Obvious troll is not only obvious, he’s boring.
My theory is that mods enjoy keeping a handful of low-level trolls around. Keeps the regular upstanding members focused on a common enemy instead of turning on each other.
You have summed it up so nicely here! Thanks!
So GLAD not to be a kewl kid.
Well, your decision. Keep in mind though that what you say, i.e. the bare content of your message, isn’t the only thing you communicate. Every communication is a social interaction—and even though transactional psychology is maybe a bit last century by now, there’s some truth to the idea that every such interaction involves a bit of negotiation between the involved parties; by ‘sticking to your guns’, you refuse to take part in these negotiations, and thus, ultimately, in the act of communicating. You’re merely broadcasting, and thus, whatever you have to say will only reach those willing to hear it; but those are the people you’re alienating.
Douglas Hofstadter identifies three levels of communication within a message. The first is the frame message: it merely identifies whatever carries it as being a message. Think about communicating with aliens: the first thing you need to do is make it clear to them that what you’re trying to send them is something that hasn’t just occurred by chance, but is the product of another intelligence trying to establish communication.
The second level is the outer message, which says something about how the message is supposed to be read. This is were the negotiation takes place. Picture yourself in a marketplace, trying to sell some goods: you’ll need to establish a certain merchant-customer relationship in order to make any progress. Meet people halfway, and take them to where they want to buy whatever you’re selling. If you’re just sullenly sitting in your corner with whatever it is you brought to the marketplace, you’ll probable not end up making a great sales day. This is where you have to follow the rules of the market, even though they may be arbitrary. And hey, maybe what you’re selling is better rules: but even then, you first have to enter into the discourse, rather than expect the others to do all the work and come to you.
Only at the third level does the actual content of the message come into play. Of course, you can take the standpoint that for this content, it doesn’t matter at all how the message is presented; you could write in binary, or Klingon, or an elaborate idiom constructed entirely of gaseous bodily emanations. But while that might be the same content, it wouldn’t be the same message, because if the outer message basically amounts to ‘fuck off, I don’t care about your conventions’ then nobody can be expected to care about the content in return.
So, when you want to communicate, offer a transaction: agree to meet your opponent at least halfway, on their territory, rather than expecting them to bridge the gap between the two of you all by themselves.
LMAO!!
That worked so well I think you should merge a few more into this one. Got any candidates?
Anyone expecting Gateway’s next thread to be on how it’s, like, totally unfair that he needs to wear fancy clothes to a job interview and not his normal attire of ripped jeans and Megadeath T-shirt?
Like, appreciate him for who he is man, not how he dresses!
Y’know, Gateway, Giraffe has a messageboard of his own and he obviously has the hots for you. I can’t give you a link, but it’s easy enough to Google.
Just saying, is all.
That… would… be… AWESOME!
You’re not coming off well here. You’re telling us you don’t care what any of us think while desperately seeking our approval.
There are billions of people who honestly don’t care about this board. You can identify them by the fact they don’t post here.
So stop fronting.
First off, you are a monster.
Secondly, we have hardly any rules compared to the SDMB, but one of the few that we do have is “please make at least a good faith effort to write in comprehensible English”. Gateway would end up locked in the Box before he made it to the end of page one of his first thread.
Iits a sad day when a troll lasts longer here than they would on the Giraffe boards…
no offense intended, Giraffe.
Partly right, but it’s for amusement value, and it’s still temporary. “Let’s let the members kick him around for a while,” or something like that. I’d expect Gateway to be gone shortly, one way or another.
If you are truly interested in making up for what you’ve done, here’s a hint.
The members here LOVE creative fonts and unique font colors as well as lots of bold highlights.
Grape. We like grape.
Go for the trifecta, grape, comic sans, and textspeak!
We love all the colors in the rainbow.
Evil. Pure evil.
I like that in a poster. 
[Internet Meme]I’m in ur base graping ur D00Dz![/Internet Meme]
And the more your posts can look like a 1995 Geocities page with revolving stars and rainbow fonts, the more seriously we’ll take your arguments. We won’t even notice your grammar’s wrong if it’s in TIMES ROMAN ALL [COLOR=“YellowGreen”]CA[/COLOR]PS.