Heh. It’s more the snows of age than platinum glamor. In fact, once past the sunny blondeness of youth, I was a rather dark dishwater blonde. The silver threads have invaded deeper and deeper into the gold over the years, until now they dominate, leaving but a sad remnant of darkness huddled in the back beneath the mud-streaked snowfall of my ponytail.
Now, how do I picture you? Hmmmm… Roundish glasses framing bright eyes that can offer a penetrating stare or a warm welcome. Short but well-coiffed gray hair framing an angular face given character by laugh lines.
I don’t know what you mean by “dishonestly.” I don’t think there’s much dishonest about pile-on posting; the intent seems to clearly be to hurt.
Zoe, like Left Hand, I left a different board recently when I was shouted down about hate speech being condoned under the guise of free speech. I didn’t leave because I felt my voice wasn’t being heard; I left because I didn’t want to continue contributing to a board that allowed hate speech.
No; honest would be “I’m piling on here just because I want to make you dance like a monkey.” Dishonest is to pretend to contradict the pile-ee because you disagree, when your position is entirely irrelevant: you would contradict no matter what position the pile-ee has taken. See? Dishonesty.
Liberal
I’ve seen quite a few Type 2 “pile-ons” and on rare occasions have been the target of a few.
You stated:
Sometimes, these pile-ons do go horribly out of control - even by Pit standards. I wish the moderators would be a little stricter in shutting such threads down. Don’t you think after 3 or 4 pages of “Doper XYZ is an idiot”, “Doper XYZ is a jerk”, etc that there is no point in letting that “discussion” continue?
For a message board that is populated by some extremely knowledgeable, cultured and intelligent people, it is regrettable that these same folks do not exhibit a commensurate amount of maturity and good manners. (Heck I’ll admit that I sometimes have posted an immature or impolite comment.)
And I’ve said about a zillion times - “hey folks, it’s only message board”.
Depends on if the Fuckwit of the Moment is fighting back, or not. If the mods start trying to pass out standing 8 counts or declaring TKOs, they just open themselves up to charges of bias for not allowing somebody to defend themself fairly. And charges of bias for not calling the TKO soon enough on posters they dislike.
And you’re right–“shouted down” is a figure of speech. What it really was, was that I was attacked in some vicious ways that upset me, and I didn’t want to be feeling upset any more, so I shut up. I should not have done so, I think.
lissener, although I believe I have seen you believe you were subject to the sort of pile-on you’re describing, I do not believe I have ever seen such a pile-on on these boards. I expect you think I’m lying, but I’m not. And that’s all I’ll say in that direction.
I tried dealing with the pile-ons I sometimes attract by opining “Okay, I get that you disagree, as do several other posters–is this news to me or something? Would someone care to, you know, argue with me, or are you just going to be repeating ‘You’re rude,’ ‘you’re mean,’ ‘you suck’? I get it that I’m rude, I’m mean, I suck, but could I hear some kind of counter-argument?”
It seems to me that votes for “PRR [or anyone] sucks.doesn’t suck” are hijacks of a sort–they turn the OP from “Discuss my controversial views on X” into “Discuss my character flaws.” Not so interesting–I can analyze my own character defects without your help, thank you very much, but if you don’t have much to say beyond that, could you maybe clear the room so we can talk?
Pseudo, I participated recently in a pile-on with you on the bottom. It was a mixture of types 1 and 2. A lot of people were taking swipes at you just because they could and because Tom is a fairly popular mod. But some people were making legitimate points and asking you legitimate questions that you ignored. For example, you maintained that faith is a choice, but when asked whether you could choose to believe in God, you dodged. And so you were asked repeatedly, and I believe your last comment about it was that you could indeed so choose, but just didn’t want to at this time. That’s a complete copout. You should have admitted that the argument destroyed your premise. Because it did.
But I don’t blame you completely. It’s a shame when “God, you’re an idiot” posts drown out “Here’s an experiment that proves you wrong” posts. Especially when they amount to nothing more than pulling up lawn chairs, which in all other contexts is prohibited.
I think someone said that there’s no real way you can drown people out here (presumably because there’s a scroll bar and links to other pages). But in fact, people often complain that So-And-So is an attention whore or that they’re tired of reading about This-Or-That. And what they mean is that finding what they want to read in the middle of a lot of what they don’t is a chore.
Just want to jump in and point out that Maastricht had a thread going about his family’s inheritance practices and how it seemed unfair. I had a post I worked on for a while to add to the conversation, but found he had closed it after getting piled on. I think there could have been an interesting and insightful discussion there, but it was killed because everyone had to tell **Maastricht ** that they thought he was whiny. I mean, come on, people! The practices people use to deliver inheritances is a valid topic of discussion! The comments which amount to “It’s not your money, so don’t complain” are not adding value - it’s *never * the inheritor’s money, it’s the deceased’s money. Sheesh! Should we never talk about these things?
I don’t think a pile-on rule is a good idea, because it’s too vague to define. On the other hand, no-pile ons should be a SDMB best practice.
Maastricht, if you want to re-open your thread or start a new one, I’d love to participate.
You’re welcome to start such a thread. It might be best to keep it a GD thread though, abstract and impersonal; inheritances are a topic in which emotions can easily run high, as the money symbolizes both independence, and love and care (or, in the case of my thread, the lack thereof).
I really don’t know why mods allow the piling on.
And perversely, when people pile on the mods seem to assume the OP is “at fault” and he will get the warning and not the hecklers.
I’ve seen this many times and fail to comprehend it. Hecklers should be banned, expecially if they are “old timers”, serial hecklers as it were, who for some reason get even more latitude.
Because it doesn’t break (or even bend) any board rules. I personally don’t choose to behave like that because it makes for some pretty boring and unpleasant threads, but not because it’s forbidden.
I don’t recall seeing the OP get a warning for people piling on in his thread. When I’ve seen OPs get warnings, it’s usually for a real board violation (reacting to the pile-on by slinging personal insults outside of the Pit), but not because of the pile-on.
Well, there could be any number of reasons based on my own experience:
(1) The mod is unaware of the pile-on.
(2) The mod is aware of the pile-on, but believes the user deserves it.
(3) The mod is aware of the pile-on, but believes it does not violate any rule or guideline.
(4) The mod believes that allowing the pile-on is a politically expedient move. (Yes, there is politics in any hierarchical command structure — even one this small.)
(5) The mod fears interfering on behalf of an unpopular poster.
And I’m sure there are others. Some good rationalizations, and some weak ones. But your analysis is insightful because it is true that the popularity of a pile-on can be a complete illusion. It could be only posters X, Y, and Z posting repeatedly and loudly in tandem with one another, driving the appearance of landslide opposition. It’s even worse when they later refer to their antics as confirmation of history to justify even more pile-ons.
But it is forbidden. Not directly, perhaps, but indirectly by virtue of both the no lawnchair rule and the no trolling rule. A “me too” post that is the third in a series repeating that a poster is an idiot is nothing but munching the popcorn or pulling out the lawnchair. And it’s trolling because its only point is to pile on another straw, in hopes of pushing the right button.
Lib, I wonder if I could trouble you to link to one or two of what you consider to be really egregious examples of type 2 pile-ons. I ask for two main reasons:
I found these items on your list:
to be particularly provocative, and I find myself wondering if this isn’t a new instance of you trying to shame the rest of the board into modifying our behavior to suit your notions of ethical treatment of one another.*
I might have missed an especially juicy one, and when I’m in the right frame of mind, those can be highly entertaining to read.
*I struggled with how best to word this – usually a sign to me that I’d be better off not posting at all, but I did want to judge for myself if I could discern the validity of your concern, and how serious the problem is. I hope all is well with you and Edlyn.
This will never be a productive line of inquiry. First of all, it is likely to draw attention to threads that have been mercifully allowed to fall off the front page. Second, it’s highly unlikely that a thread that brings out the mob-mentality in a bunch of Dopers will suddenly inspire them to go a 180 and agree that it was, in fact, a pile on. In other words, I find it highly unlikely that there is any thread, in the history of these boards, that will ever be designated by any kind of consensus, to be a true “type 2” pile on: the pilers on will always be a noisier bunch than the more reasonable among us; that’s the nature of a pile on.
In other words, Lib, I believe kaylasdad’s request for a “cite” is a lose-lose proposition, and I urge you to ignore it.
Fuck the rationalizations, I post in ways that amuse me and I hope the other posters strive to do the same (without being childish about it) because funny is better than polite.
