And that’s fair enough–I’m not losing any sleep over it. I’m just sayin’ I would’ve handled it differently, is all. What seems to you like odd semantic constructions seems very clear to me to be dishonest debating tactics; but I can see and respect that you see it differently.
Daniel
No, but I do suspect that there is an interaction, in terms of people being very familiar with Liberal’s derailing comments and thus being more likely to respond, for better or worse. I may make a stupid tangential comment, but I don’t have the history that Liberal does, so I’m not as likely to rankle as many people.
In that sense, I think that tomndebb’s argument that many posters do this or many posters do that is a bit off target. Many posters may do this or that, but very few represent the perfect storm of all these qualities that Liberal does. Why would we be having multiple threads about him right now otherwise? Unless you subscribe to the persecution theory, it doesn’t make any sense.
I don’t want to see Liberal banned by any stretch, but I think it is foolish to pretend that Liberal’s posting style is just like anyone else, or that there is not a method to his madness. Clearly his comments are often meant to provoke a response that is at best tangential to the matter at hand. Like all of us, Liberal has topics in which he is very comfortable and familiar. Most of us don’t actively try to turn other topics towards our comfort zone. Instead we read along or ignore them.
Reeder received a very idiosyncractic edict regarding Bush threads, despite the fact that he was explicitly breaking no particular rule. Why the same can’t be done for Liberal I don’t know.
Group hug!!
Is that’s what’s known as a one-line drive-by? Am I in trouble?
Sweet Christ.
And another thread is all about…Liberal.
:rolleyes:
I agree with whoever said upthread that Lib is like the kid in junior high who points a finger at your head whilst shouting, “I’m not touching you!”–in fact, that is the perfect image of him (to my mind). So, now that I have that, I will no longer rise to his bait.
But I will be informing mods when I perceive abuses-I can understand that the mods perhaps don’t have enough strong and sufficent evidence to Warn (although I disagree), but I also feel like I am at work and the employees on the floor are telling management that there is a problem with X and management has put on their deaf ears…
So, I guess it’s up to us to put bugs in those ears.
And my apologies to Biggirl --sorry to derail this thread.
“Oh, yeah. Looks good on you. [roll eyes]” — Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack
I just want to add that if you take my earlier complaint, substitute Lib for me as the complainer, Tveblen for Lib as the offender, “Trolling” for “gang-bang” as the offense, and Tom for Tom as the judge, a beautiful karmic balance starts to emerge.
Daniel
So, if I can sum up here, the consensus by the moderators is that Liberal’s use of language and posting style is, indeed, a source of much annoyance to many posters and that many posters perceive it as carefully crafted trolling but that it is somehow not deliberate and therefore OK. Do I understand correctly? That Liberal is not, in fact, as clever as consensus would have it because he can’t seem to use the language the way that most of the rest of us do, and therefore allowances must be made.
Who are the many? There are more than 54,000 people here capable of posting. If we include the cowards who gather off-board to plot their gang-banging schemes, there are what — a dozen? Two dozen maybe? You’re presuming that those who constitute your “we” are clever, aren’t you? Maybe I’m clever enough to express myself succinctly, and the Gang of Tens is just slow on the up-take.
The number of people who can post here is WAY smaller then that.
They can post. It’s just that some of them will have to fork over a couple of bucks first. I would guess, though, that paid membership exceeds a thousand.
Well, fuck. If we’re counting people who have to do something before they can post as people who can post, then the number of people who can post here is over 6 billion!! They just need to get a guest account first. Clearly, only a truly miniscule fraction of those who can post here have an issue with you.
Its like this: I am not a part of a “we” in this regard, much as thinking otherwise might feed your persecution complex. I am just some guy who showed up here one day, started reading, eventually registered and then after a while and after reading many of your posts decided that you were a jerk.
I didn’t reach this conclusion because of your politics. I didn’t get there because of your Christianity. I reached this conclusion because of the way that I see you behave. And as far as I can tell, this is something that consistently happens with you. It is not as if there is some small band of 99ers that are gunning for you.
So, I don’t know. If it were me and I had mounting evidence that something that I was doing was consistently pissing off a dozen or perhaps two dozen people I would want to know why that is. Moreover, if you are so clever, it would seem that you are also smart enough to realize that your message is not reaching a non-trivial number of people and that indeed the way that you are delivering your message is actually pissing people off.
So where does that leave us? Either you have some issues with language use and though you try you are just not expressing yourself well or you are saying exactly what you intend in exactly the way that you intend to and are perfectly aware of the consequences and simply don’t care. One is understandable, the other inexcusable.
I think there may be a third possibility: that Lib has trouble picking up cues which seem obvious to the rest of us; that he has problems relating to others here because he just doesn’t get where they’re coming from, and he’s coming from such a different place that he truly doesn’t perceive that what seems pellucidly reasonable to him is obscure assholery to others.
This is no psychologizing of Lib as he may be in the real world; it’s my hypothesis for at least part of the reason he riles people on this board so frequently and egregiously.
I will also say that my hypothesis is more applicable to the posts where he tries to discuss things at length. The driveby nastygrams are… well, Lib, you really need to step back and ask yourself, is this trip necessary?
Just my WAG on what’s the problem, could well be utter balderdash. I do find it helpful to keep in mind, though, when something he says pisses me off.
Some say I’m great. Some say I’m awful. I just say what I say.
Absolutely. No matter what, don’t even think about modifying your behavior based on external input.
I’ve modified it to the extent that I can without being fake. This is what you get. But do not feel obliged to acknowledge or engage me. No one is twisting your arm.
And others still, might posit that you’re a pompous blowhard with a message board addiction, who thinks he can prove the existance of some sort of god and is smarter than Stephen Hawking.
Here, pull my finger.
Been following this thread with interest and had a quick question…
Don’t you think your post in this thread:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6455030&postcount=62
is the kind of thing that people are complaining about?
How are the links you provided in the bottom portion of your post (with your comments) at all relevant to a thread about smoking? Or did you think you had some kind of “in” with the off-topic remark?
Just seems to me that you could avoid a lot of this backlash if you would just “let it go” as was suggested.
My $0.02.
Thanks.
Cite?
Man, that Liberal he sure is great . . . at pissing people off. 
Both sides, feel free to use in your term papers re: Liberal, with appropriate reference to authority.