[Mindy]
Okay, I love you, buh-bye!
[/Mindy]
Nobody, we’d see hell on earth.
Old Testament Hell, Mr. Liberal… real Wrath-of-God-type stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies. Rivers and seas boiling! 40 years of darkness, earthquakes, volcanos. The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice, dogs and cats, living together… mass hysteria!
Well, Liberal’s determined to make the thread about him. Good luck with that.
If I may suggest an alternate way the seasons thread could have been started, trying specifically to avoid arrogance or the appearance of arrogance:
I think that would effectively solicit anecdotes from Dopers (one of whom will make the inevitable Kessel Run reference) in which they talked about memorable moments where they imparted basic facts onto others, or had basic facts imparted onto themselves (perhaps by their own children). It would be by no means an actual “poll” of any statistical validity whatsoever, but frankly that was never going to be the case where respondents can self-select and read the responses of others before voicing their own.
Interestingly, there’s a GQ thread going on about this sort of thing right now here, though I suspect it’ll get shifted to GD or IMHO sooner or later, and the subject matter is university-level math and physics rather than “basic science”.
As for the OP getting an apology, there would have to quite the seasonal shift before I offer one, if you know what I mean.
Cut the guy some slack, I say: hell, who hasn’t posted some cringeworthy stuff when they first started? You find a board where no-one blinks when you use words like “egregious” and people can pun on your name, and you’re anxious to prove you can foot it with the best of 'em: you post show-off stuff, get slapped down a couple of times, and learn to fit in.
Piling on the guy might be childishly satisfying, but isn’t particularly productive: do we really want to drive off someone who’s clearly smart, articulate and probably has something constructive to offer, or are we going to share our toys nicely with the new kid?
Yeah, that’s why I’ve used my six other accounts to post questions and comments to myself.
Whoops, better calm down before you post again, because as I understand it, even jokingly implying you have sock-puppet accounts is comparable to accusing people of trolling and both are the SDMB equivalent of telling an airport customs agent about the powerful explosive you’re carrying in your pants.
Beyond that, I have no further comment on your activities in this thread except to repeat that they are designed to draw attention to yourself.
Well, I’m kinda in favour of the trial-by-ordeal, myself, particularly when the person invites it by soliciting opinions of his posting style. Sure, there are things in my posting history (including some real doozies just in the last few weeks) which I regret, but I never started a thread in which I attempted to justify them. If I had started such a thread, I’d be fully deserving of whatever scorn drifted my way, though I don’t expect there’d be much because I’m so fucking LOVABLE, GOD-DAMNIT!
Ahem. IAMBIC doesn’t actually have to “fit in” in the sense that he disappears seamlessly into a well-ordered system. All he really has to do is avoid violating some fairly basic (though admittedly arbitrary) rules. I’ve suggested he refrain from starting new threads until he has a better idea where those boundaries are, and I stand by it.
Well, if we want to insulate new arrivals from criticism, there may be ways to do so, including restricting guest options so they can only start threads in GQ and GD, which have the strictest rules against potshots. By starting a thread in the Pit, though, I daresay IAMBIC has deliberately put himself on the firing line. This is about as bad as it gets, though, and if he feels he can handle it and joins the SDMB, it shouldn’t get (much) worse.
A couple of questions for you, IAMBIC:
Was liberal smart or dumb to pay $14.95 so as to be able to continue to interact with others on the SDMB in the manner displayed in this thread?
Do you intend to pay $14.95 so as to be able to continue to interact with others on the SDMB in the manner displayed in this thread?
Oooh, excited, Liberal has something powerfully explosive in his pants?
Stand in line. He’s already asked me to suck his dick.
I feel so lucky. 
Darn competition. I wonder who she is?
Don’t mess with the quote function, Excalibre. Your misattribution back in post #55 was a fairly clear commentary instead of an acutal quote but it’s still a no-no. Don’t do it again.
Veb
No, but you posted quite a few times, and you resorted to bothering me when you didn’t get enough satisfaction - are you saying you don’t admit that your melodramatic declaration of how very much you suffer was a plea for attention? Well, then, what was it? Because I can’t come up with any other plausible interpretation.
Whoa, can I get some clarification? Are we allowed to alter them with brackets at all, as is normally done with quotes? My use of them left no doubt as to the fact that Liberal didn’t literally post the phrase “vapid nonsense.”
As I said, your use was pretty clear, and this isn’t a horrendous mistake. But we don’t want any alteration of quotes at all. Otherwise we’d be right back to debating instance by instance: “But it was an obvious parody!” etc. etc.
Veb
Veb, could Excalibre have achieved the same effect if instead of using the quote box he’d formatted it something like this:
“Liberal replies: [vapid nonsense]”
Would that be acceptable, or is that also too prone to be taken as distorting a quote?
Well using or implying the word “quote” at all is just a cheap rhetorical device. Why not just say “Your post was vapid nonsense”.
Yeh, that would work, too.
Liberal, if you don’t mind continuing this hijack for a bit, I have a couple of questions for you. I’m actually genuinely curious about your posting habits.
Are you aware that (for some people, anyway) you have a tendency to come across as being pretentious and argumentative?
Do you have any particular theories on why you’re perceived that way? (I’m not referencing just the post I’ve quoted above, of course.)
Do you care whether you’re perceived as being pretentious etc.? Why or why not?
So who is the intended audience for your posts?
You’ve commented that your posting style tends to get a lot of negative reactions from other posters. Have you considered trying to modify your style to ameliorate this?
If not, what do you get out of continuing to post in this manner?
I got that impression from the two linked threads (that we are being studied by Mr. IAMBIC), so I decided to see if his posting history could shed any light on him.
He has started eleven threads. Two of them are in ATMB, one of them is here. Eight of them are in IMHO.
He has posted fifty-six times. One post is in an IMHO thread that he didn’t start. Four of them are in one GD thread; one of them is in a second GD thread.
The remaining fifty posts are in his self-started threads. Seven of them are here, three of them are in his two ATMB threads. Forty of his posts are in his IMHO threads.
His two most recent posts are in his thread: Need help choosing appropriate forum.
I draw no conclusions from my research. But my impressions of IAMBIC seem to be consistent with the following:
He is curious about the Doper community, in an anthropological sense.
He didn’t do much lurking before he signed on as a Guest. Nevertheless, he learned relatively quickly about getting his fingers burned with incautious OP placement.
His experience thus far has resulted in some feelings of hostility toward the people who populate this message board.
I note that, while I got a foreboding feeling regarding his intentions from reading his latest thread, he has not, as yet, opened the thread he’s been comntemplating.
Welcome to the boards, IAMBIC. A field-work approach to learning about the board culture (such as it is) may not serve you well, but I think you have enough on the ball to learn to come here for the same thing most of us come here for: our own amusement. You might want to stay out of IMHO for a bit, and post some more to other people’s threads.
Hey, how about starting a new thread for it, rather than letting the hijack continue? **Lib said, right in his first post to the thread, that he was initiating a hijack. Of COURSE, he doesn’t mind continuing it.
Honestly, when we let him do it as blatantly as that, he’s playing us like a, a (lessee, concert piano gives us too much dignity, oh, I have it), like a cheap transistor radio.