Flame On

[Cain]

That's a good trick!

Impresses the ladies.

Also goes down well at childrens parties.

[The Doctor]

Oooer, you said 'goes down'...

I should go get food, I'm getting strange in the head.  

[Horab Fibslager]

Deep in the mystical sylvan forest, a small, weary gnome crawls out of a hole in the ground and walks up to the magical voice amplification device. A bunny sits in the bushes, her eyes a glow. Several other creatures rustle in the bushes.



Want to know the dirty little secret of flame wars?

You can't win.

Oh, you can lose, but you can't win.

No matter how many posts you make; no matter how devastating your
argument; no matter how unassailable your logic; no matter how many rules
of logic you violate; no matter how virtuous your position; no matter how
obscene your language...

You can't win.

The other guy can always make one more post saying, "Ha, ha. You're a
jerk."

You can't win, but the real secret is: neither can they.

You can lose. You do that by declaring you have lost. You flounce. You
quit. You concede. You make a last post.

They can't make you lose. You can only do that to yourself.

They never lose because they refuse to admit defeat.

So guess what? If you refuse to admit defeat, you can not lose either.

Period.

You can't win because you can't make them lose. They can always make
another post after all of yours. They can make lots of posts after your
last one, especially if they have a posse full of fanbois.

But you can't lose. Just make another post. Just say, "Ha, ha. You're a
jerk." That's all it takes.


The biggest mistake you can make, of course, is to go into a flame war
thinking you can win.

Don't try to use logic or moral suasion in a flame war. Does you no good.
Flame wars are fought at the lowest intellectual level human beings can
bring themselves to.

Flame wars are full of false accusations, spurious logic, school yard
bullying and piling on. They satisfy the needs of a primitive area of the
brain which just wants to bludgeon something and prove its superiority. It
doesn't care why. It just knows it feels better when it hits something.

In order to fight a flame war you have to disengage the higher function of
your brain and lower yourself to that primitive level where bashing
anything that isn't currently sucking up to you is all you care about.

It may feel good, but ultimately it is not about anything but bashing.

If you find yourself in a flame war, just opt out. Let the trolls exhaust
themselves. Ignore them. Post as you wish. Be yourself.

Sure, they may "follow you around" making annoying, obscene posts.
Ignore them. Tell yourself they are nothing but jackasses. (Remember,
they can't win.)

Eventually people forget what the flame war was all about (if they ever
knew.)

Eventually those who persist in flaming become viewed for the asses they
are.

Eventually the trolls becomes bored. Once they realize they can't win,
they move on.

And then, make one more post. Say anything. And you didn't lose.


Don't expect the mods to "intervene" in a flame war. Nothing they can
really do except try to persuade the parties to give it up. And we all know
how well that works.

Don't expect Mgt to intervene. All she can do is ban people. That's a
crude weapon she doesn't want to use. She wants everyone to feel free
to post on her forums.

Don't expect other posters to jump in with posts full of devastating logic
and moral superiority in your defense. Logic, morality, even popularity
are useless. Trolls don't care who's right. They only care about winning.

But they can only win, if you decide to lose.

So decide not to lose and go on with your life.

After all, it's only an internet bulletin board, somewhere out in virtual
space. It's not like any of this is real.

Or did you mistakenly come here thinking this was a "real" religion?




Oh, Yeah. I almost forgot. Ha, ha. You're a jerk.

cheers...

and now for somethign compeletely different

LOL!

j/k. next time i'm in your neighborhood or you're in mine chuck, a six pack or a bottle of your prefered says this thread turns into teh same ol same ol. nevermind that it already has.

if buckminster fuller were here, and rawwas writing him into teh story, he'd say "the energies cannot be properly vectored from here" or somesuch. this would be the correct death star.



edit: this also grabs at the bloodied throat of why i'm a bokononist- one fictional religion is as good as another. i occasionaly fidn it amusing to wonder which is mroe absurd.

[LMNO]

Yes, but open hostility to people who just got here and do want to talk about the book seems a little bit...excessive. Who knows what kind of interesting person might lie beneath the n00b's exterior?

There's a difference between Analyzing and Creating a new angle on the PD, or some of it's precepts, and saying "Howzabout that Pentabarf, eh?"

For example,
::reaches around to pat himself on the back::
I came up with an expanded concept on the Creation/Destruction/Order/Disorder chart, and it spawned many pages of discussion, and none of them (if I recall) said anything like, "You suck for referencing the PD."

[East Coast Hustle]

I think the idea is to ADD to the foundation that's already been laid, as opposed to re-hashing the same old stuff that's been played out since 1972.

[LMNO]

tHIS IS THE CORRECT PICTURE OF dIVINE.

[/img]

[fluffy]

tHIS IS THE CORRECT PICTURE OF dIVINE.

no
that was not the correct picture of divine

[Bella]

I think the idea is to ADD to the foundation that's already been laid, as opposed to re-hashing the same old stuff that's been played out since 1972.

Yup. Kind of like what Syn and Verthaine did when they wrote their own books.
Several other people around here are in the process of writing discordian/erisian type books - like horab.
And I think some of the rants and stories on this very forum also add to that foundation.

[Cain]

I think the idea is to ADD to the foundation that's already been laid, as opposed to re-hashing the same old stuff that's been played out since 1972.

Yup. Kind of like what Syn and Verthaine did when they wrote their own books.
Several other people around here are in the process of writing discordian/erisian type books - like horab.
And I think some of the rants and stories on this very forum also add to that foundation.

Which is why I like this place so much.  Look at how much so many people on here have contributed to Discordianism of late.

[Bella]

Exactly. We've got lots of great writers on this site.
Not to mention artists and musicians.

I also think that there's lots of wonderful snippets of wisdom disguised as fluff floating around this place.

[LMNO]

...And it's the digging that makes it worthwhile.

Sort of like one of the grand theories... The board is full of random and conflicting signals, and it's up to the individual to make sense of it & see the connections.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

You guys are all a bunch of jerks.

Haha. Only Serious.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I think the idea is to ADD to the foundation that's already been laid, as opposed to re-hashing the same old stuff that's been played out since 1972.

Yup. Kind of like what Syn and Verthaine did when they wrote their own books.
Several other people around here are in the process of writing discordian/erisian type books - like horab.
And I think some of the rants and stories on this very forum also add to that foundation.

Thing is, most n00bs that show up here are used to being the only Discordian they know...and, as a result, they are used to being able to get away with spewing the PD/BotSG.

What they fail to realize, of course, is that they are falling victim to the Tao/EvT fallacy...they have done with the PD what Catholics did to the Christian bible.

[LMNO]

Hence, we perform the Fish Slapping Dance upon them.




Oh... Reflexively stealing from Monty Python is just as bad, isn't it?

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Wait a minute Roger, Catholics don't even read the Bible. They don't even care about the Bible. Heh, then again most Catholics I know aren't even practicing.