Originally posted by Left Hand of Dorkness
I’ve read the whole thread. And stop calling me Shirley. 
Why, I Otto…
The fact tha Lib is occasionally erudite is noted; indeed, that’s why I didn’t write him off long ago, in the same manner that I’ve written off Reeder and milroyj. Wasn’t it Dr. Bronner who said that a half-truth was worse than a lie?
I kept hoping that his erudition and insight would win out over his dishonesty and meanspiritedness. Eventually, ya gotta give up. That’s what I did last week.
Daniel
You know, andros, I didn’t really bother with you before because you seem rather silly, but I gotta ask: Are you Lib’s little brother?
Wow. Your almost obsessive dislike of me is so blind that you interpret a perfectly balanced, unbiased assessment that favors neither side as some sort of affirmation of me at the expense of Daniel. I know this because rather than analyze the content of Andros’ post, you splashed up a completely non-responsive drive-by. Your prejudice has made you ignorant of the fact that Andros has blasted me as often as he has supported me. He simply calls it as he sees it.
You wrote a cute parody. The overwhelming majority of people told you you were off-base with your rant. None of them is related to me.
Hey little buddy, nobody was talking to you. I know you love this attention, and I hate to break up the ego-stroking, but I’m afraid that the majority of folks still think you’re an asshole.
Sorry to bring you back to reality, kiddo. Oh wait, I forgot – no matter how many times people slap you upside the head, it does absolutely no good.
Carry on.
Not to stray from the subject too far, but what was Liberal’s screen name before he changed it to Libertarian?
You know, back in the day.
Right, well, He is human like the rest of us. I must admit that he’s held up very well to all of his detractors of late. I’m still not sure why there is all the attention regarding Lib, I find him to be one of the more interesting posters on the boards and I’ve NEVER had a problem with him, even when he disagrees with me.
EddyTeddy Freddy said it best for me.
Wait, I forgot “exasperates” and “bemuses”. Does that work for you, too?
I don’t frequent the Pit much, but the pattern here seems to be that Lib posts something rather pedantic, overly literal or in some cases clearly peripheral to what the OP intended, and a mob duly turns up eager to cast a few stones (Desmo almost invariably being the first).
I shall state absolutely and without reservation that I would not be here today without him. It was the very fact that his worldview is so utterly diametrically opposed to my own that I became almost addicted to debating him. Yes, he would dance around and bob and weave using every rhetorical move in his considerable repertoire but, had he simply spelled out his entire worldview upon our first encounter I would probably have merely considered him a few bishops short of a synod and moved on. The value in “working him out” was not in the destination but the journey, which I found, and still find, to be an educational experience which rivalled any formal academic pursuit.
Lib, my friend, I must ask: Why do you post in the Pit so regularly? So little of what goes on here seems to have any real value, and yet you seem to willingly fling yourself into a current of noxious effluvia over the most trifling of flocci, nauci, nihili or pili.
Focus on the big picture, and ask yourself before you hit ‘Submit’ whether the point you find yourself defending is really worth the electrons. Your appearance in GD are always welcome.
Liberal is definitely growing on me, after only three years on the boards. The erudition usually whooshes right by me, while the literate snarkiness does not. Although there is no possible chance that Liberal gives a monkey’s booty what I think, but since his posts have informed me a great deal, I’ll give my thankful approval of his presence as a SDMB human.
He plays Civ III, too!
Actually, I think this is an incorrect characterization, except for the peripheral part. His pedantic and literal posts aren’t the problem; indeed, if he confined himself to these qualities, I’d be delighted to discuss issues with him.
It’s his mean posts and his dishonest posts and his hijacking posts that are the problem. And, overall, his unwillingness or inability to quit displaying these noxious characteristics.
Now, it may be that what you call rhetorical tricks, I call dishonesty; if that’s the case, maybe it’s just a difference of opinion. I want a debate to involve genuine efforts to get at the truth, not a win at all costs attitude; whereas rhetorical tricks/dishonesty may be useful for the latter aim, they impede the former, and poison the debate. (Not that all rhetoric is dishonesty, of course).
On some theoretical, hopeless level, I do hope that he can, one day, set aside the bullying dishonesty of his posting style here. If he did, he’d have a fair amount to offer. But, seeing no sign at all that he’d consider doing this, my hope remains theoretical.
Daniel
A fair question. I think I just like it here. Something changed when I became a mod at Philosophy Forums. I stopped taking everything so seriously. I realized that a lot of people make mountains out of molehills and that it is possible for 300 different people to have 400 different views about what happened.
It took a while, but Lynn has fashioned the Pit into something marvelous. It used to be a rather infantile place with little more than gratuitous obscenity and childish jokes. Some of that remains, sure, but now it is primarily a place of great passion and resolve. It isn’t a place to debate, and yet some of the threads make better points than some of the threads in GD.
I don’t melt down like I used to. It no longer bothers me when five people gang up on me. Besides, there are also times — like in this thread, for instance — when five people defend me. Anyway, it’s just a messageboard, and all in good fun. We can all be passionate and still be friends. I bet you a hundred dollars that if we ever had another board invasion like the one we had from Left Behind, you would see both me and Leander joining together to tell the sods to go to hell.
I feel like it’s a family here, and I don’t hold any grudges about any of this stuff. Anyway, the fact is that I post all over the boards now. I have two threads in IMHO (one of which is on Threadspotting), two threads in MPSIMS, and a rather long thread in Cafe Society that goes back quite a while to the first hint by Merv Griffin that something amazing was going to happen on Jeopardy. I participate in the threads of others as well, always mindful of the appropriate conduct in the appropriate forum.
I don’t consider even one Doper to be my enemy.
Yeah, but when Myst: Revelation comes out, I’ll be distracted for a few days.
No, you’re dead wrong. Liberal has a disorder that presents itself cyclically. Those (many) of us who’ve tried to help Liberal through this, cop a lot of shit. After Liberal’s huge outburst last year, which resulted in him being banished to Fathom, it was me who encouraged him to come back. And it was me who welcomed him back when he decided to do so. I treated him with kid gloves for months and months and months afterwards.
But the cycle is repeating, and this time I’m less inclined to give Liberal the benefit of the doubt. It’s exactly the same shit as last time. If Liberal was a good boy and took his Lithium, I doubt any of this shit would happen.
If Liberal repeats his suicide by mod, I’m going to be the last one asking him to come back.
He does not learn anything from experience.
Actually, it wasn’t lithium. It was Prednisone.
I beg to differ…
I’ll just paraphrase leander. I was talking about you, not to you, you crazy fuck.
Could this be a self-fulfilling prophecy, perhaps? Beat the guy up 'till he looses it.
As one with no little experience of mental illness in a close family member, might I suggest that the first step in helping somebody is notcalling them a crazy fuck at every possible opportunity?