I’m well aware of the old SDMB tradition of ranting around here esprix. I’ve done and read enough of them that I don’t need you to point one out to me.
However, what I normally don’t see in those posts that I immediately saw with yours was the level of hypocrisy and pity that you eventually employed to argue your point. I can’t speak for anyone else around here, but I found it obvious and insulting.
You come out swinging and calling another SDMB’er a ‘fuckhead’ and a ‘fucked-up newbie’. Fair enough. You have your opinion and have your reasons. No problem from me at this point. But you’re setting yourself up to being flamed by starting something incendiary like ‘Fuck you XXXX poster!’. But hey, you already know that because you’ve been around here long enough to know the rules.
The usual thing begins to happen and people come in from far and near to counter your point. Most counter your position by offering some valid points of their own. I definitely see their point- resurrecting a thread isn’t that big a deal when it’s not abused. One poster even points out where you’ve done the same thing in the past that you’re currently bitching about. Kinda funny, actually.
All in all, at this point, some straightforward points with no one resorting to personal attacks, except you. Maybe because of that fact I assume you will take on a more conciliatory tone and lighten up.
On the contrary, you tell that person to fuck off and reiterate how much you hate the practice of resurrecting old threads. I looked at it as opening yourself up to even more ridicule and abuse. Not because of what you’re arguing about, but how you’re going about it.
Again, fair enough. It happens all the time around here and I have no problem with someone being strong-willed in the face of disagreement. You’ll probably take some lumps because of you’re stance, but you know the rules of this place.
But what followed in that post baffled me enough that I felt I should post.
In the very next sentence you say, “…perhaps I’m in the minority on this issue (yeah, that’d be a first). Whoopdeedoo.”
Call me crazy, but because you’ve been one of the more vocal posters on gay issues around here, I only thought of one thing when I read that line. I thought you were referring to yourself as being gay and the problems you face in day to day life. That once again people should feel sorry for you because you’re miss-understood in society. You were playing the ‘gay card’, as it were, when it was completely unwarranted. I took it as a cheap cop-out to a legitimate argument that you had started.
You needlessly and hypocritically blamed particle will of initiating an argument that you, yourself, had started.
Maybe it was how he brought it up that bothers you, I don’t know. I thought he read that line the same way I had and was throwing it back at you. Whatever the case may be, that’s not my main point here.
My main point here is why you feel the need to take a martyrdom role when one isn’t needed.
You support that line of thinking by reiterating, once again in your post, that others around here agree with you but haven’t said so in this thread. You will have to take on a spokesman role for the minority. Poor esprix the martyr.
If I was wrong in thinking that at that time you did nothing to counter that in your follow-up posts. In fact, your follow-ups move towards a ‘why are people pissed? Come on people, lighten up, let’s get real here’ tone.
This flip-flop was almost insulting to me. You’re taking the easy road out of an argument and a position that, to this point, hasn’t been supportive of your position.
You start a pretty harsh thread attacking someone on this board. Noone supports that argument and discusses why they don’t agree with you. You take that as an attack against you and then attempt to garner sympathy for yourself by playing the role of the false, abused, rather than the correct, abuser. You started this thread and started the rant. Why should others feel sympathy for something you walked right into?
Maybe I’m reading something here that really isn’t there, I don’t know, it’s simply how I felt as I followed the post along.