Let's talk about The Cool Zone

[vampirate]

Here's the thing.

Setting aside for the moment the fact that I enjoy the cool zone, it still very much provides a valuable service, by giving conversations that a lot of folks don't like seeing in general a place to exist. If we remove cool zone or say 'you can't have these sorts of discussions because some people on the forums don't like it', one of two things is going to happen.

1) The conversations you do not like happen in general again, instead of in a channel you are more than welcome to mute and never look at. You are unhappy.
2) The conversations you do not like happen on other discord servers, further splintering the community, almost assuredly into multiple other discords, leading to cliqueishness, which is poison to a community. The community suffers as a result. You are unhappy.

If you don't like the cool zone, don't look at it. Problem solved. If you don't like that people are having conversations you do not like in a place you do not like and you don't want to not look at it, that is not the administration's problem. People are allowed to have opinions and conversations you do not like, and the fact that some of you are *annoyed* instead of *relieved* that they are having those conversations in a place you do not have to look at if you do not want to is bizarre and disappointing to me. I don't know how more clearly I can put this. If you do not like the cool zone, do not look at the cool zone. If you do not like the cool zone, just... just mute it. It really is that simple. Hell, you can even tell discord to not even show you channels you have muted - click the little down arrow next to the server name, 'hide muted channels' is the second to last item on the list. Complaining about people having opinions and discussions you do not like in a channel you can easily *not even see* is absolute foolishness, and I expect better of you all.

But most of the objections aren't about the opinions so much as the calls for violence, and the way people are treated who have differing opinions. The calls for violence are explicitly against the discord rules, and some laws.....

that's be like people saying "man, I sure do hate f*gs" in cool zone, and the response being "Look if you don't like someone expressing that then ignore the channel".
The objections, and my objection, lies in the uneven approach to enforcement and the types of statements that are allowed to happen there that break the rules. It's not opinions so much as a toxic culture that is being objected to. It's like super the Wild West in there. I felt the exact same kind of relief when it was gone that I did when I stopped posting on Twitter cause the ugliness there is just saddening. Don't get me wrong, there IS positive conversation there. There IS something worth saving there and fostering, but there is a LOT going wrong too.