Nah, he bumps them with “updates” all the time. Many of them, anyway.
BG essentially is greedy. He appropriates for himself large pieces of what is basically an unregulated pie. 8 out of 50 threads? 16%? I enjoy GD, and lurk there much more often than I post, but I rarely open on of his. He’s a one trick pony, at least as far as that forum is concerned.
A parody thread would be too easy. Paste an editorial from Salon or Koz, and then post, “Please rant.”
Sorry, but that shit gave me a giant case of the giggles.
I wish had BG’s job. Must be nice having so much free time.
I have a feeling the pay sucks. Especially compared to what he could make as a lawyer, which claims to be. Until I heard him claim to be a lawyer, I figured he was about 19. I’m still astonished at the naiveté he exhibits at times.
No kidding. I’m now trying to figure out ways to work that phrase into conversations. Way to go, 'luci!
Maybe that’s why he’s no longer a lawyer.
I like BG. I don’t think he’s a raving loony or a troll. Just an attention whore. I think he’s gone so long without getting pitted because 1) most Dopers share his political viewpoint, 2) his posts have, at least in the past, generated some good discussions, and 3) he’s generally nice and somewhat intelligent.
I do wish he’d cut back, though. Now it’s getting to the point where he’s scouring the internets for anything that he finds interesting, whether or not it’s newsworthy or valid. A Doper such as myself, who may use the few precious minutes of their lunch break to scan through new threads, can’t waste time sifting through the good and bad BG threads. Which means the GD forum ends up looking like some kind of junk mail bin by the end of the day.
BrainGlutton is a benefit to GD and the Pit. His threads sometimes spark interesting debates. If you guys wanna see more interesting topics debated, start some threads of your own why doncha?
My threads sometimes spark interesting debates. Of course, that’s because they’re RARE.
I think I will. I’ll find five articles that hammer on George W. Bush and I’ll post them right away. I expect your participation in all of them with nary a peep about how ridiculous they are.
Wait, that sounds pretty stupid, doesn’t it? But that’s the reality that is BrainGlutton.
I don’t like it how BrainGlutton won’t often venture an opinion or viewpoint of his own in his OP’s, though I think we’re all guilty of that sometimes. I do however think he starts threads on imporant topics that are fun to discuss.
Personally, GD is my favorite part of the SDMB to read. And I pretty much always avoid threads started by BG. It seems like it always ends up being the same thing. And I actually agree with him. It’s the same reason I quit reading Democratic Underground, and other such sites; I agree, but it’s boring (to me) to read the same basic discussion over and over. I hate Bush too, and maybe once a month there’s something new and astoundingly assholish that he’s done that I might want to read about and comment on, but 8 times a day? No thank you.
But. If there aren’t enough interesting topics in GD, we’re all to blame. We all need to make an effort to start interesting threads and respond to them. Because, ultimately, if GD has a bunch of crap in it, its my fault and your fault; not so much BrainGlutton’s. IMHO
Except that filing it up with more crap is hardly the solution to the problem. And that’s what he does. Adding a cogent OP doesn’t remove, or counteract his. His crap is still there.
The issue for me isn’t intent, nor even stylistic (though I agree that his style is intellectually lazy), rather it’s the effect.
The moderators have let him go on because the articles he posts are more often than not interesting. But the problem is that, in a sense, GD does better as a debate forum when the topics aren’t interesting. Or to be more specific, when the topics aren’t interesting to just anyone.
Imagine if YouTube only allowed videos of medical procedures, and of course still allowed anyone to post comments about the videos. You’d almost doubtlessly find that most of it would be comments from doctors or questions from people who wanted to know more. But, obviously, YouTube as it is ends up instead being a raging cesspot of illiteracy and moronics.
Try and think back to some debates you remember from one or two years ago (and true, there might be a bit of a fallacy here since higher quality ones will stick in your memory more, but anyways), and then skim through a couple of topics on the first page of GD now. And I don’t mean just BrainGlutton’s. All of them are more allowing of insults towards the quality of someone else’s posts, drive by jokes, etc. A creeping increase in lowering quality has made a lot of things that used to would have gotten a thread sent to the Pit or a poster warned now seeming commonplace and becoming unmoderated.
I mean, certainly it was never perfect, and there have always been some jibing, insulting, and joking. But I don’t think that Cafe Society-style TV episode play-by-plays and a joshing, flowing beerfest style to topics was something we used to have.
What you should do is start 5 threads a day that hammer the Democrats. I’m sure Evil Captor will embrace this as a wonderful asset to GD. Wouldn’t that be great: GD = Democratic Underground + FreeRepublic. I can hardly wait…
Hmm, sounds like I should hire you guys to keep the rabbits out of my garden.
Might freak out the neighbors though.
If they stay out of your garden too, more the better.
I’m astonished but that hits me where I live. BGs posts in GD are like watching Crossfire or something over and over. It’s pointless because there rarely seems to be a desire for actual exchange of views. Tucker Carlson is enough to see once on TV…much less in text.
Or, to quote John Stewart, “Stop hurting us.”
Given your posts in this thread, I wish that they were as rare as they’ve been over the past month or two. Perhaps I could help?
GD has become too much a current affair forum and BG’s carpet-bombing of threads there is the worst offender. I like BG well enough and certainly agree with him on many positions, but what’s the point if too much of it is set up like Coffee Talk? “The war in Iraq, discuss amongst yourselves.”
I come to the Straight Dope for the insight and discussion from its posters, not to keep informed about current events. Frankly, if all I want is a link to a news story, there are a lot of better sites on the web. And the postings aren’t timely either. By the time BG posts, the story has crossed reddit.com 8-24 hours earlier. I’ve already read the story, read a discussion, and moved on.
I’d really like to see more hardy debates in GD about topics other than current events. I like the OPs where some time is put into formulating the question and laying out a postion. Obviously then, it is partly my responsibility to start such threads.
And yeah I know, if I don’t like it then don’t read it. So I don’t, but GD was a big reason I came to this site and now I find myself hanging out there (and in general here) less and less.