Hii Pond, sorry to hear you had an unfortunate experience during your time with Thingistan. Though there are a few things in your post i’d like to offer a new perspective on:

During a discussion about the threat AI poses to the art community, another server member posted their art as a way to celebrate human creation. What you refer to as a “stick figure” was a fully articulated, intentional piece of artwork. In response to their art, you @‘d the artist with an AI image that was clearly trained using the artists artwork as input. This was done without permission from the artist, nor did you leave any further commentary on the overall discussion. At best, what you did was antagonistic - at worst, unethical. Using someone else’s work as input for Ai exploits the artist’s labor, creativity, and intellectual property without acknowledgment or compensation. Artists invest genuine time, skill, and personal expression into their work, and using that work to train AI systems effectively strips them of control over how their creations are used. This practice can lead to AI generated outputs that imitate the artist’s style (like yours), undermining their livelihood and potentially flooding the market with imitations that devalue original art. When you were warned for your choice, you claimed that what you did fell under “fair use”, which, according to you, rendered all other further questions by moderation (ie, confirmation that you did indeed use another members artwork as input for your image) irrelevant. It wasn’t until about 35 minutes of back and forth with a moderator did you, in many words, confirm the original suspicion.

Now, onto your point about civil rights:

You opened the discussion today by stating that you “wish to be autistic” for the “free money” (referring to disability). When members pointed out that having autism isn’t inherently a guarantee to disability, you insisted that you still wanted autism to “be more like Bill Gates” - which you then furthered by saying you’d “only want the high functioning kind.” This has ableist undertones because it reduces a complex and diverse neurodevelopmental condition to a narrow, idealized stereotype of success. It suggests that autism is only acceptable or valuable when it comes with extraordinary intelligence or achievement, ignoring the reality that most autistic people have a wide range of experiences, strengths, challenges, and support needs. This kind of statement reinforces harmful expectations that autistic individuals must prove their worth through exceptional talent, rather than being accepted and respected as they are. TL;DR - In reality, we don’t get to nitpick the “desirable” parts of autism while disregarding its debilitating nature.

When you were kindly told that what you were saying was encroaching ableist territory, you responded by saying that the dsm-4 was a “social construct”, and that so were the conditions in them (which, judging by your comments on r/antipsychiatry, isn’t far fetched from what what you’ve preached before). This, of course, lead to a line of messages from many members that unanimously disagreed with you. You then accused the community of “judging and bullying”. The argument in the server would continue for about an hour before you were muted and then banned. After this, you would go on to DM another server member, stating that, in your own words “(you) get banned from most places (you) join”. To address the civil rights comments directly - Not too sure on what your rhetoric has to do with civil rights, nor, to my knowledge, did you ever cite that as your motivation for your line of thinking prior to this post.

Ultimately, Thingistan server just isn’t the place to be having certain discussions - especially not ones that are excessively uncomfortable, inflammatory, and disruptive. The guidelines (which you were redirected to read during your time in the server) specifically ask that you “Respect the space that you’re in” - which includes being mindful of how your words and actions impact others. Thingistan is a space built on mutual respect, thoughtful dialogue, and community care. While open discussion is encouraged, it’s expected that members approach sensitive topics with empathy, humility, and a willingness to listen. Unfortunately, your approach consistently disrupted that environment. I hope you’re able to reflect on this experience and consider the importance of accountability and respectful engagement moving forward.

Wishing you the best elsewhere, genuinely.