Non.
Makes her look like a douche because she doesn’t want to play with the Green Acres-type search function of this board? Plus, imaginary slight from three years ago? Because she doesn’t jump into the fray with an example it’s suddenly imaginary?
I’ll go one better than that, he’s never been rude TO ME but from my general observations on the board I’d hardly call Polycarp someone above reproach. There have been enough times I’ve read stuff from him that’s made me roll my eyes hard enough to start a headache. Will I give you cites? Nope, not a chance. I’m allowed to have an opinion about things without proving it to you. So is she.
AHA! I knew I was remembering something from the past! The Iraq thing? Blue… someone. Someone Blue. I never saw the end of that story, either. Been mildly curious what that was about, myself.
I don’t think we’ve ever “hung out” in the sense you might mean. We’ve been guests at his and Skulldigger’s home. (Skulldigger is his wife.) And they have been guests at our home. They’ve spent more time here than we’ve spent there. They’ve stayed here overnight (in fact, for several days).
But you’re right, essentially. Seeing old pictures and stuff like that really doesn’t qualify a right judgment. My money says he’s taking up for me, not because we’re friends or because he’s sat down and perused my genealogical data, but just because he thought the attack was too severe.
We all make claims here about something. Or, I think, a lot of us do. Maybe even most of us. And even meeting in real life can’t verify some things. A guy could claim he’s gay, and just because we visit a gay bar when I visit him, that’s no proof that he’s gay. Now, if he sucked my dick, then I believe I would have sufficient proof that he’s gay — i.e., enough to vouch for him.
But again, you’re right.
I don’t think his Pit OP was about that, though. It was about an insult to him personally — that I had paid him off to take up for me, implying that he’s a whore of some kind. I think whoever Zhen’ka is, he or she should have something to base his belief on. In other words, if Poly can’t really vouch for my heritage — which is true — then neither can Zhen’ka really vouch that Poly is a whore.
Before my time here but Bluesman.
Explain where in what I said I was wrong. I made two statements:
- Individuals can vouch for anyone.
Explain how you believe that I cannot vouch for whomever I want to vouch for? - It is up to others to decide if that person is reliable enough to accept their vouching.
Explain how you believe that this is not true?
I basically like Liberal, and have stuck up or him in the past when people were piling on. I, too, don’t get the hate. From where I sit, he got uncharacteristically weird about a year ago, having to do with the election, but passions were running high, I guess. I haven’t been in threads with him in the last few months, but I hope he’s back to his old self.
Again, I just don’t get the hate aimed at him.
The post in question seems unnecessarily assy, but I don’t understand why people can’t be online besties without feeling the need to squirt rainbow-and-unicorn colored goo all over everyone else, as though it’s less lame that you met your online contacts in real life. I guess I just have a heart of stone. YMM (and will) V.
You can check out the series I’ve been hosting in Great Debates, if you like.
Guin, maybe you can explain to those of us who just don’t get the extreme obsessive Lib-hate.
I mean assume all the worst that people say about him … so what? Why should anyone care so much if he exaggerates the solidity of his Cherokee background? Why do some get so upset if he posts TMI? So what if he is hypochondriacal and self-aggrandizing? And if he does sometimes tell tall tales? Getting annoyed by it sure. Pitting every so often? Sure. But many posters here are going way way beyond that. They behave as if his presence is a deep personal affront to their very being. They stalk his posts. They go out of their way to open his threads so that they can get righteously upset about them and complain about him on another board. This beyond the pale attack on Polycarp’s character because he dared to speak up in Lib’s defense is a mild example of the craziness we’ve been experiencing. Really. It feels like a lynch mob that won’t rest until they dragged him out and strung him up.
Seriously. Why is there such passion over what is really just mildly annoying? Do you get it? Can you explain it? Is it just mob mentality gone wild?
You would, I should think, never have this sort of attitude towards a passing acquiantance in real life. Why question people’s reaction towards it online? Most people really do wish he would just take his batshit insanities and his issues and fuck off.
You’ve apparently missed the parts where Liberal tries to blackmail people emotionally, time and time and time again? And time and time and time again? And you wonder why he’s disliked with such venom?
This wasn’t a beyond the pale attack on Polycarp, it was pretty fucking mild. Liberal was disliked and someone who stood up for him was sniped at for it. Oh the humanity!
Can you explain this? I honestly do not understand what you mean here. What “sort of attitude” are you referencing? One that doesn’t understand people expending energy to keep a hate-fire burning? Well I question those attitudes in real life too. Perhaps a bit more politely than I do in a Pit thread but nevertheless I question them.
I also would not presume to know what “most people really do wish” as I have not done any comprehensive survey. It seems to me that there is a small very dedicated cadre of haters, a larger group that has been mildly annoyed but just ignores him mostly, another group who ignores him mostly but see that he has some interactions of real value, and a small group who think he’s interesting all the way round. But that’s just my impression.
And yes, I apparently have missed those emotional blackmail episodes. Maybe that’s because I don’t obsessively follow all things Lib, and don’t feel the need to open up every thread that has him posting in it. I’ve read enough to know that he can be full of shit sometimes and a bit “off” others. And can write long personal sagas that can hijack things if other posters respond. And sometimes he can engage in very intelligent and reasoned discussions presenting points of view that I have not considered or am not too familiar with. Much of what Lib posts is just not my particular interest and while I’ve skimmed a few of his longer personal saga missives I’ve no difficulty moving over them and onto other posts. It really isn’t so hard to just roll your eyes and move on to the next post. Give it a shot.
“Oh the humanity”? No, oh the inanity.
But thanks for trying to give an answer to my question. I’m not sure I understand it though. If I have it right your reason for the hate is that you felt emotionally manipulated by him? Because trying unsuccessfully to emotionally blackmail you would, I think, only result in a roll eyes or maybe a laugh or at most an annoyance. “Venom” would imply that you feel he got you to care and then took advantage of that emotion. Do I have it right or do I misunderstand you?
By “the attitude” I meant you would not put up with such TMI-divulging, personal diatribes, etc from a casual acquaintance, I should think. Especially not repeatedly over a long period.
You can skim over the ‘Liberal’ but you can’t skip over the ‘Liberal-responders’? Sorry, but you’ve decided to mix yourself up other people’s affairs. If you can’t understand that people would have a personal history or dislike of the guy…well then there’s really nothing for it.
Are you saying that in real life you would stalk, insult, and/or harass a casual acquaintance who told you too much personal information or who was socially inappropriate? Because honestly if you are using real life as the guide I think you may want to think about what you really would do. Me, I’d politely find a way to excuse myself and then avoid being near the person in the future when possible. Unless the person had other value to me. And then I’d put up with his or her eccentricities for the other values the person had. And I do know people like that. What can I say, I know some odd people with some very strong suits. I can tolerate strangeness; I have a harder time tolerating hate.
I may just need to skip over the Lib-haters, 'tis true. And once again I can understand a dislike of the guy. But when I perceive a thuggish gang mentality developing, the online version of a mob with pitchforks hunting “the monster” down, I feel I have some ethical obligation to speak up. Make fun of that if you will, but it is true.
There is also wisdom in not taking an inelegant analogy too far. You’re speaking up about it but not amounting to anything more than finger-shaking schoolmarm admonishment. You know that’s never going to work.
DSeid, check your PMs.
Jeff, whatever you think of DSeid’s analogy, what you’re participating in regarding Lib isn’t just random board members disliking another poster, it’s a coordinated group effort to snipe and disrupt, based on an interest in the poster himself rather than the subject of his discussions. That’s cyberbullying, by most interpretations of the term.
DSeid’s question -and mine, which I’ve asked elsewhere- is “Why?” We’re talking about a group of sane, friendly and enjoyable posters poking fun at a guy on a board where he doesn’t participate (no real problem there), but then following him around on a different board to try and refute his personal story and disrupt his discussions.
Maybe you’re all passionate defenders of Cherokee purity and avid theologians who despise apostasy, but I haven’t somehow got that impression reading your general posts elsewhere. And many of you are so determined to keep Lib as an enemy you refuse self analysis and call reasonable questions ‘schoolmarmish’ and reasonable moderation to impede your bullying ‘capricious’ and ‘arbitrary’.
You’re all individually better than this pack behavior.
I say they’re not better than this, myself. This is the best they can be, their apex as human beings.
Scary, ain’t it?
I think it is just what DSeid (and xenophon41) said, just mob mentality. There is a group of assholes who follow Lib around and pick at him until he responds. Then when he responds (and he always does) they accuse him of “making this thread all about you” and so on. This latest shit about how he is not really Cherokee is another attempt to find something to pick at.
38,000 posts, and Lib still has not learned not to feed the trolls, which is unfortunate. It is coming rather close to cyber-stalking, although not (IMO) over the line as of yet. IANAMod, so… :shrugs:
Regards,
Shodan
So what would you have us do instead?
My hope is that many travelling with the mob will recognize that this has gone too far once it has been pointed out to them, once some critical mass of us stand up and state that this has gone too far, that the bulk are not intrinsically bad people but just have gotten carried away. And that the few who are the passionate assholes will be a bit less obnoxious without the crowd behind them.
In any case, other than turning away and watching other parts of the board get diminished as Pit material spills into it, I as a regular Joe poster have no other options, do I?