Barney_TRubble
04-11-02, 12:55 PM
Folks, its time to come clean.
For the last few weeks I've been running a sort of experiment on myself. Most of you by now would have probably come to the conlcusion that I'm an arrogant ***** who has no idea about anything and probably was either spawned or spontaneously sprang into being under a rock somewhere.
when I first joined these forums, I was looking for somewhere new to express things after the collapse of a little place called "The Park" some months ago. However, I soon got bored... most of the topics seemed to cover ground we'd rehashed several times on the Park already in the philosophy sections, and I found i was not maintaining interest.
Enter the Politics arena, where I'd only vaguely dabbled before. I thought I'd try something new... I wanted to be bad. So I posted a few things I didnt neccesarily agree with, mostly to see what sort of reaction I'd get. That worked out pretty well, so I upped the tempo a bit, and turned into... well... Barney Trubble.
A short time into doing this, I thought it was kinda interesting to see what effect it was having on me, and I wanted to find out for myself how far I could go... not neccesarily in provoking reactions, but how far I could immerse myself in the persona I'd created. I became interested in finding out if I could see things from an opposite perspective by attempting not only to write like such a person would, but to BE that person for a significant length of time. It is, indeed, very difficult. I was caught on a few occasions when I allowed a couple of my REAL opinions to slip in, once or twice being inconsistent, and a couple of times posting something obviously incorrect when exposed to the cold light of day. I managed to cover up (after a fashion) those little slips by attempting to turn the question around onto whoever got me ;)
What I found is that I was suddenly seeing things from a completely new perspective, and I actually found it quite easy to understand "my" point of view after a while, which resulted in my being able to argue it better as time went on and my post count rose. From that perspective, I rate my adventure something of a success.
But I'm tired now... it does take a lot of effort to be a bastard, for me anyway, and really after a while I found it very difficult to keep on with it. Barney is done, I'm going to at some point get myself a new nic and do things properly. My experiment on myself is over.
The main reason I'm posting this is to apologise to several people who I incidentally may have pissed off or, more importantly, actually hurt (that bit was very very difficult to live with, and nearly caused me to quit much earlier). I didnt intend to do so at the start, but as I said I found it very easy to play the role after a while... too easy. Time to give it away.
Asguard... I never beat you down completely... I tried, but you kept coming back in your own way. I think you're the one who impressed me the most the whole time I was doing this. :cool:
Adam... Poor guy, probably wondering what the Yanks are thinking of this fellow Aussie, and turning red at the thought :)
Captain Canada... I noticed you copied my writing style a little when you replied to a few of my posts recently. Somebody might think that while you disliked my position intensely, you at least loved my style. Oh go on, deny it ;)
Everyone else... I'm sorry if I did anything offensive to you. But please understand, I was only using you to find out something about me. You're all anonymous... it wasn't that bad :p
Barney out.
For the last few weeks I've been running a sort of experiment on myself. Most of you by now would have probably come to the conlcusion that I'm an arrogant ***** who has no idea about anything and probably was either spawned or spontaneously sprang into being under a rock somewhere.
when I first joined these forums, I was looking for somewhere new to express things after the collapse of a little place called "The Park" some months ago. However, I soon got bored... most of the topics seemed to cover ground we'd rehashed several times on the Park already in the philosophy sections, and I found i was not maintaining interest.
Enter the Politics arena, where I'd only vaguely dabbled before. I thought I'd try something new... I wanted to be bad. So I posted a few things I didnt neccesarily agree with, mostly to see what sort of reaction I'd get. That worked out pretty well, so I upped the tempo a bit, and turned into... well... Barney Trubble.
A short time into doing this, I thought it was kinda interesting to see what effect it was having on me, and I wanted to find out for myself how far I could go... not neccesarily in provoking reactions, but how far I could immerse myself in the persona I'd created. I became interested in finding out if I could see things from an opposite perspective by attempting not only to write like such a person would, but to BE that person for a significant length of time. It is, indeed, very difficult. I was caught on a few occasions when I allowed a couple of my REAL opinions to slip in, once or twice being inconsistent, and a couple of times posting something obviously incorrect when exposed to the cold light of day. I managed to cover up (after a fashion) those little slips by attempting to turn the question around onto whoever got me ;)
What I found is that I was suddenly seeing things from a completely new perspective, and I actually found it quite easy to understand "my" point of view after a while, which resulted in my being able to argue it better as time went on and my post count rose. From that perspective, I rate my adventure something of a success.
But I'm tired now... it does take a lot of effort to be a bastard, for me anyway, and really after a while I found it very difficult to keep on with it. Barney is done, I'm going to at some point get myself a new nic and do things properly. My experiment on myself is over.
The main reason I'm posting this is to apologise to several people who I incidentally may have pissed off or, more importantly, actually hurt (that bit was very very difficult to live with, and nearly caused me to quit much earlier). I didnt intend to do so at the start, but as I said I found it very easy to play the role after a while... too easy. Time to give it away.
Asguard... I never beat you down completely... I tried, but you kept coming back in your own way. I think you're the one who impressed me the most the whole time I was doing this. :cool:
Adam... Poor guy, probably wondering what the Yanks are thinking of this fellow Aussie, and turning red at the thought :)
Captain Canada... I noticed you copied my writing style a little when you replied to a few of my posts recently. Somebody might think that while you disliked my position intensely, you at least loved my style. Oh go on, deny it ;)
Everyone else... I'm sorry if I did anything offensive to you. But please understand, I was only using you to find out something about me. You're all anonymous... it wasn't that bad :p
Barney out.