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[Bobby Isosceles]

wow I just discovered this thing called game harassment it's on youtube it's where you go into a multiplayer game and you just fuck shit up and kill people when they least expect it or you play stupid sounds over the chat over and over again until they constantly expect it and then you stop and they can't concentrate because they are expecting the sound again.  man, I think I feel like Christopher Columbus must have felt when he discovered the indiands.  Except that I haven't been able to find the key to my gun case for about a year now except for a couple months ago when I had it and then lost it again somewhere on my desk.  It's here somewhere.

Ladies and Gentlemen!

Hobbs now refers to a PUG, but of a much different kind!


he is getting a can for inadvertently giving me a chuckle. PS. screw gun cases man, let the Saiga, much like its namesake roam freeeeee

[Thomas Pain]

Dude.  Panel four. 

Learn it.  Love it.  Live it.

Such a naive and simplistic maxim is utterly impractical and unworkable in real life.  It's impossible for everyone to get what they want all of the time.  One of the very definitions of what is art is that which challenges people's preconceptions.  The "don't be a cock to a stranger" standard not only dictates that Manson should not dress the way he does because it offends and worries the piss out of such stooges as O'Rilley, but also dictates that Manson shouldn't even express any ideas which might be contrary to or otherwise upsetting to an imbecile's world view.  You've perhaps not considered carefully enough if the fact that you believe that you can pretend to know when and where the rights of and the benefit to society stop and the mission of the artist starts might perhaps be yet another example of someone being a "cock to a stranger" or perhaps even of someone being a cock to that collective of strangers that is society at large.  It's a dangerous standard that smacks of autocracy and seems untenable.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Such a naive and simplistic maxim is utterly impractical and unworkable in real life.  It's impossible for everyone to get what they want all of the time.  One of the very definitions of what is art is that which challenges people's preconceptions.  The "don't be a cock to a stranger" standard not only dictates that Manson should not dress the way he does because it offends and worries the piss out of such stooges as O'Rilley, but also dictates that Manson shouldn't even express any ideas which might be contrary to or otherwise upsetting to an imbecile's world view.  You've perhaps not considered carefully enough if the fact that you believe that you can pretend to know when and where the rights of and the benefit to society stop and the mission of the artist starts might perhaps be yet another example of someone being a "cock to a stranger" or perhaps even of someone being a cock to that collective of strangers that is society at large.  It's a dangerous standard that smacks of autocracy and seems untenable.

Neither Manson or O'RLY have any ideas. They are the mouthpieces of corporations which are manufacturing a dichotomy to raise money. The Eternal War concept of 1984 is used to use up excess resources that would lead people to question their governments, their societies, and the hands that place the pawn.

The white hat/black hat dichotomy is a similar thing. If you think white hats are the tools of security corporations and government contractors, yet are blind to the fact that the black hats sit at the nexus of most social networking trends, you're a fool. Kevin Mitnick was a tool to get caught but now he's making serious bank and if you think today's weev isn't tomorrow's Sergey Brin, you've never had mouths to feed.

Bottom line: all politics are local and all human relations are local, especially within the monkeysphere limit that our brains cannot help but abstract behind. Unless you screaming obscenities into Ventrilo actually is a point of view, you're being a cock to a stranger. If you actually have something to say and your PUGmates don't like it, fuck 'em for not respecting freedom of speech. Fair is fair in that case and point to you. But noise isn't speech and no amount of the 2girls1cup "it is performance art" defense is going to make it so among your peers. Legally, sure, maybe, but in reality? Nope.

Hence the golden rule.  Treat others as you'd like to be treated (trolling, dox dropping, etc. aren't fun.)

[Thomas Pain]

damn Bobby.  I can't argue these points with you.  I disagree with you, but I think you have a much better grasp on what your understanding is than I have of my own understanding.  If you really want to know about it, though, read a book on complexity theory.  _Deep Simplicity_ by John Gribbin is a good one.

What can I say... hmm, well the corporations might think they are manufacturing a dichotomy, but the dichotomy is simply an emergent behavior of the system, and the corps have no more control over it than any of the rest of us.  This has been proven mathematically, in theory anyway.  If you read about complexity, you'll find that the theory is quite compelling.

So often when people are successful, they would like to believe it's because they have what it takes to be successful, because they are better or special or possibly simply more modest.  I find that corporate types are even more susceptible to such BS than the rest of us.  As you look up the corporate ladder, you find each successive level more and more immersed in abstruse quasi-religious BS, which is not to say that at some points you don't also find some evidence of concurrent competency--you do--but you also find this miasma of BS that has no useful connection with reality, except that it serves as a social cement to bond together the successive layers of the corporate architecture.  This is not to say that if you speak BS you will get promoted--many don't.  Simply the fact that the corporate structure is so replete with BS indicates that there is something going on.  That something is that the BS is an emergent character of the system.  Whatever paradigms that BS manifests it's self with, such as autocratic approaches, are not so much a deliberate and optional creation of the corporation as they are an inevitable and unstoppable feature of it.

mostly I don't follow your reasoning. ; -)  I'm not sure what you mean by "all politics are local and all human relations are local."  That's a pretty strong statement, and such statements are easily contradicted unless presented in the context of some supporting model of the system.

On some level I think most governments regard any sort of social networking experiment as a black hat threat.  The only possible exception might be the one-off type case like say, Norway, and even there, it's merely that the progressives outnumber the conservatives... there are still conservative autocrats.

[Thomas Pain]

so anyway, yeah, for many people, manson is not an idea which they imbibe, he's half of a dichotomy which they consume.  He has nothing to say for these people, he's like you say, just a mouthpiece.  Whatever artistic merit or social statements he is making is way over their heads.  Okay, then there are other people who do get his ideas and what he's saying. 

Likewise, "screaming obscenities into Ventrilo" is maybe just creating a dichotomy with no meaning or merit, or, maybe it's actually making a social statement... it totally depends on the audience.  Sally Mann is maybe child porn or maybe not, again, it depends on perception.  There is an audience out there for whom her work is porn.  And there is an audience for whom it is not. 

Screaming into a Ventrillo chat is not unlike putting a clumsy buffoon on a crowded bus... it's annoying to everyone on the bus, but it's something we see again and again in comedy movies, and sometimes in real life, and we often laugh at it.  Why?  Because there's something inherent in it which speaks to us in some way.  Everyone has different levels of tolerance for being annoyed.  Shit, I mean, in an extreme case a person might simply be annoyed by the mere sight of someone else.  Unquestionably, "screaming obscenities into Ventrilo" crosses the line and becomes anti social and annoying, but it still overlaps with that area of having redeeming social value for people.

And I mean, when you look at all the videos of people getting their heads chopped off and shit, videos of street fighting and stuff that people watch, and you compare the size of that audience to those of us who go on and laugh our asses off at the Ventrillo trolling...  we're a small minority.  Which is sad.  I've never seen 2girls1cup.  I don't have any curiosity or interest in it.  Does it do something for someone somewhere.  I'm sure.  But I'm also sure that screaming into ventrillo has more merit and meaning than 2girls1cup.  Unless you can find a way to unexpectedly stream the video onto everyone's screen all of a sudden.  Then it's a tie. 

[Bobby Isosceles]

I think you will find me to be the last person to says lulz aren't funny. They usually are, and I'm not so high-minded as to decry them. But to clarify a few points:

Let's talk about the concept of "funny" for a second. Laughter occurs, from a child development perspective, when a child sees something that is unfamiliar or incongruent (== threatening) and yet it turns out not to be. The concept of Peekaboo and a child's instinctive laughter at that shows this progression. The fact that humans are the only primate to bare its teeth as a sign of laughter when every other one uses smiling as a sign of fear may yield something into the evolution of this mechanism. I don't know too much about evolutionary or child psychology, but what I have read seems to imply that "funny" is, much like the thrill one gets from riding a roller coaster, the trigger of a stress reaction accompanied by a knowledge that the stress isn't real. Or, to paraphrase an English lecture I heard years and years ago on the subject of Shakespeare: "What is a tragedy? A fall from grace. What is a comedy? A fall from grace? What is the difference? Whether or not you can identify with the protagonist."

So part of the reason why a retard on a bus is so hilarious in movies is that it's not really there. I've had the misfortune of having to deal with crazy and mentally people on buses and on the street (you try running a nightclub in the warehouse district and see what you find!) and while the humor there does exist, there's no way to turn off the TV, or walk away from the scene.

This black hat conceit that "Internet is not Serious Business" and "turn off the computer and let it go" doesn't always apply, for similar reasons. The fact is, everyone knows how to turn off a television. Everyone can walk out of a movie. And, moreover, there are enough alternatives that if a crazy person is yelling obscenities at a movie theater or coffee shop, you can go to another. But Ventrilo, much like any of that cloud-computing crap, is a scarce resource. There's maybe -- what? Ventrilo? Teamspeak? A handful of other options, which are about as usable as how many of your friends are using them? Unlike a simple act like turning a knob, or walking to another coffeeshop, not everyone has the technical skill to write their own gaming voice client. So people are de facto stuck with whatever means are there. And ruining the means, unlike being an ass in a public establishment, doesn't offer the same avenues of escape.

Is it funny? Sure. Is it as funny if there is no escape? Not so much.


At the end of the day it all boils down to whether or not people are in their comfort zone. If people feel threatened -- if they have wives or husbands or girlfriends or boyfriends or children -- then the line between humorously annoying and threateningly annoying becomes nudged more toward the threat side. That is just human nature and isn't going to be undone, not by performance artists, not by Kibo, not by Bantown, not by anyone; and any attempt is going to be in vain. For the record, I draw the line at brute forcing, dox dropping or that sort of thing. But everyone has their own line.

For example, fire is fun, but would you want flame near vegetation? Lulz work in the same way.


The comment about all politics and relationships being local was in response to you using Manson/O'Reilly as an example here. At the end of the day, none of those examples matter. At the end of the day, we are all living in little interconnected tribes and the concept of not being a cock to a stranger is applicable no matter what tribe you're in.

To digress a bit on this point, let's take an example of rural China and rural Georgia. In rural China, sure, there is the omnipresent hand of oppressive communist blah blah blah, but at the end of the day, you can call in a few favors with a local magistrate or your village council member or whatever and get away wtih a lot more than you think you can. In rural Georgia, you can get busted fraudulently for speeding and have a tail light knocked out by the nightstick and no matter how much you can speak loudly about your Constitutional Rights, unless you kiss a little ass, you're not going to get them. Older societies, such as those in China and the Middle East, have a major emphasis on politeness, even if it is insincere, because it allows a little bit of face saving. Is it disingenuous? Sure, it is. Have these societies lasted for three thousand years? Yes, and part of it has to do with these elaborate manners.

[Thomas Pain]

random thoughts:

we can posit that humor is perhaps an evolved and/or built-in advantage, one which pushes us to explore potentially stressful situations, thereby better preparing us for such situations.

A retard on a bus scene in a movie is more funny if you can suspend disbelief, bringing yourself to contemplate the scene as if it's played out by real persons who really are trapped there, instead of by actors.  It's easier to do this in the case of a Tom Green skit, because presumably Tom Green doesn't use actors, he victimizes real people.  It's funny because there's no escape.

Speaking of docs dropping, it's interesting to note the popular web site http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ whose only function is to drop docs.  There are a lot of arguments to be made for and against dox dropping having any value or serving any purpose, and the docs on this site really run the full gamut.  Personally, I find the weekly mug shots to be in rather poor taste, essentially putting people and their misfortunes on display like animals in a zoo for our own entertainment.

This page is rather unique in their archive.  "Outing An Online Outlaw -- A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality"

I tend to agree with you that a central point here is the question of if we exist on a local or non-local level or not.

Once when I was an exchange student for a year, I was on a car trip with my adoptive family, and we're driving along, in a Peugeot or some such, and it had these funky seat controls whereby you rotate a big ass wheel at the base of the seat to incline or recline the seat back.  So I am sitting in back, and one of the sons is sitting in the front passenger seat, so I start reclining his seat, one click at a time, until some 20 minutes later, he finally becomes conscious of what his subconscious had been pondering, and knowing my sense of humor, immediately deduces what's going on without even looking, curses me, and rotates the knob back to normal.  To me that was funny as all hell.

What all that has to do with this conversation, I'm not sure, except that obviously it was a local environment that we were operating in.

But are we living in small groups?  Well, yes and no.  A lot of this humor explores the dynamics of large anonymous groups that we find ourselves in more and more these days.  I mean, in the old days, you knew everyone on a party (shared) telephone line.  They were your nearest neighbors.  Now, you click onto a shared voice conference session and who knows who might be on there.  It could be someone in China. 

It really seems like a moot point to argue that because X model of cooperation worked in a local setting for thousands of years, we should apply it in the non-local settings we increasingly find ourselves in.  Part of the reason that these models (especially the more elaborate ones) work is that the setting is local, and there is feedback in the system in the form of consequences.  So much humor relies on exploring what would happen if someone acted in an unexpected manner, e.g. if someone did something that the cooperation model doesn't predict that they will do, or even something that the model (or past experience) predicts they won't do.

So I mean, take the case of a Ventrillo chat, you have a bunch of people chatting together... they're playing a game together... them along comes someone playing the game with them who all of a sudden starts team killing everyone... and then for good measure playing wacky sound clips on the Ventrillo chat.  None of the locals would do that, but this asshole isn't part of the local group.  For whatever reasons, the consequences that apply to everyone else don't apply to him.  The people who designed the game assumed that everyone playing would be interested in winning, and in socializing.  Bad assumption.  I'm not justifying it.  This doesn't justify it.  I'm just saying.

So these models of cooperation that emerged over thousands of years, or dozens of years, depending on the society, well, none of these models would or could emerge if the environment was purely static, or purely chaotic.  It's right on that knife edge between stability and chaos that complexity emerges, that life emerges, and that models of cooperation emerge.  Irrespective of the motives of the person who is team killing everyone in sight, the fact remains that these people do exist.  They could be artists looking to make a social statement or they could be completely insane, or both.

Do we really want to play God?  Do we want to step in and force the system into a regime of stability, with everyone conforming to a given model of cooperation, agreeing that we're never going to deviate from it, we're never going to innovate, that we're going to ensure that there can be no further evolution?

So what I'm getting at is that in a sense, you can liken the Ventrillo asshole to the random genetic mutation or the random situational comedy type of accident that forces the characters into new and uncharted territory not predicted by nor accounted for in the existing standard models of cooperation.  That's why it's funny.  For most people, in large measure, the perceived humor of the situation is preempted by their operation from within the existing standard model of cooperation.  What I mean is, there is a part of their 'self' that thinks it's funny, but there's these other parts that are stronger that don't. 

We maybe never stop to think about how pervasive the effect may be, in a system, of the possibility for someone to team kill, or crash a server upon which a few or a multitude of us rely.  Look at the US VS Australia for example... In the US you have guns all over the place.  In some urban areas, literally every other car has a gun in it.  I personally have a friend who sold a car and only weeks later remembered that he had left his handgun under the seat.  In essence, no matter who your are, your chances of getting team killed by anyone, anytime, anywhere, are much higher here in the U.S.  So you can think of something like Columbine as kinda a lollz attack, if not in intent, certainly in effect.  Anyway, the effect of all of this is pervasive.  The culture of the Police is affected by it... it affects how Police interact with people on a routine basis.  Our whole CJ system is quite dystopian. 

I totally agree with the principle of not being a cock to a stranger.  I mean, if everyone would conform to this, then no one would consider gun ownership as being a necessary part of the cooperation model.

Saying that screaming into Ventrillo isn't funny, because it's being a cock to a stranger... no... I can't agree with that.  It may be morally and/or ethically reprehensible, but it's still funny... which is a paradox.  Saying that it's not funny only tells me that you have a cooperation model worked out, and I just can't believe that this cooperation model is feasible.  The world is very complex and we need to consider things from the context of this complexity.  So many of the things that we think are normal and sensical are simply a hilarious riot when considered from with some other context, such as a more complex and realistic context. 

Personally, I would like to see us move towards more local systems, instead of artificially stitching together a world where everyone (all 6 billion + or whatever) is in the same chat room.  In a more local system, yes, not being a cock to a stranger works, and makes sense.

[Bobby Isosceles]

random thoughts:

we can posit that humor is perhaps an evolved and/or built-in advantage, one which pushes us to explore potentially stressful situations, thereby better preparing us for such situations.

A retard on a bus scene in a movie is more funny if you can suspend disbelief, bringing yourself to contemplate the scene as if it's played out by real persons who really are trapped there, instead of by actors.  It's easier to do this in the case of a Tom Green skit, because presumably Tom Green doesn't use actors, he victimizes real people.  It's funny because there's no escape.

Speaking of docs dropping, it's interesting to note the popular web site http://www.thesmokinggun.com/ whose only function is to drop docs.  There are a lot of arguments to be made for and against dox dropping having any value or serving any purpose, and the docs on this site really run the full gamut.  Personally, I find the weekly mug shots to be in rather poor taste, essentially putting people and their misfortunes on display like animals in a zoo for our own entertainment.

This page is rather unique in their archive.  "Outing An Online Outlaw -- A TSG investigation unmasks the leader of Pranknet and the miscreants behind a year-long wave of phone call criminality"

I tend to agree with you that a central point here is the question of if we exist on a local or non-local level or not.

Once when I was an exchange student for a year, I was on a car trip with my adoptive family, and we're driving along, in a Peugeot or some such, and it had these funky seat controls whereby you rotate a big ass wheel at the base of the seat to incline or recline the seat back.  So I am sitting in back, and one of the sons is sitting in the front passenger seat, so I start reclining his seat, one click at a time, until some 20 minutes later, he finally becomes conscious of what his subconscious had been pondering, and knowing my sense of humor, immediately deduces what's going on without even looking, curses me, and rotates the knob back to normal.  To me that was funny as all hell.

What all that has to do with this conversation, I'm not sure, except that obviously it was a local environment that we were operating in.

But are we living in small groups?  Well, yes and no.  A lot of this humor explores the dynamics of large anonymous groups that we find ourselves in more and more these days.  I mean, in the old days, you knew everyone on a party (shared) telephone line.  They were your nearest neighbors.  Now, you click onto a shared voice conference session and who knows who might be on there.  It could be someone in China. 

It really seems like a moot point to argue that because X model of cooperation worked in a local setting for thousands of years, we should apply it in the non-local settings we increasingly find ourselves in.  Part of the reason that these models (especially the more elaborate ones) work is that the setting is local, and there is feedback in the system in the form of consequences.  So much humor relies on exploring what would happen if someone acted in an unexpected manner, e.g. if someone did something that the cooperation model doesn't predict that they will do, or even something that the model (or past experience) predicts they won't do.

So I mean, take the case of a Ventrillo chat, you have a bunch of people chatting together... they're playing a game together... them along comes someone playing the game with them who all of a sudden starts team killing everyone... and then for good measure playing wacky sound clips on the Ventrillo chat.  None of the locals would do that, but this asshole isn't part of the local group.  For whatever reasons, the consequences that apply to everyone else don't apply to him.  The people who designed the game assumed that everyone playing would be interested in winning, and in socializing.  Bad assumption.  I'm not justifying it.  This doesn't justify it.  I'm just saying.

So these models of cooperation that emerged over thousands of years, or dozens of years, depending on the society, well, none of these models would or could emerge if the environment was purely static, or purely chaotic.  It's right on that knife edge between stability and chaos that complexity emerges, that life emerges, and that models of cooperation emerge.  Irrespective of the motives of the person who is team killing everyone in sight, the fact remains that these people do exist.  They could be artists looking to make a social statement or they could be completely insane, or both.

Do we really want to play God?  Do we want to step in and force the system into a regime of stability, with everyone conforming to a given model of cooperation, agreeing that we're never going to deviate from it, we're never going to innovate, that we're going to ensure that there can be no further evolution?

So what I'm getting at is that in a sense, you can liken the Ventrillo asshole to the random genetic mutation or the random situational comedy type of accident that forces the characters into new and uncharted territory not predicted by nor accounted for in the existing standard models of cooperation.  That's why it's funny.  For most people, in large measure, the perceived humor of the situation is preempted by their operation from within the existing standard model of cooperation.  What I mean is, there is a part of their 'self' that thinks it's funny, but there's these other parts that are stronger that don't. 

We maybe never stop to think about how pervasive the effect may be, in a system, of the possibility for someone to team kill, or crash a server upon which a few or a multitude of us rely.  Look at the US VS Australia for example... In the US you have guns all over the place.  In some urban areas, literally every other car has a gun in it.  I personally have a friend who sold a car and only weeks later remembered that he had left his handgun under the seat.  In essence, no matter who your are, your chances of getting team killed by anyone, anytime, anywhere, are much higher here in the U.S.  So you can think of something like Columbine as kinda a lollz attack, if not in intent, certainly in effect.  Anyway, the effect of all of this is pervasive.  The culture of the Police is affected by it... it affects how Police interact with people on a routine basis.  Our whole CJ system is quite dystopian. 

I totally agree with the principle of not being a cock to a stranger.  I mean, if everyone would conform to this, then no one would consider gun ownership as being a necessary part of the cooperation model.

Saying that screaming into Ventrillo isn't funny, because it's being a cock to a stranger... no... I can't agree with that.  It may be morally and/or ethically reprehensible, but it's still funny... which is a paradox.  Saying that it's not funny only tells me that you have a cooperation model worked out, and I just can't believe that this cooperation model is feasible.  The world is very complex and we need to consider things from the context of this complexity.  So many of the things that we think are normal and sensical are simply a hilarious riot when considered from with some other context, such as a more complex and realistic context. 

Personally, I would like to see us move towards more local systems, instead of artificially stitching together a world where everyone (all 6 billion + or whatever) is in the same chat room.  In a more local system, yes, not being a cock to a stranger works, and makes sense.

I remember reading somewhere that the slowest-growing but longest-lasting partici##### in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma are Tit for Two Tats - Tit for Tat did well until a "random mutation" factor was introduced, which then lead into an endless spiral of tit for tatting. Tit for Two Tats had a certain exploitability potential, but within acceptable bounds - the resulting tolerance/wiggle room allowed the system to handle the occasional mutation.

To that end, manners and the ability to forbear slights against us are an example of the tit for two tat paradigm. It is in this sense that I can agree that the original assholish behavior will be tolerated and thus the inherent humor of it can be appreciated. The challenge here is not to push it -- if you have a Tit for N Tats paradigm, and you do N + 1 Tats, you overload the system and cause a bad feedback loop. A simpler, more verbal example is the "Boy Who Cried Wolf." his need for lulz caused him to go to that N + 1th step and break down the social support framework.

Given that people don't walk around with signs on their head saying exactly how many lulz they will tolerate before they snap, it is a safer bet to avoid trying to toe that line. A select few do, but the secret in my opinion is to cause the victim himself to cross that line by exposing a prejudice or bad behavior. Andy Kaufman was the master of this. Sascha Baron Cohen much less so.

As for the concept of moving toward localized systems,  in a sense this is exactly against what you railed against TOUAMB (as Mr. Wonderful or neonfreon, I forget); that the group was too insular and like-minded. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are right. A little shake-up is always needed. Lord knows I need someone to take the mantle of Crazy Troll in Chief away from me. I even think I offered you pointers to troll a bit more opaquely (shaggy dogs are great for that). Bottom line is, this group isn't very forgiving because they do have a little touch of the Irish Aspie in them. Their Tit for N Tats is somewhat lower than that of regular society. On the plus side, they can probably count an entire box of toothpicks you spill on the floor. They also will have the relentless devotion to pore through the entire Austin phone book to find you. It's a fundamental tradeoff, like torque versus acceleration.  Or should I say dorque versus....

Really, at the end of the day, my only issue is with brute forcign and dox dropping. Yes, I know that sites like Smoking Gun drop dox and I am of two minds of that. On the one hand, nearly all the dox dropped are that of famous or public figures. Private individuals, den mothers etc. I don't think meet any sort of criterion for dox dropping. I wouldn't even say people of local importance meet that factor. This is something about weev that I fundamentally disagree with. The concept of dropping dox on someone because you disagree with them or don't like them makes a personal issue out of a disagreement, and IMHO I consider that reprehensible.

On the other hand, I do believe in a free press and have done more than my share of dumpster diving over the years. I know that some information never sees the light of day unless someone drops it. I know for every weev there is an Erin Brockovitch out there. So I can't  just declare all doxdrops to be fundamentally evil, and that's it. Yet I do think that there should be some sort of -- to steal a Wikipedism -- notability standard or notable cause. If someone is being a dick to you, or being a dick to their children or being a dick to their country or being a dick to humanity, then it is permissible IMO to stand up and make a fuss about it. Even then, it may not be worth it: vigilantism is often as un- or counter-productive as it is romanticized. But at least there is a cause there, because someone else was being a dick first. The concept of forebearance to a degree and proportional response to threats and reaction rather than instigation are common facets of manners, of "not being a cock to strangers," of Hammurabi's Law.

And in the end, that's the Golden Rule, isn't it?

[Drygioni]

Christ, this almost makes me miss the trolling.



Just kidding. An interesting read.

I've noticed as well, when you make someone angry and they begin to threaten you, it's absolutely hilarious until you actually begin to suspect they may be willing/able to exact some sort of vengeance.

On online games many a time a troll simply laughs louder and louder the worse the insults get. There's no way in hell anyone can deal with him because he's just an online avatar, he doesn't care at all about what you can dish out to him in that setting. Like that Heath Ledger guy in Batman, except he's not an avatar (OR IS HE?), he's just mental

In the school playground, the annoying little shit who'd get some suicide mission kick out of insulting the bigger kids would giggle like a maniac when the bigger kid made punching motions and neck slitting signs whilst the teacher was around. As soon as the bigger kid got him out of adult authority he'd scream and cry, out of the comfort zone of safety.

Even the other day I saw some poor unfortunate doused by some nobhead group of students. The students were pissing themselves whilst the guy screamed obscenities. As soon as he walked over to them they all scattered, nervously laughing. Still enjoying themselves cause he couldn't catch them but the laughter now came from the thrill of not being caught

Huh

[dejavroom]

so why not engineer a larger on-topic community by moving the off-topic socializing sorta into it's own more separate realm or dimension, and you could have multiple such dimensions, each unique like a snow flake.
 

This would work if Achewood merited this much dedicated discussion; I think that if that was the case, the board would have reacted organically, and incorporated some such change already. As it is, I think what made the board thrive even when there weasn't enough material coming out, was the spectacular and unashamed capacity for straying from subjects.

[smick]

Personally, I think Ratacat should take his performance art to a better venue.

Bars, and public spaces.

[AugustWest]

You certainly do have an ironclad rationale for being an asshole. 

Ever tried, you know, not being an asshole?

[greenkoolayd]

You certainly do have an ironclad rationale for being an asshole. 

Ever tried, you know, not being an asshole?

he isnt being an asshole.  were just too stupid or stubborn to understand his jokes.  he is like an andy kaufman of the intarwepz.

[Bobby Isosceles]

Isosceles : Hobbsy :: Andy Kaufman : Sascha Baron Cohen

[jay-ell]

I don't see what this thread has to do with Achewood; I think it should be locked and/or deleted.