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Curious if anyone has the original Universal Monk comment handy.
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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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Universal Monk was a prolific poster around election time; he had tons of alt accounts that all posted stuff purposely made to divide the left.
After his accounts all got banned for trolling and evasion, he started up the Donald J Musk accounts and repeated the cycle, this time posting far-right fascist content and trolling people with lies, disinfo, and general unpleasantness.
It's been an open secret for a while that they were the same user based on the MO, but apparently he fucked up and reused a comment.
Their favourite m.o. during election season was sealioning and concern trolling, as well as baiting people into breaking the civility rule and then reporting them. It seemed to me like they were taking pleasure from skirting around the letter of the law while violating the spirit of it.
It was completely incredible at the time that they went on for months without getting banned.
ELI5: If it's bad enough to compromise civility over, it's bad enough to report to get rule enforcers involved, right?
As for the other two things (the "sealioning" and "concern trolling" parts), I guess I'd need examples here. I've seen people called "sealioners" simply for asking for translations, and I've seen people called "concern trolls" even over pointing out law violations. It invokes thoughts of what PBS calls "fallacy fallacy".
The fact that !politics_no_um@lemmy.world had to be created still baffles me
As a big Umphrees McGee fan, who had previously blocked and forgot about UniversalMonk, seeing a bunch of posts talking smack about UM really threw me for a loop when it got real bad haha.
And if more people did that, we wouldn't have to have entire threads like this. People follow me around rather than block me. It's weird. lol
Reminds me of all the people who were banned from editing encyclopedias due to being Scientologists. Always nice to see when people know I'm not the droids they're looking for.
Tbh, it appears to me the guy is in serious mental health crisis. Social isolation isn't great without mh support and tends to exacerbate issues. I'm wondering if it's simply not affordably accessible to them or if it is and they broke so completely they failed to see the necessity. I remember a post they made about breaking up with their gf and that's when the alt-right accounts became highly visible to me.
He also posted about being happily married; there's really no way to know the truth about a serial liar like UM.
Although he has serious "50-something-divorced-guy" energy. If I had to guess, his kids and ex hate him for being a right-wing scumbag and this is how he takes out his anger.
The only thing we need to guess, impo, is he's in serious mh crisis and pushing him toward suicide or mass shooting isn't a solution. Ignore or block should leave him the option of seeking professional help or spiralling of his own doing, not ours.
It also leaves open the option to keep being a racist, transphobic, fascist troll though, which will leave the door open to becoming a Nazi bar.
I understand where you're coming from, but it's not my responsibility to play nice with the people who are attacking the people I love and those like them.
Trolls should be made to feel unwelcome until they change their behavior.
We disagree. Unless we're moderators, it's not our job and focusing on other's demons too much means we're ignoring our own. Something about the abyss staring back, but that's the beauty of the fediverse. Just like you don't get to tell me what to do, I don't get to tell you. I would only urge you to do some soul -searching and follow your best impulses, while waiting to serve the worst or questionable. There are other options such as utilizing block/report.
Sure, if that's what works for you.
But I don't want to see Lemmy turn into a trash site like Reddit, where the worst and loudest are free to harass, provoke, and lie without consequences.
This user has literally dozens of alts he uses to get around bans, so I don't see unilateral disarmament as a way to keep this particular fascist in check.
That's fair. Practicable solutions seem to be somewhere between severity and mercy, in my estimation.
Thanks for voicing an alternate opinion, I really do value other perspectives.
You're welcome and thank you, too. What about ip block ban?
My concern is for avoidable loss of human life. Not that it is avoidable, just that I would appreciate mitigation of foreseeable consequences.
I don't think that's a thing on Lemmy yet, and I imagine would have to be done per instance so they could just jump around to different spots.
It's doable though.
Kind words. But misplaced. I'm not in crisis. Still good words though and people should listen to you. Just not about me.
I've never attacked anyone. Please post any proof that I advocate violence in any form. I'm a socialist.
I'm not socially isolated though. And the gf I broke up with wasn't an emotional post. I was talking about how she was too clingy and was mad that I dated other girls. There was nothing sad about it at all. Please post the actual comment.
I can hypothetically be his girlfriend if that saves a few people from the brink of insanity.
What accounts? I don't have any other accounts except for Universal Monk. And I haven't been banned. I'm still here posting. As you can see. My post and comment history is public.
How do we know each persona is his?
With your writing style... We know haha
Where I come from, we call that speculation.
We are not in a court of law....
I will take my chances
My point being we shouldn't act like we are.
You watch long enough, definable patterns emerge, then blow up. Fractal repetition, really.
I've seen a lot of mistaken identity occur due to people trying to grasp these supposed patterns. Emphasis on "a lot" too. Among people who have thought I've evaded punishment, I've been mistaken for (other) full blown celebrities before. It's to the point where my copyrights have been imbued in their artwork.
They were all UniversalMonk@[insert instance here]. He wanted everyone to know it was him.
I mean the alternative isn't abnormal. Many of my personas share names with other people who have little to do with me.