Syag Lchochma,
“before declaring an entire shul or community to be lacking in ahavas Yisroel based on hearsay.”
another example.
I agree with you that what I wrote was not a direct quotation of DaMoshe per se, but I did feel that it was an accurate summation of the body of his posts in this thread. DaMoshe didn’t refute or object to the take either. Upon rereading his posts carefully, it is possible that he was intending to limit his polemic to the gabbaim themselves and not include the larger shul or Lakewood community. It wasn’t clear, however, particularly after he prefaced a response to Joseph with “If you’re going to tell me that in Lakewood, they think that…”. There could be other interpretations of that response too. I think other posts such as Sam2’s bringing wife beating as an example to support his point further charged the debate.
My question is just about a tendency to make a posters comments more extreme, and then respond to him based on the “updated version”
I thought a lot about this, and I think there are several different things that go on, with different elements at play depending on the thread.
1. Sometimes when a poster identifying with one “group” makes a statement about others in a different “group” (e.g., DaMoshe’s story in this thread, or if a Yeshivish person opened a thread to discuss some problem or other he witnessed with individuals in a MO setting – certainly has happened in the CR before!), other posters may interpret this as a blanket statement about that other group. Sometimes this arises from unclear wording by the OP, sometimes it arises from posters taking personal offense. I think DaasYochid alluded to this issue earlier in this thread; such posts usually do not engender positive responses.
2. In most threads as posts get added, the debate evolves into two camps, even though individual posters have a wide range of views. In this thread, for example, several posters have put me, DaasYochid, and Joseph into one “camp” and responded to us as one, even though our statements and positions have differences. Similarly, it’s possible that interpretations of DaMoshe’s posts by those arguing with him have been influenced by Sam2’s and ubiquitin’s posts, for example. I think once this two-sided evolution happens, people start responding to the “camp” rather than the poster, and it’s much easier to misinterpret individual posters based on perceptions of what the greater “camp” holds. I agree with you that posters should be very careful to remember that we are responding to unique individuals, not a camp.