Asklemmy

Plenty, though it's a general thing rather than some rigid code. And these are my rules, not necessarily things that everyone should be doing. When it comes to that, Wheaton's law covers everything well enough lol.

First, in full honesty, I sometimes will break my rules and engage with assholes, trolls, or other bad actors out of sheer boredom to entertain myself, and I'll often throw all my other rules out the window if they're enough of an asshole.

So, my number one rule is honesty. I refuse to lie. For one, I've come to value the freedom of being exactly who I am too much to fuck around. For another, I'm too fucking old to keep track of bullshit, so I'd fuck up eventually anyway. Now, I'm not saying I'll never wrap a truth up in fancy clothes for entertainment sake, I enjoy telling stories for my own fun and I'll tell them in a way that pleases me. The facts are always true, though the way they're expressed might make it seem otherwise.

Like, I sometimes break out stories about my friend Spider. If I just say that he mouthed off in a bar and got me into a fight, that's fucking boring. If I say that he pulled out his penis because the was worried he broke it, that's less boring, but telling the story in one line is a waste when describing said penis is so much more fun. Same with my stories about my cousin, Fucking Ryan. I'm not ruining a good story by writing it down using minimalism, I'm going to tart that bitch up and make it a ride, you dig? It's all true, but if I say Fucking Ryan stole a hamburger from me, that's not as entertaining as describing the ketchup leaking from his pocket.

Second, if I choose to answer a question, I try to answer it to the best of my knowledge, without too much in the way of judging that it was asked. You ask about how to tell if you broke your dick, the answer is going to be about how you tell, with no more than a return question about why you need to know. That is negated when the person asking is a douche, where I will give them shit about them being a douche, but I'll still answer.

Third, I try to remember that I'm talking to other humans. Sometimes the bots and ai generated stuff makes that hard. Other times, I fall into the trap of reacting to what's on the screen rather than the fact that a human put it there. This is the rule I fail to follow the most. A lot of the time, that doesn't matter because humans are assholes, and some of the shit they say is worth some backlash. But I try to take a second and think about what might have caused someone to say something shitty that is out of character even if I don't know them.

Which leads into the fourth. There's a limit on how many slaps I'll go into a slap fight. I figure that if I can't either redirect the person into a real conversation in three or four comments that also include not taking their bullshit, it isn't worth continuing. That means that I may tell someone they're acting like an asshole, but I'll also be trying to get them to break out of it and move on. Believe it or not, it works. Not all the time, but it amazes me how often just telling someone they're being a dick, and that I'm just another human trying to interact makes them stop and think for a second. Works best with folks that are already attacking an idea instead of a person, but are just being dicks to the person as a side thing.

What it all boils down to is extensions of Wheaton's law. Ways to not be a dick, or to be less of a dick.