[QUOTE=Miller]
I disagree with that entirely. CS is a debate board, and you can’t have a debate if there’s nothing presented that you can argue against. “That was a good movie,” isn’t a debatable position. It’s pure opinion with no support, and as such, a rhetorical dead-end. Obviously, any posting about the quality of a movie (or any other work of art) is going to be purely opinion, but if one presents an opinion and the reasoning behind that opinion, other people can engage your arguments and you can get some sort of a fruitful discussion out of it. RikWriter very, very rarely does this. The bulk of his posts are little more eloquent than, “You’re wrong.” Which is useless enough on its own, but when posted as a “rebuttal” to a carefully considered and argued opinion, it’s frustrating and slightly insulting. Although in fairness, RikWriter does it so regularly and so predictably, that it’s almost funny. Anytime anyone says something bad about the Lord of the Rings movies, or Saving Private Ryan, he’s almost guaranteed to pop up with a one-sentence post informing the poster that their opinion on the movie is somehow factually incorrect. He’s like Bloody Mary. Say, “Peter Jackson is a hack,” three times to a mirror in a darkened room, and he’ll appear!
[/QUOTE]
Again, I think it’s more pathetic that pittable. and if there are that many posts of such a type, I wish the OP had dug them up rather than five posts in four years, all of which are regarding political opinions, not artistic ones. And if someone isn’t annoying enough to be worth digging up more threads, they aren’t annoying enough to pit.
I don’t go into GD much (or at least don’t post there much) because I don’t, frankly, want to do the research to really hold my own there. I don’t have the passion for it. You can’t expect to make any throw away comment in there and not be prepared to defend it or concede the point–and I respect that even if I don’t like to play. I think that CS and IMHO have a higher tolerance for flippant remarks and throw-away comments–especially when they are veering off topic.
I do think that threads fulll of reasoned opinions in CS or IMHO are vastly more interesting, and I tend to lightly skim over the others–which may be why I’ve never really noticed RikWriter. But from the links provided, I don’t see that what he does is any worse than the people that post a 20 item unannotated list in a “favorites” thread or “Saw it. Wasn’t thrilled. Popcorn was ok” post in a movie thread. It’s pointless, it doesn’t add anything, it makes him look silly, but it’s not like doing the same thing in GD.