But does he have Cringing Mantis kung fu?
I know.
You have it wrong, and you are missing my point. I wouldn’t say anything online or act any differently towards you in person than I would here.
Since I wouldn’t call you a “pathetic dipshit” in person, doing it here is cowardly and two-faced.
What makes think that you can use “raising tensions” or “spoiling everybody else’s party” or “sabatoging Gettysdope” as excuses for cowardice or two-facedness?
I never said, nor implied, nor suggested that I would be willing to do anything of the kind. It is strictly your invention, and, I guess, your rationalization for your behavior, and I guess it gave further excuse to hurl more bile calling me a “pathetic human being.”
Let us take Gettysdope completely out of it. You know, to ease your concern for your fellow man.
FTR: I would not cause a scene at Gdope, or raise my voice or insult you, or act in a threatening or confrontational manner
Let me ask you another question, because I would sincerely like you to see my point.
In real life, do you insult people and casually throw around harsh insults in the same way that you do here?
You said earlier that you really don’t distinguish between online personalities and real life. Do you insult people as easily and as often in real life as you do here?
Hypothetically, would you be willing to meet me in person and in a one on one context, in a safe environment with no threat of physical reprisal would you repeat your comments as easily and casually as you make them here?
Would you do it to say… Weirddave?
Is that customarily the way you behave?
I know this wasn’t addressed to me, but irl
I know a substantial number of real life assholes. My rl response is:
I will do the “general greet” to all “hi, how’s it going?”
if I happen to know something personal, I may comment appropriately about it. “congrats about the baby” ‘sorry about your dad’
other than that, I’ll have somewhere else to be ,something else totalk about.
if I have reason to think you’re an an asshole, I’ll choose to spend as little time w/you as possible, regardless of howI came to the knowledge that you’re an asshole.
That seems pretty consistent with the way you are here. You don’t seem to big into the namecalling, and you don’t seem to casually through around insults the way RTF or Red does (or the way I have until fairly recently.)
My question really only applies if your behavior here is markedly inconsistent with your behavior IRL.
In light of Scylla New Year’s resolution, I want to know if I’m going to have to retire my second-favorite .sig line:
ETA: Just to be clear, this predates 2006.
Of course, my first favorite remains:
RTF:
While I’m at it, I might as well call “bullshit” on this from earlier:
You make it appear as if your first response to that thread was a serious question or an interrogatory worthy of response that was ignored thus forcing your hand to open this thread.
In fact your first response was this:
To me that looks more like a wiseass complaint couched in a rhetorical fashion, a throwaway.
So, I think your characterization of your first response as one seeking clarification which was ignored, is…
bullshit.
No need. I laugh every time I see it, and I could always use the reminder.
If you wish, you can keep it there to hold me to my resolution, and throw it in my face when and if I break it (not that we need another example of hypocrisy from me, but you know, one for the collection.)
Deal. Yer all right, Scylla. 
And I say that, secure in the knowledge that, as a Left Coaster, I’ll never be at a GettysDope where I might have to say that to your face…
The thing is that it was obviously a response that was directed to an OP that had the same value.
Well, apropos of not much, gotta take exception with the notion that your “online persona” might be somehow less than authentic. I write different than I talk, I expect I’m not so unusual (in that regard, anyway). If you start giving any serious thought to whether or not you’re different “IRL”, you should get a hobby.
As Mr Vonnegut said in explanation of Mother Night: “You are what you pretend to be, and so therefore you have to be very careful about what you pretend to be.”
If you’re pretending to be a better person than you are, for Heaven’s sake, keep pretending.
I was really whooshed by the Limbaugh thread.
See, it sounded exactly like every thing I ever heard Limbaugh said before. “I say it, my buddies all think I am right, so I must be right, and disagreeing with me is an obvious example of not understanding my brilliance.”
I was confused about why Scylla would spout Limbaughese nonsense so fervently, but I never entertained the possibility that it was a support of an argument about anything real or intelligible. I still find it far easier to believe that Limbaugh was being perfectly straightforward, and believes that his Greek Chorus of dittoheads represent some level of reasonable proof of what drools out of his mouth. But, I don’t listen to him all that often.
Perhaps Limbaugh’s sarcasm would be more pointed it resembled his sincerity less.
Tris
Well, you sure seemed to be angling for some sort of confrontation, and you seem to have an aversion to simply being polite but chilly towards one another, which is the way grownups who don’t like one another act towards one another when other people who are not part of their fight are around.
Good. Let’s. Then we shall say nothing to each other beyond the usual platitudes there?
I’m glad to hear that. I had certainly been getting the opposite impression from you.
There are different standards of behavior on this board and in real life. But jerkitude is jerkitude in both places, even if measured by somewhat different yardsticks in each.
No; like I say, there are different yardsticks. But if you were willing to drive down my way for the privilege of being told you’re a pathetic dipshit, then I would be glad to meet you somewhere down here and tell you that, if that’s what would make your day.
Damned if I know why you would go to the trouble, but it seems important to you.
I wasn’t going to bring other Dopers’ names into the discussion, but Weirddave and I both agree that we can be civil to one another when we encounter each other at Dopefests or other off-board encounters, regardless of what we say to each other here.
My opinion of him as a person is very much informed by our encounters here, but it doesn’t mean I need to express that opinion when others are around IRL.
That’s what grownups do.
By my count, it was the third of thirteen posts on the first page of the original thread that raised the issue of whether your OP was some sort of parody or whoosh. Yet by the time I posted the OP in this thread and linked to it, you hadn’t so much as acknowledged that part of the discussion.
There was no need for me to restate or summarize what they’d said, and what would have been the point anyway? My assumption at that point was that you’d just ignore it too. Like they say, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
BTW, if anyone wants to seriously debate the question of how valuable/persuasive-to-laymen is a consensus among scientists, without the distracting baggage of Fat Boy and his Oxycontin-addled pseudologic, try this thread.
Using insults is pretty childish, but posting with contempt for GD and the people who you expect to respond to your OP is way way worse. Your resolution doesn’t address any sort of character flaw: it’s 100% about PR and to enable you to be even more snide and sneering.
After seeing both threads, it is clear to me that **Scylla ** came thinking “wow! Rush is being a genius in this clever attack against scientific consensus” (I still wonder if Rush was even that clever) so he brought it in assuming many would fall in their faces attacking Rush for what “obviously” was really clever criticism. It failed with me, but as you show, it was naive for the OP to ignore that posting a GD thread like that would indeed whoosh many.
But the really sad thing was missed by me early: After people like **jshore ** pointed how even Rush’s “clever” point was misleading, that then one realizes how sad the whole effort of the OP in Great Debates was.
Nicely said.
That was Scylla Version 1.0 And besides, those are features.
That sounds more like High School to me.
No. I think that would be cowardly and two-faced and immature.
I don’t think you can rationalize it away with a contextual yardstick.
I probably wouldn’t which I said “hypothetically.”
Bully for you and Weirddave.
Exchanging high school level insults and profanities over the internet doesn’t strike me as very “grown up.”
Coming down to visit you is hypothetical. When we are in the same place I see no reason why we cannot have a short, frank, quiet, chat face to face. I see no reason why it need involve or disrupt anyone else.
That sounds pretty grown up to me.
Thank you.