[QUOTE=Una Persson]
At least 9 people out of 10 here will never, ever, ever just admit they were wrong and try to approach an issue honestly. I don’t know what it is about this Board that attracts such tireless debaters who are so terrified of just admitting they were wrong - people who will deny a ship has sunk while it sits on the bottom of the ocean and happy little crabs and seahorses play a calypso tune in the ballroom - but that’s the culture of the SDMB, I’m afraid.
[/QUOTE]
The lesson here, to me at least, is yet another reinforcement of the foolishness of participating in these stupid recreational outrage threads. The way these things play out, usually, is that there’s an early report of some bit of nastiness. Everybody jumps to associate themselves with some position or other, based on emotion usually (“how dare they cook and eat kittens!”). Then a few days or weeks go by, and the original story develops a bit; the truth, invariably, is somewhat, or violently, at odds with the initial report. (“Actually, they were serving regular food on plates decorated with kitten pictures.”) Then there’s a big ugly sloshing motion as everybody dodges and weaves and tries to retroactively justify their knee-jerk opinions.
Me, I saw this story developing, and I said to myself: This doesn’t have anything to do with you. It’s story against story. Nobody’s going to know what really happened for weeks or months. And I detached, and quit paying attention. And hey, look at me! I win. I didn’t have an opinion, so I don’t have to eat crow about anything.
But here’s the thing: As far as I’m concerned, everybody who jumped on the bandwagon here is at fault. It doesn’t matter at all that later events proved one side to be right and the other side to be wrong. There wasn’t enough information to make an intelligent judgment. Given what was known at the outset, which is to say almost fucking nothing, it’s just as possible for things to have turned out differently. From then to now, it’s equally likely that those who are now dancing in the virtual aisles might have found themselves in the opposition’s position, either desperately trying to re-spin their earlier assertions after the fact or simply hiding in humiliation. And the exact same observations about “how difficult it is for people to admit when they’re wrong” would be true.
How about this, kids: Don’t rush to premature judgment in the first place. How fucking hard is that?
What do you gain, really, by diving into an ambiguous event and planting your flags that early, other than winning bragging rights down the road on the basis of a factual coin flip? Yay, good for you. Whoop te fucking doo. This time the hooker lied, the jocks were angels, and the prosecutor was a political fuckhead. Give yourself a fucking medal.
The whole thing disgusts me. All of you. You should be ashamed. Scoring boasting points off other people’s tragedies.
This is probably going to get me flamed for days, but fuck it.
