Momo

12 minutes ago, DeltaV said:

We use debit cards, cash, PayPal, Klarna, wire transfer …

As long as the debit card is still branded Visa, Mastercard, etc. they should still work online. This is the normal case for debit cards here in Australia, but I can't speak for internationally.

One of the mods reminded me I should probably mention what the financials look like:

1. Hosting costs: variable, it's based on usage but usually USD$75~80 per month. There's other cheaper options out there but this is dedicated hosting and has been extremely solid for the last two years.
2. Invision license: USD$60 per 6 months. This is the forum software itself. Not really negotiable.
3. You will need to find your own email hosting as the email for arocalypse.com is the one thing currently tied to one of my personal accounts. I use fastmail which is $5/user/month but there's tonnes of options here.

To date, donations have been effectively nil and the old donations page hosted by AUREA is offline now so if you want to pursue that line then you'll need to figure out something for that.

As of now, I'm stepping down from running the technical and financial sides of the forum. We're looking for someone who can take up the leadership position for the forum. If no one steps up within a reasonable timeframe then I will need to shut down this site. I don't have a hard deadline today, but it will be at least a few weeks.

I'm not going to go into details about why, sufficed to say that some recent events have forced my hand but this is something I've been considering for a while now. I've been very hands off with the site, letting the moderator team manage the day to day operation but even that simply isn't feasible now.

If someone does step up then I'm happy to spend some time getting them up to speed with the hosting setup and it's been pretty solid and I haven't had to touch much in a long time.

You know why it was removed, because you got a warning about it which you acknowledged. If you're willing to actually engage and listen rather than belittle people, this thread will be kept open. You however are on a timeout, which unfortunately didn't get applied automatically and this thread showed up, so take this time to listen.

To celebrate the end of ASAW 2021, AUREA is running a fundraiser livestream on February 27th, at 3PM EST! More info on the event and guest lineup can be found at https://www.aromanticism.org/asaw-2021 from February 21st. The event itself will be hosted on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/EJ-dbqlIK9U.

I'm joining in on this event and it's looking to have some interesting people on board to talk. Some of the proceeds will be coming back to Arocalypse as well, so please do come and check it out!

For legal reasons, we can't support user accounts for people under the age of 13. Unfortunately, there's not a lot we can do there - the only other option would require more administration and young people outing themselves to their parents.

I do want to make clear that this is entirely a legal decision and not because we feel that people can't know that they are aro until that age or anything like that. If you're under 13, we encourage you to browse the site and if you wish to participate then you can make guest posts.

If anyone wants to join the Discord, the link is already available on the forum post:

Possibly all of the above.

There's recently been some big software updates to the forum software, which may have improved SEO.

We've definitely changed the guest posts system since 2018, but we've actually made it more restrictive not less. They now require moderator approval before going through.

 Just putting my mod hat on for just a moment to remind everyone that the official stance of the forum is that alloromantic and allosexual are legitimate terms. However, using these terms as pejoratives or otherwise discriminating against people who are part of those groups is against the rules of the forum:

On 12/20/2020 at 1:37 PM, Momo said:

c. Offensive and bigoted content
Arocalypse does not tolerate racist, queerphobic, or sexist bigotry, as these create an environment that is hostile to the reasonable exchange of views. You may not post hateful, abusive or disparaging content about people's race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, romantic orientation, age, or mental or physical disability. This includes, but is not limited to, anything bigoted against 'asexuals', 'allosexuals', 'aromantics', ‘alloromantics’, ‘ace-spec’ or ‘aro-spec’ as identifiable categories.

Posting offensive content, or bigoted propaganda, may result in an immediate and permanent ban from the forum. Offences judged less serious by the Admod Team will be dealt with under the Warning system outlined below.

1 hour ago, El011 said:

I'm sensing some cognitive dissonance here. You say that having privilege doesn't mean you're not also stigmatized but don't seem to apply this to aros. Don't cis het aros and cis aroaces have privilege related to sexuality by virtue of not experiencing homophobia?

I am white. I am privileged because I am white, if I argued otherwise I think most people on this forum would have words. I am also autistic, trans, aro, and ace. I am discriminated against for all four. Just because you have some privilege does not mean that you also do not experience discrimination, oppression or stigmatisation and there is no dissonance in that statement.

And related to your question, yes they do. But they do experience arophobia and acephobia respectively, things I have personally witnessed and the gay people have some measure of privilege for not experiencing that. Which does nothing to diminish the very real problems any of those three hypothetical people face.

Like I said originally, this whole concept isn't meant to be used as a measuring stick. It's a way to acknowledge issues and needs that various groups face and how they may inter-relate and connect to each other.

1 hour ago, El011 said:

Can't it also be argued that saying this is a homophobic talking point used to silence gay and bi people who have a problem with the word?

Do you think it's ok for transphobes, gay or otherwise, who dislike being called cisgender to shout down that word? It's literally the same situation. No one is asking people to self-id as alloromantic or allosexual, but the words are still useful for us to talk about people who aren't us and taking away vocabulary is a form of harassment and has been a common tactic for silencing people, as has already been mentioned.

There is nothing wrong with the terms allosexual nor alloromantic for all the same reasons that there is nothing wrong with cisgender, perisex, allistic, etc, etc. if you have an issue with the way people use these words then by all means criticise them. But different terminology doesn’t fix those problems. 

On 12/6/2020 at 4:08 AM, El011 said:

-to encompass gray-ace and gray-aro people while also acknowledging our place in the aro and ace communities.

-as a neutral descriptor that doesn't denote privilege, that acknowledges the stigma and oppression even many straight people experience related to their attraction and sexual/romantic lives (ie reproductive rights for women, criminalization of sex work, eugenics, nonconsensual surgeries on intersex people, trans people experiencing violence for having sex, racist stereotypes about people of color's sexuality, etc.)

-in a way that doesn't imply wlw/mlm attraction is privileged and acknowledges the privilege that comes with not being attracted to one's same and similar genders.

-in a way that doesn't push an "us vs. them" mentality that I see often in the ace and aro communities

-in a way that doesn't pretend asexuality or aromanticism are oppressed identities (stigmatized yes, oppressed no)

-in a way that doesn't pretend asexuality and aromanticism are part of the lgbt community

-in a way that doesn't shame or alienate people for having sex or romantic feelings

This list of issues is so contradictory as to be laughable. You say that aros are stigmatised then say that allos don’t have any privileges by virtue of being allo. You can’t have it both ways. Having privilege doesn’t mean you aren’t oppressed or stigmatised. Those are not mutually exclusive. But this isn’t a race to the bottom to find out who is worst off. It’s about acknowledging that different groups of people have different issues and needs.

On 12/2/2020 at 6:13 AM, elmas said:

imagecreatefromstring(): No JPEG support in this PHP build

Sorry for the late reply (I pay more attention to the Site Comments forum where issues like this are usually reported). This should be fixed now, but it's been a long standing issue. Please do let me know if you're still having issues with this.

A big thank you to everyone who has stood up to help out. Everyone give a big welcome to the new members of the moderation team, in no particular order: @Autumn, @Holmbo, @Magni, @nonmerci, @roboticanary, @Erederyn, and @boba. 

On a personal note, I'll be stepping back from moderating on a day to day basis. I will instead be refocusing on the technical aspects of keeping the forum running and working behind the scenes to lead the team and make sure that they have what they need in order to do their job effectively.

The forum will be returning to normal soon, however we're still looking for help especially from people in the Australia or eastern Asia timezones.

Hi everyone,

We regret to inform you all that we will be temporarily freezing Arocalypse for an undetermined period of time due to a long-standing issue. Since Momo took over administering the forum almost a year ago the moderator team has been under-staffed. The initial batch of moderators joined on a temporary basis but have been in place now for 9 months. Despite calls for moderators both on the forum and off the forum, only one other person has stepped up.

At present, we are no longer able to moderate this site effectively and so we are placing it into a temporary but indefinite read-only mode till such time as we can find people to fill the position of moderators. The current moderators are burnt out and that’s not good for us, but it’s also bad for the forum at large. The current moderation queue can go days to a week before anyone responds to issues. The site will remain in its current state with all existing posts being available to view, but no new posts or replies will be accepted.

We recognise this work is hard so we are looking for a team of people to help out. This is intentionally not a full time commitment, we want a team so that we can share the load between us and not everyone has to be available all the time. We’re not looking for specific commitments from people, but being able to help out at least a few days each month would be ideal.

The position of a moderator is a volunteer position that requires:

• We’re only able to accept moderators over the age of 18
• People who have an active warning are not eligible
• Willingness to use Discord for coordination

Moderator duties:

• Reviewing and approving guest posts
• Being available to respond to reports and give warnings when needed
• Occasionally checking in on current conversations in general to keep an eye on things beyond what gets reported

If you’re interested in helping or you just want more information then talk to us on Discord or contact us by email or the form in the footer of every page.

I'm not sure exactly how it's calculated but it's a measure of how much you've interacted with the forums in a given time period.

On 9/24/2020 at 11:47 AM, 2 Spirit Cherokee Princess said:

Most of my images are called jpg but I couldn't include them in my profile.  It says "Accepted file types gif, jpeg, jpe, jpg, png"  I was only able to use the ones called png or gif.  I don't know what the difference is.

Very late reply, but this is a known issue. I've tried to fix it a few times but I haven't found anything that works yet. jpeg should be supported, Invision itself says that it should be working but whenever it tries it just fails.

Welcoming @boba to the team! If anyone is interested, we are still looking for more hands to help out. Many hands make light work and all that.

We are looking to add more moderators on this forum.  If you are at all interested in being a moderator, please contact me via PM's and I will send you a Discord link to discuss whether you would be a good fit.

At the moment we're looking for people who can be available proactively to help moderate discussions. The only hard requirement at the moment is that you can join us on Discord which we use to discuss and plan.

3 minutes ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

To me this sounds similar to the experiences Quoiromantics describe, and then there is the associated microlabel Nebularomantic (which I don't think I have ever seen in use, but then I haven't specifically looked).

For what it's worth, I use nebularomantic when I'm in the mood to be very specific. But usually I just use aro because microlabels aren't that important to me personally.

4 minutes ago, Apathetic Echidna said:

For the people who want to acknowledge an influential trauma I'm glad there is a term, but that doesn't mean everyone with influential trauma has to use it. 

This pretty much sums up my thoughts too.

This thread is locked. It's been going downhill for a while and hit absolute rock bottom. Everyone take a breather.

This post is locked - it's going off topic and getting into territory that's explicitly against the rules:

On 4/4/2016 at 12:56 AM, Blue Phoenix Ace said:

f. Judgements of other users
Making judgments about other users, especially about the validity of their sexual or romantic orientation, is strongly discouraged. We are here to figure ourselves out, not to put each other in boxes.

A general reminder that this isn't the place to argue about whether someone is or isn't aromantic (or any other identity). I'd normally link to the AUREA website for definitions but their website seems to be broken at the moment. For others later though:

https://www.aromanticism.org/en/glossary

On 5/5/2020 at 6:19 AM, cinnamon_bun said:

Am I the only one that feels like they're missing out on certain things in life due to being aro?

I do feel like I am missing out on certain things. Lots of things. Romance, partners, sky diving, travel... the list goes on. I don't really attach more or less emphasis to anything on that list. As an aro, I may be missing out on romance and stuff, but there's lots of things in life I will never do and that's mostly ok. I tend to focus on the things I want to do. If a romantic relationship is something you want to do, there are aros that have made that work for them. It just takes more communication with your partner than a regular romantic relationship normally does.

5 hours ago, Guest notquitelimerence said:

Why does it matter whether the other person gains more or less as long as both they and I gain what they and I are after?  As for the analogy, I wouldn’t promise to play with a thing I didn’t like so I wouldn’t be changing any rules.  Sure it’s not nice to agree to rules and then break them but then why agree to begin with?  Unless this analogy references an unspoken social rule that people have to do things they don’t like or else it’s an inadequate gesture...if that’s the case it’s a very sad social rule and I want to hide in a cave and not have friends.

People's likes and dislikes change over time. Someone can agree to something they genuinely want at the time and then some time later (lets say, 2-5 years) it is reasonably common that they may not like it any more. As an example, in my late teens and early 20's I genuinely enjoyed the romantic relationships I was in. In the last 3 years, I discovered that I was aro and I'd been treating my partners rather poorly, not out of malice or anything else, we just... drifted apart every time because I didn't have that attraction. And after coming to the realisation I was aro, romantic things make me feel icky - a reminder of the harm I've caused in the past, I guess. No one is capable of making a promise over all time. Situations, circumstances and tastes all change and cause our decisions to changes as a result.

5 hours ago, Guest notquitelimerence said:

Could it also be argued that it’s unhealthy to enable acting on whims and avoid permanent things because one might change one’s mind?  Free will isn’t absolute, and having free will doesn’t mean that will can’t be used to decide “this is mine forever no takebacks.”  Are no return policies at stores unhealthy?  If someone made a rule saying I would be bludgeoned if I ever wore a wool jumper, but I don’t like wool jumpers and am sure I never will, I wouldn’t feel stifled by it.  Even if I did, I wouldn’t want to change my mind because I like being a person who does not wear wool jumpers.  I hardly ever change my mind.

It absolutely could, and in fact there are multiple syndromes described in these terms. Too much avoidance is just as bad as too much persistence and rigidity.

Welcome!

Anyone is welcome to be here, as long as they're respectful. We don't disallow alloromantic people here, and there's even an entire subforum dedicated to that. But do please keep in mind that this is a space for aromantic and aro-spec people and the rules are written to protect us in our own space. As long as you follow the rules, you are welcome here as is anyone else.