Gotcha…never let it be said that I can’t get the point after 4 repetitions.
I have gone thru this myself…and I suspect a lot of 'dopers have. My advice is to walk away when it’s not fun, interesting or amusing anymore. Maybe after some time off it will become fun again…maybe not. There are posters who I really loved to see post who have disappeared or who only rarely post anymore who I suspect have moved on to other boards or who have perhaps given up posting on message boards entirely.
-XT
My parenthetical statement did not refer to this board or discussion in general, but to a minor study of the history of ‘science’.
But yes, this board does get a bit cliche-ish over certain issues.
More significantly, many posters here and elsewhere, when pausing to consider how to present a view reasonably and respectfully, decide, ‘Screw it’, and let loose with years of vitriol (or exasperation) pent up by smiling blandly and retorting so subtly viscously that the victim is not even wounded.
Just because posters here tend toward the syntaxically correct and adept in diction does not make them less cruel (or less adherent to a herd mentality).
This can be an unfriendly place. It can also be clever and entertaining.
I wasn’t talking just about the Dope either.
If you think this place is harsh, there are a number of places that would make you cry.
Yes, it’s just too bad they can’t take a page from your book and elevate the discourse with words like ‘faggy.’
Do you have a suggestion about what can be done about it here?
Or more interestingly for me, do you have an alternative?
This seems like a good time to pass along some advice I got from Shodan once:
“You’re letting them get to you. Don’t let it happen.”
For my money you are one of the kindest, most open-minded conservatives here and one who tries much harder to see and/or honor the point of view of political positions you don’t agree with than most of the posters on the other side.
As for me, I’m less charitable than Shodan as to the motives of people like BrainGlutton. To me it is bullying…pure and simple. It’s a my-way-or-the-highway, anybody-who-doesn’t-agree-with-me-instantly-and-wholeheartedly-is-an-asshole/moron/evil knuckkle-dragging…well, you get the idea.
Most people, even conservatives, dislike argument and confrontation, and so tactics like that work. People shy away from them, and, like you, can sometimes even be persuaded by their opponents’ aggressiveness into believing that they must indeed be in the wrong or else their opponents wouldn’t be acting like that.
I’ve seen that kind of behavior coming from the left for the last forty years -and probably over that many issues - and it’s become so common that I now consider it standard operating procedure.
You’re a good person, Sarahfeena. Hang in there and keep your head up, say what you want to say in the considered and polite way that you always do, and if the wind blows from people like BrainGlutton, just consider that the predictable result and let it blow. It’s harmless, and we need more like you around here.
I’m all about the nuances. Lots of posters on here look at things in black and white and aren’t open to other people’s ideas. On the other hand…
(0-dick in .13 seconds) I don’t actually give a shit why you think the board isn’t fun. People post these big pits about other posters and how they aren’t intellectually honest, but frankly most of them come down to things like this:
“XXX wasn’t nice to me, waah!”
“ZOMG this dude who pulled out in front of me is an assshole!”
“Dick Cheney/G.W./Obama/Boutros Boutros-Ghali is, like totally a dick!”
“Like, stroke my ego in a big fucking cuddlefest because I m sadz about my shitty life!”
Frankly, shut the fuck up. I mean, just to put this in perspective, I didn’t even read the thread, but people asking if they are a nice person? How the fuck should we know? It’s the goddamn internet, and as far as I am concerned you’re all a bunch of basement-dwelling D&D fucknuts with greasy ponytails masturbating to shitty Japanese cartoons (and calling it “anime” just makes you more of a loser) with pixellated vagina tentacles or you’re a bitchy recess monitor at a grade school who thinks she’s shaping our future leaders by enforcing kickball rules while overcorrecting for her self-esteem issues by being bisexual-for-the-boys and going sky-clad while visiting the local [del]dorkfest[/del] SCA chapter and bringing a big fucking plate of disgusting turkey legs.
So if it’s not fun for you to read (or more likely to see that I am not here to stroke your goddamn ego and then post some dumbass response without getting my point) my posts then by all means quit. It’s fucking weaksauce for anyone to demand that the internet conform to their social mores. “But, but…”
Yeah, we have this forum called “Not the BBQ pit”. Ask a question in GQ and I will answer you civilly or just not answer at all, and you can feel good about yourself. On the other hand, this is the pit, self-proclaimed home of the entertaining rant about how such-and-such is an asshole or how your liberal ideals are offended by NAFTA. Don’t fucking post asking if you’re a good person, because by asking the question, you’ve answered it with a resounding “No, now fuck off you braindead twit and while you are at it, go home and cry to your mommy, if she’s not lying in my bed chainsmoking after I abused her every orifice”.
Oh yeah, and all of you stupid fuckers who pull out the “troll” comments at every goddamn opportunity, you need to brush the fuck up on the internet. Trolls are people who make inflammatory posts crafted to cause the biggest outrage while seeming sincere. When you call fuckwits posting about how Jesus writes books about fetuses or dipshits posting about whatever their fucking outrage of the day is trolls, you are actually giving them more credit than they deserve. To quote some redneck comic, you can’t fight stupid. And if you try to fight stupid, you’re probably stupid too. I mean, here I am just posting this long rant based solely on a thread title and an out-of-context quote. My awesome verbiage notwithstanding, I’m 4 sheets to the wind right now. I’m closer to a troll than the retarded hypercephaloids talking about how Dick Cheney should be drawn and quartered (or more likely on this forum, the douchewits praising Nancy’s Grace’s stance on kidnapped white girls).
So yeah, count this as a driveby “suck it up, bitch”. Whining on the internet about how so-and-so isn’t fair is just bullshit attention whoring, and frankly, the internet should respond by telling you that you suck. I realize that you are an empowered 21st century woman, or an out of the closet metrosexual, or a sensitive tabletop RPG player, or any of the other dumbass internet denizen memes, but it’s time to face reality: we’re all a bunch of assholes arguing on the internet about stupid shit while other people actually do something that makes a difference.
I figure it’s a more pure experience just to type out your goddamned rant about some stupid thing that happened to you at the starbucks (while in the real world we have serial killers, economic slavery, poverty, and genocide) than to whine about your lot in life and ask people to make a giant fucking group-hug/love-in in a forum that is sposed to be about stupid shit that pisses you off (like a dude passing me in his Ford GT on the way to park it next to his fucking Ferrari, both of which he earned by making some fucking sandwiches).
So yeah, you are a bad person, and please quit the forum right now or stay the fuck out of the pit and post in the nice places where the moderators hang out and make sure everyone plays nice and respects your feelings by saying “Bobby, that was not a nice thing to say, how would you feel if Bertha called you fat?”. Cause frankly, no one except fellow circle-jerk group huggers want to read that boring shit. Make with the funny obscene witty Oscar Wilde/Andrew Dice Clay analingus jokes or GTFO, you poncy emo gimps.
Well, that was certainly a waste of 100,000 perfectly good keystrokes.
Unfriendly for those who don’t hold the ‘right’ opinions, yes, I’d say it is.
Take an unpopular (and by that I mean unpopular here) stance on any subject and you’ll be treated with barely concealed contempt, and often not concealed at all. Your beliefs will be held up to ridicule, your arguments, however sound they may be, greeted with derision, and you yourself made to feel like a pariah.
Do all Dopers behave in this fashion? Of course not. But a substantial number do, enough to make the whole place seem unfriendly sometimes.
It’s a shame because I think the effect is to silence some members on hot button issues.
(And no, I have no personal axe to grind here, I’ve just seen it happen to others time and time again)
Good comeback. Don’t you have a narcanon session to go to?
Seriously, you’re like the Jimmy Carter of insultation. It’s like watching the “be a standup comedian” challenge on Beauty and the Geek.
Also you totally just posted a diabetic-coma-inducing affirmation to the OP. As such, I dub thee sir or lady caerbear AWWWWWW --,–’–,–@ i gotz you a rose!!! Don’t you have some orphans to encourage or some other weak-ass bullshit to do? (P.S. Please don’t quit the board! We need more cheerleaders to make us feel better about ourselves! Especially me cause I’m actually just living in my parents basement and I’m a bitter angry person sad about life’s twists and turns and I am sexually deprived and maybe wear eyeliner!!! LOLZ!!!)
Lameass.
(Also, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down?” Can you get any more cliched?)
So, after seeing how very butthurt the conservatives in this thread are over the absolutely mean treatment they receive at the bloodthirsty hands of the damn liberals at the SDMB, I went to check out the thread in question. The one that has poor Sarahfeena questioning herself so much that she needed to start a pit thread.
Low and behold:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11151363&postcount=53
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11151473&postcount=80
Yikes! I have to conclude that the only reason Diogenes or BrainGlutton did not rush to the pit to open threads about how cruelly they’ve been treated was because their emotional trauma was so great they have not been able to compose themselves, let alone an OP.
Conservatives continue to impress me as the whiniest ass bunch of whiny whiners. Grow a pair because the world can be mean and scary.
I can’t tell everyone how much I wish I could go back and re-write my OP. I never meant for the title question to be a serious one, but merely rhetorical. I appreciate so much the kind things that people have said here, and I even appreciate ivn1188’s rant, even though he’s a tad off point.
See, I don’t want affirmation. I want a good debate. I want people to consider arguments and address them accordingly. We are supposed to be priding ourselves on being able to do this, but we don’t. It’s boring. It’s frustrating. It goes around in circles. I don’t want us to hold hands and sing kumbayah. That was never the point for me here (the good friends I’ve made nonwithstanding).
If you come to this board with the attitude that all people on one side of a political issue are not good, decent people, without exception, then fuck it…what are you even here for? Why do you want to talk to me and the people who are like me? And don’t think I don’t know it comes from both sides of the political aisle, the difference being that the right is far more likely to get called out on it.
And beyond that, I find it discouraging that no matter what a pro-lifer might do in the world that is good, honorable, and decent (many far, far more than I, of course), it will never be enough for BrainGlutton and others like him, over one rather ambiguous moral issue. It’s really too bad.
I can’t tell, Hentor - are you really that stupid, or are you trolling?
Regards,
Shodan
Yeah, man, it’s Carol Stream.
In all honesty, I tend to think that both people who do do that and those who don’t both think that they do. I don’t think posters actively choose to be deliberately obtuse in most cases - which tends to make particular accusations that the opponents secretly actually agree with the poster in question all the more unhelpful. I think the problem is one of retribution - people see a poster of the opposite side in a debate say something they think is going too far, so they accept that it’s acceptable to do so in return. And then others see the debate and conclude that neither is reasonable - or that the one on their side is. And if a poster decides that they will be entirely reasonable and careful in their posting in one thread, when others continue to call them out anyway it makes the whole thing look pointless.
I would say really the problem is that there is no “reward” for good debate behaviour. You can say practically anything and be certain that at least a couple of people on your side will back you up, or at least attack the mistakes of the attackers. Likewise there’s always going to be people who’ll call you out and declare that you aren’t debating in good faith even if you are. There’s too little reason to debate fairly, so it just becomes a competition (and I say this as someone who’ll admit to having participated in that myself).
If you come to this board with the attitude that all people on one side of a political issue are not good, decent people, without exception, then fuck it…what are you even here for? Why do you want to talk to me and the people who are like me? And don’t think I don’t know it comes from both sides of the political aisle, the difference being that the right is far more likely to get called out on it.
And beyond that, I find it discouraging that no matter what a pro-lifer might do in the world that is good, honorable, and decent (many far, far more than I, of course), it will never be enough for BrainGlutton and others like him, over one rather ambiguous moral issue. It’s really too bad.
[/QUOTE]
Oh, Hentor, it’s so sweet of you to be concerned, but don’t worry, I’m not doubting myself.
If a woman wants an abortion on the hood of my car while I’m stuck in traffic, that is just plain WRONG! Nor do I want to mess up the back seat of my car, so that is out too.
Well, in fairness, that would be a functional equivalent to Brainglutton.
I challenge your use of the word functional as it relates to Carol Stream. 
Carol Stream being a dick doesn’t excuse **BrainGlutton **being a dick. You know this. Get serious.
As to the OP, look. I like to think that (on the infrequent occasions that I dip my toes in politics on this board) I’m a very moderate poster–that is, there are people on both sides who think I have asinine political opinions. There is a point where one has to ignore both the BrainGluttons and the Carol Streams to get any useful or entertaining conversations in–and I’ll admit, it’s struck me that it’s been getting harder and harder to do that in the years I’ve been a member, at least in GD and the Pit. I don’t have any solutions, nor any suggestions, except to do what makes you feel like your time spent here is not a waste–if that means not spending time here, that’s you and I for one am sorry to see you go.