Thursday, January 10, 2008

Three Theories

Well, as it turns out, I avoided getting dragged back down. I made one or two "your idea is poorly balanced" style of comments, then cut and ran. Switching gears to 'Peaks references here helped, so thanks for putting up with me. Amy calling a bit later and inviting me out for Eggplant Parmesan helped as well. Finding a red envelope in my mailbox didn't hurt either.

Looking at the forums today, I see neither person has responded to being essentially called a munchkin and a cheat. In fact, one of them has posted to that same thread but ignoring my allegations, and has also posted to another thread with cheery thanks. I see 3 possibilities here:
  1. Hoping this will all blow over, and they won't be exposed before the people they game with, these guys have decided to not respond and let the thread die.
  2. I'm just too polite, and too subtle. What I felt was a flaming indictment was in fact entirely venomless.
  3. They really just stupid, not manipulative, nor are they cheaters. As such, my (only slightly subtle) invective went right over their heads.

  4. For the record, I considered two other possibilities, but evidence refutes them:

  5. Both individuals are themselves too polite. This is not true for at least one of them - he was paranoid and aggressive for 4 and a half pages of post-counterpost.
  6. Neither has read my latest posts to that forum. This is also clearly not true. One of them has posted to the thread in which I made my allegations, responding to the comment directly after the two posts in which I accused him.
For what it's worth, my money is riding on explanation #2. That first guy deserved multiple new holes, but I think all I did was pencil-in the locations where they should eventually be drilled. Sometimes, I find that being an overall decent human being is a huge disadvantage in this world.

1 comment:

digital_sextant said...

in a single flamewar, politeness does have its downsides, but over time one develops a reputation as polite, amiable, and wise. That reputation pays off far more over the long run. Since reputation (whuffie) is all people have on fora, it's all that matters. Ultimately these people can only be hurt by you in this environment, and thus maintaining your reputation becomes the strongest motivation you have.