In other words, Leo’s writing is much like Vogon poetry. Or the novels of Edward Bulwer-Lytton.
I enjoy puzzles, so his posts do have some appeal. I often read along to see if, what I’m imaging he means, is what others think. Inevitably there are many opinions, in my experience.
But once the OP returns to defend his words, usually confusing me further, I wander off convinced it will forever remain an unsolved mystery.
Just to add one more thing, I don’t play any of the game threads, so his OP was indeed confusing and challenging to understand!
Creative writing is not necessarily good writing. Yes, Leo’s would not be considered good by the vast majority of people. If you were an average Doper I’d say you should just ignore him, however being a GQ mod you must read his OPs there and follow him in ATMB, so I clearly understand your annoyance and criticism. And in GQ clarity is important. He should save his creativity for MPSIMS.
I’ve actually tried to address the issue with him in GQ, and he has improved a great deal. For example, these recent GQ threads show he is perfectly capable of writing clearly and concisely if he tries. It used to be that his threads in GQ were regularly derailed by people trying to figure out what he was asking, or addressing one of his digressions instead of his main question (as happened in the ATMB thread).
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=856804
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=856513
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=856229
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=856244
He does do that annoying “see query” thing where he refers to the thread title in the body of the post, and he’s a little verbose, but these OPs are all reasonably clear.
Contrast those with the gobbledygook in his ATMB thread. I don’t know why he resorted to that when he is capable of asking a clear question in GQ.
If he did that, I don’t think he would be Pitted. People might scratch their heads, but they wouldn’t be as annoyed.
I’m going to quibble on this point because it’s so wrong, at least the way I think of these terms, though I agree with the rest of your comments. What does this even mean? It’s like saying, “Art doesn’t necessarily mean good art. There’s such a thing as bad art, you know!”.
Not really – what there is is a continuum of artistic quality; there is good art, there is mediocre art, and there is attempted art. In practical terms art that’s so bad that it has no redeeming qualities has completely failed in its mission, and I don’t want to see it, hear it, or read it. It offers nothing of value, and as such, is not art but a failed attempt at art, and thus, garbage. There’s no such meaningful thing as “bad creative writing”, because “creative” implies a positive redeeming quality that isn’t there. The term is an oxymoron. There’s only bad writing that tried and failed to be creative, and in the end this is just bad writing, nothing more.
ETA: I haven’t been following Leo’s literary career on this board except to have noticed some really extraordinarily bizarre and convoluted language in his postings. If he’s been persuaded to clean up his act, at least in factual forums, then good for him, and I have no quarrel with him.
He most certainly has. Or maybe that was me mentally throwing it into his posts while reading them, not sure now.
Sometimes art is like a hot needle stuck in the eye of the beholder. Maybe he can work on it and rise up to that level of bad.
That was marvelously entertaining, thanks! I notice at one point someone asks Leo, “… what is the problem that would be solved from this setup? I only see a description of actions that take place. What are you trying to figure out?”. Leo is happy to clarify:
This post is #3532 in a seemingly unending series of mine in which I try to get a feel (as it were) of how a physicist uses a) words/concepts about which I haven’t the faintest, or b) “know” about–such as acceleration, angular moment, and some others–which are part of most educated high-school graduates (if they remember), but I, for one, cannot dope out what is truly pertinent (the “set-up” in my hed) and, something which gives me pleasure from learning–thanks to the good 'ole boys in GQ–when values are placed on the pertinent factors and worked out.
A little bleg for a blackboard illustration. Sometimes I have a hankering for exactish numerical values just to be goofy, thought-provoking, and tweak the physicists here (like so many fun posts).
Other times, if I believe the problem is workable-outable on a level commensurate with many other type posts here (“Trying to explain to my kid about…”) I look toward to (but won’t pout if nobody feels like doing it) a working through of the math either as shown or what is far often the point of my questions to see a “working out”, if someone says, eg, “here we do a Fourier transform, just trust me,” I can add that to my understanding of the way/what/when/how a FT is supposed to work.
Well, that clarifies that! 
In another GQ discussion, someone posts a picture of military tanks, and someone else asks what those things are on top of the turrets that look like sandbags. A poster provides the answer: “Vehicle crew sustainment, clothing, gear, snacks. Probably some stowed camo netting as well.”. Well! Apparently laboring under the delusion that he is a master of language, Leo can’t abide that kind of poor writing, and lets the poster know it:
“Sustainment.” A word from that bizarro language used only by the military. Have you ever inquired of Mrs. Nenno for a sustainment assessment before a picnic?
Unless I truly misunderstood the word, and “clothing, gear, and snacks” are not members of sustainment, but in addition to it.
In which case:
“Sustainment”?
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21013503&postcount=11
Of course one is not permitted to find fault with Leo’s own writing, and anyone with the effrontery to do so does it at his peril:
Do NOT comment on my posting ability … No one else is rude enough, or querulous enough, to claim that he is then who parses correctly, and may be off–normal enough in conversati9onal modes even in GQ with "discrete queries:-- and somehow must make clear to all that he is the smart guy.
I defy anyone else too analyze why my queries here are not clearly understandable. I refuse to consider why you have a problem with OP, because an opening gambit like yours is far more inappropriate to “clarity”–in whatever picayune definition you may have as the mood strikes you–than a civilized tone in an Internet forum where, as here, normal intellectual-with-looseness conversation is encouraged.
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=20981426&postcount=5
I think we can see from this that Leo’s posts are actually perfect models of linguistic clarity, merely a little bleg for a blackboard illustration feeling around (as it were) words/concepts about which he hasn’t the faintest (in terms of “knowing”, as it were, or not) demonstrating a hankering for exactish stuff just to be goofy, and eminently workable-outable as to way/what/when/how on a level commensurate with many other type posts here.
Indeed, it makes my scrotum hurt to have to constantly wrestle with Leo’s posts. You could say it’s unbearable. Years ago, when I was living in Vienna, I met a guy who was quite similar to him. It was difficult to understand him, but we spent more time gazing at each others’ nude bodies in silence than exchanging words. He was a good friend though. When I was at the urologist’s office waiting to hear the news about my penile exam, he was there to cheer me up with magazines about bears. Later that night, we wrestled, though my wrestling singlet was too tight in the crotch and it made my weiner hurt. The next day, on the plane ride back to New Hampshire, my crotch was aching so profoundly that I had to ask my friend (let’s call him John) to place a bag of ice between my legs. It numbed the pain enough for me to concentrate on my fantasies about my half-sister, who I was very much looking forward to seeing, but upon arrival in New Hampshire I was saddened to learn that she had been eaten by a bear.
I read his posts with all these sorts of things in mind as potential keys to decrypting them. Sometimes they’re challenging, but that’s just the nature of his preferred style. When I’m not in the mood I roll on. Personally I get more offended by people who get shitty at someone for confusing them.
Art that bad might actually be good. Leo’s writing is more on the level of bad of cold lumpy congealed oatmeal.
But remember that this is intentional. If, despite all feedback, Leo is so lacking in insight that he wants to cling to the delusion that the world should not be deprived of his literary genius, he could restrict his fetish for gibberish to MPSIMS, and it would be a little easier for those who wish to ignore it to shrug and move on. But I do wish he’d have a little respect and keep it out of GQ, since it’s clear (see Colibri’s examples) that he can communicate clearly when he chooses. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the community to disparage deliberately obtuse writing in places like GQ or GD.
But when he asks questions in GQ and ATMB, he is asking a favor of other posters to provide him with information. It’s counterproductive, and I think rude, for him to ask questions in a deliberately confusing manner. It’s like someone insisting on asking directions in Pig Latin, and then getting mad when people ask him to restate it in ordinary English on the grounds that Pig Latin is simple to understand if you try. If you want people to help you, you need to make it easy for them.
:slight hijack:
You seem to try to objectivize something inherently subjective. There is such a thing as bad art. You might find it terrible, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t art and a result of a creative endeavor.
Example: “Rock isn’t music, it’s just noise!” Somehow even noise managed to become a genre of music. I wonder how. :rolleyes:
More examples: You can walk a lot in a forest, take a picture of your trail and call that art. You can open a company and call that art. You can burn a million pounds and call that art. You can host a product expo and call that art. You can create a bunch of nonsensical websites and call that art. You can create a bot that buys illegal stuff on the dark web and call that art. You can walk around in a city without a purpose and call that art. You can quantify what information makes up a legal human being for the purpose of creating illegal legal human beings as art and call that art. And I can go on and on. You wouldn’t get graded in an art academy on whether or not it’s art, it’s really besides the point. You’d get graded on whether or not your teachers thought it was good or bad art.
This thread is also kind of an example: Some seem to understand Leo Bloom, while others don’t. I don’t, but while I don’t I appreciate his posts nonetheless. Same way I appreciate The Room, Fateful Findings and Troll 2. If his posts are intended as art in some way, I’ll view them as that and figure out if it’s good or bad and argue for my position. (To be honest, I’d say his contributions here would be more valuable if intended with a creative artistic purpose than as a method of clear communication.)
One more thing: Being clear about the difference of subjective opinion (as in “good” or “bad”) and an approximately objective truth (as in “is” or “isn’t”) is a matter of practicality! Instead of debating if something is or isn’t ad nauseum, lets just agree that it is and debate why it’s the way it is and what we think about it. This debate has plagued artistic discourse for more or less every artistic innovation and gotten refuted every time, and yet still some people cling to this idea that only certain things are and others aren’t solely because of personal preferences. I’m sorry to say that for every stride art takes forward, backwards or sideways, the more obsolete this is shown to be, especially as art as a category becomes less and less tied to any specific media.
:/hijack:
Unless an English-speaking pod person has replaced Leo, here’s further evidence that the intermittent fetish for obtuse gibberish is conscious and deliberate:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=857028
The last sentence is poorly written, but it’s within the spectrum of “normal” bad writing, and since the core topic has already been introduced clearly and concisely, it’s easy to parse.
To continue the hijack: Your argument is fine as far as it goes, and no one is ever going to successfully come up with an objective definition of art, let alone good or bad art. But one can make approximations: it’s hard to meaningfully describe art without using words like “imagination”, “beauty”, and “emotion”, with the implication that the skillful deployment of the former is a prerequisite to producing the latter. The problem with your argument as a refutation of what I said is that I’m making the a priori assumption that certain endeavors will have an overwhelming consensus judging them to be “bad”. When this happens, it’s generally attributable to failure to produce those desirable latter qualities due to lack of the necessary creative prerequisites.
This is not the same as new art forms initially having difficulty getting accepted. Your example of rock music was not a good example of the putative arbitrariness of art, if that’s what the point was, because, whether one liked such music or not, it manifestly required creative skill and imagination to produce (you had to be able to play an instrument, you had to be able to write lyrics, you had to be able to sing) and sought to touch some aspect of our emotions.
Something just rubs me the wrong way about applying the word “creative” to anything that is broadly judged to be worthless. My view is that this is only true in a very narrow technical sense; in broader, more practical terms, “creative” and “bad” are mutually exclusive, at least in the sense that if something fails as art, there are much more appropriate adjectives than “creative” to describe it. To cite your example, if someone thinks that setting fire to a pile of money is “art”, the word “creative” would not be my adjective of choice to describe it, even though it was indeed an act that was first imagined and then created. I would prefer to use the word “stupid”. And that’s how I regard the writing in question here, simply an affectation that deliberately obfuscates, and does so with no apparent skill and to no apparent purpose. The word “annoying” is much more appropriate than “creative”.
If this is your new “thing”, it will quickly become far more annoying than the quarry or “regards”. Once is funny, twice is driving the joke into the ground with a sledge hammer.
Has the “mayonnaise and jizz on my dog” thing been addressed yet? Truly bizarre.