Opinions?

Opinions

Why can’t we have them?
I find it quite funny that lately everyone has been jumping on one bandwagon or another.
Civility aside I am curious about some things.

Why are threads being shut down for “Personal Attacks” when I see personal opinion?

Can a person not be descriptive of a perception without a perception being called a Personal attack?

I mean seriously let’s look at some examples and then Id like to get your opinions.

For instance

If Shadow says something totally stupid and arrogant or asinine and a poster replies….

PosterX: Shadow you’re a stupid fucking asshole and your children have dents in their head.

That’s an implied personal attack.
Especially when in all reality Shadow is Ken Doll challenged and Kids are not allowed on the Main grid so how would they know if they have dents or not?

However, if PosterX comes back with a perception such as below:

PosterX: Shadow your reply is short sighted, vitriolic and (they proceed to outline the perception of that individual's post or posting style.)

Sorry, but I thought we were adults here.
Why can’t we offer up perceptions of our understanding to help either curb the poster's attitude to one that we can understand?
If the original poster continues on their vile method of replies then maybe we can discern a pattern and allow them to truly hang themselves via the TOS.
This is why I disagree with some of the preemptive strikes on closing down certain threads.
It’s kind of like having a babysitter and I got rid of mine when I got out of the Army.

Sorry maybe I am ranting, I'm not even pointing fingers at any one individual just throwing out a Perception and I guess maybe that’s too much.

But if this thread doesn’t get killed I would love to hear others thoughts on this.

Shadow.

All that stuff doesn't really matter since my opinions are the only ones that count.

Have opinions??!?!

Are you CRAZY

BTW, how is

OSCAR MEYER?

Last I seen of him he was cracking Wallnuts...

I think the expression goes, "opinions are like assholes... everyone has one".

- Ace

i think being adults is the problem to some extent.
some perceptions, as you call them, are nothing more than erudite personal attacks.

the problem being that the moderators are trying to judge intent, which isn't always clear.

I agree Shadow. One of my biggest forum pet peeves is people who are incapable of distinguishing between a strongly dissenting opinion and a personal attack. My other biggest pet peeve is labeling... techi wiki, FIC, and so on, which are labels created for the sole purpose of accusing vague groups of people of something the poster finds objectionable. I find that kind of stereotyping incredibly objectionable, narrow minded, and just plain wrong. There's been far too much of that kind of crap lately. Agree or disagree with people as individuals. Don't invent shadowy groups so you can tilt at windmills and then try to pretend it's not an attack because it's not being made against anyone specific. It's an excuse that doesn't fly with me.

I may try to be polite as hell about this sort of thing, but I agree here.

I agree Chip. Inventing shadowy groups for the purpose of labelling, is grievous.

It's alway easier to hate a large faceless group... For instance how many times did you hear 'I hate the french' the other year..

Easy to say 'I hate the French' - harder to tell your French born neighbour 'I hate you'.

As for hating people by broad vague groups... a hallmark of ignorance. Of the many and varied things and differences you can dislike someone for, using 'because you or this broad group' is just lazy and silly.

Although I can see how creating a bunch of imaginary groups to make war with could give an individual a sense of purpose and importance - if such things were lacking in thier lives.

I'd put rate it somewhere between schoolyard elitism and klan-ignorance...

Siggy.

... and they all claim it is the OTHER ONE that stinks.

Heh.

I do not have a high regard for people who focus on the letter of the law rather than the spirit of the law.

For example, I could write a very nasty post about chip without ever mentioning his name, but you all would know exactly who i was talking about. I could always claim outraged innocence, for what right do you have to assume who i am speaking off! (not that I ever would do such a thing to chip, who brings reason and maturity to this forum)

I could also insult people in the form of gross generalizations and group assumptions.

Hiding insults behind jokes, generalizations and obfuscations doesn't change anything.

You can feather a swine, but that won't make it a swan.

In MY OPINION, your post should have looked like this:

I totally agree with what Chip says here! Very well said!!

Good thread Shadow!



*gets her "stalk Chip" shoes out of inventory and begins to dust them off*

I don't know whats going on in this thread but I like the looks of it so I'll sign it anyway.

And Baba Yamamoto's name as well (he gave me permission damnit!).

Thanks for those that replied on both sides of the fence.

I guess the point simply I was making is why does someone have to misconstrue what another individual says.

I personally believe that misunderstanding is the biggest contributor to the heated hate threads that we have.

So what does this mean?

Some one mentioned once that words were only what people understood them to be and that a dictionary definition of the word was often times incorrect as to its meaning.

(Please note due to recent threads and notations I am going to use two individuals as examples but do not make this thread about them as that is not the intent the intent is as an example of my statements.)

If what that individual said is true then that totally explains why there are so many "I hate Prokofy" and lets "Ban Blaze" threads that went on.
People misunderstood and in the process of that created dissention.

See its like this some people try to elevate themselves to being smarter than others and look up long .10$ words to elaborate their points.
Problem is these words when taken in the context that they were intended through dictionaries definitions creates "hate", "Anger" and total lack of control of mental reasoning.

One big one that I have noted that creates the same dissention is when a person of educated background asks those .10$ dictionary writers to elaborate on their words.

They can't because they only half understood the words themselves in the first place. So they reply with personal attacks and noting veiled attempts at attacks.

Again maybe I am just ranting, Maybe due to the recent way the forums have evolved.
I have tried to evolve with them and instead I have lowered my standards I used to uphold.

Anyway, thank you for those that are debating this amicably.

Shadow.

i think the war of "words and their meaning" occurs because people try to control the debate. if you can shape the words, you shape the debate.

for many people debating becomes about winning.

so i'd say the biggest contributor would be the desire to be right all the time.

Shadow, once again, you and I agree.

I find it incredible that there are people on these forums that feel thy have a right to violently clash with anyone they disagree with.

Personally, I urge everyone who is sick and tired of thes silly way of running forums, to stop responding to these children who follow this philosphy. I believe in doing so, you will fnd that these children will grow weary of visiting the forums and our problems will be solved!

i don't think this will work because most people operate under some version of the "reasonable person" principle - which is that people are assumed to be reasonable until proven otherwise.

which is to say, that as long as there are new people who haven't run into the childish behavior before, they will engage the children assuming the children are reasonable.

and so there is a near infinite supply of responders.

Stone while your words ring true in the context of how they are illuminated.
My statement eludes to misunderstanding.

With misunderstanding the aforementioned is in essence moot.

It's like battling a dog in a battle of the wits.
A dog cannot speak, agreed?
But it understands limited commands such as speak, heel, bark and lay down.
The moment you try to converse with the animal over the teachings of Nietzsche it will give you that High pitched whistle look.

So in that context how can you control a debate when the words used that are not understood or correctly interpreted by the opponent?
My opinion is you can't.
By continuing to "push" your point across will only flustrate the opponent to anger.
Therby reducing their ability to understand even further.
For that matter if the words you use are inflamatory in their cultural background.
They can incite other emotions that were not intended intially thus putting both partys on the defensive.

Thus I give you once more, my opinion as this. Misunderstanding is a major contributor to forum assualt where as controling a debate is only sought by a select few.

Shadow.

PS Thank you Bob for agreeing.

In this statement Stone I agree, its unfortunate that this is the premise of most culturally intelegent.
However, this is for the most part is as accurate as you can get on an analogy of human psychi.

Shadow

i agree this is the case, if the intent is actual communication.

sometimes i don't think that's the actual intent of some people, i think some people just try to win.

but in the context you set, you're right.

Thank you for understanding, at least now we are communicating and not trying to bludgeon eachother with Nuke's

Shadow

Someone explain something to me please, exactly how is it possible for anyone to cunduct personal attacks in these forums when we dont know each other?

We need to get this straight really,we are not talking about 'personal' attacks are we, we're talking about trolling.

Chip Midnight is an overbearing self offacious money grabbing egotist

Aplogies Chip lol - is that a personal attack? I dont see how it can be because I dont know you from Adam - its trolling,forum baiting etc etc etc and it goes on WAY too much here,posts by people who's ONLY function is to destroy any reasonable discussion you can come up with.

In short - a few people posting on every thread just to get a rise out of you,posting opinions on subjects & people they know zero about, just to get their post count up and have their five minutes of fame.