Fair enough; however, I did say that I didn’t think it was a particularly likely scenario. Perhaps I was to verbose, but what it really boils down to was, of those who were on the Pleo slip wagon, I found Hockey Monkey to have the greatest potential for anti-town motivation. I’m asking her to explain herself and her motivations, as well as the apparent contradiction.
The statement you quoted as a response was one of tendencies. Essentially, because the plot is somewhat complicated, I’m not willing to put a lot of stake into it; however, it would not be in the best interest of the town if I without an articulable suspicion, regardless of its actual likelihood. That is, if I’m suspicious of someone, but can’t put my finger on it, it’s not really worth anything until I can support that suspicion with reasoning. In this case, I’m not hugely suspicious, but I did notice something that I think warrants further investigation, whether it’s “Yeah, she pinged me too, let me explain…” or “Dude, I don’t see it.”
This all leads back to my theory regarding the game. I assume that the scum (particularly if there’s more than one) are likely as smart as I am and thus are likely to reason out similar conclusions that I can. I am also of the mind that information generally favors the town (with some glaring exceptions). Thus, our goal should be to maximize the information gain, which can only be accomplished by actually sharing it.
And so, to you, I must ask… why so keen on defending her? At this early stage of the game, defenses generally should be looked upon with suspicion. Only those with special information (pro-town power roles and scum) have any reason to trust any reason to express any amount of trust in another individual. Thus, it is not in the interest of scum to express trust in scum or pro-town to express trust in pro-town. However, these sorts of defenses can, and often do, lead to two very negative outcomes for the town. The first, being townie defends townie against townie, and we end up with cliques of pro-town people in-fighting, resulting in no progress. Or, worse, when that townie is eventually lynched, that scum would have the moral high ground and may be reduced in suspicion OR if that person lives, may be looked upon later with less suspicion by that person or even defended, resulting in HIS lynch when the scum eventually get’s lynched.
IOW, if you can provide a reasoned explanation for why I shouldn’t be suspicious of her, then please do. But if you’ll simply attack my point, with something I admitted as I made the point, it will only make me question your motivation because, as I explained, there’s very little pro-town motivation for such behavior at this point.
