We’ll split the blame for *this *petty sin, deal? 
(You’re on your own about the squirrel thing though 
)
How many of his recurrent sins can Skald get in a single post? Let’s find out!
Look, dude. There will be no fucking sin-splitting? I am a Rhymer, and Rhymers, as we all know, are evil. Pure, unadulerated, squirrel-slapping, dolphin-raping evil. I’m a member in vile standing of the Legion of Doom (I was sponsored by Peter Jackson, who made it in on his own merits the day Return of the King was released), and I have an evil quota to meet. Try to horn in on my territory again, and I’ll yank out your nose hair with your own toenails.
I hate seeing anyone else called ‘sweetie’ or ‘dear’ as in “I think you’d better calm down, sweetie” It sounds so condescending, like an old aunt scolding a child for asking questions that don’t concern her. I don’t think it has ever been directed at me, but I’d prefer to be called jackass.
See, the reverse of this is my minor peeve. As gets stated over and over again, we’re a board supposedly about fighting ignorance, yet you get someone (not you bouv – generally speaking) who constantly complains about stuff and blames the root cause on obvious negligence, when any number of a bazillion other things would be the reason before what they posit. It’s like the guy I used to know who always assumed everyone was trying to run him off the road while he was driving and instead, he just sped around like an entitled asshole deluxe. Unfortunately, others pointing out that he was the problem didn’t understand how the entire world conspired against him. :rolleyes:
Other than that, I have issues with question marks. Where have they all gone? I think the first I noticed them having gone missing was in a Pit thread about a member who left them out of titles. Since then, they’ve run around everywhere. Quick! Someone bring them back.
Oh, and I do apologize for combining smilies (I just like them sometimes… together!) and for parsing posts upon occasion. That last one was just to pay, I thought, proper respect to the person I was conversing with. To answer in full, thoughtfully. I have tried to become less long-winded and I’m at least partially happy to report that I almost always have more than plenty paragraph breaks now.
I keep being struck by how often people’s threads about other people they know turn on them. I’m talking about when people post either relatively mild pittings of someone else in their lives (as opposed to someone here on the boards) or IMHO threads asking for relationship advice, that sort of thing, and a dozen people pop up to rip the poster a new one for whatever sins, real or imagined, can be gleaned from their post.
Sure, sometimes it’s useful to give someone a clue over their own role in creating a situation. But a lot of the time a dozen different people, or more, will all show up with this crazy piranha-like urge to CONFRONT the poster, over and over, whether or not they actually did anything worth criticizing. Sometimes it’s so ridiculous that I just wonder if it somehow became inherently cool to yell at anyone with a personal issue, the way it’s automatically cool in some people’s eyes to hate on pieces of music.
Oh, yes. Thank you so much. It’s only a bit irritating if it’s in a thread about one particular topic. If I was reading a thread about The Chronicles of Narnia, it would take me a moment to figure out which book THaHB refers to, and that’s a bit irritating on its own, but at least it’d be possible to do so. But when it’s completely unrelated to what has been posted in the thread so far, it’s impossible for anyone else to guess what you could possibly be referring to. Damn, how lazy can someone be?
Well, some of the threads in MPSIMS really are so stupid that I can’t figure out any other purpose behind them. When the whole concept behind the thread is people typing grunting noises at each other, it’s a bit difficult to imagine why else anyone would bother.
Nope. You got it right the first time.
(Hey, you asked.)
Personally, I don’t mind it at all. It’s definitely preferable to trim judiciously, and there’s no need to be deliberately snarky in the process - one can do that perfectly well without post-parsing. But some of the discussions here are complicated. If I’m arguing with someone, then as a courtesy I try to make sure I’ve explicitly addressed every one of their points. I would like it if more people did it, because I get sick of posting responses to people’s points and then having them repeat the same points later with no acknowledgement of what I’ve said, or simply respond to a message but neglect many or most of the arguments in it. If someone’s discussing a complex topic, it’s nice if they have the general intellectual honesty to acknowledge what their opponents are saying. Maybe you find post-parsing annoying, but I think it’s a much better alternative than people just posting the same ridiculous argument over and over in different words and not directly addressing counterarguments.
I know! Why do people do that? Obviously, my cat is so cute and so intelligent that her antics are amusing to everyone who happens by, but everyone else needs to understand that those little anecdotes are really only interesting to the person who owns the cat.
Ooh! My kitty went to sleep with her paw over her eyes! Here are fourteen pictures! Isn’t she just the most adorable, clever kitty on the entire planet, throughout history, bar none?
I second that the only repeated joke that will always be funny and is welcome in any thread is the Yakov one.
Excalibre, my issue with post parsing is that it’s a bad OCD-style presentation. It seems like intellectual laziness to me, and more often than not is used as a weapon to repeatedly hammer home the same insult. Even when it’s not weaponized, it reeks of just trying to score debate points.
I’d greatly prefer that when people want to explicitly respond to multiple points, they work them into a cohesive narrative. Paragraph breaks can be quite useful for this.
You also mentioned that it can be frustrating when people repeat things already said. I’m not convinced that post parsing is a solution to this, as there’s at least one poster (me) who has admitted to skipping parsed posts entirely.
As for all your other points, I completely agree. (The cats, the acronymns, the personal issue dogpiles, etc…)
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Now contrast the above response with the one below.
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Agreed.
Yeah, it seems as if a culture of snark has taken deeper root in the past couple years. Not that I mind, but it can get predictable and tiresome.
Totally with you on this one.
Ha! Talk about the culture of snark. But I agree.
The difference between what one can do and what one does do is often vast. The very format of past parsing generally seems to lend itself to insults. Even when it remains civil, the constant repetition of the same point wastes everybody’s time.
But post parsing is a phenomenon unrelated to content; it’s all about presentation. There is no reason (other than laziness, IMO) why the response can’t be presented as a cohesive narrative. Parsing out every little bit of a post seems to be more of a tactic for scoring debate points than an actual effort at communication.
But not everybody cares about every single argument in a post. Perhaps they agree with every point made but one. Should they then parse out a one word response (“Agreed”) to each point they agree with? Or would it be better to simply respond to only the points with which they disagree?
In general I agree with you here, but post parsing is only about presentation, not content. A narrative format can do the job just as well.
There is nothing magic about post parsing that forces people to address every point. In fact, post parsing makes it easier to bury points through ommission that you don’t wish to engage. Also, which is easier to respond to, a parsed post with countless quote boxes, or a single cohesive narrative? Two or three responses into a post parsing debate and now you have countless embedded quote boxes. When it gets to that point, it’s almost a certainty that the only ones reading are the ones directly involved.
I used to like cats before I became a member here. Now I just look at them and their owners with disdain. It’s the same effect as getting sick from eating too much candy.
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Of course, that was a contrived example. But look at my first linked [post=7635320]example[/post] from [post=7822376]post 30[/post]. Here is all the text that was posted sans quote boxes:
It is obvious to me that all the points made could have been tightened up into a single narrative without any quote boxes breaking it up. And doing so would have eliminated the need for the repeated quackery jabs. Hell, it could probably have been boiled down to a mere couple of paragraphs and had the same – or better – impact. IMO, tighter presentation results in better communication.
I feel bad about myself now.
I invariably try to thank posters who have helped me with a factual answer. In your case it just slipped my mind. Therefore I am grateful for this late opportunity to put matters right. I really appreciated your contribution to this thread.
I would also like to thank Elendil’s Heir, Cecil Adams, Little Nemo and Gfactor - none of whom specifically answered my question but at least they tried.
My appreciation also goes to the internet, the SD message board, evesham.com computers, aol, my modem and my parents for facilitating the posting of this message.
I am not annoyed by so many of the sins that annoy other people that I don’t know where to start.
I am a dog owner, not a cat owner, and yet I like the cat threads. I happily click on the pix of the cat with its paw over its eye (maybe not the fourteenth one, but the first three).
I get irritated out of all proportion with some recurrent misspellings and grammatical errors (the “it’s” for “its” in particular driving me so far off the wall I have a hard time appreciating the person’s point), and though I do not correct them myself, am often grateful when a poster with more balls than I possess, steps up to the plate.
I clicked and read the two posts offered as samples of irritating parsing. One irritated me, and one I liked.
I’ve always thought the squirrels were funny.
I’ve always thought the grunting threads in MPSIMS were funny.
I really thought the IMDB thread was funny.
I guess I agree with the posters who dislike the WAGs in the GQ forum thread. Oh, by the way, any guests reading this who don’t know what all these abbreviations mean? If so, I apologize.
I have been guilty of using the word “here” to refer to a site, but don’t you think it’s acceptable in a line such as “You can see a nearly, but not entirely, safe-for-work picture of a guy doing an autopsy here”?
I suppose I have a rare peeve (rare because no one’s mentioned it before). I have Doper crushes (I know that’s not rare). They are entirely nonphysical crushes, though they combine affection with admiration. I cannot name them all because it would take so much time I would pass the word limit. But if anyone jumps on the case of Lissa, Twickster, Eve, or Qadgop the Mercotan, and many others unnamed, I find myself bristling out of all proportion. I suppose that isn’t a peeve. More a personality quirk.
Oh! I have a peeve! But it’s nobody else’s peeve because everyone else finds it funny. I’m tired of the long-running in-joke about Hal Briston and sex with sheep.
Really?
Because I’m the one who brought up squirrel abuse, and I was really just talking out of my ass. When someone asked me what it was I made up a definition–or at least I thought I was. Has someone else used that term, or did I coin it?
You coined it. I borrowed your coin. I seem to be in your debt.
But only for a small amount.
By the way, asking for another peeve: Since I can only post from home, but can read from work, I often spend too much time thinking up grand answers to mundane points, and end by posting two or three times in a row. Is this anyone’s pet peeve?
It only bothers me when I do it, as it strikes me as inefficient and silly on my part. Inefficency on the part of others does not vex me, as it indicates distraction I can use for my own vile purposes.
Generally I am not, especially when someone is posting to a long thread, but some posters have mentioned they are annoyed by multi-posting.
Jim {You know Skald, I have been doing the miniature asides for quite a while, that is why I thought you were either teasing me or really annoyed at me. I even posted about it up thread.}
But I SAID I was ONLY going to post about sins I MYSELF was guilty of.
And Rhymers never tease, anyway. We inform our victims of our decisions to unleash the hordes of winged howler raptors, or velociraptors, or whatever after said hordes have been released, giving the victims enough time to wet their pants in terror but not enough time to escape. It’s Villainy 202.
I hate it when people use tiny font.
Not for me.
I recall a recent thread in which you posted two or three times in a row. You seemed to adopt the excellent stratagem of replying to each individual post rather than answering several posts in one.
I’ve done this myself since.
Wow.
I’ve been excellent.
And here I thought I was being annoying.
Oddly enough, lately I have been adopting the stratagem of replying to several posts in one, since I was sure I was annoying people…
I hate the “supercilious err rolleyes” as in:
<insert any clip from above here>
errr :rolleyes: I think we already discussed why that happens…
I am not going so far as to say every single use is egregious - but usually it is used as a way to sneak in a put-down of a previous poster – and to make your point seem stronger and his dumber - and if it is not the Pit I don’t (usually) buy it as a legit way of communicating. Mods never call posters on this behavior, where as if someone posted said:
I am rolling my eyes because your post was so dumb “ERR Hey dummy your post is dumb because XYZ” the poster would be rightly called right out.
I don’t like IMHO and CS matter of opinion threads - where posters are mocked for their opinions:
A. BattleStart Galactica rocks! Adama is the bomb!
B. <Quoting A.> then You can’t be serious, have you even seen the original? It most certainly does not Rock, how could ANYONE think that. Adama is wooden and the furthest thing from the bomb ever
As opposed to the entirely legit:
A. BattleStart Galactica rocks! Adama is the bomb
B. I couldn’t disagree with A more, it most certainly does not Rock because XYZ. I also disagree about Adama is wooden.
Explain your opinion – but don’t put down A’s – they are entitled to it
I can’t stand when someone posts an answer that begins “You do know…” It just comes off as really freaking condescending.
OP: Does anyone know where I can find some widgets?
Next Poster: You do know that widgets are sold in every grocery store in the country, don’t you? And that you can just walk in and buy them, right?
Gaaaa! This drives me nuts. The implication is that only a total idiot would not know the anser to this question. Even if it’s not intended that way, in my head I hear this as:
You do know that is a stupid question, right? You’re not some kind of moron, are you?
Oooooh, thank you, dear! Next time I find my case jumped upon, I can threaten someone with a pre-deceasement autopsy!