“That way, with those words.” But those weren’t the only words, now we’re they? I’d say something here about context, but for fuck’s sake, I just did, and you’d still likely just ignore it in favor of selective quoting anyway!
“He called me a loser first” is not a context that changes the fact that it was an insult.
“You’re a loser” - that’s an insult.
“You’re a bigger loser” - that’s an insult.
So both are insults. The fact that the second insult came after the first insult does not change that they are both insults.
Regards,
Shodan
So you admit it was a warnable offense.
Trying to explain to some people why someone who broke the rules got a warning.
So if I respond to one of your posts with five two hundred word paragraphs extolling the virtues of not murdering people but somewhere in the middle of that verbiage I call you a cunt I shouldn’t be warned?
Logic is hard, I know, but the comparison is apt regardless of whether it’s constructed in the first person or the third.
No, it’s not. You can insult Barack Obama the POTUS all you want. You can’t insult Barack Obama* the Doper outside of the BBQ Pit.
*Who may or may not be the POTUS, but is actually a member here.
The analogy, quoted again below for convenience, doesn’t concern whether Poster B should be warned or not. It only concerns whether Poster B is insulting Barack Obama. He is not, just as SenorBeef wasn’t insulting whatshisface.
Except SenorBeef did insult whatsisface. He said, “You’re the biggest loser,” which looks like an insult to me and the majority of Dopers who replied to this thread. The POTUS is not a member of the Dope. djan was, at the time of the post. You can’t insult members outside of the BBQ Pit. SenorBeef wasn’t in the Pit. Your analogy is holier than a submarine with screen doors.
It’d be best if you’d drop the member of SDMB vs. non-member. It’s completely irrelevant to the analogy (not my analogy, FWIW), which is only about whether or not a certain phrasing was an insult. If you think SenorBeef insulted whatshisface, then you should either think that Poster B insulted Obama in the analogy, or that it’s a bad analogy. But if the latter, you have to explain why it’s a bad analogy in a way that actually makes sense. Barack Obama being a non-member of SDMB has nothing to do with whether or not it was an insult. You might as well claim the analogy is holier than a submarine with a screen door because Barack Obama is a real person’s name whereas Dajn isn’t. It’s a completely non-sequitur.
Once you conclude that it was not an insult, which the analogy helps to illustrate, then we can move on to whether or not it deserves a warning. At this point, but not before, the analogy loses its power, since Barack Obama’s and Dajn’s membership status here starts to become relevant. However, once it’s not an insult, it then follows that it shouldn’t have been warned.
I’m kind of amazed at how hard people are trying to miss the point.
Ask yourself: How did I insult him? I said “you’re the bigger loser” Why did I do that? Was it just totally out of the blue? I decided I didn’t like the guy so I just picked a random name to call him? Or because I think that posting 4.6 posts per day, which I do myself, is what makes someone a loser even though I gave no indication whatsoever that I associated post counts with being a loser? Neither of those make any sense.
No, I called him a loser because he established a criteria that he used to call me a loser. I pointed out that by his own criteria, that makes him the bigger loser. He insulted himself more than he insulted me. What I said was a refutation of his insult, not an insult to him.
Most of the people in this thread are sticking their thumbs in their ears and saying “I HEARD YOU UTTER THE WORD LOSER, CASE CLOSED” in a very bizarre way. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen this board so deliberately dense.
Woah, now. Let’s not go flying off the handle and talking crazy.
Except, no matter how much you insist it wasn’t an insult, repeating it doesn’t make it more correct.
You’re misunderstanding. Two things are true:
- At the end of a long analysis, it’s clear that you were not intending to imply that he was a loser.
- Absent the long analysis, it appears on the surface that you were calling him a loser.
The case isn’t closed after the word loser appears. However, it’s important to post in a way that is clearly non-insulting before lengthy analysis is applied. Since things that appear insulting prior to lengthy analysis are against the rules, the lengthy analysis is not relevant to whether you followed the rules.
The irony, it burns.
No analysis is required at all!
There is literally no other reasonable way to interpret my words.
Possible alternate ways of interpreting what I said:
-
Huh, SenorBeef just called him a loser out of the blue. It had nothing to do with the rest of the post he just posted, even though he said “turns out” in the same way he would say “in conclusion”. But no, he must’ve just called him a loser totally out of the blue.
-
SenorBeef thinks he’s a loser because he has the same posting rate as himself. Even though SenorBeef has given no indication that he thinks that a post count of 4.6 posts per day makes you a loser, obviously that’s what he meant. He just decided to bring it up at random.
Obviously neither of those make sense.
This isn’t lengthy analysis. This is the most basic of logic and reading comprehension. The only thing that makes sense is that I was turning his own insult around on him. There is literally no other interpretation that makes sense. No analysis is needed at all. I only used analysis to demonstrate conclusively that no other interpretation makes sense, because people are being incredibly dense on this one.
I’m not missing anything. The only thing people are saying is “yes, I ignored the rest of your post on purpose, you said the word loser, that’s a warning”
That is in no way a fair summary of my post. For SenorBeef’s statement to be a insult, you can either accept the analogy is accurate, and explain why Poster B’s statement is not an insult to Barack Obama, or you can make a cogent argument why the analogy is inapt. The fact you have done neither is telling.
One has nothing to do with the other. SenorBeef clearly insulted another poster. If you refuse to acknowledge that, I’m not going to keep wasting my time on a lost cause. You’re engaging in the same flagrant twisting of logic as SenorBeef.
In the analogy, did Poster B clearly insult Barack Obama? Simple question.
I’m done. I have better things to do than to keep arguing with you.
I snipped the following six paragraphs of analysis :). What does “analysis” mean to you?
Your analogy is fine, but here’s a simpler one which fits the situation slightly better:
A: “Man, you own 10 books. You’re a loser”
B: “What? I just looked in your living room and you own 11 books. I guess you’re the bigger loser”
There’s no reason to think that person B actually thinks that owning books makes you a loser. For one thing, he owns books. For two, owning 10 books is a pretty reasonable amount of books to own, so even if you thought owning books was somehow loser-worthy, he’s not an extreme example. And three, it’d be really fucking weird if this conversation took place at a book club meeting, as a conversation about post counts did on a message board.
So B doesn’t think that owning books makes you a loser. B pointed out the absurdity of A’s insult and refuted it by turning it around on him.
Of course, everyone in this thread will say “BOTH STATEMENTS CONTAIN THE WORD LOSER. I DON’T NEED TO HEAR ANYTHING ELSE. EQUAL GUILT!”
What way could be a valid, reasonable interpretation of my post that isn’t in line with what I described? You’re trying to say that only with tortured analysis, does my statement mean what I say it means. What else could it possibly mean?