That’s pretty much what i got out of your argument, too. If you want to persuade people to change, you should probably try to describe the change you are looking for more clearly.
Well dang! I lose I guess.
I wear skirts sometimes, but I have yet to wear a garter. (Maybe we can use some of those fancy new pronouns for when I do a bit of gender-bending!)
I agree. It was mostly pointless for me to start anything. A bit of a mistake. I make them sometimes! I do sincerely appreciate your positive, constructive participation in my thread, and I thank you for it. Namaste!
I just started reading a book, in case it interests you.
So far, I like it and wish I’d read it ten years ago.
Unoffendable: The Art of Thriving in a World Full of Jerks by Einzelganger, who I think is a YouTube personality.
Kind of a mash-up of a Stoicism, Buddhism and Tao.
See, this is you being a jerk. If you read much that Acsenray posts, you will notice that Acsenray consistently uses gender neutral “e” pronouns for everyone. It’s true that the singular “they” seems to have won in the field of “gender neutral pronouns”, but that wasn’t clear for a long time, and E, es, em was a leading contender. I still prefer it, personally. At any rate, it means nothing about you that Acsenray used it, and now your are making a fuss about it, as best as i can tell because Acsenray is disagreeing with you.
Same here. @Aeschines wrote:
and as near as I can tell, the crux of the disagreement is whether what he calls “dry wit” others call “being a jerk,” and whether what he calls “stat[ing] my complaint about what they are doing” is what others call “insulting each other.”
I do think that in the past decade, there’s been some tightening up of that “dry wit”/“being a jerk” business, and that’s all to the good. There’s also been serious limits placed on being a gross misogynist or racist or transphobe, and that’s also all to the good. There are other changes that I’m not always convinced about, but overall I’m pretty pleased.
Allowing more of what you consider “dry wit” in non-Pit threads doesn’t strike me as a win.
That sounds cool! I’ll check it out.
No, “aren’t puppies cute?” can get you in trouble, too. If you think that’s supposed to be an exaggerated example, you’re obviously not familiar with what has come to be known as “the cat avatar thread scandal”, in which I was officially chastised for whimsical humour suggesting that dogs were superior to cats. 
I’d call it being “cheeky.” If there’s anything this board hates, it’s being irreverent in the face of criticism. Be serious! (This board is too serious.)
I do not know the person’s posting habits at all. I had not heard of E, es, em. It looks like some sort of mistake in Latin, a language I wasted a bit of time on in high school. They/them is actually English, so let’s use that!
Haha, I have no doubt that such a thing is possible here! (And know, I had not heard of this famous confrontation, dear Pup!)
As I said: what you think is funny (cheeky/dry wit/etc.) others interpret as your being a bit of an asshole. And it sounds like, confronted with that realization, you want to scold everyone for not having a sense of humor, rather than recalibrating your own standards.
Folks joke around here all the time. If your jokes aren’t falling on an appreciative audience, you’re unlikely to chastise us into laughter.
Modding would have to be done differently, for sure.
Look, I am an irreverent Trickster type. Gemini for the win. Appealing to the mods, tattling on people to the mods is an appeal to authority. I’m not really a fan of authority. What people on this board can’t stand is cheekily brushing someone off without crying their eyes out to Father Zeus about the violation of the rules.
I get that it would be a different type of board if it were not so mod-focused. I.e., authoritarian. There are pros and cons of both approaches.
But I have. I haven’t Pitted someone since 2007, and I hadn’t been pitted since 2008. I know this board is full of squares, and I usually post accordingly. This was a rare deviation from that norm.
Chuckles chuckles!
Just to be really clear, Acsenray didn’t do anything the mods care about. You decided you don’t like it, so you want to insult em. Not because it’s wrong, just because it’s not the choice you would have made. And i guess you feel that the right way to express your disagreement is to be “cheeky”.
Yeah, I’m humor impaired. I didn’t think it was even slightly funny. Just mean.
I’ve only ever seen those pronouns used by Acsenray and the usage seems quixotic.
@Aeschines why do you care what others think to the point that you would censor yourself? I think giving that sort of power to strangers is counterproductive. Ultimately, words on a message board are just words. Now, it is true that there is an unhealthy amount of gamesmanship but that’s an unfortunate society wide blight on mass media now and seems inescapable.
And the pit is as close to that environment on these boards as you can get. Miller has a very light, some would say gentle hand, and outside of a specific set of rules that were catered specifically to your boundaries I don’t see how you could do better.
I wouldn’t agree that you can’t say anything “of substance” - there are many substantial topics that can be talked about - but there are certain topics where you are treading on thin ice even if you bring logic or facts to the debate. Any topic that links race with IQ, for instance.
I have seen those pronouns used by others, but i agree that it’s quixotic. I wish E/es/em had won, rather than the singular they, but at least in my trans-heavy social circles, it’s “they”.
That’s not “thin ice”, that’s a banned “tired topic”.
Struggling to recall any scientific racism threads where the racists brought any actual facts or logic to the debate.
One of the things I’ve learned is that when someone tells you about their own positive character traits, the following things are usually true:
- They honestly believe what they’re saying about themselves.
- They’re insecure about it.
- Their insecurity is well-founded, because it’s not something anyone else is going to conclude about them. They tell you because they know you won’t believe it otherwise.
Can you imagine an actual trickster-type telling someone they’re an “irreverent trickster”? Fuck no. That’s a bit of insecure puffery.
Get over yourself. You’re no trickster.