[RangerScience]

I've seen four "in person", one very public (just purely IRL public).

I didn't see anyone (with one exception) pick sides immediately; although most people's "picked" side was "not involved". (The one exception was a community organizer who definitely has Been Through This Before).

For three of those, I did my own homework - a lot of asking around, and then a lot of conversations with both people. In the end, most of that didn't matter: the accused ended up damning themselves (or not!) pretty immediately when I talked to them about it.

[Jensson]

> I didn't see anyone (with one exception) pick sides immediately

> the accused ended up damning themselves (or not!) pretty immediately when I talked to them about it

So you mean yourself being the exception?

[RangerScience]

Haha. No. I spent hours before hand talking with involved other people, and then I spent hours talking with these people, and then hours more processing the conversations (on my own and with advisors).

It’s just that in the end, it turned out that the things that decided it one way or the other had come up pretty early in the conversations with the accused.

[Jensson]

Yeah, most people are really bad liars or don't really lie a lot, so in many cases its just obvious. But some people lie as easily as they breathe, those are much harder to understand, and other people get really nervous when accused of stuff they didn't do and sound as if they lie even when they don't, so in those cases its hard.

And this is extra important in nerd communities, since in general we are biased to believe nerds are creeps so when women accuse a socially clumsy nerd of something people will mostly believe the woman. Popular guys aren't affected much by a cancellation, but they totally destroy awkward guys.

Even more important for people on the autism spectrum. They might say "I touched her" when she touched him, since technically you touch someone if they touch you so its autistically correct. So a woman making advances on an autistic guy and then accuses him, the autistic guy will likely damn himself with statements like that since he doesn't understand how those statements will make people misunderstand the situation.