Are the people in this thread defending the pushers forgetting that smoking is against the law on that platform? She had every right to ask them to stop doing something illegal, whether she was standing right next to them or not. I’m a little surprised at anyone defending them; in most threads about a situation like that, people would be queueing up to brag about how vigilante they would have gotten on the law-breakers’ asses. Are they getting a pass here because the law being broken was about smoking?
And yes, smokers do affect people negatively out in the open air. Trying to use a walking path with smokers around, or when smokers light up upwind of other people - you’ll definitely be getting a snootful. Second-hand cigarette smoke is a Grade A carcinogen - that means that there is no safe level of exposure (or, alternatively, the only safe level of exposure is none).
I swear, for a board full of mostly smart people, some of you get whooshed easier than a racist YouTube commenter or a Yahoo Answers contributor who types in all caps.
The funniest part is when posters get called on missing the humor, then get all pissy and start attacking the post that fooled them so easily.
In order to help our… slower posters, I have bolded the parts that should have tipped you off to the fact that the OP wasn’t entirely serious (hint: it’s basically the entire post):
If that sounds serious to you, you’re too stupid to breathe.
I’m saying nothing except that yes, I know the station very well, having commuted along that line daily for two years. There is plenty of room for smokers and nonsmokers to make space for each other, so we should all be able to avoid both foul-smelling carcinogens and foul-tasting illiberalism.
Crazy position + wording that repeatedly deprecates that crazy position in a humorous manner = duuuuuuuuh, gonna have to think about this one for a minute
Monty - you’re funny. You can’t read, but you’re funny. I referenced Victoria Coren’s piece and specifically said I had no beef in this fight. I just thought the debate, re civil liberties and anti-social behaviour, was very interesting and that others might like to read it. But of course that means I want little old ladies pushed off station platforms. :rolleyes:
It’s really not too difficult to tell someone who’s unintentionally funny because they’re mentally unbalanced apart from someone who’s very obviously going for laughs by inserting multiple jokes into every sentence.
Then I guess I should turn in my license to breathe. People on SDMB use humor all the time in posts that were seriously pitting people. I seem to remember that they were often praised for their clever turns of phrase, also. Are we now to assume that the only serious pittings are those that do not use humorously descriptive phrases.
And I haven’t seen anything in Staggerlee’s later posts in this thread that indicate that her OP was anything but serious.
You’re right. It didn’t sound serious. It sounded like the person was making a joke about an old lady being pushed onto some railroad tracks and getting her just desserts for being a busybody. Funny stuff that. Haha. (It seems like you are suggesting that there haven’t been assholes on the SDMB who would have posted something like the OP in the defense of the two future cancer ward patients and we should automatically know which is which.)
I didn’t miss it. I just didn’t see how it applied to anything that had been posted previously. Nothing she said prior to that had indicated that she was anything but serious in her OP, which read to me (and apparently others as well) that she was either pitting the “busybody” for daring to take verbal action against two people who were breaking the law, or saying that she thought the physical attack by the two lawbreakers was justified.
You think that Staggerlee is so committed to smoker’s rights or the libertarian movement (which doesn’t advocate violence, if I understand it), that he would be seriously defending the actions of people who pushed a 60-yr-old woman off a subway platform?
Almost everyone here read the OP as irony. Because it was.
Not only is it obvious Staggerlee is joking, but it’s so obvious that I still kinda think you might be fucking with me because nobody can be that stupid, let alone multiple people in the same thread.
Which do you think is more likely? That the OP is an actual sociopath who is genuinely in favor of pushing little old ladies from subway platforms, or that the OP is engaging in the kind of black humor that gets posted on this board every single time something horrible happens?
Thank you. I was beginning to think I was in some kind of bizarro world with these ridiculous responses.
You mean like the people who actually pushed the old lady from the platform? It is not beyond the pale that for everyone who would try to hurt an old lady for such a reason there would be a number more who would sympathize with their actions and that one of them could possibly post here on the SDMB about it. You’ve been here for quite a while and you haven’t seen worse? Geez, off the top of my head we have Der Trihs wishing death on American service men at least once a week and he seems pretty serious about it, too. Why would this OP be anymore incredulous to us?
But which is more likely? That the OP is fucking insane, or that, considering he makes about four jokes per sentence, he just might be joking? Instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt by taking this for what is, by far, the most likely scenario, you’re vilifying him by assuming something that is, both comparatively and absolutely, very, very unlikely.
Sure you can list a few posters out of thousands who have said some equally callous things. While you’re at it, though, why not go ahead and make a list of every poster who’s every made a tasteless joke about death. Which list do you think is going to be longer?
Now, considering that it’s far more likely just by the numbers that the OP was joking, you might also want to recall the fact that there were multiple, honest-to-goodness, jokes in the freakin’ post!
Given this information and a thinking cap, you have pontificated on the matter and come to the conclusion that… the OP was 100% serious? Really? Really?
Does it hurt to frown disapprovingly all the time? I have detected not one serious post in this thread (serious meaning that anyone actually believes that these two thugs should get anything except the full penalty of law) except yours. I half expect you to declare “I didn’t hear a harumph from that guy”, and, unlike Mel Brooks, mean it.
It is likely that he is being sarcastic, but it isn’t obviously so.
I don’t know the person from Adam. I don’t think I’ve ever noticed a post from him before. Yet, when I read it, there was doubt in my mind that the person wasn’t just making a joke. Not a whole lot mind you, but I can see where the confusion can arise.
Jokes in the OP? Maybe one. The rest were statements that were ambiguous at best. Possible other interpretations of what you considered ‘jokes’:
still-functioning nose - As in while I don’t necessarily agree that the women should have been pushed off the platform, I do agree that she should have been punched in the nose for sticking it where it doesn’t belong.
her damned cancer-less mouth - Isn’t it enough, that I as a smoker, have to endure an increased potential for cancer, but I’ve also got to endure holier than thou attitudes from non-smokers.
she broke her well-circulated wrist - must be an inside joke as I don’t understand it. Haha, so it must be funny, right?
brave Libertarians - Are libertarians normally cowards, or possibly known only for non-action. Again ambiguous at best.
hunted like criminals - criminals should be hunted like criminals. But, in this case they are being hunted like criminals for doing something that the OP thinks shouldn’t be a crime. eg. Standing up to the busybodies of the world.
they should be getting a medal - For standing up to the busy bodies of the world.
a lump to my throat* *which I hope isn’t malignant - About the only somewhat obvious joke in the lot, actually.
I notice that you are the one interpreting these statements as a joke. The OP hasn’t bothered to come by to agree with you in your interpretation. In fact the OP hasn’t been too open about whether their post was, in fact, a joke. And as there has been some confusion raised, it probably would be in their interest to so. But, then it is no skin off my ‘still functioning nose’ if they do so or not.
Another spin on it. If you reversed the scenario and had a smoker tossed onto the tracks by a clean air defending non-smoker, would you be so quick to say that similar OP would have been a joke?
