As an atheist I agree with you that religion / spirituality in all forms is delusional bunk.
As a member of western society at large and the SDMB in particular I recognize that we do in fact have a culture of benign tolerance for most of that particular sort of bunk. I’m not going to change that any time soon that by being an absolutist. Nor by being impolite.
You’re right, the OP was not seeking a high-minded subjunctive discussion of a theological hypothetical. Instead she was showing us a peek into her (IMO) bunk-encrusted psyche.
As such the thread should have been reported for forum change after post #1, and ideally have been moved to GD before the “it’s bunk; you’re nuts” pile-on gained much speed. Our cultural rules of engagement with (arguable) bunk are very different in GQ vs. GD.
As I said in my earlier post, were I tomndebb I would have mildly censured several posters, not just onomatopoeia. And I’d have done it explicitly for violating the general no-jerks rule, not the more specific threadshitting rule. The border between these two is fuzzy. As are all the rules here. You seem strongly motivated to parse out a bright line that does not (and cannot) exist. The specific fact pattern here is (IMO) a distinction without a difference. As a lawyer you understand the futility of that line of argument.
It now sounds to me mostly like both you and tomndebb have both somewhat overstated your cases and are now defending those overstatements to the death. That seems … unprofitable. Potentially moreso for you than for him.
Is that so? Good, so you can come up with examples, right?
Oh I see. So if it **Little Nemo **posited a being (let’s call him LNman) that had superpowers as plausible as those of Superman but wasn’t Superman (or any other known fictional character), then it wouldn’t be threadshitting to say that his premise was incorrect? I’m fine with that. Let’s assume **Little Nemo **starts a thread saying we should send LNman to the Middle East to put an end to ISIS. Do you agree that since **Little Nemo **believes LNman is real, people can only argue against his idea within the framework that’s consistent with his beliefs?
The definition of threadshitting is and always has been about suggesting a topic was not worthy of discussion. It is not and never has been about stating that the premise of a question lacks factual support. You don’t need a line to be bright when you aren’t within a hundred miles of it.
What this is actually about is that **tomndebb **is religious and someone (ie onomatopoeia) pointed out the obvious problem with asking a serious question founded on a baseless premise. It’s an obvious problem with **tomndebb’s **worldview also, so his ox was gored.
onomatopoeia’s conduct wasn’t jerkish enough to warrant sanction, so **tomndebb **had to shoehorn it into a category he could complain about. So he tried to call it threadshitting. It’s painfully obvious from the rampant strawmanning by **tomndebb **and those that agree with him in this thread that they’ve got to change the facts to make the crime fit the charge.
I think this is basically correct. When one response says “Your premise is incorrect,” it’s not threadshitting. But it starts to look threadshitty when several posters, or one poster over and over, keep posting “Your premise is incorrect” without adding any additional context. It sounds less and less like presenting information or even opinions and more and more like just shouting down the discussion.
It might be worth noting that the OP of that thread has an entire history of 2 post on this MB, including that OP. The other post was made about an hour after the OP. The thread in question is now 3 pages long, and this one is almost a full page. There might be an easy way of avoiding these types of situations.
It might be because nobody is speaking directly to the OP or to the topic she/he brought up.
edited to add: Except for Kanicbird, who is also a true believer, but seems to be on a different wavelength.
We do tend to give newbies the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, even without his participation people seem to be enjoying arguing with one another about the topic.
Not if someone seriously claims that Darth Vader is spying on our country and plans to bring it down. Please re-read the claims made by the OP in his first post, and the followup claims in the second post.
A lot of us seem to be stuck in some kind of mode where we actually believe our role here is “fighting ignorance” - it isn’t. The Straight Dope *Column *has been fighting ignorance since 1973, the message boards not so much. We have no such charter. They are a place where people go to have discussions with people on the internet, that’s it.
It doesn’t matter what one’s personal beliefs are about the legitimacy of the premise, only in what way they are willing or not to engage the OP and other posters about that subject once it has begun being discussed.
If someone opens a magical mystery thread about ghosts and demons and supernatural events, our job isn’t to fight their ignorance despite the protests I know that statement will get from most of our die hard messageboard truth finders. It’s just a request to have a conversation with people on the internet about some subject. If we find their premise totally unsupportable, or that there is no possible way to discuss it so all that’s required is a flat denial, what we’re supposed to do is not respond at all. If you choose to open a new reply in that conversation though, then you are willingly agreeing to participate with the OP in the conversation that they are asking to have. It isn’t anyone’s right to just step in and declare the premise invalid halting any more discussion on the matter.
It’s not our job to set anyone straight. If we want to take the time to argue their premise or arguments with substantial and engaging discussion there’s no rule against that (although I’d argue that is a big waste of time) but it isn’t our job or right to declare people’s requested conversation topics to be invalid on their face and add nothing more than that to the discussion.
Since we’ve broached the subject of the OP in this case being from a Sept. 2016 sign up, and considering the fact the post contains at least 4 or 5 obvious trigger keyword hot-button issues that are bound to immediately arouse our house truth detectives, in this particular thread my opinion is that any participation should be approached cautiously or not at all. But if one insists on participating they are threadshitting if all they do is deny the OP their request to have a discussion about their chosen topic.
This is absolute nonsense. This means that if someone claims to have invented a perpetual motion machine and wants to promote it, any naysayers on the subject should just shut their mouths and let those who accept the premise yack away to their heart’s content.
Not at all. First of all that would be spamming or lobbying for some personal project which is against the rules.
Secondly anyone is more than free to argue that a time machine doesn’t exist and provide substantial and engaging discussion about why they believe that to be the case.
All we aren’t allowed to do as it pertains to this thread is threadshit by saying “that isn’t possible so there’s no point in discussing this.”
I would also agree this is an utterly wrong viewpoint about this board. No one has a right to have their premises accepted by everyone participating in a thread. Challenging assumptions is a fundamental part of this board.
I don’t disagree with that at all. My point is that if you are engaging an OP in their discussion at all, you’re agreeing to do it within the rules of the board and it is threadshitting if all you do is declare the premise invalid without any substantial argument or discussion. If that is incorrect then my definition of threadshitting could certainly be wrong. (it isn’t an SDMB term it is defined much the same way in every internet discussion forum)
I’m not saying that anyone should humor an OP and keep the thread exactly on the premise they desire, but that if they want to argue it they need to argue it, not just dismiss it.
As I noted some posts back one way of doing that without literally saying those words is to dismiss multiple or complex questions or themes with simple, dismissive posts like “no.” or “no, because they don’t exist”. That happening is exactly what this thread is about.
Maybe a thread by a person claiming to have been troubled by demons in this and previous lives, a person who claims to have personal conversations with the Archangel Michael, a person who claims to have psychic powers…maybe a person like this doesn’t need a thread in Great Debates. I know religious threads usually go in GD, but if that is the only reason it was put there, just this once I think it was horribly misplaced.
