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27464. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 2:36:33 AM it's avoiding that kinda crap which keeps us coming back here.we love our lives and interests and we don't feel a need to keep this place going with petty shallow repetitive exchanges 24/7. None of us is defined by what impression we're trying to make here, a la junior high. Thankfully we have better things to do. Hopefully one day you'll be able to say the same.
Posted from: my hammock
Which I'm here to tell y'all is my current favorite place on the planet. I can't believe I just now have one. When I think of all the lost leisure time I spent not having one.... 27465. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 2:39:04 AM which reminds me: mildescape.com. she makes the most lovely escape games, and posted a new one just today. 27466. iiibbb - 7/1/2013 2:44:49 AM they say strange things happen to people who have been to the end of the Internet... I thought I'd never see one 27467. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 3:03:28 AM Arky demonstrates well in her #27466 my earlier point about her (and a few others here) not having the ability to debate.
"it's avoiding that kinda crap which keeps us coming back here."
But most are NOT coming back.
This is the deadest forum on the planet, and it has been for many years.
Now if the six of you still enjoy coming back here on a monthly basis to post about some small personal episode in your lives, I think that's great. Everyone should have friends. Even Bhel.
But isn't that why they invented Facebook?
When I look on the front page of this forum, I see threads like News and Current Events, International, Religion and Philosophy, Technology and Science, Health, American Politics, etc. - all of which invite the forum's posters in to comment and debate.
But even when some poster accidentally wanders into one of those threads and makes a comment, nothing resembling a debate follows.
Occasionally when a debate does accidentally break out, some posters here are quick to squelch it - out of fear perhaps that it might become a habit and destroy the tenuous comity you've built up here.
Look, I get it. The forum's evolved. A lot of people here have always had different inclinations that caused them to shy away from debate. You've all gotten older and less interested in anything that resembles confrontation. You prefer hanging out with people online who you only vaguely know from some get-togethers every other year that only a handful of you attend on a regular basis, but who you know are kind and never tease you about your harelip.
So why don't you say so? Stop pretending that I'm some ogre who undermines debate when you know damn well that's not true. 27468. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 3:16:59 AM post something of substance to debate. I dare you. you're content averse and you always have been. None of us have forgotten. 27469. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 3:23:44 AM there are plenty of dead forums on the internet. Some in which the participants have moved on to other things, some in which the same old people say the same old shit over and over and over ad nauseum. 27470. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 3:32:19 AM "post something of substance to debate."
I have, Arky.
I posted some substantive stuff about LBGT politics and sex/gender in the discussion sparked by ibby's comment about the so-called six-year-old transgender boy.
It's just that most of you are so offended by either my tone or my ideas (and probably both) that you assume I'm not serious and so can't possibly not substantive.
But that's malarky. I can be both insulting and full of content. There's no contradiction there. And I can be a good sport when I'm insulted in turn, so it's not as if I'm asking for special treatment. Only stupidity turns me off.
I also posted about my bet with Alistair. I thought one of you might follow my links to the discussion with Alistair - which is better than anything I've seen here recently - and comment on some aspect of it. There's a lot there: the quality of expert predictions; energy prices, peak oil, currency exchange, etc.
But none of you did. Not one. 27471. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 3:34:25 AM "there are plenty of dead forums on the internet. Some in which the participants have moved on to other things, some in which the same old people say the same old shit over and over and over ad nauseum."
If you think I've been saying the same shit over and over again, you clearly haven't been reading me over the last half-dozen years.
That's fine. You have better things to do. But don't pretend you know the score when you're not watching the game. 27472. judithathome - 7/1/2013 3:45:38 AM I can be both insulting and full of content.
Just as you can be insulting and full of shit.
Look, no one wants to discuss things with someone who is calling them names. I know that's SOP at TPW but it's not like that everywhere.
I didn't follow your links because frankly, I'm not up on the price of oil or the exchange rates of the EU. And really don't care about either one.
I've had a lot of things happen to me in the last few years and it's made me somewhat jaded about what is important in my life and to my life and what is not...I consider it a good day when the sun comes up without some grime personal news.
So yeah, I don't get very deep into discussions and don't debate and couldn't care less what goes on...if that makes me shallow, so be it. I can get through the day just fine without Facebook or Twitter...or earthshaking, soul-searching fact tossing. 27473. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 3:55:16 AM PM is a bore, plain and simple. He lacked a valid point in his "gender debate" so he went with provocatively calling children who have gender identification issues "mistakes." His tactics are vacuous and tedious and bereft of any complexity. What were you positing for discussion? That some children should be written off as "mistakes"? Were you presenting the benefits of eugenics? In short, what was your point? That question would never be asked of a competent debater. 27474. arkymalarky - 7/1/2013 3:57:47 AM "Only stupidity turns me off."
Hahaha! 27475. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 4:39:13 AM Judith,
"Look, no one wants to discuss things with someone who is calling them names. I know that's SOP at TPW but it's not like that everywhere."
You guys don't seem to have any problems calling people names over here. I've been called all of the following over the last several days - sometimes by people I never even addressed in my posts, and frequently by posters I'd not called a name.
Clown.
Asshole.
Degenerate.
Fucking asshole moron knob.
Fucking asshole moron fuckwit.
Rabid chimp.
Rush Limbaugh.
PMS.
Baboon (including various junior members of baboon brigades).
Douche.
Troll.
Monkey boy.
*****
I'm not complaining. Bhel, for example, is much more interesting to read when he's directly insulting me than when he's sadly reminiscing about the grown-up atmosphere of this place that he implies I'm polluting.
But please get off your high horse about the elevated tone you people prefer here, Judith. Von Kreedon came in here from presiding over his Ace of Spades fan club to call me a troll and then left without a goodbye. You can call me a troll, Judith, but von Kreedon lost that moral right when he shacked up with Ace.
27476. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 4:43:32 AM Judith,
"I've had a lot of things happen to me in the last few years and it's made me somewhat jaded about what is important in my life and to my life and what is not...I consider it a good day when the sun comes up without some grime personal news."
I'm sorry to hear it. But I don't remember calling you a name. It's possible I've forgotten something. But I think I've just been kidding you with a pretty light touch. 27477. judithathome - 7/1/2013 4:48:13 AM I don't give a good goddamn who calls whom what. It's tiring, frankly, and if I recall correctly, I haven't called you any names.
What I was trying to say was...I have real life things that are much more important to me than anything I read on-line. Things that have put the world in a certain perspective for me.
From that perspective, I'd rather not see people acting like boors...that's all. I may be guilty of being boring and light-weight but trust me, that opinon matters not one whit to me. I'm just glad I wake up every day. 27478. judithathome - 7/1/2013 4:50:13 AM But I think I've just been kidding you with a pretty light touch.
You have been...and I appreciate it. You might try that with others...heh. 27479. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 5:13:06 AM Arky,
"PM is a bore, plain and simple. He lacked a valid point in his "gender debate" so he went with provocatively calling children who have gender identification issues "mistakes."
If a major physical or mental characteristic in a person is so aberrant that it obviously reduces fitness, what's wrong with calling it a "biological mistake"?
Is it provocative to do so? Sure. But is it wrong? No.
And you can't claim I'm using this language as a personal insult because I obviously don't know enough about any of your personal lives to make it personal.
And here is my main valid point in that discussion, Arky: Identity is a meaningless concept for both race and gender outside of some biological framework. If I want to start calling myself a black gay woman tomorrow, I can do so. And in some sad circles, my word on that would be considered good. But it doesn't make it true.
Nor do human oddities - people who genuinely have some strange and rare mix of characteristics from both genders - make it any less true.
"That some children should be written off as "mistakes"?"
I didn't say write them off. In fact, I explicitly said that you're a good parent if you don't write them off. But that's only if you don't have a choice.
Sarah Palin is being a great parent by loving her child with Down's Syndrome. But if we could remove that condition from future children tomorrow, she'd be an equally great parent by wanting to remove it from her fetus.
Their condition is still a mistake, and it's wrong to fetishize it as some sort of valuable identity that needs to be protected and nurtured. So if in the future you have the ability to make a choice about that condition in future children, you should do the right thing by removing it. We don't need to perpetuate transgenders like they're a rare species. 27480. bhelpuri - 7/1/2013 6:33:11 AM Does anyone really give a shit about this fake "gender debate"? Is anyone quite as invested as PMS? Why, PMS?
This is actual a useful moment in one way. We see that our old forum - built robust in the relatively early days of the web - has in fact transformed to a kind of club for the old friends who connected intensely here and The Fray so very many years ago. Vicious argumentation is misplaced here now. Boorish baboons now look even more ridiculous than in the first place.
And posters who have failed to grow up stand out. Seriously, PMS, we all have pity (and could perhaps generate understanding) for you. But who cares, you were an asshole all along. Now fuck off again for as long as possible... 27481. bhelpuri - 7/1/2013 6:39:05 AM Now I feel like writing 2000+ words on the Internet pre-snooping, pre-NSA diabolicalness, pre-scumbags like PMS.
But who will pay?! Dollar a word is my rate! 27482. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 6:45:33 AM Why is it a fake debate, bhel? Am I to believe you don't care how people are identified in society?
Well, I don't believe you. I think you care greatly. You may not care about certain kinds of people, but you still care about others.
But even if it's true that you care not at all for how people are identified, and the way we understand their characteristics, society obviously cares. On both the left and the right.
So this is what we people who actually like debating call a real debate. No credentials need be presented. No moral judgments need be displayed. You just need a good old fashioned argument. 27483. PincherMartin - 7/1/2013 6:54:07 AM When I earlier said bhel didn't know a debate from a hole in the ground, this was exactly what I meant.
He casually dismisses an entire realm of centuries-old inquiry into sex, gender and identity, which has only heated up to an extreme degree in the last few decades, as a "fake debate". Why? Because he doesn't even know how to approach the discussion unless he can moralize about it. He has a fine aesthetic sensibility, but is missing entirely an analytical side to his brain.
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