A response to Scylla that I can't make in MPSIMS

[Stanislaus]

You’re all very kind. In truth, I’ve been sitting on that since I flicked from the thread to the relevant news story last week.

[Loach]

@Scylla

So, Loach closed the original thread because I called myself a shithead and other people could not respond in kind. That’s unexpected, but I guess that’s fair and reasonable.

What’s not reasonable is that he Said that I was celebrating being a shithead.
That’s not true. I was just using some rhetorical judo. It’s hard to defend yourself when people are basically telling you you are a piece of shit. It’s also tiresome. When people take that route, I just generally agree with them and say “sure, I’m a total piece of shit, whatever.” It sort of takes the power away, shows that I am aware that I am flawed (when did it become anathema to present yourself in a less than favorable light on the internet, and why must we all pretend we are blameless saints?)

Anyway, I mildly disagree with the decision and wish it was still open.

I’m sorry I wasn’t being completely clear. Let me be clear now. You posted in a manner and on a subject that you knew would piss people off. You were delighted when you did piss people off. You posted it in a forum where people could not reply to you and fully express their feelings. The choices I weighed were to warn you for trolling and close the thread or to move it to the Pit. I chose the later by a slim margin. When I saw that the Pit thread was twice as long as the original thread I figured moving it would cause confusion so I closed the original thread. Anyone who wants to read it can follow the link in this thread.

If you want to continue this discussion open a thread in ATMB but I’m not sure if I have anything more to add.

[Cheesesteak]

@Scylla

It’s hard to defend yourself when people are basically telling you you are a piece of shit. It’s also tiresome. When people take that route, I just generally agree with them and say “sure, I’m a total piece of shit, whatever.”

When you need to develop a strategy for dealing with people who are publicly calling you a piece of shit, maybe it’s time to take a long, hard look at yourself.

[iiandyiiii]

@Stanislaus

I think a lot of people are being very harsh on **Scylla **here. I read the original story as a cry for help.

Clearly, it didn’t happen as written. There may well have been a minor incident that acted as the trigger. But something else drove Scylla to create this tale. And what is it a tale of, exactly?

Consider the dramatis personae. We have the child: emotionally undeveloped, entirely egotistical, unable to moderate his own behaviour, making unreasonable demands of all and sundry without any regard as to basic propriety. We have the mother: ostensibly the grown up who should be checking this behaviour, she has all but given up on her responsibilities - allowing the child to make demands of passers-by, and only rousing herself to get involved when she sees the need to defend her baling offspring from criticism by others. And finally we have Scylla. An innocent passer-by, drawn into having to deal with this child by the mother’s negligence. In this fantasy, Scylla is capable of doing what needs to be done to put the child in his place. He has the power. But he is, clearly, conflicted about it. He views it as unpleasant, and worries it might expose him. He fears the judgement of his peers, hence the hasty exit. But he consoles himself that he did what needed to be done. However poor and socially unacceptable his behaviour, it put the brat in his place.

Do we need, given that this OP was written in the same week that Donald Trump accosted the Danes with the delusional demand that they sell him fucking Greenland, to spell out the metaphor here? To point out that this out of control emotionally incontinent brat represents (indeed, embodies) Trump at his entitled worst? That the mother who has checked out of dealing with her kid in public but will still defend him against others’ attempts to control him clearly stands for the Republican party, who so many moderate Republican voters (like Scylla) trusted to curb Trump’s worst excesses? That Scylla knows that, as a voter, it has been left to him to put Trump in his place, but he struggles with the social consequences of doing so?

I think we need not. This tale speaks for itself.

Scylla, it’s OK. You’re OK. And it’s OK to vote against Trump.

Bravo!

[Euphonious_Polemic]

@BigT

You seem to present this as a good (or at least normal) thing. It would just make him a liar. It wouldn’t be filling in unimportant details or simplifying, but actually changing the entire point of the story.

If I appreciated it as “an amusing anecdote” that is made up, then I’d just think of him as pathetic, more so than any other Doper (other than a poster with a troll persona). Why the fuck try to make yourself look cool here of all places?

You’d try to make yourself look cool here if that’s all you’ve got. And you’re correct - that is pretty pathetic. That was my initial response to the story. “Oh dear it’s sad that someone feels a need to come here and make up a story that paints himself in such a negative light. I guess he wants the attention”

[tricoteuse]

He must want the attention because he did make an atmb thread after loach posted here, after this thread pretty much ran its course.

[k9bfriender]

@Stanislaus

I think a lot of people are being very harsh on **Scylla **here. I read the original story as a cry for help.

Clearly, it didn’t happen as written. There may well have been a minor incident that acted as the trigger. But something else drove Scylla to create this tale. And what is it a tale of, exactly?

Consider the dramatis personae. We have the child: emotionally undeveloped, entirely egotistical, unable to moderate his own behaviour, making unreasonable demands of all and sundry without any regard as to basic propriety. We have the mother: ostensibly the grown up who should be checking this behaviour, she has all but given up on her responsibilities - allowing the child to make demands of passers-by, and only rousing herself to get involved when she sees the need to defend her baling offspring from criticism by others. And finally we have Scylla. An innocent passer-by, drawn into having to deal with this child by the mother’s negligence. In this fantasy, Scylla is capable of doing what needs to be done to put the child in his place. He has the power. But he is, clearly, conflicted about it. He views it as unpleasant, and worries it might expose him. He fears the judgement of his peers, hence the hasty exit. But he consoles himself that he did what needed to be done. However poor and socially unacceptable his behaviour, it put the brat in his place.

Do we need, given that this OP was written in the same week that Donald Trump accosted the Danes with the delusional demand that they sell him fucking Greenland, to spell out the metaphor here? To point out that this out of control emotionally incontinent brat represents (indeed, embodies) Trump at his entitled worst? That the mother who has checked out of dealing with her kid in public but will still defend him against others’ attempts to control him clearly stands for the Republican party, who so many moderate Republican voters (like Scylla) trusted to curb Trump’s worst excesses? That Scylla knows that, as a voter, it has been left to him to put Trump in his place, but he struggles with the social consequences of doing so?

I think we need not. This tale speaks for itself.

Scylla, it’s OK. You’re OK. And it’s OK to vote against Trump.

Very nice. I saw Scylla’s post a couple days ago, and had similar thoughts. I am glad now that I did not have time to express them, as you have expressed it much better than I would have.

Though, actually, my first thought was that we need to employ Scylla’s dour expression and terse objection in response to not only the Greenland issue, but to any of his tantrums.

If his mug is as nuclear as he claims it to be, he could make a mint renting it out to world leaders and corporations that want to explain in simple terms that Trump is not their boss.

[begbert2]

@TokyoBayer

Im not sure why I had like you as a poster before, but this thread shows a different side to you. Oh well.

@Kimstu

Also, it’s one thing to acknowledge that you’re not good with kids and that out of irritation and stress you might act kind of mean towards them if they’re gratuitously bugging you. It’s another thing to treat your mean impulses as something to brag about as a “justified” response.

Wait a pile of cheddar, when did I say or imply that my (predicted) irritated responses to a kid screaming demands at me or the resulting inevitable argument with the kid’s mother would be a good thing? Don’t confuse me with Scylla here; I didn’t present my reaction as any kind of bragging anecdote. I was simply saying that I can totally understand treating a stranger’s screaming kid with something other than decorum and gentle parenting instincts. I’m pretty sure that were I corralled into such a situation then I would react in an unproductive and unadmirable way, simply because a) I’m not that great with kids (though they seem to love me, possibly because I talk to them like I talk to an adult. Or maybe because I talk to them at all?), and b) I’m not great with noise. These are things that would be pretty unarguably be called flaws, which I mitigate mostly by getting the heck away from screaming kids as quickly as I possibly can.

Again, to reiterate: I don’t defend the idea of deliberately trying to make toddlers cry, but damn if I can’t understand failing to be a perfect parent-but-not-their-parent to every child that passes within twenty meters of me. And were I plucked from my reality and dropped into Scylla’s story, there is a distinct possibility that the situation would degrade badly if I didn’t retain the presence of my mind to just keep my irritation contained and walk the fuck away.

And TokyoBayer, I’m so sorry that the fact that I have personal failings has soured your opinion of me. Okay well not actually that sorry, since I don’t think being a perfect drive-by parent is a necessary requisite to participating on a child-free message board, but in any case if I’ve damaged your ability to find my occasional wittiness amusing, that’s a shame 'cause I’m sort of unlikely to go away.

@you_with_the_face

Annoyance is understandable. Self-righteous anger at the illogical utterances of a toddler, not understandable.

If I let my irritation get the best of me and started an angry debate with a toddler, there would be nothing righteous about it.

[QuickSilver]

Fitting childish tantrum in progress.

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

@QuickSilver

Fitting childish tantrum in progress.

Maybe his blood sugar is low.

GIVE ME ‘POLOGY

[QuickSilver]

@IvoryTowerDenizen

Maybe his blood sugar is low.

GIVE ME ‘POLOGY

[Bryan_Ekers]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

“Doodlebug!”

You racist.
I found the tale offputting in its self-aggrandizing, especially the part about how the awesome world-destroying power of Scylla’s sneer was the critical factor in the fall of the Soviet Union.

[Euphonious_Polemic]

If he does not get an apology NOW, he may have to consider possibly not gracing us with his wordsmithery in the future.

I am quaking in fear.

I suggest we all chip in and buy him a lunchbox.

[bobot]

@Bryan_Ekers

You racist.

I found the tale offputting in its self-aggrandizing, especially the part about how the awesome world-destroying power of Scylla’s sneer was the critical factor in the fall of the Soviet Union.

It worked in Berlin, too. Remember Reagan: “Mr. Scylla, sneer down this wall.”

[k9bfriender]

@begbert2

Again, to reiterate: I don’t defend the idea of deliberately trying to make toddlers cry, but damn if I can’t understand failing to be a perfect parent-but-not-their-parent to every child that passes within twenty meters of me. And were I plucked from my reality and dropped into Scylla’s story, there is a distinct possibility that the situation would degrade badly if I didn’t retain the presence of my mind to just keep my irritation contained and walk the fuck away.

Someone once asked me what it would be like to be a sociopath, I responded, “Set out with the deliberate intention of making a child cry.”

But yeah, that’s not the same as just being bad with kids. Personally, I just remove them from my world unless they are in my way, in which I take as little note of them as possible, or they are in danger of immediate harm, in which case, I would do what I am able to do to remove them from harm.

Other than that, unless they are a niece or a nephew (and most of those are adult now), then I just refuse to even acknowledge their existence.

[Bryan_Ekers]

So let’s compile some Scylla’s Sneer facts, shall we:

[ul]
[li]Scylla’s Sneer is powerful enough to trigger a fusion reaction.[/li][li]Scylla’s Sneer is so cold, it has been used to preserve embryos, albeit leaving them shocked and wailing.[/li][li]Scylla’s Sneer has caused hundreds of men to shed tears and thousands of women to shed panties.[/li][li]There was a planet between Mars and Jupiter, until Scylla sneered at it.[/li][li]Behind Scylla’s Sneer isn’t his mouth - it’s another sneer![/li][li]Scylla’s Sneer has alternately caused and destroyed Middle-East peace.[/li][li]Scylla’s Sneer wrote Star Trek 5 and Highlander 2.[/li][/ul]

[Euphonious_Polemic]

Superman once wanted Scylla to teach him to sneer… but he could not be trusted with that level of power.

[iiandyiiii]

Scylla’s sneer is, in fact, the fault of the Democrats.

[SteveG1]

@you_with_the_face

Again, I just don’t understand the indignation. You’re taking about a kid who likely is too young to be fully continent and can’t distinguish between fantasy and reality. “Buy me lunchbox” is just his immature synapses firing. So okay, call him a brat but taking anything coming out of his mouth seriously? I have to laugh at that.

I’m not all that indignant. I’m usually pretty tolerant because I realize shit happens. Still, a parent is supposed to control their kids when out in public. If the kid is too much to handle, make a correction, take him/her home, something. Don’t let your kid demand anything from me, and don’t you or him/her get in my face. It’s your problem, not mine. Deal with your kid. Handle your shit. I won’t blame your kid, I will blame you.

@begbert2

Imagining myself in such a situation I’d already be doing poorly just from all the noise; loud and shrill noises give me instant headaches. (And yes, this does make some of my younger relatives painful to be around.) Once the kid shouted directly at me, thus inviting a response, I’d be very much inclined to reveal unmasked irritation in my suggestion that he stop bugging me.

And when the mother inevitably confronted me, my response would probably not be particularly witty, and along the lines that she should please kindly get her kid under control and away from me. Things would presumably degenerate from there, particularly since I’m not really the mike-dropping stride away type.

Fortunately for me, I apparently don’t live in the same sitcom as Scylla and have not been accosted this way. I have seen loud bratty kids demanding things at stores -once just a week or so ago, in fact!- but the kid constrained herself to pestering her parent and I walked away, and all was well. (Okay, possibly not for the parent, but whichever.)

And what begbert said. Keep your problems and your undisciplined kid to yourself.

[wguy123]

@IvoryTowerDenizen

Maybe his blood sugar is low.

GIVE ME ‘POLOGY

That is some funny rhetorical judo! Kudos!