Butthurt, a Few Thoughts Concerning.

[insideout]

But

my Butt doesn't hurt.

And anyway, people wouldn't care so much about being butthurt if you were nice enough to give them a reach-around.

just sayin...

[navkat]

Okay, as promised, my long-ass thoughts on the butthurt thing:

People around here get butthurt more than we really need to because we're not following some basic rules...some of them are even our own.

1. It's the fucking internet. People say shit. 5 times out of 7, It's not about you, it's about them. Know why? BECAUSE YOU AREN'T EVEN IN THE FUCKING ROOM. They're not really addressing you, even when they are. They're running at the mouth, haplessly and you are standing (or putting yourself) in the way.

2. Again (and I can't stress this enough) YOU AREN'T IN THE FUCKING ROOM. Nobody can see your facial expressions. Sarcasm, laughter, a good portion of the human experience gets lost. Drowned out in walls of text. So do the recoils and looks of hurt, interruptions, interjections in normal conversation that signal to a person to stop and clarify or change tack. In a normal mano y mano, if someone starts running their mouth, it's easy to stop them and say "Wait a minute. You DO know my mom DIED of Fruit Roll-up addiction, don't you?" Then sensitivity can occur. This doesn't make the person a phoney-baloney, mincing words, it's a necessary part of human exchange when someone is RUNNING OFF AT THE MOUTH. It's a moment for them to pause and really THINK about what they actually mean: you've given them perspective, now they have to factor that into the flow. They have to now reassess their own perspective in less 2-dimensional, overly-simplistic terms and put the brakes on some of the mercilessly one-sided shit that might've rolled out of their mouth otherwise.

In the forum medium, they get to dump their entire, unrebutted opinion onto the page and then YOU, dear reader, have to get pelted with the entire, fucking diatribe, getting hotter and hotter with every one-sided word. Then you let 'em have it. So the original poster is now left with a choice: If they change tack NOW, they look like they're backpeddling. If they don't, they're digging in and screeching. The only winning move becomes not to play (which is what I do).

3. Riding The Correct MILSPEC Humvee. Okay, so you're right. The other guy's opinions are lame. You've got your shit figured out, can point to citations, are pretty sure you're using a good blend of common sense and empathy when formulating your view on the matter and the other guy's being a calloused or uninformed dumbass. Or he's a corpsefucker. Whatever. Okay, so put on your Captain America helmet, climb onto your MOTORCYCLE and zip on through. You're right, other credible people agree with you (or not. But probably so. Who cares?) and you've illuminated an area where the other guy needs to grow up a little bit. This is Easy Rider, man. SO WHY ARE YOU STRAPPING YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS INTO A GIANT, STUFFY, GAS-GUZZLING MONSTROSITY OF RIGHTNESS AND DRIVING ALL OVER THE THREAD FOR SIX MORE PAGES? At some point, it just starts to look like a circle-jerk at some dumbshit's expense before he's had a chance to go back and school himself. Again, fostering screeching or flouncing.

"If ya wanna be a bird, why don't you try a little flyin?"

4. Not letting people off the hook gracefully. Even when someone tries to change tack, self-correct or open another door, people station themselves in front of every exit and screech:
Dude A: "Okay, x, y and z is true but moving onto my other point about a,e,i,o and u..."
PeeDee: "YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT X, Y AND Z, DUMBSHIT!"
Dude: "Okay! I only said that because ___ and ___. Let's just leave "sometimes y" out of it for a minute and..."
PeeDee: "THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD. X, Y AND Z ARE BACKED BY SCIENTIFIC FACTS, YOU UNINFORMED MONKEY-NOZZLE. YOUR CREDIBILITY IS RUINED FOR THE DAY. POSSIBLY EVEN THE WEEK. THIS WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER."

5. The Mee Toos. If shit's getting heated, the only reasons to fucking pipe up should be:
a. You are lending a measured and well-balanced validation to someone's argument that they, themselves didn't cover or that you have an alternative way of articulating/presenting for the purpose of helping someone be better informed or gain fair perspective and in the name of benevolence. This can be assertive if need be. Piping in to tell someone "Yes, but that's not what you said." Or pointing out a logical fallacy. Or posting citation.
b. One party is CLEARLY being a douchenozzle and causing genuine harm, distress or making threats--in which case, we all stick together. We do not tolerate stalking, threats, manipulation or downright nastiness against one of our own.
OR
c. You're just ganging up/white knighting/showing allegiance for your favorite(s). If this is the case, stop. Stop. STOP.

Here's the difference: Roger seeing some jerkoff having a difficult time accepting Nigel as a strong, female opponent and telling that guy where to stick is as only a man can call-out another man is Right On. Someone popping in to reiterate all of Roger's points when he's already doing a fine job of nailing someone's balls to a chair is just schadenfreude. You're enjoying yourself. Or masturbating Roger. I don't care which. Stop it. However...

6. NOT stepping in when it's necessary/The Right Thing To Do. If someone is clearly getting bullied or when someone's unfairly drowning/stumbling...OR because the person who's wrong is "higher ranking" and you don't have the integrity enough to try to bring things into focus, that's just fucked. It should be a welcome part of discourse for someone to say "Hey, dude, you have a lot of clout here but I gotta tell ya, FNG23 has a point. He's floundering about it but here's where he's solid: ..."

7. Exaggerated outrage directed at other members but disguised as righteous conscientiousness.
Really? It bothers you THAT, FUCKING MUCH that some chucklehead called all Hatian sugar-cane farmers a bunch of sketchy marshmallow-fuckers? REALLY? Are you really THAT FUCKING OUTRAGED that someone had the GALL to suggest that school uniforms are in fact, NOT a form of fascist indoctrination, but rather, a way to equalize students in mixed socioeconomic neighborhoods? REALLY? THAT makes them a fascist goat-fucker with no value to the human race? REALLLLLY????? ARE YOU THAT FUCKING STUPID? DID YOUR YOUNGER BROTHERS ALWAYS WIN AT THE WEEKLY ASS-KICKING CONTESTS IN YOUR OBVIOUSLY DYSFUNCTIONAL HOME???? You people make me SICK. YOU ARE THE REASON THE TEABAGGERS ARE WINNING. Go back to your Sarah Lee cream puffs and watch Oprah give away Vespas, sock-defiler.

See where I'm going with this?

8. Willful ignorance/continued feigned misunderstanding.
If someone makes their point, you misunderstand and challenge their point, loudly and obnoxiously and then they clarify the misunderstanding, STOP ATTACKING THEM FOR THE THING YOU MISUNDERSTOOD. Really. This gets like a runaway train in here sometimes. A little necessary disclosure: I'm biased on this point and I'll tell you why and then you can decide whether the point is still credible based on that but it's a fine example to underscore this...

Remember last year when I got into it with some people on here for comments I made about the military?  It was the Anarchism and Welfare thread. I made a point about the dissonance between some of stupid/nasty things people say they want to do or fantasize about doing and what they actually end up wanting to do when finally faced with that choice in reality.  To illustrate my point, I used the metaphor that there exist some people in this country who join the military because they want to (and I quote because I served with some of them) "blow shit up." But the minute someone gives them the keys to the tank, they comprehend the gravity of the situation and the idea of "blowing shit up" loses its charm quick.

Coyote rebutted with the fact that his service in the Army was always intended to be peaceful and anti-militaristic from the start and that he never intended to blow anything up, ever, nor was there ever a chance that he would.

Then I replied with something that was supposed to come out like: "Well, when you joined, if it turned out they didn't have a peaceful billet for you and the Army changed its mind, screwed you over and put a rocket-launcher in your hands, you'd be stuck blowing shit up. And even though that's never what you intended, you'd be stuck doing it and it'd be your own fault too because they told you when they swore you in and you agreed and promised that if the Army ever asked you to kill someone, you would."

What I actually said was:

Two points:
1. Of COURSE you didn't join to kill anyone, neither have you said or done anything to indicate that you would enjoy taking lives. Troll account is trollish.

2. That said, the military is inherently violent and you are an adult, of legal age and entered willingly into a contract whose terms imply that you will likely, at some point, be required to take a life to not be in breach of that contract. I did it, you did it, I understand. There a level of disconnect from the following truth: "the purpose of the military is to kill people in a situation wherein my elected officials have determined they will not listen to reason." It's easy to forget when you're in your early 20s and indulging fantasies in your head of decoding intel and jumping out of airplanes but it is nonetheless true and your own fault/responsibility if, after jumping out of airplanes, your orders include putting a slug into the head of a 12 year old child, pointing a gun at you.

OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I WAS HANOI JANE, CARESSING THE HAND OF A VIET-CONG FLIGHT OFFICER WITH HIS FINGER ON THE BUTTON OF THE BIG ONE, POINTED RIGHT AT THE HAIGHT.

Someone decided I was calling Coyote, Roger, his son, myself and the entire length and breadth of US SVMs and Vets baby-killers. Then I tried to clarify. No dice. I felt genuinely bad and tried to fix it. Over and over, I tried to make my point that he, I, Rog, all of us...we signed a contract with the military. Military inherently means use of militant force. Militant force implies people get killed by weapons. People getting killed by weapons necessarily means someone pulled some triggers somewhere along the way...whether they wanted to or not, triggers got squeezed. We are the ones who agreed to be the squeezers and many of us agreed to that hoping we'd never really have to but knowing deep-down that we might.

It didn't matter. No matter what I said, I was told that CLEARLY, I was calling coyote some nasty shit. It just got worse and worse. Runaway train. I was struck several times with thoughts about that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy says "Don't be obtuse" and the warden was all like "WHAAAT did you call me?!?"

Somewhere along the way, someone in that mess had to have either known what I was really trying to say but chose keep riding that train all the way to Jackson...or simply refused to get to the bottom of it with me because they'd already decided what I meant and where I could shove my Jell-o Pudding Pop that day and they weren't about to let me keep it in the wrapper no matter WHAT the truth was.

I tried to stick it out but it became apparent that I really wasn't offering anyone anything of worth so...exit navkat.

9. Failure to compartmentalize flame-topics to their original thread.
On the surface, this seems to not be a problem but we all do this thing where we discredit or disarm someone's argument based on their statements in a thread where they were caught with their pants down. It follows them in the form of nicknames and dismissals.


10. Inability to apologize/admit wrong.
If you tore them down publicly, you should apologize publicly...or at least apologize privately but make the public effort to make nice without hiding behind some lame "I'm going to be the bigger person here" baloney.

11. We need to let shit roll off our backs.
So, someone waxed your nozzle widdershins instead of deasil. Okay, so? Let them be. It doesn't mean you lost or that they're right, it means you opted not to decorate your cage with their skull.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Better response tomorrow.  Bedtime for Bonzo.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

But if we follow those rules, no one will get cake!

[East Coast Hustle]

Okay, as promised, my long-ass thoughts on the butthurt thing:

People around here get butthurt more than we really need to because we're not following some basic rules...some of them are even our own.

1. It's the fucking internet. People say shit. 5 times out of 7, It's not about you, it's about them. Know why? BECAUSE YOU AREN'T EVEN IN THE FUCKING ROOM. They're not really addressing you, even when they are. They're running at the mouth, haplessly and you are standing (or putting yourself) in the way.

2. Again (and I can't stress this enough) YOU AREN'T IN THE FUCKING ROOM. Nobody can see your facial expressions. Sarcasm, laughter, a good portion of the human experience gets lost. Drowned out in walls of text. So do the recoils and looks of hurt, interruptions, interjections in normal conversation that signal to a person to stop and clarify or change tack. In a normal mano y mano, if someone starts running their mouth, it's easy to stop them and say "Wait a minute. You DO know my mom DIED of Fruit Roll-up addiction, don't you?" Then sensitivity can occur. This doesn't make the person a phoney-baloney, mincing words, it's a necessary part of human exchange when someone is RUNNING OFF AT THE MOUTH. It's a moment for them to pause and really THINK about what they actually mean: you've given them perspective, now they have to factor that into the flow. They have to now reassess their own perspective in less 2-dimensional, overly-simplistic terms and put the brakes on some of the mercilessly one-sided shit that might've rolled out of their mouth otherwise.

In the forum medium, they get to dump their entire, unrebutted opinion onto the page and then YOU, dear reader, have to get pelted with the entire, fucking diatribe, getting hotter and hotter with every one-sided word. Then you let 'em have it. So the original poster is now left with a choice: If they change tack NOW, they look like they're backpeddling. If they don't, they're digging in and screeching. The only winning move becomes not to play (which is what I do).

3. Riding The Correct MILSPEC Humvee. Okay, so you're right. The other guy's opinions are lame. You've got your shit figured out, can point to citations, are pretty sure you're using a good blend of common sense and empathy when formulating your view on the matter and the other guy's being a calloused or uninformed dumbass. Or he's a corpsefucker. Whatever. Okay, so put on your Captain America helmet, climb onto your MOTORCYCLE and zip on through. You're right, other credible people agree with you (or not. But probably so. Who cares?) and you've illuminated an area where the other guy needs to grow up a little bit. This is Easy Rider, man. SO WHY ARE YOU STRAPPING YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS INTO A GIANT, STUFFY, GAS-GUZZLING MONSTROSITY OF RIGHTNESS AND DRIVING ALL OVER THE THREAD FOR SIX MORE PAGES? At some point, it just starts to look like a circle-jerk at some dumbshit's expense before he's had a chance to go back and school himself. Again, fostering screeching or flouncing.

"If ya wanna be a bird, why don't you try a little flyin?"

4. Not letting people off the hook gracefully. Even when someone tries to change tack, self-correct or open another door, people station themselves in front of every exit and screech:
Dude A: "Okay, x, y and z is true but moving onto my other point about a,e,i,o and u..."
PeeDee: "YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT X, Y AND Z, DUMBSHIT!"
Dude: "Okay! I only said that because ___ and ___. Let's just leave "sometimes y" out of it for a minute and..."
PeeDee: "THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD. X, Y AND Z ARE BACKED BY SCIENTIFIC FACTS, YOU UNINFORMED MONKEY-NOZZLE. YOUR CREDIBILITY IS RUINED FOR THE DAY. POSSIBLY EVEN THE WEEK. THIS WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER."

5. The Mee Toos. If shit's getting heated, the only reasons to fucking pipe up should be:
a. You are lending a measured and well-balanced validation to someone's argument that they, themselves didn't cover or that you have an alternative way of articulating/presenting for the purpose of helping someone be better informed or gain fair perspective and in the name of benevolence. This can be assertive if need be. Piping in to tell someone "Yes, but that's not what you said." Or pointing out a logical fallacy. Or posting citation.
b. One party is CLEARLY being a douchenozzle and causing genuine harm, distress or making threats--in which case, we all stick together. We do not tolerate stalking, threats, manipulation or downright nastiness against one of our own.
OR
c. You're just ganging up/white knighting/showing allegiance for your favorite(s). If this is the case, stop. Stop. STOP.

Here's the difference: Roger seeing some jerkoff having a difficult time accepting Nigel as a strong, female opponent and telling that guy where to stick is as only a man can call-out another man is Right On. Someone popping in to reiterate all of Roger's points when he's already doing a fine job of nailing someone's balls to a chair is just schadenfreude. You're enjoying yourself. Or masturbating Roger. I don't care which. Stop it. However...

6. NOT stepping in when it's necessary/The Right Thing To Do. If someone is clearly getting bullied or when someone's unfairly drowning/stumbling...OR because the person who's wrong is "higher ranking" and you don't have the integrity enough to try to bring things into focus, that's just fucked. It should be a welcome part of discourse for someone to say "Hey, dude, you have a lot of clout here but I gotta tell ya, FNG23 has a point. He's floundering about it but here's where he's solid: ..."

7. Exaggerated outrage directed at other members but disguised as righteous conscientiousness.
Really? It bothers you THAT, FUCKING MUCH that some chucklehead called all Hatian sugar-cane farmers a bunch of sketchy marshmallow-fuckers? REALLY? Are you really THAT FUCKING OUTRAGED that someone had the GALL to suggest that school uniforms are in fact, NOT a form of fascist indoctrination, but rather, a way to equalize students in mixed socioeconomic neighborhoods? REALLY? THAT makes them a fascist goat-fucker with no value to the human race? REALLLLLY????? ARE YOU THAT FUCKING STUPID? DID YOUR YOUNGER BROTHERS ALWAYS WIN AT THE WEEKLY ASS-KICKING CONTESTS IN YOUR OBVIOUSLY DYSFUNCTIONAL HOME???? You people make me SICK. YOU ARE THE REASON THE TEABAGGERS ARE WINNING. Go back to your Sarah Lee cream puffs and watch Oprah give away Vespas, sock-defiler.

See where I'm going with this?

8. Willful ignorance/continued feigned misunderstanding.
If someone makes their point, you misunderstand and challenge their point, loudly and obnoxiously and then they clarify the misunderstanding, STOP ATTACKING THEM FOR THE THING YOU MISUNDERSTOOD. Really. This gets like a runaway train in here sometimes. A little necessary disclosure: I'm biased on this point and I'll tell you why and then you can decide whether the point is still credible based on that but it's a fine example to underscore this...

Remember last year when I got into it with some people on here for comments I made about the military?  It was the Anarchism and Welfare thread. I made a point about the dissonance between some of stupid/nasty things people say they want to do or fantasize about doing and what they actually end up wanting to do when finally faced with that choice in reality.  To illustrate my point, I used the metaphor that there exist some people in this country who join the military because they want to (and I quote because I served with some of them) "blow shit up." But the minute someone gives them the keys to the tank, they comprehend the gravity of the situation and the idea of "blowing shit up" loses its charm quick.

Coyote rebutted with the fact that his service in the Army was always intended to be peaceful and anti-militaristic from the start and that he never intended to blow anything up, ever, nor was there ever a chance that he would.

Then I replied with something that was supposed to come out like: "Well, when you joined, if it turned out they didn't have a peaceful billet for you and the Army changed its mind, screwed you over and put a rocket-launcher in your hands, you'd be stuck blowing shit up. And even though that's never what you intended, you'd be stuck doing it and it'd be your own fault too because they told you when they swore you in and you agreed and promised that if the Army ever asked you to kill someone, you would."

What I actually said was:

Two points:
1. Of COURSE you didn't join to kill anyone, neither have you said or done anything to indicate that you would enjoy taking lives. Troll account is trollish.

2. That said, the military is inherently violent and you are an adult, of legal age and entered willingly into a contract whose terms imply that you will likely, at some point, be required to take a life to not be in breach of that contract. I did it, you did it, I understand. There a level of disconnect from the following truth: "the purpose of the military is to kill people in a situation wherein my elected officials have determined they will not listen to reason." It's easy to forget when you're in your early 20s and indulging fantasies in your head of decoding intel and jumping out of airplanes but it is nonetheless true and your own fault/responsibility if, after jumping out of airplanes, your orders include putting a slug into the head of a 12 year old child, pointing a gun at you.

OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I WAS HANOI JANE, CARESSING THE HAND OF A VIET-CONG FLIGHT OFFICER WITH HIS FINGER ON THE BUTTON OF THE BIG ONE, POINTED RIGHT AT THE HAIGHT.

Someone decided I was calling Coyote, Roger, his son, myself and the entire length and breadth of US SVMs and Vets baby-killers. Then I tried to clarify. No dice. I felt genuinely bad and tried to fix it. Over and over, I tried to make my point that he, I, Rog, all of us...we signed a contract with the military. Military inherently means use of militant force. Militant force implies people get killed by weapons. People getting killed by weapons necessarily means someone pulled some triggers somewhere along the way...whether they wanted to or not, triggers got squeezed. We are the ones who agreed to be the squeezers and many of us agreed to that hoping we'd never really have to but knowing deep-down that we might.

It didn't matter. No matter what I said, I was told that CLEARLY, I was calling coyote some nasty shit. It just got worse and worse. Runaway train. I was struck several times with thoughts about that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy says "Don't be obtuse" and the warden was all like "WHAAAT did you call me?!?"

Somewhere along the way, someone in that mess had to have either known what I was really trying to say but chose keep riding that train all the way to Jackson...or simply refused to get to the bottom of it with me because they'd already decided what I meant and where I could shove my Jell-o Pudding Pop that day and they weren't about to let me keep it in the wrapper no matter WHAT the truth was.

I tried to stick it out but it became apparent that I really wasn't offering anyone anything of worth so...exit navkat.

9. Failure to compartmentalize flame-topics to their original thread.
On the surface, this seems to not be a problem but we all do this thing where we discredit or disarm someone's argument based on their statements in a thread where they were caught with their pants down. It follows them in the form of nicknames and dismissals.


10. Inability to apologize/admit wrong.
If you tore them down publicly, you should apologize publicly...or at least apologize privately but make the public effort to make nice without hiding behind some lame "I'm going to be the bigger person here" baloney.

11. We need to let shit roll off our backs.
So, someone waxed your nozzle widdershins instead of deasil. Okay, so? Let them be. It doesn't mean you lost or that they're right, it means you opted not to decorate your cage with their skull.

It would be impossible for me to agree with this post more than I currently do.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Awesome post Navkat! Very well said!

[Aucoq]

Okay, as promised, my long-ass thoughts on the butthurt thing:

People around here get butthurt more than we really need to because we're not following some basic rules...some of them are even our own.

1. It's the fucking internet. People say shit. 5 times out of 7, It's not about you, it's about them. Know why? BECAUSE YOU AREN'T EVEN IN THE FUCKING ROOM. They're not really addressing you, even when they are. They're running at the mouth, haplessly and you are standing (or putting yourself) in the way.

2. Again (and I can't stress this enough) YOU AREN'T IN THE FUCKING ROOM. Nobody can see your facial expressions. Sarcasm, laughter, a good portion of the human experience gets lost. Drowned out in walls of text. So do the recoils and looks of hurt, interruptions, interjections in normal conversation that signal to a person to stop and clarify or change tack. In a normal mano y mano, if someone starts running their mouth, it's easy to stop them and say "Wait a minute. You DO know my mom DIED of Fruit Roll-up addiction, don't you?" Then sensitivity can occur. This doesn't make the person a phoney-baloney, mincing words, it's a necessary part of human exchange when someone is RUNNING OFF AT THE MOUTH. It's a moment for them to pause and really THINK about what they actually mean: you've given them perspective, now they have to factor that into the flow. They have to now reassess their own perspective in less 2-dimensional, overly-simplistic terms and put the brakes on some of the mercilessly one-sided shit that might've rolled out of their mouth otherwise.

In the forum medium, they get to dump their entire, unrebutted opinion onto the page and then YOU, dear reader, have to get pelted with the entire, fucking diatribe, getting hotter and hotter with every one-sided word. Then you let 'em have it. So the original poster is now left with a choice: If they change tack NOW, they look like they're backpeddling. If they don't, they're digging in and screeching. The only winning move becomes not to play (which is what I do).

3. Riding The Correct MILSPEC Humvee. Okay, so you're right. The other guy's opinions are lame. You've got your shit figured out, can point to citations, are pretty sure you're using a good blend of common sense and empathy when formulating your view on the matter and the other guy's being a calloused or uninformed dumbass. Or he's a corpsefucker. Whatever. Okay, so put on your Captain America helmet, climb onto your MOTORCYCLE and zip on through. You're right, other credible people agree with you (or not. But probably so. Who cares?) and you've illuminated an area where the other guy needs to grow up a little bit. This is Easy Rider, man. SO WHY ARE YOU STRAPPING YOURSELF AND YOUR FRIENDS INTO A GIANT, STUFFY, GAS-GUZZLING MONSTROSITY OF RIGHTNESS AND DRIVING ALL OVER THE THREAD FOR SIX MORE PAGES? At some point, it just starts to look like a circle-jerk at some dumbshit's expense before he's had a chance to go back and school himself. Again, fostering screeching or flouncing.

"If ya wanna be a bird, why don't you try a little flyin?"

4. Not letting people off the hook gracefully. Even when someone tries to change tack, self-correct or open another door, people station themselves in front of every exit and screech:
Dude A: "Okay, x, y and z is true but moving onto my other point about a,e,i,o and u..."
PeeDee: "YOU WERE WRONG ABOUT X, Y AND Z, DUMBSHIT!"
Dude: "Okay! I only said that because ___ and ___. Let's just leave "sometimes y" out of it for a minute and..."
PeeDee: "THAT IS THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD. X, Y AND Z ARE BACKED BY SCIENTIFIC FACTS, YOU UNINFORMED MONKEY-NOZZLE. YOUR CREDIBILITY IS RUINED FOR THE DAY. POSSIBLY EVEN THE WEEK. THIS WILL HAUNT YOU FOREVER."

5. The Mee Toos. If shit's getting heated, the only reasons to fucking pipe up should be:
a. You are lending a measured and well-balanced validation to someone's argument that they, themselves didn't cover or that you have an alternative way of articulating/presenting for the purpose of helping someone be better informed or gain fair perspective and in the name of benevolence. This can be assertive if need be. Piping in to tell someone "Yes, but that's not what you said." Or pointing out a logical fallacy. Or posting citation.
b. One party is CLEARLY being a douchenozzle and causing genuine harm, distress or making threats--in which case, we all stick together. We do not tolerate stalking, threats, manipulation or downright nastiness against one of our own.
OR
c. You're just ganging up/white knighting/showing allegiance for your favorite(s). If this is the case, stop. Stop. STOP.

Here's the difference: Roger seeing some jerkoff having a difficult time accepting Nigel as a strong, female opponent and telling that guy where to stick is as only a man can call-out another man is Right On. Someone popping in to reiterate all of Roger's points when he's already doing a fine job of nailing someone's balls to a chair is just schadenfreude. You're enjoying yourself. Or masturbating Roger. I don't care which. Stop it. However...

6. NOT stepping in when it's necessary/The Right Thing To Do. If someone is clearly getting bullied or when someone's unfairly drowning/stumbling...OR because the person who's wrong is "higher ranking" and you don't have the integrity enough to try to bring things into focus, that's just fucked. It should be a welcome part of discourse for someone to say "Hey, dude, you have a lot of clout here but I gotta tell ya, FNG23 has a point. He's floundering about it but here's where he's solid: ..."

7. Exaggerated outrage directed at other members but disguised as righteous conscientiousness.
Really? It bothers you THAT, FUCKING MUCH that some chucklehead called all Hatian sugar-cane farmers a bunch of sketchy marshmallow-fuckers? REALLY? Are you really THAT FUCKING OUTRAGED that someone had the GALL to suggest that school uniforms are in fact, NOT a form of fascist indoctrination, but rather, a way to equalize students in mixed socioeconomic neighborhoods? REALLY? THAT makes them a fascist goat-fucker with no value to the human race? REALLLLLY????? ARE YOU THAT FUCKING STUPID? DID YOUR YOUNGER BROTHERS ALWAYS WIN AT THE WEEKLY ASS-KICKING CONTESTS IN YOUR OBVIOUSLY DYSFUNCTIONAL HOME???? You people make me SICK. YOU ARE THE REASON THE TEABAGGERS ARE WINNING. Go back to your Sarah Lee cream puffs and watch Oprah give away Vespas, sock-defiler.

See where I'm going with this?

8. Willful ignorance/continued feigned misunderstanding.
If someone makes their point, you misunderstand and challenge their point, loudly and obnoxiously and then they clarify the misunderstanding, STOP ATTACKING THEM FOR THE THING YOU MISUNDERSTOOD. Really. This gets like a runaway train in here sometimes. A little necessary disclosure: I'm biased on this point and I'll tell you why and then you can decide whether the point is still credible based on that but it's a fine example to underscore this...

Remember last year when I got into it with some people on here for comments I made about the military?  It was the Anarchism and Welfare thread. I made a point about the dissonance between some of stupid/nasty things people say they want to do or fantasize about doing and what they actually end up wanting to do when finally faced with that choice in reality.  To illustrate my point, I used the metaphor that there exist some people in this country who join the military because they want to (and I quote because I served with some of them) "blow shit up." But the minute someone gives them the keys to the tank, they comprehend the gravity of the situation and the idea of "blowing shit up" loses its charm quick.

Coyote rebutted with the fact that his service in the Army was always intended to be peaceful and anti-militaristic from the start and that he never intended to blow anything up, ever, nor was there ever a chance that he would.

Then I replied with something that was supposed to come out like: "Well, when you joined, if it turned out they didn't have a peaceful billet for you and the Army changed its mind, screwed you over and put a rocket-launcher in your hands, you'd be stuck blowing shit up. And even though that's never what you intended, you'd be stuck doing it and it'd be your own fault too because they told you when they swore you in and you agreed and promised that if the Army ever asked you to kill someone, you would."

What I actually said was:

Two points:
1. Of COURSE you didn't join to kill anyone, neither have you said or done anything to indicate that you would enjoy taking lives. Troll account is trollish.

2. That said, the military is inherently violent and you are an adult, of legal age and entered willingly into a contract whose terms imply that you will likely, at some point, be required to take a life to not be in breach of that contract. I did it, you did it, I understand. There a level of disconnect from the following truth: "the purpose of the military is to kill people in a situation wherein my elected officials have determined they will not listen to reason." It's easy to forget when you're in your early 20s and indulging fantasies in your head of decoding intel and jumping out of airplanes but it is nonetheless true and your own fault/responsibility if, after jumping out of airplanes, your orders include putting a slug into the head of a 12 year old child, pointing a gun at you.

OH MY FUCKING GOD, YOU WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I WAS HANOI JANE, CARESSING THE HAND OF A VIET-CONG FLIGHT OFFICER WITH HIS FINGER ON THE BUTTON OF THE BIG ONE, POINTED RIGHT AT THE HAIGHT.

Someone decided I was calling Coyote, Roger, his son, myself and the entire length and breadth of US SVMs and Vets baby-killers. Then I tried to clarify. No dice. I felt genuinely bad and tried to fix it. Over and over, I tried to make my point that he, I, Rog, all of us...we signed a contract with the military. Military inherently means use of militant force. Militant force implies people get killed by weapons. People getting killed by weapons necessarily means someone pulled some triggers somewhere along the way...whether they wanted to or not, triggers got squeezed. We are the ones who agreed to be the squeezers and many of us agreed to that hoping we'd never really have to but knowing deep-down that we might.

It didn't matter. No matter what I said, I was told that CLEARLY, I was calling coyote some nasty shit. It just got worse and worse. Runaway train. I was struck several times with thoughts about that scene in the Shawshank Redemption when Andy says "Don't be obtuse" and the warden was all like "WHAAAT did you call me?!?"

Somewhere along the way, someone in that mess had to have either known what I was really trying to say but chose keep riding that train all the way to Jackson...or simply refused to get to the bottom of it with me because they'd already decided what I meant and where I could shove my Jell-o Pudding Pop that day and they weren't about to let me keep it in the wrapper no matter WHAT the truth was.

I tried to stick it out but it became apparent that I really wasn't offering anyone anything of worth so...exit navkat.

9. Failure to compartmentalize flame-topics to their original thread.
On the surface, this seems to not be a problem but we all do this thing where we discredit or disarm someone's argument based on their statements in a thread where they were caught with their pants down. It follows them in the form of nicknames and dismissals.


10. Inability to apologize/admit wrong.
If you tore them down publicly, you should apologize publicly...or at least apologize privately but make the public effort to make nice without hiding behind some lame "I'm going to be the bigger person here" baloney.

11. We need to let shit roll off our backs.
So, someone waxed your nozzle widdershins instead of deasil. Okay, so? Let them be. It doesn't mean you lost or that they're right, it means you opted not to decorate your cage with their skull.

You had me at "masturbating Roger."

Awesome post, Navkat!

[navkat]

Mathematical! Thanks!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'd argue one point, and I think Cain would, too.

When I'm catching shit over something, provided I'm right, it is nice to occasionally have someone back me up.  "Higher rank", whatever that is, notwithstanding.

[Cain]

Yeah.  I think that is kinda implied under six, but not explicitly said.

It's definitely nice to be acknowledged when you're right, especially when you have six or seven different jackasses harping on about something at you.  I distinctly recall being told over at EB&G, more than once, that no-one bothered backing me up because "I did a good enough job of that myself".  Well, it would've been nice if someone had said so.  I remember feeling like I was getting slammed from several different directions and no-one was willing to actually look at what was said or say "you're being dickweeds, calm the fuck down".  Except me, in those actual arguments.

It's not a very nice feeling.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am BUTTHURT at the following people for the following reasons:

Stella - reminds me of shitty overpriced beer

navkat - not BUTTHURT but pre-emptively BUTTHURT for when she posts her things about BUTTHURT

Roger - a person hairier than I should not exist

LMNO - savage drumming is cracking the walls of the tenement I live in and making it hard to close the door

Luna - is over ten years my senior and LOOKS YOUNGER THAN I DO

Roger - drumming up rumors about the SECOND HALF OF THE JOKE

Ippie - you know what you did you bastard

Waffle - My disagreement with Waffle Iron stems from our fundamentally different perspective regarding the issue of obscure 19th century philosopher/poet Foehershel Byarlsimone.  While Mr. Iron insists that his post-Baroque soliloquies are reminiscient of his predecessor and mentor Drekselern Pridistansen I find them more in the style of the Bjorn Fjarlmane in that their umlauts are arranged in a manner meant to evoke sensory delight.  And I just can't forgive that shit.

Roger - drank coffee in front of me on a day when I was abstaining from coffee

Cain - due to a variety of reasons I shan't go into presently, I found myself stranded in Nigeria bout a decade ago with my funds tied up in frozen accounts.  I sent him an e-mail requesting a small amount just to get mys ass out of Africa and he didn't even fucking respond.

Gogira - name makes too light of the King of Monsters

Roger - just HAS to be on a list more times than anyone else

I'm butthurt that you're not butthurt at me!

[Eater of Clowns]

I am BUTTHURT at the following people for the following reasons:

Stella - reminds me of shitty overpriced beer

navkat - not BUTTHURT but pre-emptively BUTTHURT for when she posts her things about BUTTHURT

Roger - a person hairier than I should not exist

LMNO - savage drumming is cracking the walls of the tenement I live in and making it hard to close the door

Luna - is over ten years my senior and LOOKS YOUNGER THAN I DO

Roger - drumming up rumors about the SECOND HALF OF THE JOKE

Ippie - you know what you did you bastard

Waffle - My disagreement with Waffle Iron stems from our fundamentally different perspective regarding the issue of obscure 19th century philosopher/poet Foehershel Byarlsimone.  While Mr. Iron insists that his post-Baroque soliloquies are reminiscient of his predecessor and mentor Drekselern Pridistansen I find them more in the style of the Bjorn Fjarlmane in that their umlauts are arranged in a manner meant to evoke sensory delight.  And I just can't forgive that shit.

Roger - drank coffee in front of me on a day when I was abstaining from coffee

Cain - due to a variety of reasons I shan't go into presently, I found myself stranded in Nigeria bout a decade ago with my funds tied up in frozen accounts.  I sent him an e-mail requesting a small amount just to get mys ass out of Africa and he didn't even fucking respond.

Gogira - name makes too light of the King of Monsters

Roger - just HAS to be on a list more times than anyone else

I'm butthurt that you're not butthurt at me!

NIGEL - can never remember I live on the far east side of Portland

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Very well-said, Navkat! That was an excellent post.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am BUTTHURT at the following people for the following reasons:

Stella - reminds me of shitty overpriced beer

navkat - not BUTTHURT but pre-emptively BUTTHURT for when she posts her things about BUTTHURT

Roger - a person hairier than I should not exist

LMNO - savage drumming is cracking the walls of the tenement I live in and making it hard to close the door

Luna - is over ten years my senior and LOOKS YOUNGER THAN I DO

Roger - drumming up rumors about the SECOND HALF OF THE JOKE

Ippie - you know what you did you bastard

Waffle - My disagreement with Waffle Iron stems from our fundamentally different perspective regarding the issue of obscure 19th century philosopher/poet Foehershel Byarlsimone.  While Mr. Iron insists that his post-Baroque soliloquies are reminiscient of his predecessor and mentor Drekselern Pridistansen I find them more in the style of the Bjorn Fjarlmane in that their umlauts are arranged in a manner meant to evoke sensory delight.  And I just can't forgive that shit.

Roger - drank coffee in front of me on a day when I was abstaining from coffee

Cain - due to a variety of reasons I shan't go into presently, I found myself stranded in Nigeria bout a decade ago with my funds tied up in frozen accounts.  I sent him an e-mail requesting a small amount just to get mys ass out of Africa and he didn't even fucking respond.

Gogira - name makes too light of the King of Monsters

Roger - just HAS to be on a list more times than anyone else

I'm butthurt that you're not butthurt at me!

NIGEL - can never remember I live on the far east side of Portland

THAT'S BETTER.