This thread is already pretty deep in a variety of shit at this point. Have fun, shit to your [del]hearts[/del] bowels content. I am surprised it has gone this extra page.
It does seems cheaper to buy a can of raid than pay a frat kid to eat them.
Jim
Depends, is the beach in Quebec in February?
Well sure, from a low cunning point of view, you can say that the frat boy got the better of me, seeing as how he got $500 bucks.
My larger point is:
My impression is that pseudotriton ruber ruber was only posting here as a hobby, and for him taking the $500 and moving on to other things was the smart move, seeing as how he could get more enjoyment out of the $500 than out of two years of posting. I still don’t like the idea that the board members with disposable income feel that they can use that money to get rid of posters they don’t like.
But let’s suppose differently - posting here was a right that pseudotriton ruber ruber cherished, and he was humiliated at the prospect of taking $500 to leave the boards, but decided to do it anyway. My thought on that would be that I can surely find many people poorer than me that I could convince to forsake some sacred principle for a few dollars. Would that make me superior to the person I humiliated, and should I pat myself on the back and laugh at him (or her?) In my opinion I would be a jerk for putting the other person in that position.
Damn. Okay, how about this: I won’t shit in your lunchbox for $25.
Me neither. For that purpose, I would have paid someone else.
NO ONE expects an amateur…
Sorry, sorry, terribly sorry…
Liberal, despite your protests, it sure does look that way to many of us.
Don’t be sorry, I left the straight line dangling. After posting I realized that it would compel someone to make the joke. This is the Dope after all.
Jim
If I merely disliked PRR, why would I give him the out that I’ve given him? He can begin posting again and get his money simply by doing what I specified.
You need to find a copy of Limericks Too Gross/or Two Dozen Dirty Dozen Stanzas, originally described as a duel [del]by[/del] between Isaac Asimov and John Ciardi.
I gotta stop taking weekends off from this board…13 pages in 2 days!!! Less than 7 minutes per post average!!! For 2 days!!!
Just as an observer, the conditions you keep setting and the alternatives you keep “offering” him do give you a bunch of power over him. And to the extent it degrades him to take your money and stop posting, it probably degrades him more to take your money and publically renounce his views, which was the “out” you gave him.
So, yea, I think if I disliked somebody and wanted to hurt him (and had $500 to throw around), acting the way you’ve acted to him would be a good way to do it.
I mean, I don’t particularly care if you do dislike him or want to hurt him. I mean, he’s a big boy and can take care of himself, and nothing he’s written really makes me care if he sticks around or not, but I just wanted to point out the way I’ve been viewing your actions, if you care, which you probably don’t. 
But if you disliked someone and wanted to hurt them and had $500 to piss down the toilet, how exactly does offering them $500 to perform various degrading stunts give you power over them?
If I offered you $500 to let a mousetrap snap on your scrotum, would you take me up on it? And would that degrade me, or degrade you? It seems to me I can only degrade you if you consent to be degraded. And that’s taking as a premise that snapping a mousetrap on your scrotum would degrade you. Maybe you don’t think doing such a thing is degrading, or maybe the degredation factor is part of the fun.
PRR wasn’t hurt by this stunt. He wasn’t degraded. And even if the offer was degrading, PRR didn’t have to accept, and he certainly didn’t have to goad Liberal into honoring his joke offer. And really, who else except Liberal COULD be goaded in such a manner? Liberal’s peculiar sense of honor is, well, peculiar.
Probably not, because I like my scrotum, a whole lot. But sure, if I did it, it would degrade me, because it’s a degrading thing. It would also degrade you, of course, because you’re paying money to humiliate another person.
But the fact that I’m willing to do humiliating or degraded things for money doesn’t make me no longer degraded. It just makes me desperate.
Two things concern me about this and neither of them are about humiliation; they are:
-Is the ethos of this community not slightly modified by serving to facilitate the scrotum-snapping? - we’ve become ‘Welcome to the Straight Dope, where we fight ignorance and facilitate financially-compensated genital injury’
But…are you degraded by accepting? Or does accepting merely reveal your degredation?
Anyway, it’s all kind of academic, because the really annoying people tend to eventually have their posting priveledges revoked by the moderators, and this costs nothing. There is no real need to think deeply about the implications of this one particular event, because I’m pretty sure it will never be repeated.
Although discussions about what people are willing to do for money, or for some other price are somewhat interesting.
I’ve set one and only one condition: that he admit that he cannot “choose” to have faith in God, and that his claim to the contrary was irrational. If he chooses to get his money and come back under that condition, then I will defend him from any and all who attack him. You few are having a lot of fun at our expense, and that’s okay. No big deal. But he and I have not taken this lightly. Whatever you may think about what we’re doing is irrelevant. It is therefore better that you just stick to razzing and crafting limericks. (Though none of you will ever top Xeno.)
You’re overlooking a critical element - it’s financially-compensated self-inflicted genital injury, which makes all the difference.
In any case, the “out” is that prr has to write a certain apologetic phrase and he gets his $500 right away? Heck, I’d do that in a heartbeat, in tiny print the same colour as the background, stuck in the middle of a larger post about how foolish Liberal is, which satisfies the letter of the “out” offer while joyfully defecating on its spirit. Then I’d play Liberal’s game of seeming to respect someone while actually insulting them (i.e. “I understand why one might be led to believe as you do given certain environmental conditions…”) for a few weeks, put the $500 in my RRSP before the deadline and get on with my life.
As an afterthought, that probably explains why I don’t get a lot of offers.
That bent penny that Triskadecamus turned down is still available. All you have to do to earn it is sing “I’m a Little Teapot, Short and Stout” while turning in a circle with your hand on your head and your pinkie sticking up.
Heck, I won’t even insist you video yourself and post it on YouTube – I’ll take your word for it.
Which pinkie? I don’t wanna do it and then find out I shoulda held up my right pinkie instead of my left one. I have some dignity, after all.