Desperate Housewives 2892

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006, alexy

It is time to have that little "fireside chat" with you. I play in a usenet sandbox which is defined by two things: i) my interest in whatever kind of generally endless arguing (or endless agreeing, roughly, over certain topics with those holding similar views) that I, as a participant, and my co-participant engage in, and ii) the definition and control (and who does the controlling) of that sandbox.

Newsgroup trolling is a popular game that can go way beyond misinterpretations, biased interpretations, biased arguments, biased positions, and just plain kicking up the dust. I am not bothered by people, such as for example, conservatives who post against liberals and liberals who post against conservatives. However, I do notice and detect when people start playing a more sophisticated and dishonorable game by altering their own word usage, interpreting beyond what was said, pretending that something was said that was not said, or even continuously altering, to a variable extent, their own positions to overlap or not overlap with their co-participant on a given issue. This also goes beyond simple "quotation out of context" and sellective quotes. Ah, then we get into pseudo name calling (variations on a dog's name), inuendo (eg "bigoted" and bigot-like), and even sellective responses to some but not all posts by a participant. And, of course, agreement on some issue whenever it suits your whim.

So, some few people are not interested in coming to a consensus, not interested in presenting positions, not interested in learning another point of view, not interested in rationalizations. And, I also notice a very high absence of moral and ethical concerns. Not just that some author has one or another moral or ethical positions, but a conspicuous absence of such. So its time to focus and describe the image. Here it is:

I'll tell you the pattern here is your little game of playing cat and mouse with people. You dance around, flip-flop, make things up, use coy wording to play games, generate artificially simplistic examples (your excess bleeding and rest) then don't follow up on my analysis, and then when I catch you making big mistakes, you ignore it and don't answer. In the last few days, you made many. So, all you are doing is just picking what you feel like responding to (maybe the easier issues) and being dishonorable about the rest of the content), and play the game "heads-I-win- tails-you-lose" but its not working. I'll acknowledge a very few insignificant and gratuitous "my bads" from you, but beyond that, Alex, I'll just have to tell you that "the jig is up."

So, as the judge of my usenet sandbox, I sentence you to sandbox jail. You will be in sandbox prison until you shape up and play nice. You are free to play in sandboxes not controlled by me.