Eh, the son may or may not be real and the story true or not, I don’t have an opinion or care either way. Sam writing it into a tale of his martyrdom at the hands of this mean, leftist hivemind of a board that he’s codependent on is entirely in keeping with Sam’s character regardless of the truth behind the tale.
Conservatives are never responsible for their own actions, someone always makes them do bad things.
I have no more inside information than either of you, but I do apparently possess some capability for critical thinking that you seem to lack. Given all the facts at hand, including the fact that Sam has been a poster here for 24 years, and that it would be completely out of character for an obviously intelligent poster to create an easily-detected sock account from their home IP address, it seems vanishingly improbable that Sam did something so blatantly stupid. This kind of attack on Sam just seems pointless and puerile. Sure, go ahead and attack him for misrepresenting facts, but don’t beat him up over imagined transgressions that probably never happened.
Thanks I will and I will tell you to fuck off too.
That’s the problem with posting so much crap where eventually folks no longer trust anything coming out of them. Once you no longer trust someone, do you trust anything out of them? How do you decide what to trust? How do I know he didn’t down a 12 pack of Bud…oh wait, he’s “Canadian”, 12 pack of Molson and do something stupid?
How stupid do you have to be to blatantly lie, misrepresent or not even read cites you provide for a quarter century? You’d think after the first couple of times someone obviously so intelligent would catch onto the fact that other people can actually look at them too and see that you are lying, misrepresenting them, or not bothering to actually read more than the headline. Deciding ‘eh, fuck it,’ continuing to do so and get caught doing it for a quarter century isn’t a sign of intelligence.
This kind of lack of trust in anything coming out of his mouth is the logical conclusion of him lying so often.
The tale of the son making an account here may or may not be true, I neither know nor care. The ‘and you guys would have liked him too, look at what you did scaring off the poor boy’ is just par for the course Sammy horseshit.
Yeah, he’s been awful here for a quarter of a century and now he’s been awful in a slightly different way. Very believable.
I would have been interesting if his son also claimed to be “Canadian.”
We have a poster who’d post a link to a news story, saying “OMG! Look what’s happening right now!” Others would point out that it was from three years ago and clearly no apocalypse ensued.
BUT he was properly chagrinned and would say “Oh, darn it, I did it again! So sorry, it just came up in my Facebook Recreational Scandals feed yesterday, and I never noticed.”
Sure, he’d do it again a week later, but he’d apologize… and soon he went from weekly gaffes, to monthly, to a couple of times a year. He learned from his mistakes.
Here’s to Sam learning as well…
Oh, crap, I’m doing that Unfounded Optimism thing again, aren’t I? Well, maybe I can learn, too…
So, what’re the chances on that happening before the heat death of the universe?
This kind of meanness drives away the liberal leaning young people from the Oil Patch.
Yeah…and not the fact that most young people aren’t dumb and see that it’s not a field with sufficiently long prospects they can retire in it.
Lots of the deluded (or just flat-out con artists) talk up all the “opportunities” still available but at the end of the day, even taking politics out of it, it’s not an industry with oodles of great long term career prospects.
Sorry, but I’m mid-career in the “Oil Patch” and it’s a bit of a sore spot.
In Sam’s case, I’m willing to accept maliciousness rather than stupidity. He knows what he’s doing - he just enjoys tweaking the noses of everyone willing to engage with him again and again and again and again and again over it.
Extremely low effort: Sam posts a cite without reading it, or perhaps skimming/reading it and purposely misrepresenting it.
High effort: A bunch of posters spend a bunch of time carefully reading his cite and then explaining why it doesn’t say what it says.
Zero effort: Sam refuses to acknowledge anything, often just leaving the thread for a while.
Effect: Sam gets giggles from riling up the libs yet again.
Rinse. Repeat. Sometimes he comes here and goes on about struggle sessions or blames us for causing suicides or whatever. I always take that to mean that he’s not getting enough attention elsewhere.
But it’s fun sport for him, and he spends the rest of his time just shooting the shit in the other parts of the SDMB. And he won’t ever actually get banned because he’s not stupid and knows where the lines are. That’s why I was surprised to see him banned and not surprised to see him reinstated. Socking isn’t in character.
Sam’s like Martin Hyde, who also trolled us for many many years while often contributing to threads in good faith. Just because he’s trolling doesn’t mean he places zero value on this place. It’s just that part of what he values is fucking with people.
Y’all talk about “good Sam” and “bad Sam,” but there’s only one Sam. And what motivation does he have to change?
The opinion of his community? He has people who defend him and he has people who dislike him. His amusement depends upon the latter group disliking him.
Fear of banning? He’s not going to get banned because he’s pretty good at vanishing from discussions rather than vociferously arguing in obviously bad faith.
Those of you who think that Sam will change if you carefully refute him often enough are, and I say this with love, the stupid ones. Feed the trolls or don’t, but don’t fool yourselves into thinking that you’re performing a service for the boards by serving up heaping platters of attention.*
Change requires external motive force from somewhere. This thread isn’t it, because he enjoys the attention. Telling him that he’d be much more likable if he dialed back the trolling doesn’t work because, you know, the fun bit is being disliked. The only way he ever changes is if the mods step in when he lies, but they won’t, because (properly, I think) they don’t police for objective fact in most circumstances.
*I’m aware of the irony here. There’s a reason why I try not to address trolls directly in pit threads. I know this entire post is just shouting into a wind tunnel, but I had a shitty day and I’m taking it out on you guys.
Eh, my sympathies. And you’re not speaking to the wind, I’ve said as much before and just put S_S on perma-ignore. If others want to keep trying, to believe in the myth of “Good Sam” let them, but I won’t encourage them.
But the number willing to extend Sam the benefit of the doubt is frankly surprising based on the poll I did a while back. An astonishing number of participants IN THIS THREAD think there’s something reachable there - and that’s what S_S banks on.
No, I am not ‘banking’ on anything, and no I don’t enjoy these pile-ons. They rank right above having needles stuck in my eyes in the “things I’m hoping to do today” category. It’s always more fun to be on the mob’s side during these things.
To the extent that I have made any errors in citing (the Musk joke got me, for example), It’s because I get bombarded with demands for cites for everything, and occasiinally when I am rushed and trying to get through them all I might make a mistake. Which of course gets milked to the maximum.
Here’s a hint: If you are looking for an admission or apology from someone, try not interlacing your requests with smears, snark and outright character attacks. This, surprisingly, is not an optimal strategy. Just thought you should know.
Well, y’know, you could try not posting so many off-the-cuff claims and hyperbolic statements whose factual veracity you don’t really know. Then you wouldn’t have to go digging around haphazardly to try to support them when you get challenged on them.
This is the behavior pattern now enshrined in my consciousness as “the Pareto’s peas thing”. Is there a lot of dumb crap floating around on the internet that can look superficially plausible to a casual reader, even a smart one? Sure there is. Do you have to credulously regurgitate dumb crap in a notoriously nitpicky internet forum without subjecting it to closer scrutiny or even seriously thinking about its credibility? No, you don’t.
Ultimately, Sam, it’s not “leftist” malice that gets you into hot water with your cites: it’s your own perennial gullibility about dumb internet crap.
Pffft, now that’s just childish. Grownups don’t refuse to acknowledge or apologize for an error they made merely because the people complaining about the error aren’t being nice enough to them about it. The basic honesty and integrity involved in admitting a mistake should not be treated as conditional on other people’s behavior.
One might conclude that those not looking for an admission or apology now have permission to engage in smears, snark and outright character attacks…
Hey, good hint! Here’s one for you: don’t dismiss a letter because the envelope is muddy. If you’re unwilling to pay attention to what folks are telling you, that’s not on them, that’s your character flaw. Don’t make excuses.
“All the bad stuff I do is everyone else’s fault” is a common theme is Sam’s posts.
Conservatives never take personal responsibility, someone always makes them do bad things.