can, at most, stretch to forgiving the ridiculous idea that I was the one being “toxic” here, and not simply holding up a mirror to the toxicity of the troll who attacked me for an innocent mistake, fantasised about me doing hypothetical racist things, asked me loaded questions and tried to put words in my mouth to fool credulous onlookers.

What I cannot ever accept is the allegation that I somehow engaged in “racism” anywhere in this interchange or in any of my other comments in the years I’ve participated on here. I deserve an explanation as to what you think you saw as racist in any of my comments.

I expect a complete apology, a clearing of my name and censure against my attacker and abuser. Those involved shamed themselves with their actions. You have an opportunity to make amends and undo that injustice you’ve inflicted.

I run a large ML forum with weekly views of tens of thousands and I recognise exactly the temptations you’ve allowed yourselves to succumb to of abusing your power for a false sense of righteousness based on petty bullying and unfair treatment. I know that I’m not the only one who’s been a victim of this on lemmygrad.

The contributors to this forum deserve better moderation and better judgement from the admins in general. The current process of banning people without right of reply is abusive and dishonourable. That can be a separate discussion.

  • porcupine
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    4 days ago

    there’s a good amount of people who came upon this thread without knowing you were ever banned and coming out of it thinking “wtf is larkin on about.”

    that was my experience, and when I explained it, this person immediately went into a megalomaniacal rant about how I’d revealed myself to be part of the conspiracy. you have a truly admirable amount of patience, and I’m sorry you have to deal with people like this.

    • ghost_of_faso2
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      4 days ago

      At a certain point good faith runs out and I have to achknowledge that Larkin is simply just doing ‘DARVO’, deflecting all criticism and making himself look like a victim.

      • DamarcusArt
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        4 days ago

        Thankfully they are really bad at it. There is an astonishing refusal to self-reflect, let alone self-crit. They already have all the answers and anyone who disagrees with their conclusion is just part of the conspiracy against them. Not to mention the massive hypocrisy, where they accuse everyone else of lying about them and yet put words in the mouths of others constantly.

        All this anger over…a pretty minor ban honestly. Like even if we take what they are saying as 100% true and the mods are just power tripping, then they can just take their lumps and come back, or leave entirely. It’s not a big deal to be banned from an internet forum for a whopping two weeks.

          • ghost_of_faso2
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            3 days ago

            My bet is abusive man syndrome, all the allegations of ‘my abuser’, calling them a pedophile, insisting that they are actually the victim, tone policing the response to them (eat soft shit) when it was them who brought the conversation down several levels by bringing up analogies of beaten wives when asked to reflect on a potentially racist misconception ect; this is how abusive people react when faced with even the smallest slight that impacts there own perception of there character.

            And it sounds like projection, usually when people make baseless accusations like this it comes from guilt.

            • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺
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              3 days ago

              It very well could be, I do not want to start out with an assumption that someone is an abuser or abusive, that feels like a pretty heavy allegation

              • ghost_of_faso2
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                3 days ago

                Yeah I hate to sit here and psycho-analyse someone I dont know as well lol, just the amount of negging and talking in circles going on is leading me to that evaluation, they havent displayed any self-awareness and just keep doubling down.

                They may very well not be abusive, the entire thread and comments made within it though display those characteristics however.

                • ☭ Comrade Pup Ivy 🇨🇺
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                  3 days ago

                  Honestly I am going to hope this is either some sort of delusions of grandure or immiturity, both of them seem to be the least worst options I have seen. But no I really cannot rule that out entirely

            • CriticalResist8A
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              3 days ago

              I made this mistake too originally because the two profiles are very similar (complete with two flags lol), but the person who told them to eat soft shit is a different user than the OP larkin was replying to. And yeah one could ask if it was warranted for a third party to come in with this kind of comment.

              The problem is larkin is so bad faith right now that if you give him any concession he’ll jump on it to accuse you of taking sides or bullying him. When neither of the two people who were implicated in the original thread ever made a comment here. They probably don’t even know this thread exists.

              So we (everyone who commented here) end up not conceding any point because the problem in this case is not that someone responded to him in a way he didn’t like (we determined the threshold for removal wasn’t reached), the problem has become his behavior since he first posted this thread, before any comment was even made in it. I told him several times that we re-evaluated his ban and upheld our original decision but apparently an appeal means that we have to apologize to him personally and promise not to ban him again lol

    • redtea
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      4 days ago

      And mine. I didn’t know about the ban or the thread that caused it but I was curious. I tried to work out what happened and explained the problem in the original interaction.

      Now I’m an immature scoundrel. Or might be. Or would be. I lost track of what was conditional on me impersonating a mod or an admin or both.

    • CriticalResist8A
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      4 days ago

      I don’t want to put words in anyone’s mouths but that was my impression, that even people who came across looking at both sides equally (as we did too in the adminship, we re-evaluated the case and came to the same conclusion we did back then) and tried to explain this to him agreed that his comments were out of line. This is not a judgment of values and I tried to get this across to him, I’m using the most neutral words I can to describe the sequence of events as faithfully as possible, but he doesn’t want to get it 😵‍💫