it’s French.
God, if you weren’t such a classless prole, you would know.
Don’t tell me I don’t have class. I know what color Boone’s Farm to serve with fried jumbo bologna sandwiches and which Flintstones character should be on the glass.
Come on folks, take it easy - maybe he has Asperger’s.
Regardless of who is right and who is wrong here, I can’t help but to throw up in my mouth a little whenever I see that the scumbag has posted. ** iamnotbatman**, if you really want to feel superior to him, take a look at this thread from July- right about page 9 we see scumbag show his true colors. He’s quite simply a misogynistic, bitter, nasty douchebag. You just happen to be the latest recipient of his nastiness. ** Scumbag** must have felt pretty stupid, because he stopped posting after this mess, and didn’t start again until November. Probably should have just stayed away.
Did you have some part in that or are you bringing it up here just to try to chisel off some feeling of victory from my opponents in that thread? Clearly, it means a lot to you and so you really should open your very own thread dedicated to it.
No, I don’t care that much- I really just wanted the recipient of your pit thread to see what kind of piece of work you are. I’ll take a pseudo-intellectual twat any day over the dog turd that you are.
Now that you have thread shit, you’ll be moving on then?
You know what? Anyone as smart as you claim to be should be able to recognize that when another individual says, “X is boring,” what they are really saying is “X bores me,” or “I find X boring.”
There are lots of things in life that i love, and there are things that bore me, and in many cases, if asked about those things, i will say something like “X is fantastic, but Y is boring.” And i’m very well aware, when i make such statements, that i’m offering a subjective observation, a personal account of my own feelings on the subject. When i say that silent film is boring, i’m well aware that this is not some sort of universal, objective assessment; the fact that my PhD-holding, intellectually-curious wife loves silent film is very clear evidence that my preferences are just that: my preferences.
Here’s a little exercise that might help you in future: when someone says “X is boring,” just add the words “to me” to the end of the sentence, in your head. That way, you will be able to focus on the main point of their statement without getting all overwrought about the subjective versus objective nature of the statement.
Is this the post you’re talking about, Alice? You know you can link to a specific post instead of making people click repeatedly to get to a specific page of a long trainwreck, right?
Well. I did refer to page 9. And it’s not just that post, there are many.
So don’t listen to him because he said something that hurt your feelings 6 months ago?
Words mean things; if you mean, “I find X boring,” why don’t you just say that? Saying, “X is boring” is taken to mean that you think all X is universally boring, because that’s what you just said. I don’t expect people to add things onto the end of what I said to change my meanings; in fact, I hope people are not doing that, because I do try to be precise.
Really, Alice, go ahead and open your own thread. You obviously want to discuss that thread and my part in it. You’ll get a far greater number of responses in a thread with a title that indicates what you want talk about.
So nobody should ever say that something is boring simply because at least one person in the world, somewhere will in fact enjoy what was just called boring?
Well, I think we can all agree that Niels is boring.
because people in normal conversation are not pedantic and hyper-accurate. they’re colloquial.
if you actually wanted to make the claim that “all x is universally boring”, and have it understood by the vast majority of normal people, you would actually have to say that “all x is universally boring” - no one would take “x is boring” to mean that because most normal people understand that when you talk about subjectivity and qualitative things,you aren’t talking in terms of universals.
But anyone with more than three functioning neurons recognizes that it is basically impossible for anything to be universally boring. Boredom is something that does not exist outside a subjective frame of reference. There is no boredom without individuals, and nothing is boring except that particular individuals find it so.
Boredom is not something that can be gainsaid by another person, or subject to positive proof by someone else. If you say that you find something boring, i can’t say “No you don’t,” because you are the only person that matters in making that evaluation. And if you find something boring, and i agree with you, that doesn’t constitute some sort of confirmation that it is universally boring, because there are probably going to be plenty of people who disagree with both of us.
And all of this is true even if the person speaking intends to say “X is universally boring.” That is, if you say to me “X is universally boring,” all you are really saying is “X is boring to me and to other people in my experience.” That is, whether you intend it or not, basically every observation about something being boring is particular, not universal.
I guess we might, as a species, arrive at some consensus about a few activities that basically everyone would find boring. There’s a reason that we have phrases like, “About as interesting as watching paint dry,” or “As boring as watching grass grow.” But for anything that we are likely to talk and argue about in everyday situations, particularly in the realm of human endeavor, the fact is that universal agreement is basically never going to happen.
Made me have a second city television flashback.
That’s the nerdiest pun I’ve seen in ages. I may be in love 
iamnotbatman, I’m asking you this seriously and honestly. You say you don’t judge someone’s interests boring or not without first doing a bit of research first, and never fail to come up with a new appreciation for the subject.
So if my hobbies include coin collecting, needlework, gardening, swearing at… I mean rooting for the NY Giants, and video game design, you would actually study up on the ones you weren’t familiar with and previously had zilcho interest in?
I’m all for people expanding their horizons and I have found some of my favorite interests completely by accident. But instead of studying up on something that doesn’t grab my attention from the get-go I would rather spend that time doing something that DOES interest me.
For example my sister’s SO loves antique cars, and the cars he is working on restoring, and given the slightest opening will talk both your ears off talking about cars. My interest in cars is nil, I would no more tkae hours boning up on engines and carbuerators than I would expect him to care about the major types of U.S. 3-cent silver pieces.
Ugh - I should have known not to get into a pedantic nit-picking contest with Dopers. 