Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

I personally think the comments are a horrible hive of racism, sexism and transphobia. What about you?

Yep, it has turned into a conservative circlejerk these days. Was this influenced by the creation of the GamerGate article? The election articles? The arrival of Lisa? We'll never know, but hey, at least we have the downvote button in the comments section.

That downvote button suuuure helps alot.

The arrival of Lisa?

I sincerely doubt the arrival of one user is the cause for the degradation of an entire community. The community was getting users like that long before Lisa's time. And Lisa may be aggressive and make inflammatory posts, but I really don't consider her a bigot, nor does she really mirror what the bigoted users are saying. If I were to point to one thing that caused this shift in the community, it would have to be GamerGate, but really I feel it was a number of different events that caused this shift.

I think our biggest problem right now is the bigoted members of the community are a very vocal minority, and the more well-reasoned users don't even want to bother discussing because the minority will fight and argue with them at every turn. It gets very tiring, especially when it's just pointless discussion on a meme site. Many of our users have left the site during this shift because they just don't want to deal with it. It's not like moderators can do much about it either, because it's not like these people are breaking rules or anything.

But I think if you want change to happen, then complaining about it in a forum isn't going to do much of anything. As they say "be the change you want to see in the world". If you want to shift the attitude of the community, then go out there and get into the discussion against the bigoted posters. You're going to get downvotes, you're going to get 50 replies telling you you're a stupid SJW, but if you really care enough about the community you will keep going and the users that share your opinions will feel more encouraged to speak up now that they know they're not alone. Change doesn't happen overnight, but if enough of us are persistent enough then I think we could one day see a turnaround in this community.

I honestly cannot agree that kym is bigoted. And I think the assessment is very politically bias to come to.

Both comments and forums need to come out from their separate wings of the political spectrum of center-left and far-left and realize thjs.

Shows how far left you lean if you think KYM is a conservative circlejerk.

The bigots are just shitposters, and we all know those don't count, isn't that the argument?
All the transphobia on the Caitlyn Jenner page are shitposters with blank avs, they don't count.
How many times does that have to be repeated before you believe it?

{ the users that share your opinions will feel more encouraged to speak up now that they know they’re not alone. }

hahaha yeah right, not while the downvoting system is in place lmfaooo. When you can be punished for your opinion, you're not gonna share your opinion. So hard to figure out why users would rather leave altogether than voice their real opinions and stand up for what they really believe in when their last few comments are buried under 50+ downvotes and "WHAT A FUCKING SJW GO BACK TO TUMBLR LOSER KYM JUST ISN'T RIGHT FOR YOU" is top comment.

Lock the GG gallery and close the comments due to the harassment they consistently bring against other users, which is against the rules. They can go to voat

Not really. Outside some controversial comment sections, there is no real bigotry. No one sensible enough not to be an idiot really even goes on those comment sections or really comments in general.

The forum especially has no real bigotry. The forums might have the occasional post that does seem quite bigoted like ones from those subhumans such as Laika. Even then a lot of them are users just trying to troll or be funny. And a lot of the community is accepting if you aren't causing any problems. A lot of LGBT members too.

No.

I believe what some people may be experiencing here is a form of confirmation bias. Those comments that one is truly "bothered" by will tend to stick out and persist in one's mind, while all others will quickly fade away from one's memory. Thus, even if the former only accounts for about 10 to 20 percent of the total (a pretty reasonable proportion in an online community where anyone anywhere can join and speak on controversial issues), an illusion will form over time that it is multiple orders of magnitude greater than that. This is especially the case when one already has the idea in one's head that the comments section has a problem.

To illustrate my point, I'll pose a hypothetical- let's say that you've never heard of KYM at all. But that changes one day, when a really good friend of yours tells you about how they recently left the forums because they're "really messed up". Out of sick curiosity, you go and take a look. What conclusion do you think that you'd come to?

I think it's very easy and often disingenuous to label things as bigoted these days. Just compare the comments section to something like Stormfront or a Golden Dawn forum and tell me there isn't a huge difference there.

I don;t know enough to make of a judgment, but I have to agree with .9999 that Confirmation bias is a factor.

That said I think part of the reason for the influx of bigotry is because some of our user-base tends to come from image boards, specifically, /pol/. Another factor is the shift towards controversies, shitstorms and movements rather then just injokes and macros, those tend to attract people from all stripes of life, even those that are often mocked on FSTDT (like the aforementioned Stromfront).

I don't think that either GamerGate or Lisa's getting an account here is to blame for the influx of bigots here either. I think they might have came when we documented something they liked that isn't related with politics (Take for example, Hitler, leader of Nazi Germany. Who happened to Like Disney's Snow White enough to paint the title character. There is no indication that Wolt Disney influenced his evil deed) or more likely their content, which is bound to attract some people of /pol/

KYM itself isn't bigoted, but very few people go to only one community and its is likely that the other community one might go to is bigoted (especialy if that community is /pol/)

@lisa. Poe's Law is a thing, how can really tell a shitpost apart form a really bigoted comment?

I don't think that the active userbase, outside of maybe 2 or 3 users, is bigoted. But I've noticed on a lot of articles where I see a lot of racism/homophobia and what-not, there are a lot of fairly new users or users who have posted almost nothing in like 4 years who come out of the shadows to post. I'm not sure why but I have noticed it for most controversial articles. I typically don't engage in them since there's no real point.

What actually defines a bigot? Some posts are questionable, and depend on the interpretation of the post in order to determine whether it's actually "bigoted" or not. I notice that some groups of people are particularly sensitive to disagreeing opinions that still aren't bigotry, I kind of touched upon this in that transgender thread.

I do think they have the right to say whatever they want and people have the right to vote as they want as long as they continue to abide by KYM rules. Other users help regulate the social standards and most truly bigoted posts I see usually get flooded with downvotes. To me, that's a sign that the community is not bigoted, but a few members who are fairly inactive are.

P.S. Lisa is not a bigot. She's actually pretty open minded about a lot of things. However she is pretty conservative which is why people might make that assumption.

"KYM is bigoted" is a very sweeping statement that I don't think is fair. However, the comment section have no shortage of such content. There's also the conspiracy theorists (I hear TPP is literally the end of the internet and the media is enforcing an Orwellian narrative), the morally outraged (This one editor is anti-skub, clearly that's why this article is biased! Oh, and we brothers must teach our comrades how to fight against the Antigamers), the sea lions and the dank memers (le tigger :V go back to fumblr cislord xDDDD). There are also plenty of other users that run against that grain, and even flagrant transphobia is a good way to rack of downvotes. When you get into more of the grey area of social issues the site is more ambiguous, and while I certainly don't think that anybody in the comments section would care for a well-written explanation of the correlation between minority neighborhoods and toxic waste sites in the United States, they sure as hell are not going to give a warm reception to somebody who comes in to complain about "chimps" or "gay hate maggots".

Also, Lisa: Just to be clear, a lot of people regard exactly what your criticizing to be "right-wing". Much of that discourse, from the cabal of feminists controlling the media to the SJW-baiting, is recycled from right-wing literature (think Milo Yiannopoulos and James Delingpole). Your approach to conservatism is very different, you express conservatism through opinions on economics and Islam, which are pretty far-seperated. You may feel that KYM has a leftist bias when it comes to those issues – and you're probably even right – but I think that isn't what chowzburgerz is referring to when he calls it a conservative circlejerk.

regarding my earlier comment, I meant to pluralize "deeds".

i honestly don't feel kym is bigoted
while we may have some heavy shitposters who like to bring their agenda into every comment they say, they're in, like previous posters have said, a minority, and i rarely experience them from just casual browsing, like what most users on this site do
heck, you shouldn't even worry about bigotry on kym so much, as that doesn't affect the main purpose of this site, which is to document internet culture. sure, you'll get some fellows who post inflammatory messages and rude stuff towards users, but the mods seem to handle that pretty well.
so basically, don't worry too much about people posting their opinions, even if it conflicts with your beliefs directly, just browse this website for those dank memes ayy lmao B)

Oh right, so it's not shitposting anymore, now that we've agreed it's happening legitimately and can't be simply ignored, it's conservative discourse.

That "discourse" is used globally by people of all parties of all extremes, it's not recycled from any one point of view. That's why the statement is BS. To try and blame "logic" actively used by literally everyone in politics/social commentary on "conservative circlejerks" or "conservative discourse" is the definition of being so far-left you've lost the ability to see what's really going on. The same is true vice versa.

It's a bit pointless to bring politics into it at all as we're talking about a group of teenagers who have not yet had to think critically about political/social issues thus far in life, nor are they trying to. Bigotry isn't even the right word, people who don't understand or care about the impact of their opinions aren't bigots, they're mindless reactionaries seeking confirmation in the form up upvotes from their peers. They will be mortified and ashamed if they come across any of their posts in as little as 5 years from now. The general KYM comments are a convergence of immaturity, if anything.

You can generally assume something is shitposting if it includes emoji.

It can still be shitposting, but it has something more than mindless meming behind it. You have every right to feel that it's unfair to have your beliefs associated with it. As an environmentalist, I'll never be able to scrub myself of the anti-GMO "how dare Monsanto kill all of our bees!" crowd (and don't forget PETA). But it's not just recycled ideas. This stuff didn't fall out of the sky, it's informed directly by the likes of AEI writers and anti-academic bloggers (think Sommers, Sargon of Akkad and so on). A lot of it is consciously political, although not all of it is; I don't think that teenagers that bleat about "cultural marxism" appreciate the seriousness of what they're saying. Perhaps "conservative" and "right-wing" aren't the best terms. I myself use "anti-progressive" for that reason but who really wants to get into an argument over semantics? You're free to object but do try to keep in mind that when people call whatever this all is "conservative", they probably don't intend to lump you and many other conservatives in with it.

"All the transphobia on the Caitlyn Jenner page are shitposters with blank avs

New unwritten. If an annoying user has a blank avatar, disregard everything they.

But in all seriousness users like that have been around for a while. The anti-feminist people, the racism doesn't exist anymore crowd, the people who believe sex change operations are mutilation. They've always been there if you go back further in the sites history.

Are we equating being against feminist beliefs with bigotry now?

"All the transphobia on the Caitlyn Jenner page are shitposters with blank avs"
Not all of them, I just got into an argument with one that had 2000 comments. Wasn't much of an argument since he refused to back up his claim, but still.

I don't really see any bigotry with all of those things you listed. Although, I'm not going to lie. I have noticed an increase of Islamophobia.

{ It can still be shitposting, but it has something more than mindless meming behind it. }

Does it, when it's coming from a bunch of teenagers on a meme site? We're talking about KYM here, keep your considerations in context. Is any of it consciously political, despite what political writers and bloggers may have said similar things? Are the KYMers parroting that sort of discourse even aware of where it originated?

I don't think so. Like at all. Thus it's useless to involve politics/political lingo/serious social commentary at all. It's not that they're shitposting, it's not that they're awful horrible bigots, but that they lack the maturity and social awareness to understand the impact of those opinions to begin with. They're teenagers. Most of them still view the world in black and white, right or wrong, male or female, no room to compromise.

Which is why, going back to my original post here, the downvote system on KYM is drastically more detrimental to free expression than systems used on sites with an older average userbase. If KYM wants to encourage more varied opinions/critical thinking/actual discussion among people of this age, it has to get rid of the downvote. If it doesn't care, it will continue to come off as a "bigoted shitshow" to the casual observer and new arrivals (who quickly leave). We can talk talk talk about it all we want, but nothing is going change unless the site does.

Meh, the problem is people are taking this too seriously.

While KYM does document real-life events, that's not the main focus of the site. Remember the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory, in that anonymity brings out the worst in people quite often. Since literally anyone could take 30 seconds and sign up to post a comment, it's easy for any idiot to just post a racist/homophobic/sexist comment. This isn't necessarily indicative of the entire community, because in the forums (where you actually have to take the time and look for threads and post) I generally haven't run into any.

It's like Youtube comments in a way. The comment section in any popular website usually becomes fairly cancerous.

It’s a bit pointless to bring politics into it at all as we’re talking about a group of teenagers who have not yet had to think critically about political/social issues thus far in life, nor are they trying to. Bigotry isn’t even the right word, people who don’t understand or care about the impact of their opinions aren’t bigots, they’re mindless reactionaries seeking confirmation in the form up upvotes from their peers. They will be mortified and ashamed if they come across any of their posts in as little as 5 years from now. The general KYM comments are a convergence of immaturity, if anything.

Thus it’s useless to involve politics/political lingo/serious social commentary at all. It’s not that they’re shitposting, it’s not that they’re awful horrible bigots, but that they lack the maturity and social awareness to understand the impact of those opinions to begin with. They’re teenagers. Most of them still view the world in black and white, right or wrong, male or female, no room to compromise.

I agree and disagree with you on this here.

Yes, the general age and life experience can be a decent explanation for the general immaturity in the comment section (there are always expections to the cause, and immature nerds often feel a higher need to reply, so I don't wish to insult the general age group here). Ask any internet user above the age of 20 to look back at the stuff they did online at age 15, and they'll be horrified. I was no different. The mind of a 14-16 year old on the internet often doesn't reach much further than yourself and your vidya, and the feel to be accepted by your peers.

But at the same time, saying it is useless to discuss topics like politics on our site is throwing in the towel too quickly, which is where I disagree with you.

You are assuming that our entire active community consists of teenagers. Are you a teenager, am I one, are most people who make well written comments in discussion threads teenagers? No. Calling people of your and my age teenagers, and thus childish for our age, is basically an insult.

We don't know who might be lurking. Although plenty of teenagers can be lurking, I'm certain there are also plenty above that age group. But if they don't see a post style or opinion that matches more to them, they'll never feel a need to reply.

Be the change you want to see. If people never bring up certain topics on our site, or don't increase how often they appear, then the change we'd like to see will never come. I have noticed a shift in general opinion in the comment sections. Certain "Anti-SJW"-style comments are losing their popularity and the calling out on its bullshit is increasing. And I absolutely love how certain people like Rikameme are bringing some sense back to that hivemind. They receive downvotes, they'll get insulted, but they keep trying. Users who feel its necessary to then rely on insults in their reply can receive the mod card.

People often state that it's best to stay away from the comment section, but if you do that they will forever remain cancerous and you are part of the problem that they are still cancerous.

Aren't you the user who saw racist remarks made at Ellen Pao and thought it was an example of misogyny?

I'm not sure I should be trusting your judgement of "bigoted" if you can't even properly name your social issues.

@Lisa

When you can be punished for your opinion, you’re not gonna share your opinion. So hard to figure out why users would rather leave altogether than voice their real opinions and stand up for what they really believe in when their last few comments are buried under 50+ downvotes and “WHAT A FUCKING SJW GO BACK TO TUMBLR LOSER KYM JUST ISN’T RIGHT FOR YOU” is top comment

You have no idea how much I've tried to campaign for the removal of downvotes. Around this time last year, maybe a little earlier, it was the main point I tried to argue. I took the issue of the vote bias to the admins multiple times but the vote time limit is the most that came out of it. As much as I hate to admit it, the downvotes aren't going anywhere.

I'm of the opinion that for a lot of people, they're so stubborn in their opinions that they aren't going to take into account even the most respectful person who even slightly goes against their thoughts. Not everyone mind you, which is why there IS merit in keeping up the debate, but it's like Lisa says, can you expect people to want to continue when they've seen their longposts buried for no good reason other than "I disagree"?

I still hold to the opinion that the downvote button is not a disagree button, and this was echoed by a lot of the mod team. Back when the GG issues first arose, this was one of my key arguements, but people just wouldn't accept it. All I wish is that there was some way to make sure people don't feel like they were arguing for nothing, like their opinions aren't just for moot, but other than just removing downvotes I just don't know how

I'm not quite that cynical, but I see how it can be open to interpretation. I mean, most of the time the political element is inherent, but how consciousness can be told apart from unconsciousness seems extremely subjective to me. I'm also not sure how helpful a distinguishing of parroting and informing is. To use a familiar example, if a person believes that Islam is compatible with western values and uses the liberal appeal to cosmopolitanism to support it, would they be liberal (at least, in regard to this one single issue)? Would they be parroting liberals who say similar things? Are they informed by liberal values? How can you tell if they are left-wing or if they are espousing something to which a political label cannot be applied? I mean, this has no real consequence at all because it's yet another horrible semantic debate, but I'm trying to figure out how you would draw the line.

Also thanks RandomMan haha

As for downvotes, one thing that might help is a display of both downvotes and upvotes, rather than a net count. 30 upvotes and 31 downvotes says far more than 1 net downvote. edit I'm dumb who knew

As for downvotes, one thing that might help is a display of both downvotes and upvotes, rather than a net count. 30 upvotes and 31 downvotes says far more than 1 net downvote.

Hover your mouse over the vote score and it'll display your total up- and downvotes.

I call TROLL BAIT.

C'mon people….

It's not just on the site (very little at best) its big fueld shittty trend and is all over the US media hot-light
And complaining about something like this fuels it.
Also if you "leave" this site :) over someone's comments…where were you ALLL of the internet?

I've always tryed to keep the fun aspect of this because if you truly get no enjoyment… deactivate pls

{ But at the same time, saying it is useless to discuss topics like politics on our site is throwing in the towel too quickly, which is where I disagree with you. }

I was talking about this thread. It's pointless to discuss the issue of "bigotry in the general KYM comments" from a political point of view because they don't have a real grasp on (or possibly even an awareness) of the political discourse they're parroting. "This bigot is more conservatively a bigot and this bigot is more liberally a bigot" doesn't mean much when you're talking about 16 year olds as opposed to adult political pundits.

I also think (and have been told) that the forum crowd is, for the most part, a few years older on average that the people who stay in the site comments. & I obviously discuss politics here daily.

{ But if they don’t see a post style or opinion that matches more to them, they’ll never feel a need to reply. }

Right now they see a post style or opinion that more matches theirs being downvoted into the ninth circle of hell. Not particularly encouraging.

{ but I’m trying to figure out how you would draw the line. }

{ if a person believes }

I am not convinced that specifically the typically mid-teenage poster in the KYM comments believes or even cares that much about what they're ultimately saying. If you're informed on the issue, to continue your example, you'd have to ultimately be able to defend your view that Islam is compatible with western values. When pushed, most of these users can't actually explain why they hold the opinion they do, most of them can barely defend it at all when confronted by someone who understands the argument.

First off, I wouldn't call it bigoted; that word doesn't fit right. That said, there has been a change in attitudes. 4 years ago, hipsters were considered the acceptable target. These days, it seems to be radical feminists, though that is an anecdotal observation that is probably false.

Secondly, it isn't exclusive to KYM. I've seen this shift on YouTube, Cracked, and Dorkly, and I suspect it's taken place on most popular websites centered around user content, but again, anecdotal observation. Heck, even the Senate switched to Republican, though that's probably unrelated and due to the six year itch, or whatever it's called.

I'm just glad to finally know that I'm not the only one who noticed a shift; I thought I was practically the only person who felt this way.

I find the term "bigot" to be utterly meaningless these days, since it basically means "intolerance towards opinions you don't like." Which is usually how most people treat the counter opinions to their own. Conservatives are bigoted toward liberals, liberals are bigoted toward conservatives, the forums are bigoted toward the comment section, etc.

TripleA9000 said:

But in all seriousness users like that have been around for a while. The anti-feminist people, the racism doesn’t exist anymore crowd, the people who believe sex change operations are mutilation. They’ve always been there if you go back further in the sites history.

Surprisingly, people have differing opinions about subjects and, when given the chance, like to express those opinions.

What we need are some more channels on the site where we can get the other side of the coin to comment.

There's no denying that the KYM comment section has accumulated a gross amount of people that parrot one extreme viewpoint and shut out the other. We see this the most when it comes to feminism.

If we could somehow import more of the 'other side' to take part in their own counter-circlejerk on the site, we'd see some balance in opinion and also the site would get very interesting.

Right now if you want to oppose the opinions on the KYM comment section, your only solace is the forums which has the bulk of the dissenting opinion towards the comments. IE: Here we have all the anti-GG, the transexuals, most of the bleeding liberals, the girls on the internet and probably the minorities too.

Only on KYM can you look at comments that boast KYM as an overwhelming pro-GG citadel of ethics in games journalism with high walls against feminism…Then you cross over from the comments to the forums and it's like you're in a new website with overwhelming anti-GG sentiments, nearly every mod does not support GG and openly mocks it. Social justice wisdom is respected and most posters support feminism

If we could get some of the forums thinking into the comment sections more, then we might see a change

@TSG

I find the term “bigot” to be utterly meaningless these days, since it basically means “intolerance towards opinions you don’t like.” Which is usually how most people treat the counter opinions to their own. Conservatives are bigoted toward liberals, liberals are bigoted toward conservatives, the forums are bigoted toward the comment section, etc

Pretty much this

Only on KYM can you look at comments that boast KYM as an overwhelming pro-GG citadel of ethics in games journalism with high walls against feminism…

I would guess that a great deal of said comments were made not because they believe KYM supports GG, but because KYM allows people to express their support for GG. Compared to so many other sites that ban anything other than outright outright disgust for GG, that would be enough cause for people to regard the site as pro-GG.

Nah, you're just being a pussy. Grow a pair and get over it.

Since there's been some talk about the semantics of the issue, might I offer the word "reactionary" as a better description of the kind of behaviour we're seeing?

Generally, reactionary politics skew to the right, and are mainly defined in terms of opposition to the current state of affairs and a desire to return to some earlier situation (real or imagined). So, for example, most anti-feminist posts are reactionary in character: they see the current state of affairs as having been negatively affected by feminist thought and activism, and would like to either revert the changes or prevent them from progressing further.

I like this term because, while it is often used as a synonym for "conservative," what it describes is more of a style of thought rather than a set specific views. Someone whose politics skew reactionary tend to define themselves in terms of opposition to certain groups, ideas, or people, and spend most of their thought and energy on describing why those things are bad and coming up with ways to oppose them, often without positing any alternative position of their own besides "the way it used to be." This sort of thinking need not lead to bigotry, or even conservatism (the worst parts of Tumblr leftism often fall into this trap), but very often does.

It also fits in well with what people were talking about earlier in terms of the self-centered politics of younger internet users, and teenagers in particular. If your political horizon cuts off with your own well-being, it's hard to develop any kind of political goals that go beyond a mere set of ideals. You politics lacks specificity. And so your approach to politics becomes a matter of comparing whatever you come across to whatever your ideals are and, as so often happens when reality meets the ideal, finding it insufficient. And so you oppose the imperfect thing. And eventually these oppositions add up, and you end up with a nascent political identity constructed almost entirely around being against certain things.

At the very least, I think this is a limitation that Gamergaters often run into. Their approach to politics is almost completely negative – in that it's based around negating certain things, whether it be "unethical" behaviour, feminism, "SJWs," academic games criticism, or specific people they've added to their enemies list. Even if their ideal – "ethics in journalism" – is a laudable one, it never makes the leap from the negative to the positive, from tearing things down to building things up. Even the moderate, not-doxxing-or-harrassing members of the movement run into the roadblock of having an extremely narrow and limited political program.

So anyway, if I were to offer a diagnosis of where the apparent bigotry of the comments sections comes from, I'd go with "reactionary politics."

Yeah, because there's nowhere on the internet that has GG support. It's not like people that are pro-GG can go to places like Reddit or 8chan or Youtube… Oh wait.

Yeah, Reddit's been going through a lot of shit with shadowbanning and censoring unsavory opinions, but it's not like gamergators are on Reddit's hit list. Where are you going that anything supporting GG is being banned outside of maybe small niche sites? Shit, you can find gamergators on Tumblr of all places if you look hard enough.

Where are you going that anything supporting GG is being banned outside of maybe small niche sites?

4chan, for one. GG being banned there set off alarm bells for a lot of people about the quality of moderation there.

Generally, though, the biggest complaints have been about gaming forums, which many GG people not surprisingly (used) to want to frequent. Some are small, like you said, but the persistent degree to which almost all of them ban any mention of GG is quite something.

That sounds like trying to ring in Gamerghaziers into this fight. And trust me, you don't want that no matter how much you agree with em. Not unless you want everything to become hyper polarized with "Anything not indie should be destroyed" vs "Anything indie should be banned" and an endless job for mods to clean up daily doxes from the ghaziers against the ggers.

I have so, so much to say, and to talk about, but not enough time, or space, and too many topics that would all flow together.

I have neglected the forums. Where can I even begin? Even if I were to start with this thread's particular topic, all the ideas and topics that would follow would be dependent on their interconnectedness to be properly expressed. Do I start a new thread to address this variety of topics? Do I begin my wall here with the current topic, and continue wherever the train of thought leads until it is run dry? Or will I be expected to find as many topic specific threads as I can and present my thoughts piecemeal, reducing their potential impact? I certainly hope not, but I will ask the mods to guide my next action. How should I proceed?

After this post, I must go for a while, and won't be able to check responses in the meantime. But, I suppose, to ensure that even this post holds some relevance to the topic at hand, I will answer OP's question: No, I do not.

but I will ask the mods to guide my next action. How should I proceed?

Start with the topic at hand: simply and to the point. Begin with several points/rationale for your thinking and address questions seperately as they come to you.

@BlackGraphicT, that's an interesting word, "polarized". I suppose the questions of the day are now "Is KYM politically polarized?", " is the internet politically polarized?", "Is there anyway we can combat the polarization without worsening it to extremes?"

@Morningstar

I don't know if I would call KYM politically polarized. At least not the forums anyway. We've had plenty of tests that showed how the forum political climate isn't really that diverse. Not enough to be polarized on issues, I don't think.

As for the rest of the site, we seem to see support for a range of political viewpoints that coincides with the entries we have. Compare peoples attitudes on articles related to liberal memes and the attitudes on articles related to conservative memes.

But that's all we have to go by and it's not enough for me to make a solid conclusion. I guess it depends on the subject matter.

As for the greater internet at whole? Yea probably. You'll see lots of polarized viewpoints on nearly any political news comment section.

I don't know if there's much you can do about polarization but let it play out

@Black graphic

That sounds like trying to ring in Gamerghaziers into this fight.

What are gamerghaziers? This is the first time I heard of them. But they sound dangerous.

Looking up on these guys now; they appear to be some hatedom for Gamergate. Which I agree, is not what we want. Hatedoms of any kind are rubbish. I want to invite more minds that rationally question, not mindfully hate.

Bigoted? Eh, sorta. Sure we have users who stick to the same shlock of "justice 4 d interwebs" but 9 times out of ten when i meet with these people theres one of them who is more accepting and willing to see another side, and those people are becoming more common and common. So, sorta, but it is changing from that.
EDIT
Ironically it seems a bit bigoted against the comments as many users (including me to be fair) will hate the comments no matter what which to me seems a bit extreme. Sure, they can be stupid but complaining about that will just make the forums seems more like the bad guys and can literally make them more bigoted. so I would suggest doing something about rather than whine about it here.

@ Butterscotch, they're the polar opposite of KotakuInAction, meaning they're exactly as bad as KotakuInAction, but whose main focus are gamergaters and the video game industry.

yeah that was just poor discussion planning on my part

but she was defiantly hated for her race and gender, spez banned 3 subs but nobodies comparing him to dictators. he's white and straight and cis.

Did "spez" ban three very popular and commonly used subs?

I doubt Pao would have gotten the same reaction to messing up something much smaller then r/ama.

She still got a mountain of hate when IAMA was totally fine and the subs that were banned were all small, with the exception of fatpeoplehate (still nothing compared to IAMA). I wasn't even on Reddit and I saw Chairman Pao memes when that happened.

I should point out that reddit's reputation could be seen as "Like 4chan, but worse" due to having more CP, rule 34, sexism and such (this extends to 4chan itself who accuses reddit of stealing their memes) especialy around the violentacrez debacle

Not really. Racist and sexist attitudes are in the minority now, which is quite impressive for a site that you can stay reasonably anonymous on if you so choose. I wouldn't say I see Transphobia/Homophobia a lot on this site either, but they're still treated as a minority group, and the majority of comments I see on LGBT topics are neutrality or ambiguous acceptance, as if people aren't fully comfortable with it, but don't want to be dicks.
Still as a whole, I praise the KYM community for being pretty bro about "Controversial" gender, race and sexuality topics that the media likes to get pissy about sometimes.