Assholes and twats
First off,
Spidergoat,
love the hat!
As to the general topic, what surprises me is how few of the people who complain the most about personal attacks are capable of understanding the concept. Wait, let me correct that, lest anyone think I'm attacking them: ...
how few of the people who complain the most ... demonstrate the capability of understanding the concept.
Look, it's kind of like our plagiarism rules. We don't like whole articles posted because of copyright concerns. But we also don't like excerpts posted without any comment by the poster. It's lazy and leaves the poster's opinion to be determined by the reader. And if there's one thing my time here has taught me well, it's that people don't like others thinking for them.
Recently, moderators have received a string of complaints about personal attacks that present some problem for us. Apparently, anyone who openly and expressly disagrees with a poster is mounting a personal attack. Likewise, anyone who does not think highly of another is apparently mounting a personal attack. In addition to that, pointing out observably true, difficulties with a person's argument apparently equals a personal attack.
Should we enforce such standards, Sciforums would finally become the liberal-extremist, bland kind of love-fest that is, coincidentally, feared by conservatives. Strange, eh? Especially when we consider that these ridiculous standards are being posited by folks who coincidentally argue more conservative viewpoints.
I'm going to single out our topic poster for a moment: it's okay if you think the words I write are
silly. That's fine with me. However, according to many of the complaints filed of late, calling my words silly is a personal attack that requires moderation and infraction points. Furthermore, what are people supposed to think when your expressed basis for calling something silly is so at odds with what is on record as to be absurd? Either you're functionally illiterate--a notion contradicted by the sentences you write, unless of course you're dictating them to a secretary--or intentionally choosing to ignore what's there. Frankly, I find this behavior more damaging than the occasional use of words and phrases like "gormless twit", "silly", or even more substantial insults involving words like "asshole".
In fact, let's take a look at assholes for a moment.
(1) "You're an asshole!"
(2) "Asshole."
(3) "Stop being an asshole."
(4) "You're acting like an asshole, you know."
Now, in the case of #1, that's clearly a personal attack. So, for the most part, is #2. But in the cases of #3 and #4, there is no permanent assignation. With the first two, there is a sense of assignation that a given poster hasn't the foundation, or, therfore, the right to sling. In the case of the latter two options, well, what if it is observably true that someone is acting in a manner generally described by the colloquial insult "asshole"? People can stop being or acting like assholes in this sense. Thus, while I can't say that someone who ignores what is written in order to mount an insult against a poster is, truly, an asshole, it seems to me that such people are, indeed, trying to be or act like assholes. And we'll all be much happier and more welcoming when such behavior ceases.
Thus, if our topic poster, for instance, is acting like an asshole, he's acting like an asshole. He can, in theory, choose to stop, oh, say, being dishonest in order to be insulting. Whether or not he is permanently and irrevocably an asshole is well beyond my knowledge. But if telling him he's acting like an asshole on such occasions that he observably
is constitutes a personal attack, how will he ever know? If nobody can tell him, he won't realize he's acting like an asshole, and therefore won't have any impetus to reconsider his behavior.
Seriously, if people can't put at least a little bit of effort into expressing their anger, they might as well go somewhere private and shout at the wall. It's amazing what can be accomplished if one puts even the slightest effort into insults. (Why, for instance, did passive-aggressive sarcasm have a heyday in the 1980s and '90s? Because, to borrow from an old song, "It's fun and it's easy for the empty-headed fool." And why are people so sick of passive-aggressive sarcasm these days? Because, to borrow from an old song, "It's fun and it's easy for the empty-headed fool." In other words, when you're two and a half years old, people are supposed to be impressed that you're not pissing your pants. When you're an adolescent or adult, however, we're not impressed. For instance, we're not impressed because Mondrian managed to color inside the lines. The reason Mondrian's seemingly-simple artistic expressions are considered impressive go well beyond the psychology of sphincter control and color-by-numbers.)
In short, put some effort into it. That way, you can have even more dubious pleasure when the person acting like an asshole pretends to not understand. And who knows, maybe they don't. I can't actually recall the number of times people have lashed out at me for using too many words.
For instance, have I just spent a tremendous number of words calling Baron Max an asshole? One could look at it that way, I suppose. And some will. Of course, those folks are simply looking for something to fight about, and must necessarily, in order to draw such a conclusion, ignore such notions as underlying themes or, more directly, what is actually written in this post and why.
For the rest of us, however, there are more important things to worry about than whether or not our topic poster is acting like an asshole.
I won't start in on twats.
