The guy has had some interesting things to say on one or two topics. Mostly though, he’s an ignorant, unrepentant ass. He expects special consideration for topics he’s interested in and appeals to lofty standards in the pursuit of them.
Catch him in another topic though, and it’s insufferable ignorance, and genuine nasty shit.
I find it especially disturbing because up to recently I had a genuine respect for the guy, though we seldom agreed.
This thread here, caused me to reasess my opinion.
Here’s the OP:
Not the greatest, actually kind of ignorant, but nothing too terrible.
He explains a little further
I see. The thinly veiled insult. What an interesting way to make an inquiry.
Still later:
So sorry, that we had trouble figuring out what was going on in your mind when you wrote that unbelievably stupid Op.
Interesting. Despite myself and several others pointing out the fallacy of that statement, describing exactly how needles can be procured, Mr. intellectual honesty sees no need to acknowledge his error.
I write:
To which the chuckleheaded one responds after being warned by Gaudere:
At least he acknowledges the cheap shot. Strange way this guy has of deliberately antagonizing those from whom he wishes to gain insight. Real smart.
Did that sound like regret? No, I think not. From the same post:
Ahh, yes. An excellent technique for proceeding down a civil debate from which one hopes to gain “insight.”
Now, I know that on more than one occasion I’ve acted like an asshole. I do however pride myself on acknowledging my errors and doing better.
I ask for a cite for when I refused to apologize after behaving badly:
But, that’s it. Apparently Lissener got tired of his unfair baiting. He refused to apologize or substantiate his behavior.
I’m disapointed by the lack of integrity that displayed. I’m also disapointed that shithead makes accusations but lacks the responsibility to back them up.
Fortunately some more responsible and honest debaters showed up and the debate actually got interesting. Fortunately Lissener didn’t come back and ruin it.
I even used his stupidity for an interesting thread idea, here. Doubtless the irony was lost on our friend.
Perhaps I should’ve listened to one of our Mods, Unclebeer:
Or even Manhattan:
I foolishly hoped he’d settle down and might have something interesting to say. Silly me.
Things got tough and several others wanted Lissener to back up his stupid assertions:
Lissener though, rather than stand up, apologize, or take responsibility for his posts, prefers to run away, proving Unclebeer’s asessment of his character correct.
One person goes out of his way in an appeal to maintain the status quo:
I’d have left well enough alone, but having lost that round, and cut and run, Lissener prefers to wait in ambush and launch unprovoke attacks in other threads to get even
In this thread he attacks me, though I choose not to respond when I address a point goboy has brought up.
Still ignoring him in hopes that he’ll go away:
What truly pompous, pseudo-intellectual bullshit.
The discussion with goboy concerned the usage of the term “cocksucker” and the actual act of fellatio as derivative of animal mounting dominance behavior.
An interesting topic, and one in which there is some legitimate room for debate.
I gave up the debate and left, even though I’d found several cites that seemed to concur that fellatio did not seem to indicate dominance games among primates, but rather served a mutual pleasure, bonding function.
Again, it might have been an interesting discussion.
I sincerely hope he goes away and stays away. What little worthwhile content he has to offer seems exhausted. What’s left is a mean-spirited, and dishonest person.
Gordon, I mean Scylla, you are so full of your own pompous baboon shit that it is beginning to erode my otherwise high opinion of you.
I just wasted a half an hour reading your crap posts and I think I have at least part of your number down. Here’s the MO of this post as I see it:
Start with a pre-conceived notion.
Fine, lots of us do that.
State your opinion, here in the Pit.
Which is a great place to end fights, particularly the ones that start here. No problems there, except that despite the profligacy of your posting, you have been notably absent from the GD forum, where your bullshit tactics would be shot down quicker than my own attempt.
Attempt to redefine the argument along terms you think you can successfully defend, by dividing the argument, as you did on your third post here.
Now it’s getting slippery. And your own research begins to make you look foolish.
Then, when annoyed responses return to your post, some of them technical, you take them out of context and deride them as incomprehensible and start your own inflammatory post, singling out an individual like lissener, while ignoring other, more general but not less cogent posts in their wake, like those of Esprix and goboy.
My opinion of you, Scylla, is eroding like the trust I have in “compassionate conservatism.” You, sir, are not a commedian; you are a sophist.
I’d suggest a rereading and reconsidering of your fourth point, though, as it is demonstrably false. I was most pointedly not responding to Lissener, but rather to goboy.
Well, I’m sorry that my little thesis has caused such hard feelings. I thought my idea of primate dominance ranking being unconsciously expressed as sexual insults was interesting. (Thanks for the links on primate oral sex, Scylla. I can just imagine the looks on the fundies’ faces when I bring up chimpanzee blowjobs in the next creationism thread.) Even though it’s the Pit, it would have been a pleasant discussion without the gratuitous insults (I’m looking at you, Lissener), or using language tricks instead of reasoned argument; for example, refuting a point I never made, such as penetration defining dominance(I’m looking at you, Scylla).
Thanks for the polite reply. It is an interesting thesis. It would have been nice to explore it.
I apologize for a misinterpretation I caused. Lissener was asserting that penetration=dominance. I responded to that point in a post addressed to you, since I was trying to ignore Lissener. I can see how you thought I attributed it to you, but that was not my intent.
I think it would make an interesting GD: “Are sex-related curses actually vestiges of primate mounting behavior?”
It still doesn’t seem quite right to me, but I confess there may be something to it. It’s a brand new idea (to me, anyway.) So thanks for the interesting insight.
I used to waste a great deal of time here taking on all comers. As Scylla can tell you, I would often be one of the last remaining debaters on an issue that most people had drifted away from out of boredom and, I suspect, self respect–most of my post count can be attributed to thanatoequuflagellation.
Apparently Scylla misses being my oft-wonted mount.
What he sees as cutting and running, I see as dismounting as soon as the beast comes to a halt, or begins to run in circles. If Scylla can’t respect me unless, like him, I’m willing to kneel, panting, over a fallen horse, and beat it with my bare fists until my knucklebones break through the skin, well, I just think that’s his problem.
Scylla insists that anyone who debates with him must indulge his mindless and immeasurable capacity for oversimplification, misdirection, and obfuscation. But frankly, once an argument becomes a circular series of “that’s not what I said,” and “we’ve already been over this,” and quotes nested within quotes within quotes until writing a reply is like braiding snakes, that argument’s time-to-value/interest ratio is no longer within my parameters. So then I leave it Scylla to gnaw on with his nubby little teeth until he wears himself out and (one can hope) falls asleep in front of the fire.
Finally, as Unclebeer can attest to, I once began a thread in GD which, upon further reflection, I acknowledged probably had little more point than ruffling a few feathers and should have been posted elsewhere, and at least twice asked moderators to move it. This has happened exactly once, and this is what Unclebeer–as always, a model of levelheaded restraint–refers to as my “track record.”
I have no intention of leaving SDMB permanently, but as some of you may have noticed I now choose my battles a little more carefully. I’m sorry, Scylla, but yours are not often up to my standards.
Imagine my suprise when I ran across this thread and discovered a wallowing, nasty ad hominem penned by yours truly? Yesterday was my birthday and I went out on the piss like I haven’t in a long, long time. That is not an excuse.
Scylla, I hope you will accept my personal apology for the above. As I said before, I think you’re a pretty cool guy, and there is no reason why I can’t get along with you. Futhermore, you have my promise that I will do everything in my power to avoid making such a mistake again.
I hate reading shit like that post, which makes me even more embarassed that I wrote it. I hope all of you will accept this retraction and apology.
Ah yes, one day I aspire to knowledgeable and learned discourse by asserting that gun owners have small penises.
Truly a scholarly idea. I’m surprised you didn’t submit it for peer review before posting it.
And in the “Cocksucker” thread, suggesting I watch more porn to understand real life roles. Clearly porn isn’t fantasy or anything. Surely it’s an accurate depiction of life.
Why just the other day I walked into my office to find my secretary in a negligee, masturbating with a cucumber. Happens all the time, right?
Clearly a man capable of such high levels of discourse is beyond my meager abilities to debate.
Do you think you are actually fooling anybody?
Try this:
Why don’t you just admit you were being a real jerk, apologize, and try not to do that kind of thing anymore?
You thanked me before, albeit sarcastically for a lesson class. Well, there’s one worth learning.
Everyone has their trigger issues, and Lisseners is, apparently, homosexuality. I suspect that he comes from a background where homosexuality is openly mocked, degraded, belittled, and misunderstood, and he seems to assume that we are all like that and that he is the first real live homosexual any of us have ever met. He is like the athiest who comes to the boards and says “God is dead” and expects us to faint (or the fundy who says “God is risen” and expects us to convert).
He seems to assume that people are knee-jerk homophobes and that the only way to change them is by being an asshole until they cry uncle. (Reading that sentence over it occurs to me that it could be used in the derailed dabate to show something, though I am not sure what). Personally, he is the only person on the board who has ever out and out flamed me (here), and while it is a minor one compared to some, it does stick in my mind. That he misunderstood me was no big deal–this is the place to be misunderstood and learn how to be more clear–but that he never came back and acknowledged that I was not in fact the worst sort of homophobe realy did irritate me–“homophobe” is perhaps the next-to-worst label you can wear on this board, second only to “jerk”.
Overal, Lissener seems to be an intelligent, well-meaning poster. I think that if he would assume that everyone else is also an intelligent, well-meaning poster until shown concrete evidence to the contrary, he would be a lot more sucessful in making his views understood. Becasue, really, we are almost* all reasonable, decent people here. That is why we come here in the first place.
*And the ones that aren’t tend to make it patently obvious almost at once that they are idiots.
Sorry, I can’t agree. I read through the needles/guns thread this guy started, and came to two conclusions:
Either lissener is suffering from an overestimation of his own intelligence, or
He just loves to start with a provocative comment and then leave. Kind of like a guy who gets his kicks throwing a cat into a roomfull of dogs. His manners stink - those sophomoric cracks about the small penises of gun owners was way out of line. From my point of view, when those kind of insults come out, the entire poster’s arguments lose any validity. UncleBeer saw this right away.
I am ready to debate gun rights (or any other subject) with people who can form clear, rational and civilized arguments. However, acting like a fifth-grade schoolboy keeps you right off my radar screen.
It’s been my experience that Lissener’s vitriol isn’t limited to topics concerning homosexuality. It seems to be disagreement in general that sets him off.