# Some clarification **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [September 2, 2017, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301 "2017-09-02T04:25:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/21 "2017-09-03T01:24:59Z")
Stop explaining, stop excusing, start acting like a decent human being. ---
**Author:** ![Chimera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Chimera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chimera)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/22 "2017-09-03T01:46:28Z")
I’ll say it again, then. _ **There is no justice, no ‘fairness’ in the Universe. But the beauty of being Human is that we are able to conceive of Justice, to conceive of Fairness, and to create them in our world.** _ Anger is a weapon and a tool. But it is like fire in that it will burn you as well, and to live in it is as destructive as living in a fire. You have to learn to live outside of it, to master it, to choose not to be angry. There’s a million things it is very easy to get angry about, and if that is your mindset, very difficult to unlearn. But you don’t have to get angry about everything, or anything in particular. You have to make that choice. Most of the time anger is unhelpful. Stop listening to right wing media. As my sig line above, it is ‘little packets of fear and outrage, sold like crack from your computer and TV’. It is a drug and it is addictive. It is also a lot of lies wrapped around a partial truth, designed to mislead you and make you support things counter to your own interests. If you have bigoted friends, walk away. It might be hard, but as long as you have that shit whispered in your ears from people you trust, like or respect, it is going to be a part of you. Start by asking why you like, trust or respect these people in the first place. Stop creating threads for a while. Work on your Google Fu and do some research and some reading. The sum total of Human Knowledge (and a whole sea of crap) is at your fingertips. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/23 "2017-09-03T01:57:55Z")
> [@Chimera](#): > > This. > > I’ve been a member for 2 weeks shy of 15 years. I have made 21,346 posts and started 184 threads in that time, or just over one thread per month on average. > > That and I’m a 55 year old white man who thinks that anyone who thinks they’re hated for being a white man is a fucking moron who listens to people who are telling him that to make him angry. STOP HATING ME FOR BEING A WHITE MAN!!! Because even though I know we’ve never met and have no idea what I look like, I’m sure you do. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/24 "2017-09-03T01:59:07Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > Stop explaining, stop excusing, start acting like a decent human being. I’m not a racist. Sometimes I say racist shit online, but don’t believe my words that I post online; just believe my behavior in real life which you never see. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/25 "2017-09-03T02:01:51Z")
CHRIST! When is the white man finally gonna catch break?!?!?! First they tell us we can’t own slaves. Then they tell us that our wives can vote. Then they tell us blacks can take our seats at the front of the bus. Then our wives, sisters, and daughters join the goddamn workforce and take our jobs, and then Mexicans, Indians, and Asians take even more of our jobs. And then the robots with female voices started taking over the jobs of robots with male voices. WHEN DOES IT STOP?!?!?! ---
**Author:** ![Idle\_Thoughts](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/838e76/32.png) [@Idle\_Thoughts](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idle_Thoughts)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/26 "2017-09-03T02:48:41Z")
Oh look, the ATTENTION WHORE TROLL makes yet another thread basically crying for attention and saying ‘LOOK AT ME!!!’. ---
**Author:** ![Trafalgar\_Laura](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/trafalgar_laura/32/2907_2.png) [@Trafalgar\_Laura](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trafalgar_Laura)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/27 "2017-09-03T07:08:31Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > I remember a conversation where, I was about 15, he told me that “licking a woman’s ass” drives her over the edge (in terms of an orgasm). Leaving all out the rest… man, it sounds like your brother was very incorrect… about… uh, apparently \*quite \*a wide range of topics. Please don’t start a thread about this bizarre sexual theory. I can’t even imagine how he… I mean, that… What? ---
**Author:** ![WilyQuixote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@WilyQuixote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WilyQuixote)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 8:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/28 "2017-09-03T08:07:21Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > It’s not just about the topic itself; he’s a one-trick pony with the whole thread-starting thing, especially in recent weeks. > > The OP has made a total of 623 posts to this message board, and fully 124 of those (about 1 in 5) is a post starting a new thread. He has started over 100 threads in the last three months alone. That’s better than one new thread every day. People who do this are often shitty message board members. > > I understand that there are no rules against starting lots of threads, but in my 16 years (fuck, is it that long?) on these boards, i have noticed a fairly decent correlation between people who start a lot of threads (as a percentage of their total post count) and people who start a lot of stupid or poorly-articulated threads. I suspect it’s because they’re generally more interested in getting attention for their views than they are in clearly and cogently discussing their views. Before the OP started spouting RW BS about the removal of statue and white privilege, he mainly started innocuous Cafe Society threads seeking opinions about music in 1990s, life in the 1970’s and the like, which don’t really require a lot of participation or well thought-out posts. And he generally participates in threads he starts. FWIW, his latest non-Cafe Society thread is about the plight of native Americans, and appears to be free of any obvious RW talking points. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/29 "2017-09-03T13:11:41Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > The biggest help I need is basically cleaning the poison out so to speak. I was raised by people who told me there was a race war coming in the near future; I heard this from the time I was a kid. I heard that the media was run by anti-white people; and as a teen was shown all sorts of propaganda such as commercials which supposedly had anti-white content or that had an underlying anti-white message to it. I was raised up to feel that Orwell’s 1984 was going to be realized in the near future; that our American history would be changed and that political correctness would further stifle language. I was raised to distrust Blacks and Jews. That the media is trying to inflame a race war by focusing on white-on-black crime; that the media doesn’t talk about what happened to the Irish; that our family had to assimilate and lose their language and people today do not. All things I was taught from a young age. > > The joke of it is, I’m not from the South. The people who taught me these things aren’t members of militia groups, or Klansmen, or uneducated people. But they held and hold those beliefs so strongly. I do not think they would ever hurt a Black person or a non-White person in general. The irony of it is that the people who held these beliefs had among their friends a Black man and a Jewish woman. A Black man was (R.I.P.) my godfather. My father held most of the anti-black views, yet Joe was his best friend who like I said, was my godfather; He was an Italian from Benshonhurst who did some time in jail with members of the NOI, which helped to cultivate his distrust of Blacks. He would hang a Confederate flag on the wall, yet as I told another poster privately, he cried the night Obama was elected. Not from sadness or sorrow, but from carthasis. He thought Blacks and Whites could finally let go of the old baggage. My mother held the anti-Jewish sentiments and yet one of her closest friends is and was a Jewish woman, with whom we actually once spent Passover; I even spent time in a Jewish summer camp once as a child and was always around her son. My mother gained her anti-Semitism through her mother, who would tell her that there is (verbatim) “Nothing worse than a Liberal Jew.” Then again, my grandmother would also say that there was “Nothing worse than an Irish from the other side”, meaning an Irish person from Ireland (she herself was Irish-American). > > My brother in law was the one who would show me the anti-white propaganda. He was indepenantly bigoted; he never really talked much to my parents, and his own mother struck me as being quite enlightened. He was a Civil War Re-enactor in his youth. He was into war gaming, Warhammer 40k, and such things. He was a pervert. When I was as young as 14, he would point out hot women to me and say he would “destroy them”; I remember a conversation where, I was about 15, he told me that “licking a woman’s ass” drives her over the edge (in terms of an orgasm). > > Both my father and brother in law were fights, men quick to anger, men who would speak of their fights were they beat the shit out of another man. My father spoke of a time he took a guy’s elbow and busted it over the bannister of a staircase, breaking it, or when once in jail, he attacked a black guy at lunch by hitting him repeatedly with the metal lunch tray. > > I was taught that masculinity = violence. Yet I’ve never been prone to violence myself, leading to issues with my own sense of masculinity, which breeds bitterness and contempt. “Why am I not a violent guy? Why am I not a fighter?” It’s not my nature. It makes me angry and deeply resentful, and all of those ugly emotions are tied to my uglier views I was raised to have. > > So yeah, those were my primary role models; and my male role models. > > I have always tried to idealize my grandfather, who I have heard from various people was quite progressive for his day in his racial views. The only friends of his I’ve ever heard of were all minorities. He kept a book called “Why America Fights” by Sherwood Eddy, which says in part, that America was fighting in WWII to bring about ‘social justice’; and that after the War we needed to focus on bringing ‘social justice’ to our land with regard to the races; that it was our Christian duty to do so. He held this little booklet as so important that he made sure to keep it in pristine condition from the time he got in 1942 to the time he died in 1975. I never got to meet him, so he stands more as an ideal than someone I could actually listen to or take advice from. My other grandfather isn’t bigoted, but he doesn’t speak much about anything, he is generally silent, so there is not much to be gotten from him. > > I would like to be more like my grandfathers, and less like my parents. It is a struggle. It’s a struggle that leads me to even have a love/hate relationship with EVERYTHING Baby Boomer related. > > Internally, a part of me knows these things are wrong, and works to fight against what I was taught. Another part of me is bitter at the world and bitter toward life in general and clings to these hatreds because hatred is easy to cling to; When you fuck things up, it’s easy to blame others rather than yourself. When you see society changing, it’s easy, almost instinctual, to believe that the things you were told were going to happen, are happening. Thus at times I’ll come off like a relatively nice Leftist person, because that’s myself - my enlightened self - talking. When I say stupid alt-right shit, that’s the part of me that was raised to feel that way talking. It’s a struggle. There is also a heavy element of pride as well as a degree of Narcissism in there (then again, my generation is said to be the most Narcissistic). > > Bigotry is a security blanket. That’s all it is. It’s a hard blanket to shake off. That explains why you’re so angry. ---
**Author:** ![jkirkman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ac8455/32.png) [@jkirkman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jkirkman)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/30 "2017-09-03T14:55:06Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > No, he just struck me as one of the few Presidents who was truly like your average American, did overall little damage, openly supported the ERA, started federal Special Education, and seemed like a genuinely nice person. He didn’t really have much time to do much else. WIN buttons. Don’t forget the WIN buttons. ---
**Author:** ![TreacherousCretin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/treacherouscretin/32/476_2.png) [@TreacherousCretin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TreacherousCretin)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/31 "2017-09-03T16:07:41Z")
> [@Idle\_Thoughts](#): > > Oh look, the ATTENTION WHORE TROLL makes yet another thread basically crying for attention and saying ‘LOOK AT ME!!!’. Bingo. ---
**Author:** ![Pantastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3bc359/32.png) [@Pantastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pantastic)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/32 "2017-09-03T17:56:55Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > have anger problems, and when I get angry, I say things without thinking. I’m a reactionary, and I am adverse to change (literally ANY change - not just political). I’m a young man who is both angry about things because of external non-political factors, and who is like a stick in the mud. I get angry and say stupid things. > [@](#): > > I do not want to be hated or thought of poorly. If it is an apology you would like, then I shall give a genuine apology; I want to be liked here. I have been on this forum for over a year and a half, and only in the past few weeks have I run into issues because I react too angrily and too nuclear when it comes to contentious topics. This is bullshit. A genuine apology means you realize you did something bad and regret doing it. But if you’re apologizing to be liked, then you’re not actually remorseful for bad stuff you did, you’re just sorry that people responded negatively to your negative behavior, and the apology is purely self-serving. A genuine apology also requires you to take responsibility for the bad actions, but you don’t - you write that you’re angry and say things without thinking like it’s an immutable force of nature, but it’s not - you choose to write your ‘angry’ posts. You declare that you’re a reactionary like it justifies something, but it just means that you support bad things happening to other people because change makes you uncomfortable - that is, that you’re a self-centered inconsiderate jackass. Even worse, you don’t even know what you did wrong - you just offer a shotgun apology for whatever will make the other person stop disliking you. If you genuinely felt remorse, you’d know what you feel remorse for in the first place! Also in the other direction, caring a lot about what people on a message board think of you is horribly unhealthy. There’s a set of people on here that hate me because I use the standard definition of “know” in discussing a TV show instead of some weird non-standard definition that they can’t articulate but that definitely means a character doesn’t “know” something that she clearly knows by the ordinary meaning. (I’m not mischaracterizing the argument, one of them literally told me that their problem is that I’m using the standard definition of “knows”) I can’t imagine losing sleep over whether these people like me, or offering an apology for speaking in standard English when discussing a TV show on an English-language message board. And if I did want to be accepted by these people, I’d stop posting in regular English and adopt their definition, instead of posting in standard English but offering an apology for what I’m going to keep doing. ---
**Author:** ![John\_DiFool](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_difool/32/19543_2.png) [@John\_DiFool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_DiFool)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/33 "2017-09-03T19:05:29Z")
> [@jkirkman](#): > > WIN buttons. > > Don’t forget the WIN buttons. Whip Idiots Now? ---
**Author:** ![Covfefe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ee7513/32.png) [@Covfefe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Covfefe)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/34 "2017-09-03T22:40:23Z")
I hear they call you Mr. Fahrenheit when you’re angry. ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [September 3, 2017, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/35 "2017-09-03T23:08:27Z")
Get a therapist you trust. Don’t work these things out on a message board. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2017, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/36 "2017-09-04T04:53:44Z")
> [@mhendo](#): > > It’s not just about the topic itself; he’s a one-trick pony with the whole thread-starting thing, especially in recent weeks. > > The OP has made a total of 623 posts to this message board, and fully 124 of those (about 1 in 5) is a post starting a new thread. He has started over 100 threads in the last three months alone. That’s better than one new thread every day. People who do this are often shitty message board members. > > I understand that there are no rules against starting lots of threads, but in my 16 years (fuck, is it that long?) on these boards, i have noticed a fairly decent correlation between people who start a lot of threads (as a percentage of their total post count) and people who start a lot of stupid or poorly-articulated threads. I suspect it’s because they’re generally more interested in getting attention for their views than they are in clearly and cogently discussing their views. I concur with others on this. I picked one poster at random who is a respected long-time contributor and looked at his stats. It was just what I expected: a little over 100 thread starts out of 20,000 posts in nearly 15 years. The OP has started more threads than that in just the last three months, most of them uninteresting or stupid and many of them redundant and annoying (some of the latter being almost immediately closed). And yet, despite being told at least three times that this is a problem, and acknowledging it here, the attention whore has since upped his output to _ **three** _ new threads in the subsequent single day. So whatever else the OP may be, he’s clearly unresponsive to the advice he’s been given. It’s not always entirely about being an attention whore, although I do think the OP is afflicted with this issue. It’s more generally a symptom of having no filter between brain and keyboard, so that every brain fart causes a new thread to be inflicted on the board, regardless of quality or value or interest. What it demonstrates in my view is contempt for the quality of discourse on the board and the time of its members and readers. OP, if you’re asking for advice, here’s mine: Stop. Think. Insert a thought process between brain fart and keyboard. Not everyone thinks your every passing thought is as fascinating as you do. Show some respect for your fellow members by aiming for quality instead of quantity. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2017, 10:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/37 "2017-09-04T10:18:29Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > … > It’s not always entirely about being an attention whore, although I do think the OP is afflicted with this issue. It’s more generally a symptom of having no filter between brain and keyboard, so that every brain fart causes a new thread to be inflicted on the board, regardless of quality or value or interest. What it demonstrates in my view is contempt for the quality of discourse on the board and the time of its members and readers. > > OP, if you’re asking for advice, here’s mine: Stop. Think. Insert a thought process between brain fart and keyboard. Not everyone thinks your every passing thought is as fascinating as you do. Show some respect for your fellow members by aiming for quality instead of quantity. IMO this snip is real insightful. Assuming for a moment the OP’s statements in this thread are the whole truth, he’s sorta like a drowning man grasping at any floating tidbit. Somewhat intellectually curious, inherently a decent soul, but trapped in an ignorant family after an ignorant upbringing. To have finally found a group of decent thoughtful people to talk to must be a real breath of fresh air. So he’s (unwittingly?) trying to make up for lost time by blurting out every idea he can remember ever having. It may be understandable behavior, but that doesn’t make it attractive behavior. Especially to the degree he’s still watching/reading RW propaganda and spouting off on his habitual IRL hobby horses. There’re other boards that might love that stuff. Rightly or wrongly, we mostly don’t. This is a club open to anyone. The only real rule is “Don’t be a jerk.” Which the community interprets to include “engage brain before posting.” Your (any your) posts \*are \*your persona. Be somebody you’d be proud to be. Be your better self. That’s a lot easier to do here than it is in real life. Said another way: there’s not much excuse for not doing it here. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2017, 3:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/38 "2017-09-04T15:01:12Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > It’s not always entirely about being an attention whore, although I do think the OP is afflicted with this issue. It’s more generally a symptom of having no filter between brain and keyboard . . . I always thought that posters like this were just people who are suddenly unemployed. ---
**Author:** ![jkirkman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ac8455/32.png) [@jkirkman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jkirkman)\ **Post date:** [September 4, 2017, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301/39 "2017-09-04T17:01:31Z")
> [@John\_DiFool](#): > > Whip Idiots Now? If you, like myself, were a teenage smart-ass at the time (come to think of it, those two terms are almost interchangeable), you wore it upside down and claimed it stood for “Need Immediate Money.” 🆒 We shall save the SAWB button discussion for another time and another thread 8-). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/some-clarification/795301.md?page=1)