Joking vs mockery, respect or disrespect?

[Mystic]

I blame Minimalist. You guys were all super kind souls, but then he was all Bad Ass, and everyone was like, praising and kudusing him and repping him, and then everyone is like I gotta be like Minimalist, he got like so much reps.........

Nah. You just think I was kind because I was, and hopefully still am, kind to you. That is because you are cool. If you were a dick, I would berate you for fun. I'm just not a good person.

Aww thanks.

Well for what it's worth, I think you are a good person and that Tiberius is a very lucky man.

[Nine]

You bring excellent points. The thing is there is a compassionate/caring way of telling people. For example, when your parents criticize you, it can be harsh, but you can tell that it's out of caring.

To be honest I can't even remember where this was going anymore. Yeah its nice to be nice but should never be required. The best part is you can call somebody a dick for calling somebody a dick if you think it was unfair. Or you could put it a nice way. I like the idea that everyone speaks their minds here.

For people like jstrodle many of his posts came across as some kind of attempt to be condescending to people. Giving people grief for not reading enough of a certain book and all that. I think he's fair game. If you come to the world of adults and act like an ass you might get called on it. I like to think 9 times out of 10 its all taken in peoples stride or they soon grow a thicker skin. The other one blows up causing a lot of drama and entertainment before ending up in the Staff Log.

[Shell B]

Yeah, I guess you're both nuts.

[Nine]

Well for what it's worth, I think you are a good person and that Tiberius is a very lucky man.

Well he kept getting free balls.

[Tonus]

Perhaps I don't condemn foolishness as I should. Perhaps I am tolerant of it, because, I lived my life being foolish myself and don't want to condemn my past self.

Ehh... if slapping the shit out of my past self would've helped me wake up sooner, I'd happily do it. If you're not condemning your past self as you get older, then you're not learning anything.

[Shell B]

Well for what it's worth, I think you are a good person and that Tiberius is a very lucky man.

Well he kept getting free balls.

He has more friends than I do on tapped as well.

[Jackalope]

Morality just seems more subjective and subjective the more it's discussed.

You should have taken the blue pill.

[thesummerqueen]

I despise my past self. It makes me strive to be better.

This.

To be honest I can't even remember where this was going anymore.

Also this.



Somewhat off topic, but I think you'll agree:

David and I were talking about an article a friend posted (she's a youth psychologist) and my imminent 10 year high school reunion. I'm not keen to go to the reunion. The plan right now is to drive up anyway because friends who live across the country are likely to be in town, so it's the perfect time to grab lunch, but I have no plan to go to whatever "ceremony" they have going on. Anyone I still want to see or be in touch with, I am in contact with via some route through the internet. I have witnessed their changes and growth, and I know where they're at in life at this moment. No need to be voyeuristic on all the other numbnuts I went to school with.

Which brings me about to the point we were discussing. The article's premise was that (basically) we never truly leave high school. For some reason, whatever roles we took on there supposedly define us and we very easily slip back into those roles. And then there are these reunions where we can go back and see how everyone turned out after so much time. I've heard from older friends that the same old cliques are there.

And then you have those fuckers who say "high school was the best time of my life."

Who are you people? I dislike who I was in high school. I disliked many of the people in my high school. I wasn't part of any group or clique, but wandered aimlessly with a shifting group of other wanderers who didn't fit in either. I was nerdy enough to talk to smart kids, but not socially inept. I was in the art classes, and friends with people in the drama club, and friends with musicians, and friends with popular people. High school was a way-point, not a defining portion of my life. I couldn't wait to get out and get a job. Then I got one and started making some money. My early 20's were incredibly formative - I learned more about history through my own reading choices, I suddenly became steeped in skepticism, I moved out so I didn't have to play at being religious anymore. I was thrust into a world of being on my own, being single, treading the waters of criticism and flattery alike. I became me. Note - I wasn't at college either. David agrees with this - he said the years after he quit college and got into the workforce also honed everything he is.

I don't know why people keep looking to the past like it was in some way better than now. Maybe you have more worries now, but you have more freedom to choose how you solve those worries. Being a kid sucked ass.

Somewhat more on topic: I had friends, teachers, and parents who criticized things about me - sometimes even mockingly. Some of these criticisms did some damage. Some of them, on the other hand, were instrumental in teaching me how to hone my own self as much as possible, because not everyone was going to agree with me, not everyone was going to call me a clever girl, and not all of my ideas were going to be perfect, nor was everything going to be easy. The point was not to know everything, or to be perfect, but to be constantly improving, and to know where to go to find the right information. And realizing that undid the damage that the bad criticism wrought.

And realizing THAT also told me that not all adults deserve the respect your parents try to beat into you. Some of them are just as silly at 40 as they were at 14, because they haven't really changed. And I'm not ashamed to mock them for it, because stagnation creates rot and death.

[Whateverist]

I don't. Fuck em, and fuck em twice if they can't take a joke.

I like them but I don't want to fuck any of them.

I've noticed that too. Most of the hotties here are not theists. Apo claims to be one (unless my memory is totally fucked) but she definitely walks and talks like an atheist. On top of that we don't have any lady theists that I can think of .. except for the one with the nun avatar. So theists here are likable enough, just not very fuckable.

---

I don't mess with logical proofs. I haven't studied them, and I don't give much of a shit about them.

Agreed. I find you can communicate more nuance without formal notation. The most that can be said for laying out a logical proof is that those who disagree can easily see which premise they reject. Rarely will such a 'proof' convince anyone who disagrees to begin with, though it may confuse someone who is less clear about what they themselves think. I tend to expect that anyone who communicates this way is totally locked into the rational part of their brain and will be blind to the bigger picture.

[Faith No More]

I try to show respect to everyone until they prove they are unwilling to reciprocate that respect. Every once in a while, however, I stop showing respect after hearing something horrendously stupid come out of someone's mouth.