# Is Shodan more retarded lately, or has he maintained a consistent level of retardation all along? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [January 24, 2012, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530 "2012-01-24T20:31:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 53
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1041 "2012-02-19T07:32:11Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I suppose I would despise you if I gave you any thought. You gave me enough thought to respond to one of my posts, so I guess you could despise me if you put just a little more thought into it. ---
**Author:** ![rogerbox](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/76d3ee/32.png) [@rogerbox](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rogerbox)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 8:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1042 "2012-02-19T08:00:34Z")
Ah, the good old “liberal media” folk myth. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1043 "2012-02-19T08:07:21Z")
> [@The\_Second\_Stone](#): > > I suppose I would despise you if I gave you any thought. I like [that scene](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-8-6Yd_uKg&feature=related#t=22s) too. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 8:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1044 "2012-02-19T08:30:39Z")
There isn’t a scene in that movie that isn’t to like. As for OMG, he didn’t pick up the reference. Round up the usual suspects. (And it doesn’t include Kevin F’in Spacey). ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1045 "2012-02-19T11:37:55Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > So what do I have to do to get a 20+ page thread about me? The last one, and only one, about me, iirc, barely managed to crack two pages. You make it too much of a challenge for others to take you very seriously, starting of course with the teenybopper ‘Omg’ in the username. ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1046 "2012-02-19T15:58:12Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Ahem Double-wide here. Of course, I’m a peckerwood from Waco, so we aspire to trailer trash. Ages back, my then-girlfriend and I visited her grandmother who lived in a double-wide trailer. Can’t speak to the quality of the neighborhood or likelihood of surviving a brisk windstorm, but the interior of that thing was bigger and nicer than any apartment I’ve lived in. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1047 "2012-02-19T16:13:56Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > If someone gets under your skin that much that you have to “hate”, or however it you want to phrase it, them then it’s probably because you perceive there to be an air of truth to their statements. Well, I have two responses to that: (1) Someone spouting absolute 100% BS could certainly get under my skin… but it would probably depend on the extent to which other people believed them. Obama-born-in-Kenya is as close to a provably-100%-fabrication as we ever get in terms of things-people-believe, but it certainly bugs me (although it also amuses me) (2) That said, most of the conservative talking points that irritate me aren’t 100% lies, in the sense that they’re not just fabricated from thin air. Rather, they’re misrepresentations, intellectual sleight of hand, exaggerations, irrelevancies, etc. While I’m as willing as the next man to accuse FoxGroverNorquist of lying, I don’t think their MO is just “let’s put 10 fiction writers in a room and have them come up with any statement, no matter its truth value, which would reflect badly on the left”. Rather, it’s more like “here’s the situation as it exists… here’s what we DON’T want people to be talking about, as it reflects badly on us. So let’s take a minor little detail or issue from somewhere ELSE, blow it WAY out of proportion, tack on all sorts of scary words, bend the truth a bit if we have to because who cares, and turn it into a talking point”. So, I guess in some sense it might be true that a fair number of Talking Points contain a grain of truth, but it’s not the grain of truth that bugs me. If you call me a socialist there’s a tiny grain of truth there in that, while I am in fact not a socialist, I’m probably marginally closer to it than you (ie, on a scale of 0 to 100, you’d be a 52 and I’d be a 47 or something). But your statement would bug me not because it’s partly true but because of the propaganda-weight of the words involved, the fact that you’ve now derailed the discussion and put me on the defensive, and the fact that the same thing has happened to the detriment of the national debate so often. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1048 "2012-02-19T21:08:35Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > If I was all “anti-truth/anti-information”, I’d be a raging liberal as then it’d be easy. Just turn on the TV and listen to the everything the news tells you. So? You turn on Fox News, listen to the everything “the news” tells you, and show up as a raging conservative. Same, same. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2012, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1049 "2012-02-19T21:26:50Z")
Oh, not so much “raging”. Rather dull, actually, esp. when compared with the, ah, guest of honor. Who, after ten years and more, ought to be at least a _ni-dan_ by now. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1050 "2012-02-20T00:59:46Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > I don’t have a wife. I don’t have any kinds, either (praise God, Jesus, Allah, whoever :D). If I was all “anti-truth/anti-information”, I’d be a raging liberal as then it’d be easy. Just turn on the TV and listen to the everything the news tells you. If someone gets under your skin that much that you have to “hate”, or however it you want to phrase it, them then it’s probably because you perceive there to be an air of truth to their statements. Dude, you’re a conservative who deliberately joined what you believe to be a liberal message board. And you continually post how wrong all the liberals are. We’re not stupid: your _goal_ is to get under people’s skin. Let’s further add that you’ve never once given a decent reason why you are a conservative, despite being in a demographic that largely isn’t conservative, and give no indication of being one due to religious reasons. I don’t think it’s a bad idea to think that you are a conservative because you like getting into arguments with people and getting under their skin. Your username is itself a defiant statement designed to draw attention to yourself and your political views. Don’t pretend you don’t like it when someone is annoyed by you. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1051 "2012-02-20T01:05:34Z")
Hell, he won’t even say what \*kind \*of conservative he purports to be, social or financial or isolationist or religious or _what_. He won’t share his own beliefs or how he arrived at them in even superficial detail, just as if he hasn’t actually given the subject any serious thought. **OMG** , if you’re really here to try to convince others of your views, you might make a slight effort in that direction once in a while, ya know? Otherwise, you simply let us think you’re here only to be annoying. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1052 "2012-02-20T01:25:37Z")
> [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](#): > > So what do I have to do to get a 20+ page thread about me? The last one, and only one, about me, iirc, barely managed to crack two pages. Try defending a pedophile with outrageous statements about “just playing hide the soap”, or measuring how difficult it is to stick your winkie into a paper towel roll, or how anal rape does not count if the 10 year old victim does not show obvious signs of distress. In other words, if you want to have a long pit thread about you, you really have to up your game. Or, if you want to have a 20 page Great Debates thread, you may want to post something interesting for once. Your choice. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1053 "2012-02-20T21:11:54Z")
> [@Euphonious\_Polemic](#): > > Try defending a pedophile with outrageous statements about “just playing hide the soap”, or measuring how difficult it is to stick your winkie into a paper towel roll, or how anal rape does not count if the 10 year old victim does not show obvious signs of distress. > > In other words, if you want to have a long pit thread about you, you really have to up your game. > > Or, if you want to have a 20 page Great Debates thread, you may want to post something interesting for once. > > Your choice. These are difficult choices. ---
**Author:** ![Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7ba0ec/32.png) [@Omg\_a\_Black\_Conservative](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omg_a_Black_Conservative)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1054 "2012-02-20T21:38:29Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > So? You turn on Fox News, listen to the everything “the news” tells you, and show up as a raging conservative. Same, same. It’s a rare day that I watch the news on TV. That is so sixty years ago. > [@BigT](#): > > Dude, you’re a conservative who deliberately joined what you believe to be a liberal message board. Actually, I never did read the message board before joining. Seriously. > [@](#): > > And you continually post how wrong all the liberals are. Not continually. Just whenever they are (or I see it). Now I’m not exactly sure why you’re complaining about this, since one ideological group stating the other one is wrong is and trying to prove their wrong pretty common occurrence in politics, period. Hell, it’s a pretty common occurrence on this message board. > [@](#): > > Let’s further add that you’ve never once given a decent reason why you are a conservative, despite being in a demographic that largely isn’t conservative, and give no indication of being one due to religious reasons. Maybe because I don’t really feel like I should have to emphatically state why I think the way I do in regards to political affiliation, nor do I ask the same of others. > [@](#): > > I don’t think it’s a bad idea to think that you are a conservative because you like getting into arguments with people and getting under their skin. Well, that’s only half right. > [@](#): > > Your username is itself a defiant statement designed to draw attention to yourself and your political views. Don’t pretend you don’t like it when someone is annoyed by you. Nope. And since I’ve gone over this _ad naseum_, I’m not going over it anymore. Some of y’all simply need to pay more attention to real life discourse. ---
**Author:** ![KneeSid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dec6dc/32.png) [@KneeSid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneeSid)\ **Post date:** [February 20, 2012, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1055 "2012-02-20T21:44:22Z")
I do not like his current posts but I read some of his old stuff. Go back about 5 years. Man this guy rocked. Maybe he lost some finesse over the years, but read his old stuff. He made some really solid points back when ---
**Author:** ![The\_Second\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bbe5ce/32.png) [@The\_Second\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Second_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1056 "2012-02-21T02:54:05Z")
Moar Wee Tadit!! ---
**Author:** ![VinylTurnip](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b2d939/32.png) [@VinylTurnip](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/VinylTurnip)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1057 "2012-02-21T13:26:38Z")
> [@KneeSid](#): > > I do not like his current posts but I read some of his old stuff. Go back about 5 years. Man this guy rocked. Maybe he lost some finesse over the years, but read his old stuff. He made some really solid points back when I agree, **OmgaBC** was a much more valuable contributor to this board five years ago. Why can’t we get THAT guy back again? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 1:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1058 "2012-02-21T13:58:17Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Dude, you’re a conservative who deliberately joined what you believe to be a liberal message board. And you continually post how wrong all the liberals are. We’re not stupid: your _goal_ is to get under people’s skin. This description applies to me also: a conservative member of a liberal message board, posting frequently to illustrate how wrong liberals are. My goal is not to get under anyone’s skin. My goal is to see how well my ideas hold up when subjected to strong criticism. It’s not useful for me to say, for example, that I disfavor same-sex marriage on a conservative board, because I would get nothing but laudatory responses and agreement. Posting the same thing here made me work to defend the claim, and indeed to realize that it’s not defensible. So I abandoned that view. ---
**Author:** ![pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@pseudotriton\_ruber\_ruber](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pseudotriton_ruber_ruber)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1059 "2012-02-21T14:19:35Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I abandoned that view. To your credit. I just wish you (and to a much greater extent, **Shodan** , though I gave up on him years ago) would post less arguendo (without IDing it as such). If you would post more of your actual beliefs, and not so much what you COULD say under CERTAIN circumstances, IF you were willing to ignore clear evidence to the contrary, etc., I think you’d get less grief and a lot more respect. But getting under people’s skins is just a little too enjoyable for you to give that up entirely. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530/1060 "2012-02-21T15:43:43Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > This description applies to me also: a conservative member of a liberal message board, posting frequently to illustrate how wrong liberals are. > > My goal is not to get under anyone’s skin. My goal is to see how well my ideas hold up when subjected to strong criticism. It’s not useful for me to say, for example, that I disfavor same-sex marriage on a conservative board, because I would get nothing but laudatory responses and agreement. Posting the same thing here made me work to defend the claim, and indeed to realize that it’s not defensible. So I abandoned that view. But where are you when we really need you… over in the **Paterno Pit Thread That Will Not Die**? \*\*\*Starving Artist \*\*\*has been defending Paterno, and disproving that Sandusky could’ve been guilty, and claiming it’s a witch hunt due in part to Paterno’s “Well-Known Conservatism”. _ **SA** _’s claims have been so egregious (read it, I dare you), and his grasp of legal matters is so skewed, that I often refresh the page just in hopes that _ **Bricker** _’s weighed in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530.md?page=52) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-shodan-more-retarded-lately-or-has-he-maintained-a-consistent-level-of-retardation-all-along/610530.md?page=54)