this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2025
-9 points (36.4% liked)
Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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15 users here now
This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
Posting Guidelines
All posts should follow this basic structure:
- Which mods/admins were being Power Tripping Bastards?
- What sanction did they impose (e.g. community ban, instance ban, removed comment)?
- Provide a screenshot of the relevant modlog entry (don’t de-obfuscate mod names).
- Provide a screenshot and explanation of the cause of the sanction (e.g. the post/comment that was removed, or got you banned).
- Explain why you think its unfair and how you would like the situation to be remedied.
Rules
- Post only about bans or other sanctions that you have received from a mod or admin.
- Don’t use private communications to prove your point. We can’t verify them and they can be faked easily.
- Don’t deobfuscate mod names from the modlog with admin powers.
- Don’t harass mods or brigade comms. Don’t word your posts in a way that would trigger such harassment and brigades.
- Do not downvote posts if you think they deserved it. Use the comment votes (see below) for that.
- You can post about power trippin’ in any social media, not just lemmy. Feel free to post about reddit or a forum etc.
- If you are the accused PTB, while you are welcome to respond, please do so within the relevant post.
Expect to receive feedback about your posts, they might even be negative.
Make sure you follow this instance's code of conduct. In other words we won't allow bellyaching about being sanctioned for hate speech or bigotry.
YTPB matrix channel: For real-time discussions about bastards or to appeal mod actions in YPTB itself.
Some acronyms you might see.
- PTB - Power-Tripping Bastard: The commenter agrees with you this was a PTB mod.
- YDI - You Deserved It: The commenter thinks you deserved that mod action.
- YDM new - You Deserved More: The commenter thinks you got off too lightly.
- BPR - Bait-Provoked Reaction: That mod probably overreacted in charged situation, or due to being baited.
- CLM - Clueless Mod: The mod probably just doesn't understand how their software works.
Relevant comms
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Welcome to the circus lol
You can't exactly go into the stables voluntarily, and then complain that you have horse poop on you now. It is known as a common feature, and if you didn't know, now you do.
Bruh how does Cowbee get null a second time, that's amazing!
I've said this about another person, but Cowbee is a camouflaged pit of sharpened spikes. It's just argument bait, a person who has more time than god to get in bad-faith arguments.
I'm a little bit curious what's going on there. The right-wing political "fellow leftist" booby trap users are fairly easy to identify, likewise the people who are sincerely expressing bad opinions (that grouping can even be fun to talk with for a while I think.) I even mastered some of the weirder characters like Yogsoth and recognized some who work along similar lines. Recently I have added streamer stans to my little menagerie of weird-Lemmy-interact-ers, I sort of tried for a while to understand them and stopped without really having reached enlightenment, but it is okay.
Cowbee is not any of those. He is still a mystery to me. He must be sincere about what he's saying, no one would spend that level of time and energy unless they meant it on some level. And his style of argumentation doesn't really betray that he doesn't believe it himself or know that it is factually weak... if I had to guess, I would say that he is completely sincere, he just kind of has some alternative facts at work that are hard to break through because it's all bedrocked on this alternate reality, coupled with I think an emotional attachment to "his team" needing to be the right team that must be defended at all costs. That's my best guess honestly. I think the infinite energy comes from wanting to stand up for "his people" in some sense, and I think he cares to send infinite messages on whatever topic and wants to rearrange facts around to support whatever he's trying to "win" at the moment just because it is fun to fight for his team and feel successful.
But honestly, that is all guessing. Another possibility is that he has a position of leadership in some kind of leftist organization, and so this stuff is tied in with his sense of self-image, and so he has to defend it to the death any time it comes up and comes onto his radar. No idea. He's not really stupid or vacuous like a lot of the infinite-internet-arguers, but talking with him is usually not productive just because his side of the conversation will contain 0 listening, so you'll just be hearing lectures until you feel like stopping the interaction.
I agree with you and think he's absolutely sincere. You either put that much energy into something because it's passion or a paycheck, and I don't think there's any indication that they're a bad actor, they are a dyed in the wool communist who's been here since the beginning. They might work or be attached to an official org or something, but I don't think that enters into to it at all except to say they are very educated. Also as you noted, whip fucking smart!
But that has created the situation I refer to as an argument trap. Because arguments with Cowbee are not productive because they are not moving them in any direction except not liking you and using meta arguments to dismantle any serious points you make, and to dismantle any influence you may have.
It's fun to watch and anyone who argues with them will eventually be reduced to a series of deep left buzzwords. By the end it's become a meta argument that doesn't even resemble anything approaching the original point. It was simply a waste of time and energy.
But it's fun to watch, by Jobe!
Yeah. Well, kind of. One of the hallmarks of the people I think are getting a paycheck for it is that they don't really seem to give a shit whether the stuff they are saying makes sense or is believable. They might go back and forth for a long time, but they don't get invested in it, it's just "here's why we all think Kamala Harris is an asshole, obviously" and then on to the next comment.
Eh. This particular argument caused me to flee in alarm within the first few comments.
It did actually inspire me to look up whether a massive argument I had with one of the lemmy.ml people some time ago was Cowbee or not (if it had been, it would have been a key insight as to what made him tick). Alas, it was not. Sometimes I enjoy talking with these people (I think I actually have had some extended talks with Cowbee about Communism, which were fine), but this one I think both people were focused so much on minutiae that it quickly became unbearable.