You have an amazingly broad definition of “assholish,” Jessity. Amazingly broad.
For purely academic purposes, what post of Q.E.D.'s from your third link qualifies as “assholish?” The part where homercles tries to pick a fight and Q.E.D. refuses to take the bait? The part where, shown he was mistaken, he cheerfully admits to being wrong? Help me out here, because with your standards for “jerk,” I’m surprised you’re not alphabetically pitting every member of the boards, one by one.
You really don’t see the difference?
Okay, last night I was too pissed off to bother, but here goes:
I agree with you, as far as your opinion that catsix’s comments quoted in the OP are not Pitworthy. It’s also not clear from the OP that Guin is reacting to a perceived pattern of behaviour, so it’s not unreasonable to characterize her pitting catsix on the basis of that one thread as an overreaction. It’s easy to miss that “But why do you always seem to have to butt into a thread, guns a’blazin, just to tell us how stupid we are, and how YOU aren’t offended, so no one else should be?” Ideally, she probably would have done a lot better to phrase it more carefully, making it more clear that she was addressing what she saw as a consistent behaviour rather than the isolated event, and to provide links to other examples to support her case, because the single instance just doesn’t seem to demand such a strong response.
So yes, I agree that her OP invited criticism. That’s not to say that I think that Anal Scurvy’s “bad man” OP was appropriate for this board at all, and was really worthy of any defense. It seems to me that he doesn’t think it was, either. I also agree that pitting someone for saying “It was just a joke, and it didn’t bother me,” is way out of line. Of course, that’s not what Guinastasia actually did, but it’s understandable that someone might take it that way, since the OP was less than perfectly clear on that point.
Personally, I think that we would all do well to try not to let out personal feelings about particular posters colour our perceptions of their individual posts. That’s not always an easy ideal to put into practice, though.
At any rate, when it comes to “attacking people to any degree imaginable,” there’s a lot of real-estate between presenting a list of perceived offenses, and the sand-in-your-face tactics you trotted out from the get-go, here, making direct personal attacks that had absolutely no bearing on the subject, going directly for what you may have thought to be the most vulnerable spots.
Larry Mudd is right. This wasn’t so much a pit about that one comment, but about general board behavior.
FWIW, I actually like catsix, but I think she comes off, whether she intends to or not, as being self-righteous and haughty.
All the people you’re talking about were the victims of violence, not the cause of it. There is a huge difference between the gallows humor of a holocaust survivor and the sadistic humor of a nazi perpetrator.
I don’t see anything funny at all about offering to beat a pregnant woman into a miscarriage, and I have as dark a sense of humor as there is.
Good points Larry.
Agreed. My biggest mistake came after I learned the med comment hit closer to home than I’d imagined, and yet I still used it to get in a cheap shot against her. In retrospect, that was pretty lame. That’s not how I want to be, but it’s what I did.
For that, I apologize.
The rest of it… well, I still stand by I wrote. It was what I was thinking, and it felt damn good to get it out. I thought what was happening was unjust, and I didn’t want to simply pass by without saying anything on it.
On the other hand, I don’t want to be known as the poster who always ‘went off’. I think I’ve contributed more than that, but I can see where some think it’s all I’ve posted about around here.
In that regard, it’s kinda moot, as I’m simply passing through. When I’m here again, whenever, I’ll take that into account though.
Deal?
True, and it seems odd.
I read Anal Scurvy’s OP. I did not find it funny, but I can see how someone else might. I did not find it all that offensive, either, but I can see how someone else might.
Yet it spawns Pit threads, and manhattan and Ed Zotti to warn catsix in particular and the board in general.
How do we tell if something is offensive enough for banning? The rule is “We’ll know it when we see it”. Well, I won’t.
It honestly didn’t seem like that big a deal to me. Compared with some of the stuff on this board - heck, compared with some of the stuff I have posted - it was pretty mild. Stupid and not funny - but over the line? Really?
In the only serious Pitting I have ever conducted (that I recall), I made a bunch of statements that might be called “morbid” or “sick humor”. They were joking, at least in part, as I don’t really want anyone to be sodomized or tortured. And if they weren’t offensive, I failed, as I certainly meant them to be. It was a Pitting, for heaven’s sake.
But I would not be able to describe, in twenty five words or less, the reason why what I posted was OK and what Anal Scurvy posted was not. And I couldn’t describe why catsix should be warned and a new rule instigated in a novel the size of War and Peace.
I guess I must lack the ability to tell what is truely over the line and what is acceptable. Call it a blind spot.
I can only hope that, if and when I go too far, I can be warned first, and not banned immediately. I would like, ifI can, to retain my posting privileges.
I wish I knew more about Anal Scurvy’s politics, so I could blame this all on my usual excuse that the moderators are always picking on the conservatives.
Regards,
Shodan
Right on. Gallows humor does have a place here, just look at Eve’s threads. TheKatharine Hepburn one, for example. There should be a line somewhere, though, and it looks like that line is cruelty.
Search isn’t working for me at the moment but I recall someone posting that they had stomped kittens and people wondering if that someone was being serious or not. If the new rule imposed by Ed had been around then, it might have discouraged such a post.
Context? That was in response to Zoe’s post about acceptable topics of humour, not source or intent. Huge difference there as well.
And you’re entitled to your opinion, including your opinion of your own sense of humour. But apparently your SoH is not as dark as there is, because some people have said they found it amusing.
For the record, I didn’t find it funny at all either. The punch line was too weak to carry the morbid set up. Weak as in non-existent (IMO). But I wasn’t offended. There are millions of bad, tasteless, and lame jokes on the internet - I don’t think they’re part of some evil plot to destroy humanity, do you? It’s the offensive content that presents itself as serious that I worry about.
But do you see how the subjective qualifiers you (and others) are asserting as an absolute criteria for humour creates a problem?
From Fruitbat’s post on this thread (my emphasis):
Is there anything at all funny about suggesting people eat their children? (Swift’s A Modest Proposal). If we’re going to say that cruelty, horror, or violence in humour is absolutely unacceptable, there’d be almost nothing left of what’s called comedy.
It’s part of the human condition. We all indulge in cruelty (or at least, think about indulging), and we’re all victims of cruelty. Basil Fawlty was cruel. Bart Simpson is cruel. The Sopranos? Tarantino films? Even children’s cartoons are full of cruel and/or violent characters. It’s a way to release our own “evil” vicariously, and savour watching evil plans go wrong.
Or, as in Swift’s satire, condemn our hypocrisy, and expose the real horror and evil we might otherwise avoid facing up to.
As to whether or not it belongs here (SDMB) - that’s not my call, and I have no problem with admin controlling content for any reason they decide.
Shodan: FWIW, I’ve got the blind spot too. 