# Pit Trolling And Friendly Crumudgeon **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [February 23, 2021, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573 "2021-02-23T18:14:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/61 "2021-02-23T23:37:19Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Perhaps those who insist that he deliberately lied only heard the part before the pause. @Collibri, for instance, renders it as “n’eager”. The point is, he actually said both. The word “n’eager” (or “meeger”) came before the pause, the syllables ‘nig er’ came after the pause. I was referring to the word after the pause. I hear “I’m eag, I’m eager to hear” before the pause. I don’t hear either one slurring the m into the eager to produce meeg, meeger as you say. He doesn’t say “nig er”. The first syllable has a long “e,” and is pronounced exactly the way he pronounced eager. If he were saying the n-word it would be pronounced with a short “i” > [@](#): > > And he did say that Biden said it accidentally. He isn’t claiming that Biden is racist. He didn’t say that directly, but that’s the implication. If the word wasn’t part of your vocabulary then it wouldn’t accidentally pop out. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2021, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/62 "2021-02-23T23:42:02Z")
Wow, good find! ---
**Author:** ![Babale](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/babale/32/15666_2.png) [@Babale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Babale)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2021, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/63 "2021-02-23T23:52:39Z")
Nvm misread your post ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2021, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/64 "2021-02-23T23:57:52Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > I don’t agree that FC was lying or trolling. The sounds are there, to my ears. But it’s not a question of what _sounds_ were there. FC didn’t claim that there were some random garbled phonemes that coincidentally resembled the slur, he claimed it was the actual slur. The original Pit thread title: > Biden drops the N-word From the subsequent ATMB thread: > a clip of a president at a conference accidently dropping the n-word [sic] Ok, there’s a slight ambiguity there - but it sounds to me like a claim that it was the actual word, and the accident was that he let it slip. But in any case, even after it has been explicitly pointed out to him that in context it very obviously was not the slur, he doubles down to remove any ambiguity about his deliberate lie: > The word he said wasn’t “n’eager” it was the other N word. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/65 "2021-02-24T00:11:18Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > He doesn’t say “nig er”. The first syllable has a long “e,” and is pronounced exactly the way he pronounced eager. If he were saying the n-word it would be pronounced with a short “i” I’ve listened to it 30 times, and I can’t hear it any way except with an i sound. As I said, maybe this is an example of what-colour-is-the-dress. > [@Colibri](#): > > He didn’t say that directly, but that’s the implication. If the word wasn’t part of your vocabulary then it wouldn’t accidentally pop out. When people stumble over their words, it often comes out as a rude word they didn’t mean to say. For instance turning popcorn into cop porn. Those words might well be spoken by someone who would never want to discuss pornography. Quoting the Trump lawyer Lin Wood making a statement under “plenty of perjury” is amusing. It doesn’t mean I think he’s _admitting_ to perjury. Neither does pointing out Biden’s verbal gaffe imply that Biden is racist. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/66 "2021-02-24T00:26:15Z")
nm… ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/67 "2021-02-24T00:27:08Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > I’ve listened to it 30 times… You will eventually get to the bottom of this! ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/68 "2021-02-24T00:38:51Z")
> [@Riemann](#): > > But in any case, even after it has been explicitly pointed out to him that in context it very obviously was not the slur, he doubles down to remove any ambiguity about his deliberate lie: To repeat my above example. Suppose that Biden made a comment about **popcorn** , but he stumbles on his words, and says **cop porn.** @John_Smith posts a message “Biden said _porn_ .” You point out to @John_Smith that the word _porn_ doesn’t make sense in context. Nevertheless, @John_smith keeps claiming that the word was _porn_ . Is he lying? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/69 "2021-02-24T00:42:09Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > I’ve listened to it 30 times, and I can’t hear it any way except with an i sound. > > As I said, maybe this is an example of what-colour-is-the-dress. When the ratio is 100 to 1(or worse), it is no longer “what-colour-is-the-dress”, it is “when-was-the- last-time-you-were-checked-for-colour-blindness?” ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/70 "2021-02-24T00:49:45Z")
> [@Falchion](#): > > Yet, multiple posters watched the video, presumably themselves heard the n-word, and concluded that the video was obviously faked. That’s all that I find curious. Thanks for the strawman, @Czarcasm, but it seems like the ratio is a long way from 100-1. It seems as though many people heard the N word. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/71 "2021-02-24T00:51:32Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Thanks for the strawman, @Czarcasm, but it seems like the ratio is a long way from 100-1. It seems as though many people heard the N word Yep…the same way it “seems” to you that you heard “ni” ---
**Author:** ![Atamasama](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/atamasama/32/12961_2.png) [@Atamasama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Atamasama)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 12:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/72 "2021-02-24T00:51:33Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > To repeat my above example. Suppose that Biden made a comment about **popcorn** , but he stumbles on his words, and says **cop porn.** @John_Smith posts a message “Biden said _porn_ .” You point out to @John_Smith that the word _porn_ doesn’t make sense in context. Nevertheless, @John_smith keeps claiming that the word was _porn_ . Is he lying? That’s a false equivalency. Because in your example, he is actually saying “cop porn”. In reality, in the original thread, he didn’t say the slur that was alleged. A closer example would be if Biden was talking about a case where the police honked their horn at someone, and obviously said “cop horn”, but said the words quickly so it sounded like “copporn”, and someone repeatedly insisted that he said “porn”. In that case, it would be deliberate lying. That is much closer to the claim made in the now-closed thread. And even then, it still wouldn’t be that close, because “porn” isn’t a very loaded racist dehumanizing term, such as the one that was originally alleged. That’s another part of this, which increases the likelihood about the intent being to troll people. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/73 "2021-02-24T01:11:01Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > All that is off topic. I’ve participated in these sort of threads sufficiently, including cites from the administration with rules clarifications, to know that cites and the demands for cites are farcical or worse. > [@iiandyiiii](#): > > This just sounds like an excuse to not ever have to back up your argument. Once again, these things are not just self-evident to everyone. If you want to convince people who disagree with you about something, you have to actually go to the effort of showing evidence. > [@Skywatcher](#): > > Good luck with that. How is a long history of refusing to back up accusations against other posters not, at the very least, jerkish behavior? Why don’t mods, at a minimum, do thread bans after a poster pulls this stunt? How many years of the same old are necessary before the pattern becomes apparent? Why is it tolerated at all? ---
**Author:** ![Falchion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a88e57/32.png) [@Falchion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Falchion)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/74 "2021-02-24T01:11:24Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Biden has a lifelong speech impediment. He stutters. He sometimes trips over his words. His speech included several seconds of word salad, which quite definitely included the syllable ‘nig-’ followed by the syllable ‘-er’. I think it can be fairly transcribed as: > > … is broad and complex. I meeg, I’m meeger to hear [pause] nig er hear next from my good friends… > > [Listen to it again](https://youtu.be/uwjxQoTyVAE?t=928) and see. > > Maybe this is the audio equivalent of what-colour-is-the-dress, but I can definitely hear those syllables immediately after the pause. > > Perhaps those who insist that he deliberately lied only heard the part before the pause. @Collibri, for instance, renders it as “n’eager”. The point is, he actually said both. The word “n’eager” (or “meeger”) came before the pause, the syllables ‘nig er’ came after the pause. So, I listened to it (for the first time) and I’m now a bit more genuinely puzzled. I hear a very clear n-word and, in fact, it seems so clear (and so out of context) that I’m not sure my negative reaction towards the posters who claimed it was fake was fair. My instinctive reaction is to think that someone edited the n-word into the speech. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/75 "2021-02-24T01:12:38Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > Neither does pointing out Biden’s verbal gaffe imply that Biden is racist. The problem is that’s not what FC did. He made a Pit thread condemning Biden for dropping the n-word. Then he ignored the people saying it was just a verbal gaffe (showing that wasn’t his argument). Then he made an ATMB thread where he alleged that we were all just ignoring it because he’s not Trump or a Republican. And then, in that thread, he once again said it wasn’t a verbal gaffe, but that Biden had actually said the n-word. He was given an out multiple times. He could have said something like “yeah, he probably meant to say eager, but it came out wrong.” But he didn’t, not even when doing so would help him. He kept saying he actually said the n-word. > [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > To repeat my above example. Suppose that Biden made a comment about **popcorn** , but he stumbles on his words, and says **cop porn.** @John_Smith posts a message “Biden said _porn_ .” You point out to @John_Smith that the word _porn_ doesn’t make sense in context. Nevertheless, @John_smith keeps claiming that the word was _porn_ . Is he lying? Assuming that “porn” really wouldn’t make sense in that context? Yes. They argued that he really said the word “porn,” yet he clearly didn’t, and they didn’t bother countering the argument that it didn’t make sense. Though I do agree this scenario isn’t quite analogous to what actually happened. The particular word and the implications of someone actually saying it matter when deciding if the lying rises to the level of trolling. ---
**Author:** ![Riemann](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/riemann/32/3133_2.png) [@Riemann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Riemann)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/76 "2021-02-24T01:13:23Z")
> [@Peter\_Morris](#): > > @John_smith keeps claiming that the word was _porn_ . Is he lying? In a malapropism like “cop porn”, there is a sense in which they did not really say the word, it was not their semantic intent; and a technical sense in which they really did, since I think the neurological mechanism here is that the actual word is spoken, albeit unintentionally. But this was not a malapropism, what Biden said was a few jumbled random phonemes that merely approximate the sound of the word. I don’t see any way to make a plausibly valid claim that he really said the word. In any event, I think this kind of philosophical hairsplitting is frankly ridiculous in defense of deliberate lying to troll the Board. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/77 "2021-02-24T01:18:02Z")
Obviously, you didn’t read what you quoted or you would have read that I in fact did provide cites up until the point that it became a farce. Being insulted by a mod in a pm about said cites was definitely a factor. However, this is not a thread about my cites nor is it a thread for you to insult me by calling me a jerk. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/78 "2021-02-24T01:20:41Z")
As for the actual sounds Biden made, I’d argue that the exact vowel is short and indeterminate. It definitely is not the exact same sound as in “eager,” as it is shorter. But such shortening doesn’t inherently mean it changed its phonemic quality. I suspect that, because it was shorter, it got reduced (i.e., becoming closer to the schwa sound “uh”, and thus became more indeterminate. This is not an uncommon aspect of speech. I do thus think it is possible that someone could hear it as sounding like the n-word. That isn’t the contention I have with the banned poster. It was the insistence that they were not mistaken, and that he wasn’t trying to say the word “eager” but added an “n” to it. That much is 100% clear. Biden did not “drop the n-word.” ---
**Author:** ![Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mundane_super_hero/32/6304_2.png) [@Mundane\_Super\_Hero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mundane_Super_Hero)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/79 "2021-02-24T01:28:38Z")
Mr Crumudgeon was a horrific troll. Almost every single post of his was awful. His very user name made people think, “Well Here’s the Racist Old White Guy POV”. I’m surprised that he lasted as long as he did. Also, I’m surprised that Doc Oct is defending him here so hard. ( Is he doing work on your artificial octopus arms for free, Doc…?) Anyway, I’m starting to appreciate what our Mods do a lot more… (and what horrible old white racist trolls do a lot less). I support this banning. . - Your Friendly Neighborhood Writer-Man ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 1:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573/80 "2021-02-24T01:34:28Z")
I’m not defending the misleading post. I wouldn’t have made it. Nor did I participate in the thread and I clearly think the post was wrong. I disagree with how misrepresentation and who it angers in the pit is dealt with. It reminds me of the Huey banning where he was banned for posting in the pit too much even though he was the initial target in the pit. It strikes me as who you piss off is the real offense not that you are pissing people off. Yes, it was the ATMB post that may or may not have probably but we’ll never know that sealed the deal but it was the subject of the OP in the pit that started the chain of events. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pit-trolling-and-friendly-crumudgeon/933573.md?page=5)