Things that dopers overstate

In My Humble Opinion
21

That may actually be true. I’ve found that many, many of the people on the Dope assume quite a lot about the public’s IQ. I teach HS, so I see a spread of abilities. I’ve been told on this board that calculus should be pretty much required for HS graduation, when in fact the bottom half of the population struggles to get through Algebra 2. I know that a HS diploma shouldn’t just be handed out like candy, but I assume we mean for more than the top half of the country to be able to achieve it.

It’s very easy to assume that everyone is like your friends. I see this on this board (liberal, agnostic/athiest) and in church (WASP/Republican). If you and your spouse have college degrees, and you interact with other degreed people at work, and your friends tend toward the intelligent and educated, it’s easy to forget that there are 10s of millions of people out there who didn’t even graduate HS.

22

Ahh, one of the advantages of working with people who by definition are at least working on a graduate degree (sort of a degree, anyway, a teaching credential). My army brother tells me the officer corps has plenty of people who faked their way through a bad state school and act horrified at the idea of reading on their own, but if you said, “I’ve read only 2 books ever on my own” in a staff meeting at even a bad HS, you’d be assumed to be joking.

23

The nauseating power of perfumes.

24

Things that dopers overstate

– Dopers tend to overstate a lot.

25

The merits of cats except as food animals.

26

No, it’s an overstatement.

22 terms should do it.

27

Demrats are stupid and annoying.

Pubbies are stupid and annoying.

28

I am sorry, but there is no way for me to overstate the idiocy of one of my (former) coworkers.

(She quit! She quit! Woooo!)

29

Not everything.

30

Cell phones are annoying: They can be annoying when they go off at inappropriate times, but any competently run theater, government building, or auditorium will prevent this. I agree unequivocally that they’re grossly overrated and a lot of people need to learn how to think and be decisive independently.

Smilies are annoying: Some are; not the ones on SDMB, though. Some are just plain bad ideas, like the “razor cutting” one on bemanistyle.com (which is also overused to a ridiculous extent).

Hardcore fans of (Joss Whedon is the most common one, but just about anything there can be hardcore fans of) are annoying: Usually true. Don’t really see any need to repeatedly point out the blindingly obvious, though (which is why I found all the statements about Paris Hilton being a slut to be annoying).

Using doper cliches is annoying: Okay, this one I have to disagree with. Completely. The worst thing about this board IMO, and I know I’m not the only one. Not funny, not creative, not original, no point whatsover. Why the hell can’t we let them die??

Atheists are sometimes unpleasant about it: Not sure about this one. Atheists get a much better rap here than on some boards, that’s for sure.

The Simpsons isn’t as good as it once was: See note on hardcore fans. Homer’s dumb, Lisa’s out of it, Bart’s a jerk, Mr. Burns is a flippin’ vampire, Joe Quimby will never not be mayor, Smithers is a freakshow, we get it. What’s there left to discuss?

ER isn’t as good as it once was: See note on hardcore fans.

Saturday Night Live isn’t as good as it once was: See note on hardcore fans.

George W. Bush is about ten billion times worse than the worst thing ever to happen to the country, and the only way we’re ever going to even have a tiny chance of recovering is if Democrats win the presidency for the next 25 consecutive terms: A gross overstatement. It was George Bush and Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, a Republican-controlled Congress, an astonshingly sycophantic media that never asked ANY hard questions in the runup to the Iraq invasion, and of course anyone who voted Republican in '04. Joe Montana didn’t do it alone, and neither did Dumbya.

Board members’ intelligence: I’m pretty sure there was a point when the SDMB was just as chaotic and flame-infested as any other message board. Guess what…the useless cretins got banned. Every last one of them. And when new slimeballs show up, guess what? They get banned. When the choices are behave like a rational human being or get shown the door, of course the average intelligence is going to be much higher than normal.

And I’ll add one that’s been gnawing at me for a while, that The Empire Strikes Back is the most wonderful super-awesome Star Wars movie, end of discussion, and Return of the Jedi was a horrible travesty due to the Ewoks. I’ve never heard an explanation for the latter that made one damn bit of sense, and the former is just the application of a dark-evil-bad guys fetish that has no relevance to Star Wars. For the record, I had the same impression of both movies as I did for A New Hope and the prequel trilogy: Flashy entertainment, fairly lightweight plot, and in all a fun way to spend a few hours watching and talking about later…

31

Surely you’ve noticed the “Us dopers is the smartest sum-bitches evah!” threads that pop up every few months.

I’d estimate the level of discourse here to be, on average, about the same as you’d find in a freshman history class at your local college or university.

Not bad for the 'net, but if some of these threads were to be believed, The Dope is exclusively populated by the earth’s Illuminati.

I think this falls into the “badly overstated” category.

32

I agree with that. I’m not putting down the forum or members because it’s a great place, but I do find that to be true. I post and visit other forums that have intelligent and educated members and I honestly haven’t seen that done before. It doesn’t bother me, but it’s a little curious.

33

This is the Internet. Every argument is overstated.

“This entire movie sucks monkey balls because of one minor obscure bit of trivia they got wrong.”

34

Things that dopers overstate:

everything we’re not.

IANA doctor, lawyer, cat owner…

35

I think you have hit on a very interesting issue - the fact that the lack of face-to-face communication that the Internet represents makes it easier to make these overblown kind of arguments. When you have to look someone in the face and talk to them, it’s so much harder to make really stupid arguments because you have to confront an actual person in disagreement. Online, you can just say stupid shit and then never respond. You can’t run away from an argument like that in real life - I mean, you can, but you look like a huge jerk and then chances are you have to face that person again at work or school or at home or whatever.

The anonymity of the internet can definitely dumb down conversations.

36

I’m a 99er, and I don’t remember it being like that. I don’t remember if there was a structured moderator posse, but in any case it was too obscure at first to draw too many dorks. You found the site because you knew of the books or had been reading the online Cecil questions. Nowadays I forget there are new Cecil questions.

37

No, you can’t compare IRL college level discourse with a MB. As far as MBs goes, the SDMB is in the tippy-top. And, if someone says we are #1 amoung those with a large member base, I’d have to agree with them. I am on a couple very small MBs with dudes as smart as Dopers, but on any board getting to even half our membership, the quotient of slack-jawed droolers is pretty high. Here we certainly have a few, but we also have some very smart cookies indeed.

So- I’ll accept- the smartest sum-bitches *amoung larger boards.
*

38

Regarding:
Silver Fire’s quote about the [above] average intelligence of the board’s membership…

I teach at a college, and the vast majority of the students could never be on this board - they wouldn’t be able to write a single three line paragraph without ten errors - and most of the people on this board can do better than that after a night out at the bar.

Regarding:
Originally Posted by Garfield226
George W. Bush is about ten billion times worse than the worst thing ever to happen to the country, and the only way we’re ever going to even have a tiny chance of recovering is if Democrats win the presidency for the next 25 consecutive terms.

Despite your attempt at exaggeration, you did a great job at aptly defining the Bush Administration.

Regarding:
**jjimm **'s comment that everyone who doesn’t smoke is fatally allergic to a whiff of ciggy on the street on a windy day.

You got that right - and 98% of them never set foot in a bar, but eagerly voted to ban smoking in those establishments they never frequent.

My nominations for things Dopers overstate:

My cat is different from all other cats - you would like it, really!

Peter Jackson should be assassinated because he didn’t include (insert esoteric reference - for example, on page 341 of book two, Frodo turned his head left instead of right unlike in the LOTR trilogy film version.)

Variations of the truly stupid questions like: “I am going to Europe - what should I see?”

39

How badly everyone around them drives.

How annoying and inconsiderate their roommates are. (Dopers always seem to be unimpeachable roommates.)

How many badly behaved children they encounter, and how egregious the behavior is.

How badly their favored sports team performs, or how incompetent the officials are at a game/match.

The frequency of their moviegoing experiences being disrupted, and how obnoxious the disruption is.

40

I use the term 'gliterati, myself.

But I have to ding you on this, John. I’ve taught freshman history course as a grad student. Lord above there’s few things dumber than college freshman. I once had to fail one for ardently insisting on Ronald Reagan’s deep affection and support for the Sandinistas.

I think this is an exemplary board with a much better than average group of posters. If only because of the cultural insistence on avoiding leetspeek and other net-wide idiocies.