wait! wait! make a campfire!
rushes off to get marshmallows
smaje1, you’re experiencing the adult version of school kids who taunt and insult others, in what they consider to be a humorous and clever manner. They think it’s funny to affront people, implicitly or outright, and if anyone objects, or even defends themselves, the youngsters jeer, “Can’t take a joke, huh?”
“Can’t take a joke!” Pretty much what you’re getting. I came up with a handy riposte to this “Can’t take a joke?” jab. I countered, “Can’t take a punch?”
FWIW I consider my early experiences on SDMB to have been extremely valuable in part precisely because I did learn so much about how to ask a good question.
Its a sad fact of life that many people who have low self esteem, or are underperformers IRL,who day after day have to accept putdowns from those around them,(whether at work or socially) and can’t retaliate for whatever reason use the Net to "Get their own back ".
Its a form of therapy I suppose.
So and so’s got a better job,more attractive partner, is more self confident …whatever !
Then use the safety and the anonyminity of the internet to redress the balance.
Don’t take them too seriously, and definitely don’t take it to heart.
While they’re attempting to hurt people that they’ve never met, all they’re doing is showing themselves for the cowards and underachivers that they really are, rather then doing you any damage.
Believe me there are plenty of decent, interesting people on the net generally and on the Dope , so don’t give up on it and keep your chin up.
Its an absaloute that all bullies are cowards both IRL and in cyberspace.
If you’re an achiever you you get a good feeling from your achievements.
If you’re a bully you try to get the same feeling from trying to undermine others.
Don’t get downhearted !
Well I’m the poster who got admonished and I didn’t consider the thread snarky as much as pedantic, and my complaint was only to those posters who were being so. Someone asks what the gender of the moon is, if your response is that the moon is clearly not female nor male then that is silly pedantry. But I had forgotten where I was, and thus I take no offense at Colbiri’s non-warning warning. Pedantry is not only allowed here, 'tis promoted. This board is over represented with pedants. It is after all a place that in real earnest promotes itself as an anonymous Internet message board that “fights ignorance”.
A good portion of the regular posters here are midly intelligent folk who vastly overrate their own intellect. As often as not people in that position resort to snark, pedantry, cynicism, and sarcasm as a means to confirm their distorted self-image.
That’s not to say that parts of this board aren’t filled with interesting conversations. It just that you have to remember that the real life analogue to this board would be a sophomore lounge at a prep school right after philosophy 101 let out, and act accordingly.
You are severely overestimating the quality of conversation among prep school philosophers.
Also, they don’t give nearly as much of a shit about declawing cats.
Nope. I teach sophomores. The level of discourse among my honors students when they are trying to show how smart they are is a spot on analogy for the SDMB, the “Great Debates” section especially.
I will admit the cats thing though. Even nerdy high school kids are capable of making enough real live human friends to keep a decent perspective on human-pet relations.
Posting here must indeed be a sore trial for you. My sympathies.
Oh bullshit. The answer was there is no one answer. The OP didn’t like the answer. Boo fucking hoo.
I only skimmed that thread but, FWIW, I strongly sympathise with OP.
Early religions did associate gender with Sun and Moon, and it does seem interesting to explore the reasons and the exceptions. Since the question had some interest for me, I started to skim the thread but stopped when I saw that useless responses outnumbered the useful.
Negative criticism can be fine when it’s funny or when it’s instructive, but some responses in the thread were just inane.
[ul][li] #2 Huh? Are you serious?[/li][li] #9 In what way could something like this be “official”?[/li][/ul]
I support this [del]Pitting[/del] Pointlessing.
Except nobody made fun or insulted smaje1. You’re a real white knight, aren’t you Sir Galahad?
I didn’t post in either thread, but I just read it and I don’t think you can say the “useful” posts were outnumbered. I thought that most of the posts in the thread were “useful”. YMMV, but I thought that about 38 posts in the thread had either attempts to answer the question, or honest attempts at clarification about the question that didn’t seem snarky to me - I would call both of those “useful”. The OP had 7 posts in the thread, out of 68 posts total. So if 38/61 responses by other posters were “useful” re: the OP’s question, that’s 62% of them.
I would call posts “not useful” re: the question if they weren’t directly answering the question. But the “not useful” posts were not all snarky as some were just non-snarky jokes (e.g. “Why else would we refer to “The man in the Moon” unless the Moon was something a man would want to get into? Silly question.”), some were defending the OP after they got upset, discussions with moderators, posters saying the OP had left the thread, talking about the GQ forum in general, a couple off topic posts, etc… I’d say that only about 5 responses seem even somewhat snarky to me.
How are either of those responses inane (silly; stupid; not significant)?
I’d say that #2 could have been phrased differently, but even the OP readily said that they didn’t phrase their initial question very clearly. If the very first response a thread gets is that someone isn’t sure if you’re serious or they can’t understand what you’re asking, then it’s time for the OP to come back and clarify what they’re asking for.
As for post #9, I think that’s a completely honest question to ask - it wasn’t silly or insignificant. I thought I understood what the OP was looking for with their question, but I don’t see how there could possibly be answer that could be considered THE “official” answer. I mean, if a majority of western cultures usually refer to the moon as female, does that make it the officially correct answer? That’s an honest question. Post #9 was asking the OP what they meant by “official” - official in what way? in which cultures/languages? etc…
As a moderator pointed out in this exchange:
Not exactly “white”, but a Knight, yes.
I’ll leave it to the injured party to define insult … and my lance is always ready to come to the aid of a fair damsel. Always.
Chivalrous and porny are bad enough on their own but together? Ew.
You are supposed to see a doctor if it is ready for more than four hours.
Just read through the original thread.
I understood the question that the OP was trying to post. Although it could have been clearer, I don’t think it was that badly phrased.
That being said, none of the responses seemed even remotely offensive to me, with the exception of “You got better questions than your question deserved”. And even that was mild.
And none of the responses were overly pedantic either. They were providing the kind of information the OP was asking for. I’m really not seeing any problem with the original thread (or the board as a whole) aside from the OP’s reaction.
To the OP: I am trying to be sympathetic here. I know how lousy it feels to not be taken seriously, or worse, to be made fun of. But I can’t see people doing that here.
Impressive. You managed to cover “aggressive”, “awkward”, “naive”, “sexual”, AND “sexist”, all in the same catchphrase. I gotta remember that one.
I understood the question. I saw nothing to be offended about either.
It was this part that makes me think the OP should mature a bit before coming back to the internet:
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink]
In what way could something like this be “official”? It’s not like there’s some sort of universal governing body that determines these things.
[/QUOTE]
Followed next post with:
[QUOTE=smaje1]
Wow, I was expecting straighter answers from General Questions.
[/QUOTE]
The OP wanted an official answer. There obviously isn’t an official answer. Different cultures viewed it in different ways. The question could be answered as a point of language, culture, mythology or religion. Answers were given from all of those aspects. But the OP was pouty because there is no official answer.
That’s not exactly what I’m understanding from the OP. I’m getting that she asked a clear, reasonable question, and wanted some cites to go along with the answers. I don’t see “pouty” here, but I think she was disappointed that posters were criticizing her question, and perhaps implying that it wasn’t worthy by forum standards, when really, it’s a simple question.
I missed the part where she said she wanted an “official” answer.
I still think it was natural to wonder what she had in mind by the word “official.”
You missed a lot. There were some mildly snarky replies. But a lot of thoughtful correct information too. But it was not a question that has one official or correct answer. And the replies reflected that.