Why?

[Agathon]

That would seem to be both a blessing and a curse, Tiamat.

It seems to me that much of the mudslinging on here is just letting off steam as someone said. Most of the people here don't really hate each other since you need more than internet acquaintance to sustain real loathing.

Hell, I'm sure that even Fez isn't such a bad guy even though he's said that people like me should be shot.

[Alexander's Horse]

What fights? What name calling? We are all just one big happy family.

[Ben Kenobi]

Heck, I even started a trollfest with me as the target. Interesting the slags that come out when you do so.

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
What fights? What name calling? We are all just one big happy family.

Alrighty then. Ok Horse didn't Mrs. Horse lock up the liquor cabinet?

It is a blessing and a curse. It helps when I was working since my job was receptionist I could remember clinets very well but knowing all this stuff and being able to recall word for word what people say.........well let's just say being newly married for only the past 5 months I'm having to learn patience and how not to tell Steve........OOOOOooooo no you did not say that you said.....you can see where I could get into to trouble.

[Tingkai]

Maybe Fez is trying to subtly demonstrate how stupid we look when we get upset and go up on a friggen rant by childishly insulting other people.


Fez being subtle? Nah. Never mind.

[Agathon]

You know, avatars are weird things. I can't get it out of my head that Obiwan18 actually looks like Alec Guinness.

[Tiamat]

Fez subtle........what where you thinking

[Nubclear]

You people do have to understand that a lot of us have to live nice, happy lives. Throughout the day, I always have to put on this cute little smiley to everyone except my wife as if life is all good and nice, when it sucks.

So Poly OT provides me a nice way to express my anger without hurting people I care about in any way. This is why I study the sucessful (and unsucessful) trolls of MING and FEZ, SPIFFOR and NED....

[Ben Kenobi]

Now, DON'T name names in this thread.

You wouldn't be emulating your idols, now would you Tass?

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by obiwan18


You wouldn't be emulating your idols, now would you Tass?

[Spiffor]

Skywalker :

Thing is : a debate is very different here than a DemoGame's debate (I think that's your only experience with 'Poly debates). In a DemoGame, people do really debate to find the best solution to the same problem, and they are united by the same interests : to win and to have fun.

Here, things are very different. Debates are fundamentally not constructive because there is no stake beyond them. Even if someone sways the whole forum to his views (ain't gonna happen anyways, because of our conservative stubborn d1ckheads ), it will have no influence on the real world. Zilch, zero, nada.

Besides, when talking about real politics, rather than Civ politics, there are very opposing worldviews that clash, and that can hardly be changed by each other. Sometimes, in a "debate", people just say their ideas with very little interaction with the others. Sometimes the debate becomes a place where both parties are interested in what the others say. And most often, the only interaction between two completely opposed worldviews are insults.

This is normal, and I would say it is healthy on Internet, because it can not lead to physical violence. Besides, they are almost always good natured, and almost all OTers like each other (see, uberconservative Slowwhand started the birthday thread of ubercommunist Chegitz )

If you just want to adress the issue without all the noise, you'll learn to distinguish between flameposts and debateposts quickly enough. Let's just say one-liners very rarely make a point, except when written by Frogger (specialist of the one-liner debate), and let's say a provocative thread has very little chance of becoming serious at any point. Besides, some people here are only here to troll for their entertainment (and ours )

[Flubber]

Nothing anyone says here can ever truly upset me. I have too full a life to let a post by some anonymous person rile me up. I also find that the name callers weaken their arguments by resorting to insults and I believe this assessment would be true of most readers. The run to insults usually comes when the debater is finding it increasingly difficult to refute the opinions of their opponent.

I actually find some of the threads where two posters go at it to be a bit amusing. Its funny to see ones where posters start threatening each other from half a world away. I always figure that they must be scripting these for a bit of fun or that each one is trolling and being trolled by the other just to see how long it takes for Ming to come along. Perhaps each of them is as calm as can be and each is gloating on how thaty managed to get someone else POed.

[Sava]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
It's all in good fun d1ckhead.

Yeah skywalker... you need to not take stuff so seriously.

[Giancarlo]

Originally posted by Agathon
Hell, I'm sure that even Fez isn't such a bad guy even though he's said that people like me should be shot.

Show me where I said that you liar.

[GePap]

While I can get angry at certainy people here, I never mind about those that are trully insulting, because by doing so, they ae so dminished in my eyes I have no reason to give a damn what they say, ever. The few times I have gotten really steamed here in OT it has been with what one would call "sensible" posters who were pushing a line I found utterly disgraceful, hypocritical or otherwise.

But like Spiff said, all we have is hot air running around. Notice how free of insults non-political threads are, and when someone posts that they need some type of help people are genuinely helpful and only a few, more disgraceful types, ever interlude with soemthing rude in those situations.