Seems like lately a ton of people in the sciforums "community" have made quite a few nasty, bullheaded and downright mean comments to other members of said "community" without provocation. Few people seem to be above this. Not to say that I haven't participated in my share of flame wars, and dealt/recieved my fair share of low blows. That's to be expected, especially when you've got so many people talking about so many things. All's fair in war, that's a given...but I'm talking about when it's not war. I'm talking about when it's an ordinary discussion. Even a disagreement. Even a heated disagreement. What I'd like to propose is that as many people as possible commit to making an effort not to make these comments...to clarify when these types of remarks are or are not warranted (in the scope of the proposed agreement), try not to take an argument to the next level. There's a difference between an argument and a shitfit, between disagreement and brutality. I'm not even necessarily saying be nicer or change your attitude. I'm saying don't be the asshole that insults someone's intelligence, or masculinity or appearance because they're disagreeing with you, or with the community. Don't be the guy who calls someone by a disparaging name first. Don't be a dick. Unless someone's a dick to you first (as defined above). Then it's open season. Who's with me?
In general I think you've identified the problem. People are not the same, so they often find insult where it's not intended (especially considering the lack of body language to clarify intent). When this happens, someone feels justified in letting loose on someone and shibang, got yourself a shitstorm. Worse, the motivations on a forum like this are widespread indeed. Some are here for the specific purpose of excercising the miniscule power they have to manipulate other peoples emotions by well, fucking with them. They have no emotional investment in their words excepting in that they provide them apparent power, and the resultant desired negative emotional reaction serves as fuel for continuation of the reaction. Well, those things plus every other combination of intent and action possible given the medium. *shrug* So while your intent seems noble many of your opponents might ask? "So what?" Potentially adding: "Fuck nobility." And of course you don't know if they mean it or not or whatever. Oh, and a lot of people simply aren't adults yet so... well I'm sure you understand. So again, I'm down with your apparent intent but uhm, I think you'll be dissapointed if you make this any kind of expectation. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I think "fuck nobility" would be an acceptable response, but "fuck you and your nobility, walker", wouldn't be. I mean in the spirit of the thing. But yeah, I know what you mean. My expectations aren't necessarily high, but I've got 'em. If we're a .1% better community by doing this, or if it makes other posters, moderators, etc. decide to try and elevate the conditions on these forums in other ways, then coolio.
walker: May the fleas of a Thousand Camels infest your armpits. sorry...couldn't resist. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Insults can sometimes be humorous and witty. Those type should be tolerated and taken with a grain of salt IF they are truely only joking. Those who insult others are they themselves insecure because they have to put others down to make themselves feel good. It is their way of trying to be happy through the hurting of others.
Ahh, yer mom.Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Insults usually serve as a valuable measure of a thread's content level. It is helpful when people begin to spew the vitriol because then you can either decide to go somewhere more meaningful, or stick around and spew your own load of venom. For instance, when you are arguing with someone who claims that they've been selling fortune cookies for twenty-five years, and they just KNOW that fortune cookie fortunes are true, and be damned and pox on anyone who does not side with the Fortune Cookie Army, a good response would be to refer to them as the swollen, irritated anus of a domestic canine, and to tell them to go masturbate with a chainsaw. This serves the dual purpose of: 1) Communicating that you don't care how long they've been selling fortune cookies, that you don't believe that fortune cookie fortunes are true, and that you don't want to join the Fortune Cookie Army. 2) Enlightening other forum readers who happen upon the thread as to the bad turn that the content has taken in this thread, and that perhaps they might be better off reading about something more interesting, like whether they would like to be a guy or not.
Uhm.. nuh uh. YOUR MOM. So there. And of course uh, your head is rather gigantic and of displeasing color. HA!
Since it's very hard to determine the intent of an insult, how it bill be received and how it was pronounced in the writers mind, written on a screen, and that most people who visit the internet becomes aware of this fact ( unless they're slow learners) , then the use of insults becomes meaningless, only creating unecessary misunderstandings and flame-wars. Maybe every forum needs a special flame thread, or even a whole section where people can take their fights if the feel for flaming emerges and clouds other "serious" topics. Another approach could be that insults and personal attacks, fould language etc are completely forbidden. If strict rules like this should become the norm, I think it would also have the side effect of people becoming more "polite" in real life too, just out of habit. But then there would be the ethical issule of wether to control peoples use of language and freedom of expression would be right or wrong. So maybe a flame section would then be better, because after all, we have to learn how to deal with that kind of language and aggressiveness in real life too, so why not practise a little from a safe distance at first. It becomes obvious what kind of remarks that trigger certain types of reactions etc. It's like kindergartenstudies in social behaviour.
The thrust and parry of a pair of expert invectivators at play like Wraith and Gendanken is a sort of stained, filthy art form of its own, and regulating it would be a mistake in my opinion. Think of it more like the fruit-throwing festivals that they have in some places - sometimes we wear nice clothes and go to work, but once in a while we all agree to just get some tomatoes and let fly the produce. I mean seriously, if someone pisses you off, would you rather sit and get an ulcer about it all day? Nah, you'd rather go to the tomato room and challenge the punk to tomatoes at ten paces. Spluk spluk spluk spluk spluk. And if he has tomatoes of his own? That will make your tomato victory all the sweeter. So to speak. Without this cathartic release of ugly emotions and bad humour they might have to hold it all in, or worse, vent it on someone less deserving. In this sense, Sciforums is performing a public service, as are the expert flamers, by providing round-the-clock insult catharsis... So remember, sticks and stones will break your bones, but names will never hurt you. And tomatoes can be funny under the right circumstances.
Arent Insults apart of life? Wes, There is a insult in your P.M Box.... Enjoy.......................................................................Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! -Guyute
NO NO NO!!!!! Not insults. I hate those! I want insluts! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Hahahahaha.....My bad. Well, I wasnt gonna send you one anyways. Ahah, I made you look. Feel the insultment running down you take it to your grave. Muuhhhhhhaaaaaaaa....Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Along with a couple slutsPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! -Guyute
Everything that you have all said about insults is true, and I'm not saying "agree with me to never make an insulting comment". I'd have to quit posting. What I am talking about is making cruel, meanspirited and generally nasty comments when the bar hasn't been raised. I personally don't think you should belittle and degregate the Fortune Cookie Army just because of their rather extreme views on fortune cookies. If they take it to that level, or make generally distastefull comments to some or all, then fire at will. But don't call them fucking dipshits just because of their opinions regarding prophetic confections. So I've got suppoert from wesmorris and fireguy_31...anybody else? Any bold moves in the direction of civility to be made by the rest of the community? If not, I suppose it's alright. But I'd at least like for people to be aware that there's some pretty unnecessary making of desparaging remarks going on, and that you can do something about it.
it's difficult... to .... resist.. insulting .... someone... now (that your'e making a big deal of it)! ARGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! *overloads*
You swine. You vulgar little maggot. You worthless bag of filth. As they say in Texas, I'll bet you couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel. You are a canker. A sore that won't go away. I would rather kiss a lawyer than be seen with you. You're a putrescent mass, a walking vomit. You are a spineless little worm deserving nothing but the profoundest contempt. You are a jerk, a cad, a weasel. Your life is a monument to stupidity. You are a stench, a revulsion, a big suck on a sour lemon. You are a bleating foal, a curdled staggering mutant dwarf smeared richly with the effluvia and offal accompanying your alleged birth into this world. An insensate, blinking calf, meaningful to nobody, abandoned by the puke-drooling, giggling beasts who sired you and then killed themselves in recognition of what they had done. I will never get over the embarrassment of belonging to the same species as you. You are a monster, an ogre, a malformity. I barf at the very thought of you. You have all the appeal of a paper cut. Lepers avoid you. You are vile, worthless, less than nothing. You are a weed, a fungus, the dregs of this earth. And did I mention you smell? Try to edit your responses of unnecessary material before attempting to impress us with your insight. The evidence that you are a nincompoop will still be available to readers, but they will be able to access it more rapidly. You snail-skulled little rabbit. Would that a hawk pick you up, drive its beak into your brain, and upon finding it rancid set you loose to fly briefly before spattering the ocean rocks with the frothy pink shame of your ignoble blood. May you choke on the queasy, convulsing nausea of your own trite, foolish beliefs. You are weary, stale, flat and unprofitable. You are grimy, squalid, nasty and profane. You are foul and disgusting. You're a fool, an ignoramus. Monkeys look down on you. Even sheep won't willingly have sex with you. You are unreservedly pathetic, starved for attention, and lost in a land that reality forgot. And what meaning do you expect your delusionally self-important statements of unknowing, inexperienced opinion to have with us? What fantasy do you hold that you would believe that your tiny-fisted tantrums would have more weight than that of a leprous desert rat, spinning rabidly in a circle, waiting for the bite of the snake? You are a waste of flesh. You have no rhythm. You are ridiculous and obnoxious. You are the moral equivalent of a leech. You are a living emptiness, a meaningless void. You are sour and senile. You are a disease, you puerile one-handed slack-jawed drooling meatslapper. On a good day you're a half-wit. You remind me of drool. You are deficient in all that lends character. You have the personality of wallpaper. You are dank and filthy. You are asinine and benighted. You are the source of all unpleasantness. You spread misery and sorrow wherever you go. You smarmy lagerlout git. You bloody woofter sod. Bugger off, pillock. You grotty wanking oik artless base-court apple-john. You clouted boggish foot-licking twit. You dankish clack-dish plonker. You gormless crook-pated tosser. You churlish boil-brained clotpole ponce. You cockered bum-bailey poofter. You craven dewberry pisshead cockup pratting naff. You gob-kissing gleeking flap-mouthed coxcomb. You dread-bolted fobbing beef-witted clapper-clawed flirt-gill. You are a fiend and a coward, and you have bad breath. You are degenerate, noxious and depraved. I feel debased just for knowing you exist. I despise everything about you, and I wish you would go away. I cannot believe how incredibly stupid you are. I mean rock-hard stupid. Dehydrated-rock-hard stupid. Stupid so stupid that it goes way beyond the stupid we know into a whole different dimension of stupid. You are trans-stupid stupid. Meta-stupid. Stupid collapsed on itself so far that even the neutrons have collapsed. Stupid gotten so dense that no intellect can escape. Singularity stupid. Blazing hot mid-day sun on Mercury stupid. You emit more stupid in one second than our entire galaxy emits in a year. Quasar stupid. Your writing has to be a troll. Nothing in our universe can really be this stupid. Perhaps this is some primordial fragment from the original big bang of stupid. Some pure essence of a stupid so uncontaminated by anything else as to be beyond the laws of physics that we know. I'm sorry. I can't go on. This is an epiphany of stupid for me. After this, you may not hear from me again for a while. I don't have enough strength left to deride your ignorant questions and half baked comments about unimportant trivia, or any of the rest of this drivel. Duh. The only thing worse than your logic is your manners. later in life, after you have learned to read, write, spell, and count, you will have more success. True, these are rudimentary skills that many of us "normal" people take for granted that everyone has an easy time of mastering. But we sometimes forget that there are "challenged" persons in this world who find these things more difficult. If I had known, that this was your case then I would have never read your post. It just wouldn't have been "right". Sort of like parking in a handicap space. I wish you the best of luck in the emotional, and social struggles that seem to be placing such a demand on you. P.S. You are hypocritical, greedy, violent, malevolent, vengeful, cowardly, deadly, mendacious, meretricious, loathsome, despicable, belligerent, opportunistic, barratrous, contemptible, criminal, fascistic, bigoted, racist, sexist, avaricious, tasteless, idiotic, brain-damaged, imbecilic, insane, arrogant, deceitful, demented, lame, self-righteous, byzantine, conspiratorial, satanic, fraudulent, libelous, bilious, splenetic, spastic, ignorant, clueless, illegitimate, harmful, destructive, dumb, evasive, double-talking, devious, revisionist, narrow, manipulative, paternalistic, fundamentalist, dogmatic, idolatrous, unethical, cultic, diseased, suppressive, controlling, restrictive, malignant, deceptive, dim, crazy, weird, dystopic, stifling, uncaring, plantigrade, grim, unsympathetic, jargon-spouting, censorious, secretive, aggressive, mind-numbing, arassive, poisonous, flagrant, self-destructive, abusive, socially-retarded, puerile, clueless, and generally Not Good. Hope this helps! Have a nice day!
