(June 14, 2012 at 3:39 pm)Moros Synackaon Wrote: I'd like to point out that often in a discussion with an ideologue, you are as much making a case for your position to the ideologue as you are making a case to the audience.
Another reason to be less "You're an idiot" and more "You show a poor understanding of X,Y,Z. Perhaps you should inspect things more carefully before mouthing off."
Our personal attacks clause is often relaxed when the poster engages in clever aphorisms and displays an understanding of wit.
The clause, consequently, is strongest against "You're a douchebag loser crack addict."
If I may, and I am not sure if I have used this example on this board before.
In my entire history of posting on several board over the past 11 years there has been only ONE person who initially made a demand that that board boot him. And admittedly my blood was boiling because of an insult he had made about my x-wife.
He had started a thread about the Japanese Tsunami. 13, thousand people died in that event. He'd had already in prior posts at that board been making DIRECT insults about atheists, calling us all sorts of names.
But he hit close to home because what he did not know, was that my x was Japanese. The thread was about how god allowed it as a warning to America to find god.
Now my x was not directly affected, but her home nation was and her family knew people directly affected. Not to mention that my x has TWO degrees and a PHD in microbiology. Not to mention that Japan has no crime rate compared to America.
The name calling prior to that I lived with. I have been called every name in the book merely for not believing. But he picked on a completely innocent person and a nation that sets a much better example than America.
I initially demanded he be removed because of that "insult". But someone pulled me aside and said "no Brian, let him hang himself". And that person was dead on right. So now when he posts his bullshit, he still uses his standard insults about atheists, but every time he posts I remind everyone about that thread. It doesn't shut him up forever, but it becomes something that "let the reader decide" and most of the time he stops posting in that thread.
I want people like that to put on display it allows me to use their own weight against them. So while he is an asshole and still insults us, it doesn't bother me like it did at first. I simply ridicule him. He is quite useful to that board and brings that board lots of attention.
