It may be scary at first, but just try taking your hat off. You may just find that people do like you, if you take the risk of letting them.
You’re making a good point, and I can see where “collectively” seems a bit weaselly. Nonetheless, it’s valid. There are exceptions to everything. Generalities are still valid. If I say “Shodan is less respected on this board than John Mace”, that does not mean that there is not a single poster who respects Shodan more than John Mace. It just means that if you average everyone out, this will be the result. And then the question is why this is so (not that there is anything specific about the comparison of these two, of course).
And that’s the whole point of all these Pit threads. The point is not that SenorBeef specifically has an issue with Shodan. The point is that many many others share this view, and these threads are intended as vehicles for all these people to get together and agree among themselves about just how reprehensible Shodan (or whoever the latest target is) really is.
So the relevant question is not whether this or that individual poster respects some supposed conservative poster. The question is whether the widely shared (as intended to be evidenced by this thread) opinion of Shodan is the result of his political ideology or his other characteristics. So the comparison to other conservative posters is only meaningful in a collective sense. If there are other conservative posters who are collectively respected by the board, than this shows that the collective opinion of Shodan is not based on the ideology that he shares with those posters. But if the collective opinion of the board regarding any poster who shares Shodan’s ideology is similar to or on par with the opinion of Shodan, then this strongly argues for the opposite position - that it’s the ideological common link that is the issue.
This is true. But idiots are not identified by special labels on the SDMB, and being an idiot is not a black-and-white matter. It’s a matter of degree and is very subjective. And furthermore, the determination of who is or isn’t an idiot is itself heavily influenced by ideology.
What this all means is that while there are a lot of people in this thread attacking Shodan who I would regard as idiots, and their views about Shodan have little or no value to me, many other people will regard these people as something more than idiots, and their views will be used to buttress their position (“all these people think you’re a jerk”).
So while you seem to be advocating - if I understand you correctly - just ignoring the idiots and let’s look at what the normal people think, I don’t think it’s nearly as simple as that.
The hell of it is, I quite like Shodan when he’s not posting in political threads. Without the chip on his shoulder, he’s pretty witty and personable. But that chip overrides everything else in political threads. It’s depressing, really.
I’ve said it a few times in the past: there’s conservatives and liberals, then there’s anti-liberals and anti-conservatives. Nothing wrong with the former two, but the latter two are high-order douchebags.
Just because that’s why you called me a troll (other than to suck up to Scylla) doesn’t mean it’s the reason why other people call you one.
Not that I feel particularly bothered by being called a troll by the likes of you, because, well, it is the likes of you. But if you want to try to redeem yourself to the slightest extent, feel free to go back to that thread and quote something I said in that thread that constituted trolling.
You will decline this offer, I’m sure. But that’s exactly the sort of thing that gives you a bad name: a repeated accusation of trolling, backed up by…jack shit. And if there was any reason for it other than your dislike of my politics, you sure haven’t provided any.
And now you take your behavior, and project it on your adversaries. Kinda like Newt Gingrich complaining about other people poisoning the debate.
Neither, apparently.
s/liberal/funny/
A lot of that sounds like opinion. Perhaps your perspective informs that opinion.
I would point to John Mace. A fact centered conservative who gets argued with but doesn’t get dismissed because he will admit error. I put Bricker (and a few other conservatives) in the same category, a conservative with whom I disagree but who is fact based and recognizes when he is expressing his opinion rather than fact. You frequently get piled on by folks who view the world through a Nader shaped prism and while you are not impervious to logic and reason (and frankly there are plenty of lefties on thsi board who are), you are highly resistant to it when it does not confirm your bias.
To be fair you are usually no worse than folks like martin hyde (at least that has been my impression) but you seem to have come off the rails a bit recently. I get the feeling that it is slowly dawning on you that Obama has a chance of winning reelection and its getting your blood pressure up.
This is getting pretty tired.
Worst hellhole you’ve ever subjected yourself to, eh? If only there were some way you and Shodan and the rest of the “wurst board EVAR!” brigade could escape to greener pastures… ah, well.
[absently swabs his banana] Meep?
I agree.
Piss off, assholes
CH
If you could see it as I do, it would only keep getting funnier… thanks, Greasemonkey “Replace Text”!
Excellent, I’m sure that’s covered in shit as well.
So your behavior outlined in the OP - was that an attempt to make an argument, or snark?
Ass Horn,
Graded
It’s sort of like amateur boxing. You’re not looking to get hit by the other guy, but it’s part of the game. If that happens to be the game you enjoy playing, then you’ve got to take it.
[sniffs banana] Wait a second… I thought this was a friendship banana. 
This is an excellent point. I read and post on this board for amusement. I do not find being jumped on by the antis at all amusing. Consequently, I do not post in political threads on this board, despite the fact that I enjoy discussions with the first pair you mentioned. It’s not possible to have such discussions, as long as the douchebags are around.
ETA: Oops, I almost forgot…
Piss off, assholes
CH
You display a lack of comprehension. The BBQ Pit is one sub-forum of this board. It’s not the only reason the SDMB exists.
I’ll score this as another instance of you just not understanding even what you think you’re arguing against.
No, they get pitted because they are idiots. It’s not their right wing view that gets pitted, it’s the fact that the way they claim to have arrived at the right wing view is so monumentally stupid.
Bricker only gets pitted when he outright lies about something or when he pulls his “liberal hypocrisy” card out of his sleeve. He doesn’t get pitted because he proffers conservative views, unless you’re going to make the argument that “come see the liberal hypocrisy” is somehow a conservative view, instead of just a lame tu quoque.
And another instance of not being able to believe that anything that anyone says that doesn’t fit your own preconceived notions, no matter what, because then you would be wrong about something. And if you could be wrong once, you might be wrong more than once, and your world-view simply won’t allow that.
I think that you used to occasionally do that, but it’s been quite some time since I can remember reading anything from you that wasn’t dismissive, unsupported by facts and poorly reasoned, just like the quote above.
It is. You’re welcome.
“Worst board ever”, huh? I’m sure people get tired of me asking “Did I say that?”, but “Did I say that?”. I mean, here’s a serious question. Is there some kind of guidebook which lays down when and under what circumstances one should throw out a straw man?
This is the kind of crap that caused me to stop posting here. I can handle a tough debate, and I can handle a pitting. But what has been happening recently is that I would post an argument and cite it, and the following exchange would take place:
Sam: Here’s my argument. <insert argument here>
Hentor or some other Ankle Biter: “Don’t listen to him! Sam Stone is a liar!” (or as close to saying that as he could get away with without breaking the rules in GD).
Sam: You have evidence of this?
Hentor: here’s a message from 2003 in which your cite didn’t match what you said! And you got smacked down in this thread, and this one, for lying.
Sam: No, I didn’t. Here everyone, here’s a link to the threads in question so you can read them.
Hentor: You’re wrong! Admit you lied!"
Etc, ad nauseum. The problem with this is that it has nothing to do with the thread or my current argument. It was pure ad-hominem attack. There is a handful of posters on this board that seemed to make it their life’s work to take everything I posted and comb the archives looking for contradictions with something I said years ago, to to build a general case that I should not be listened to regardless of what the current argument I was making happened to be.
A side effect of this was that I not only had to be sure that my posts were heavily cited, but that the cites had to come from non-partisan sources, and those sources couldn’t be funded by someone who might have an interest, and the cites had to be very explicit in their support of what I was saying and I couldn’t ask people to generalize the point into a larger one, etc. A standard no one else, and certainly no one on the left on this board is ever held to.
I started reporting these ad-hominem attacks when they happened, and that generated a lot of warnings to people, but I hate having to do that. And the bigger problem was that it was getting to the point where my mere entry into a thread would derail it with hijacks as it turned into a “Let’s debate Sam’s character” thread instead.
Finally, the quality of argumentation around here has declined dramatically. We haven’t just lost the good conservative posters, we’ve lost the good lefties and the good moderates as well. People Like Hellestal and Stranger on a Train don’t post as frequently as they used to, and while they don’t get personally attacked, I’ll bet their other reasons are much like mine - it’s become impossible to have a serious debate here without it being drowned out in partisan noise.
I’ve tried several times in the recent past to start a serious discussion about libertarian ideas, and even though my OP has begged people to stay on topic and consider the specific ideas up for debate, it usually only takes a couple of posts before someone comes in and says, “Libertarians are just people who have money and don’t care about anyone else” or some other crack like that, then the chorus dives in and hijacks the thread into another libertarian-bashing extravaganza.
I’ve been trying to get this through people’s heads here for years - you let the bomb throwers run mad on a message board, and they’ll chase away the serious people until all you’ve got left is partisans throwing mud at each other. That’s what’s happening here, and the combination of the deterioration of debate and the constant personal attacks has made it just not worth my time.