Can be. Shame he usually chooses not to be.
I’ve never actually debated Shodan. I have contradicted him, but have yet to see a response. Roughly, seventeen years.
Shut up, you fucking troll.
Regards,
Shodan
Bless your heart!
OK, somebody explain to me how touching the girl’s hair was interpreted as a racist act. Was it touching as in “Is this real?” and smoothing one’s fingers down her tresses, or was it touching as in grabbing her hair and calling her a nappy headed ho? Was it somewhere between the two? Can’t it be possible that pre-schoolers grab things out of curiosity and NOT have racist intentions?
I find it really hard to understand the issue when context is left out, which frequently happens when one’s intentions are to inflame the audience. This guy’s using the same tactics as right-wingers declaring Christianity is under attack because preachers shouldn’t endorse political candidates. Fuck those assholes.
He’s been doing this for over a decade. The thread I link to–in which he’s been following me around calling me a liar because I paraphrased something in a way he didn’t like, and he reiterates his accusation, in the process dishonestly paraphrasing both me and the original source–formed my main impression of him as a poster of little intellect or integrity.
Oh he’s always been a jerk, no doubt. But even in his jerktitude there was sometimes some thought put into his arguments. But he (along with some others) has thrown all pretense of honest debate out the window since, ohhhh, I don’t know, maybe last December…
Now it’s like he revels in being as nasty as possible just for fun.
I guess he’s gone from jerk to straight up troll.
I used to read his posts, but lately, he’s another one that I roll eyes and scroll.
Thing is, we don’t have a lot of context. The guy was talking about his kid on the radio, and mentioned it casually and moved on. He was talking about his kid on the radio. People were grabbing her hair so often that she wanted to hide it. She was ashamed of it.
To me, this suggests it’s not just about novelty, as it’s not new forever. It also suggests that the kids were not responding to her telling them not to do it, and that the teachers, who should know better about this sort of thing, were ignoring it.
The only other info I can add is that this is just a thing that often happens to black kids in school. And black women in general. People will just cop a feel of their hair. It’s widespread enough that it’s a general taboo: you’re specifically told “don’t touch a black woman’s hair.”
Given that cultural context, the fact that we just don’t know the specifics, and that the guy involved knows stuff about racism, and I see no reason not to give him the benefit of the doubt.
He is the only person I have ever put on my ignore list, only because I was sick of the visual distraction of his non-sig sig.
Ironically, rather than his posts simply going away, they continued to appear, the content replaced with the even longer, equally distracting message: “This message is hidden because Shodan is on your ignore list.”
Oh well, I tried.
Supposedly it’s Canadians like myself who are disposed to be polite, but I’m somewhat baffled by the intermittent praise Shodan is getting because I can’t recall an occasion where he deserved any of it.
Possibly I simply haven’t been reading those particular threads. Links, anyone?
The benefit, I think, comes mainly from comparison with the worst of his peers. If Shodan has seen further prestige, it is by standing on a stack of mental midgets.
This one comes to my mind:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19765948&postcount=6
Dammit Vinyl Turnip!
Stop winning all the threads!
I only have a single memory of Shodan directing a post at me that wasn’t sarcastic and hostile.
It was this one.
Just because the guy has shown the capacity to act like a normal poster doesn’t make him befitting of praise. He’s not a loveable curmudgeon, IMHO. He’s just a jerk who routinely skirts the line of trolling. Bricker doesn’t impress me all that much either, but Shodan isn’t anything like Bricker. I think he’s much more on the doorhinge end of the conservative Doper spectrum.
For stubborness?
No, pit him for being a colossal prick.
On the day Shodan is banned, we will carry on regardless.
I believe that the feature of signing his posts has become a deliberate provocation. Fuck him for that.
When you think about it, that’s really fucked up. One single post normal post in all these years.
A recent example may be instructive. There’s doorhinge, of course, but he’s the peanut of low-hanging fruits.
Yesterday, in a thread about the French presidential election, and more specifically on the topic of the suspiciously well-timed release of potentially incriminating (whether true or false) information about Macron, our own octopus posed these penetrating questions:
Bear in mind that this person typed these words, presumably thought to himself “I’m making a really good point that isn’t at all stupid!” and clicked “Submit Reply.”
Shine on, you crazy Shodan!