5/25/26
This is an analogy about community dynamics. If a stair case has a missing stair in it, you learn to just step over it and keep walking. This is annoying and maybe a little dangerous. Surprisingly quickly you don’t even really consciously recognize the missing step any more though. You just acclimate to it and step over it subconsciously. You live with this annoyance even though you could just fix the stair and not have to deal with it at all.
People like this show up in communities too. They’re fine enough as long as you don’t talk about that one thing that sets them off or whatever. The community learns to just avoid whatever behaviors are unpleasant about the person. They just put up with it and it makes everyone slightly (or more) worse off. This person is not actively damaging enough that something gets done. This analogy makes the point that the harm this person is doing is still real and it can still make sense to remove them from the community.