This may end up being my first Pit rant (mods, be warned).
I just spent about half an hour plowing through a two page thread in Great Debates. No, I’m not going to say which one or identify the two or three dopers who were contributing to it.
Now my butt hurts. That’s about all I can say. I didn’t learn anything, didn’t appreciate too many of the arguments. Seems like many of the threads in that forum degenerate into semantic nitpicking or personal attacks, along with a heavy dose of self righteous fanaticism. I’m not saying that GD should be eliminated - there are some interesting debates. All too often, though, they turn into a tiresome collection of mean spirited comebacks.
Calm down, people!
Whatever happened to reasonable people reaching a reasonable COMPROMISE? If you want to cuss each other out, belittle each others opinions and ethics, GET THEE TO THE PIT!
Is there anybody else who’s got the impression that the GD forum is about winning an argument, not debating a topic? That’s the excuse I have for putting this all into IMHO, by the way.
I have no sympathy. I spent way too long reading through “The Ryan, you are NOT cute!!”. And granted that was a pit thread, it ended up being pages and pages of quoting single lines of text at a time, debating whether or not “Next time, keep your brain on track” was an insult or a polite request to pay attention, bringing up old mud-slinging, and links to 8 million past threads supporting somebody’s reason for hating The Ryan. You won’t believe how much my butt hurt after that. My eyeballs hurt. STILL!!
After I wrote my “rant,” I remembered an IQ test I failed over at The Spark. It just kept going on and on, and so did I. Turned out the point of the test was to notice that it wasn’t ending and to quit. I came out as a low grade moron, which may explain why I sit and scroll through these snit fests, or sit through an awful movie - I’m just too damn stubborn.:rolleyes
I’ll say that I don’t believe there are too many people who post in GD who are actually ambivelent about the subject under discussion–the vast majority have made up their minds already, and just want to express themselves. So insofar as anybody is going to actually have their opinions changed or modified, it’s mostly going to be the Silent Majority who reads but doesn’t post.