I don’t want to bother those people, lol.
I’ll send you the gif in PM, let me know what’s bad about it.
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No please 
. It’s ok. Lets move on from it.
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Let’s try this again…
I mean that dude was a Nazi in that movie wasnt he?
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I would advice against posting a deleted picture (or post) again on the forum. The reason being that every flagged post is taken into consideration and opinions are taken from the Forum Ambassadors too. So to post it again will imply going against the Forum policy.
I do genuinely agree with you on the matter of exploration of topics in a deep manner but we have to also understand that the forum rules are different and we are trying to be neutral with regard to politics, religion, idealogy, etc. As such we do have to take into account flags and how they affect others.
This is my explanation on the matter and not a personal point against you or anything since I really love your opinions on various topics.
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I think we all know that icons and symbols have power.
That their meanings, associations, and connotations are inherently imprecise is a central feature of the power of symbols and icons.
Icons and symbols propagate easily.
They are “memetic”.
And as such they are purposed and repurposed extremely easily.
A cross. A circle. A star. An Andre the Giant face.
They carry multiple, contradictory, often charged meanings.
Thus when you tap into the power of a major cultural symbol or icon, the narratives that you are activating go far beyond whatever your individual intentions might happen to be.
Some icons are powerfully emotionally charged because of their close associations with major historical events and cultural references.
This is Collective Social Phenomena 101.
Just the way things work.
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I didn’t flag this image. But I’ve flagged similar images before.
I wasn’t flagging the human who posted the image.
I was flagging the image.
The image sends a powerful message, independent of whether your personal intention is to celebrate every part of that message or not.
It represents a whole lot of trauma.
haha.
If someone really loves me. And that person decides, as an expression of love, to take some fresh fecal matter and use it to draw a heart on a piece of paper and to write the heartfelt message “I love you”.
The intention is beautiful, but…
I’m still throwing that crap away.
(I am not saying Hellboy is crap. It and other Golden Age-setting, pulp-style comics were making use of the WWII tropes to evoke (and subvert) the sense of clear moral lines. Effective literary strategy.)
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If I flagged every post here that represented a whole lot of trauma… lol.
I have gifs with guns shooting and nobody flags it.
People post music from Cannibal Corpse on here and nobody flags it.
You guys are reaching, and reaching very hard.
Not only that, but
Nobody has told me why my gif was flagged, deleted and against the Forum policy.
We are assuming that it’s because of triggering symbolism (very small in the size of the entire gif).
So if I repost the gif without the symbolism, then how is the gif still inflammatory? Like what the fuck, lol.
You know what, y’all got it. I posted some cool gif related to art (creative story writing/music/mood) like I always do and people go insane.
It’s the internet, I got you.
No problem, lol.
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Context, my good man. My meaning, as I hope you know, is not to say that we can’t talk about trauma here.
I’m talking about unintentionally causing it.
A pretty good rule of thumb: If there is a symbol or phrase that is pretty much exclusively associated with a genocide that occurred in the past 200 to 300 years? Just think twice.
Not really.
A decontextualized image of a Nazi officer standing defiantly with swastika-covered flags waving behind him.
Not a very far reach.
It’s actually kind of a softball when it comes to ‘Things that may trigger or inflame people’.
It would be a $100 Jeopardy game-show response. Not a $1000 one.
Bruh. I think you are beautiful and awesome. I’m just talking about swasties.
(and as a person who has investigated his fair share of Buddhist iconography, I’m aware that that symbol had some very different associations before the 1930s and 1940s. It still does.)
I think it is fine without the swastikas, personally.
But we’d need to wait for an actual moderator to know the whole story. I don’t have access to the flags.
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Malkuth has explained it very well.
And regarding this:
Every flag is investigated but some posts and pictures are harmless and hence are allowed.
Every flagged post isn’t deleted.
Have said my part, my friend. Any other issues, please consult @RVconsultant and @DarkPhilosopher.
EDIT: as of this writing, Forum Ambassadors don’t have the ability to delete posts nor even see which posts are flagged. But the admins (RVC and DP and even Saint and Fire) do ask our opinion and eventually they take the final decision.
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Let’s try something. I will post something very controversial, let’s see if it gets flagged.
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As usual, will send a number of my bank account, you know I am more of a material guy 
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Lol you just get humor. And nail it everytime.
Thanks for the lols, man.
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Would like to add that there have been some of my posts that have been deleted too. Granted many of them have been in the heat of the moment when dealing with troublemakers (like H, C and AM). And I haven’t been notified why they are deleted. But it’s ok.
Sometimes we say something bleh and it gets deleted. But most of what we say are intact and available for everyone to read.
Sincerely, @Skadoosh, I love you bro. Am trying to explain how the flagging system works here. Rules are rules. And we have to follow it.
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It’s just a gif, lol. No way I’m wasting a moderator’s time with this, hahaha.
It’s an extremely trivial matter, I’m not upset about it
Yes, I agree with you completely.
At the same time, I feel like the context is the short story. I posted that gif because the character is wearing all black and the tone fits like a “dark, majestic and beguiling badass” type of atmosphere. That’s really it, it’s a wholesome intention.
It’s a cool gif from a cool and popular mainstream movie in cult culture. The movies are not culture-canceled and people don’t typically (if at all) find the movies offensive. There is no outrage against the movies. It’s Guillermo del Toro… the same guy who brought us Pacific Rim. He has an Emmy Award.
No normal people in society are outraged against the Hellboy movies… they’re often touted to be underrated.
I feel like to flag my gif is logically justified, but at the same time is based on a very low level superficiality. Which is okay because it’s the internet lol, I’m just being vocal on it.
So while I agree with you that:
I feel like the reach is the lack of:
“Well why aren’t we trying to figure out the context? and why isn’t it warranted?”
Also, when you don’t give someone the benefit of their context, you’re in a sense trivializing the person as well. There’s no respect to what they’re trying to convey, one is just projecting their triggered state onto them. It’s just all completely superficial, lol that’s my only gripe.
Honestly, all I intuitively get is “what did you expect Luther, it’s the internet and you should know better”. In context of growth, this is the type of ass-kicking/lesson/message I’m receiving hahaha. To distance myself from the internet or practice a different form of expression away from gifs and internet style culture.
Anyways, thanks for the insights and discussions. It’s really all harmless, there’s no need to tag moderators and stuff. Not a big deal, lol.
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And don’t forget Pan’s Labyrinth, another extremely bad-ass movie based around WWII-era.
Yes, the gif was utterly bad-ass.
And powerfully evoked the title of this thread, The Black Emperors.
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@Skadoosh I’m thinking of this from another angle.
The occult has already caused a stir up with hermit. According to Saint there’s people watching this forum waiting to pounce on any shred of evidence to drag them through the mud.
We’ve already dealt with 2 highly unstable individuals connecting the most ridiculous of theories. Paranoia works on a different level, independent of intelligence. I get what you’re saying, but not everyone will.
I’d say don’t think of it as censorship or anything like that. Consider all the crap this company has been through recently and think of how these things can fuel that unintentionally.
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Don’t make my life hard right now, people. I deleted the picture because it was flagged and quite frankly, with everything going on right now, it’s best to just move on.
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Oh wow!!! That was fast. If you blinked, you missed it! 
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