Devil's Advocate....

... and he's got his own WD-40

I do, my balcony door always sticks. A little WD-40 and it is as good as new

Playing devil's advocate can stoke a discussion and make people rethink or affirm their own positions on issues. It's very healthy for a discussion. Often in organized debate you'd have to promote and defend a position to stretch your technique, and often those positions will have been completely opposed to your own personal positions.

The difference between organized debate and the SL forums, or any forums, is the organized bit, and the lynch mob that starts to well up in the audience. People don't always realize when someone is playing devil's advocate to further a debate, and it's only natural that each of us draw conclusions and form opinions based on what someone declares here. That's human nature, no matter how open minded we like to think we are. We all make judgments.

Playing devil's advocate without being contracted by the rules of formal debate is a precarious position to take, and one that's very hard to keep on course. Too often the advocate bows beneath the overwhelming dissent coming their way and lashes out with fictional 'facts', emotional terrorism, ad hominem attacks, straw men, and every other 'illegal' debate tactic in the books, because it's also human nature (for all but the most spineless) to defend ourselves.

The base discussion becomes lost, the advocate is painted with the brush of whatever s/he was advocating, and there are generally a lot of harsh feelings all around.

I wouldn't play devil's advocate here without clearly declaring that's what I was doing, and even then I would expect to get flamed. I would also expect at least a handful of people to assume I was hiding behind the 'advocate' badge to express what I really felt. I would also expect to catch a lot of grief for daring to go against the herd, even by those who preach open-mindedness and individuality. Insults, rumors, broad assumptions, personal attacks.. those would all come with the territory from some of our more knee-jerk residents, and anyone setting out to stoke a discussion by playing devil's advocate should expect them all.

What lively discussion.

Devil's advocate or not, listen then speak.

One of my favorite authors, Salman Rushdie, is a proponent of speaking clearly what you think -- being fierce in your thoughts -- regardless of the bias you may have for the opinions others will have of you.

Being offended by something is becoming more and more of a silly thing to me. The more I think about what people are offended by, the more I think how silly they are. Being offended by something is to take personal the opinions someone may have that are contrary to some fundamental reasoning behind your opinion.

Now don't get me wrong -- there are certain things that are just plain wrong: racism, classicism, and bigotry for example -- but nonetheless, they are simply opinions that are contrary to fundamental beliefs that form our opinions. Like how fundamentally most of us know that racism is wrong which formulates our opinions surrounding it (which is by and large a higher-level process): ie -- a white man may have the opinion that using derogatory racial slurs to adress someone is wrong. another may find it acceptable. They could both fundamentally believe that racism is wrong -- they just have different opinions surrounding it.

So ultimately, what I'm saying is -- say whatever the hell you want. It's your life, your mind, your conscience, your soul, whatever. If you are a racist pighead -- be a racist pighead. Just don't be surprised when the majority of people disagree with you. We all just have to remember that fundamental layer that gets lost in misappropriated speech and the levels of language that we're not often aware of.

It's this phenome that can allow someone to seem like something they fundamentally aren't. Either way, we have to protect ourselves from ourselves in these situations because the fundamentality of ourselves is the fundamentals of humanity as a whole. Therefore, things like hate and bigotry are things we want to remove at the fundamental core of ourselves. The only way we can do that is by understanding...

and understanding is argument.

Therefore, why alienate your right to understanding? Our fundamental selves are slow to change and sometimes taking the seat we don't like sitting in and trying to argue for it is the best way to better change our fundamental beliefs so that we may form new opinions.

... and I'm full of words today so I'm gonna shut up and say: be offended all you want. be offended till you're old, cranky, and bitter. and be as offensive as you are. just don't be hateful, bigoted, and such silly things. Open mind people -- it's not thick skinned, it's understanding who you're talking to.

You're kidding right? I agreed with your post entirely until this last paragraph...

Expect personal attacks? Insults? Rumors? Ummm, correct me if I am wrong, but this is the LAST thing I would "expect", SL is "supposed" to be for 18 and over, and so are the forums... Anyone that resorts to these types of actions whenever they don't like something said should have an age verification done, and if they are over 18, I would imagine it is time to grow up.

Eh, actually things were very civil before some pompous person entered the thread and *crapped* out shit like this:

"Most of all, raise the level of the damned dialogue. All this chest thumping is starting to deafen people to valid points."

Nice dismissal and complete non-recognition of the fact that the debate wasn't binary at all and that there were several viewpoints being projected.

How craptastic.

Where's Kandahar when you need... OH! nm.....

Flypaper catches flys, how inexplicable.

And look where that got him! But yeah, I strongly agree with this statement.

If you wouldn't expect these things, you don't read these forums. I didn't declare them as the correct form of action, I said to expect them. It's unfortunate that people respond this way, but they do, all the time. And they will. We've all seen it.