Okay, sure. What you say is probably correct. Woop-dee-doo. Your excellent debating skills have won the day. My favorite part was the bit where you called me naive and ignorant. No wait, my favorite part was the bit where you take a question and turn it into a horrible plan to poison the discussion. You started the argument, you motherfucker. What did I do? What the fuck did I do this time? I'm going to log out now. I'm going to log out, and then I'm going to go to bed. After I go to bed, I'm going to go to sleep. When I wake up, I'm going to have breakfast, shower, brush my teeth, and check Hubski again. There will be, I assume, some brilliant response waiting for me in my inbox that will reveal all of life's greatest truths. One of these truths is that I can't talk to people on here. I can't succeed in talking to people on this website. I'm going to post that game I wanted to run on here, but I'm going to avoid talking about anything else. I'm tired of being picked apart, I'm tired of being insulted, I'm tired of defending myself. If the game falls through, too, I'm going back to being a lurker. I'm sick of this.
Rhetorical skill permits one to win an argument when one does not have the facts. I mod a default. It's the fifth or sixth I've modded. I've been bestof'd something over 100 times and I haven't done much more than modding since 2011. My trophy case says "load more trophies." I was nominated Redditor of the year in 2008, 2009 and 2010. Gifts on my behalf have paid for nearly a week of Reddit server time and Reddit's first podcast is partly about me. Facts. I haz them. Here's rhetorical skill: I'm sorry I offended you. I think you didn't mean to come across as offensive. I reckon you rarely do. However, based on your response (and previous responses to others - this is a small site), you come across as offensive by mistake with disquieting regularity. Here's why we like Hubski better: - On Reddit, all you ever get is a downvote. On Hubski, you get a discussion. - On Reddit, you're a never-seen-before username. On Hubski, you're a precocious-but-prickly homeschooler that I still choose to talk to. - On Reddit, there's no context to anything. On Hubski, I've watched you trip over your own caltrops so many times that when you took "naive" in an insulting way, even though I didn't mean it that way, it was easier to lance the boil and let you vent. Feel better? 'cuz here's the thing: Hubski is not a site where you only get to talk to people you agree with. Not only that, but the people you disagree with are around a lot. Again, voice of experience: I've got a long-ass mute list. Several people on there I've tried to come to terms with many times. Can you say the same thing about Reddit? Are there people on there that have rubbed you the wrong way for years but you still have to be civil to them for the sake of the general level of discussion? (see, I can, but we all mod defaults. Disagreements at that level make the news. Call me a corner case.) You sound deeply frustrated. I would be, too, if every time I wanted a discussion I got a fight. But think about it for a minute: why do we want to fight you? You came into this completely neutral. You asked what you think is a completely neutral question. With each interaction it became more and more heated until here you are, QQing out in a languorous and verbose fashion. Do your friends out there in the world say things like "Oh, that's just Waterford, he's like that?" 'cuz the world doesn't. The world takes you at face value - 93% of communication is context. Which means what you type is only 7% of what I'd get off of you if we were standing face to face having a chat. So if you have a hard time face-to-face, online's gonna be rugged. Which means - sorry, champ - you're 93% made-up in my head. Everyone is. All of us are one-sip-out-of-a-beercan truth. Once you internalize that, you start to choose your words more carefully. NOBODY started their interactions with you intent on giving you the ratchet. It got there though, didn't it? And we don't really do that much with each other anymore because our 93% has been filled in somewhat by other interactions. We got history. THAT is another reason we like Hubski better. I've seen several people try and steer things back to normal with you. You don't get that on Reddit, either. But there comes a time when you gotta participate in the process, mate. If you can't have a conversation without ending up on the defensive, perhaps your conversational skills need refreshing. There is no aspect of life that won't improve, trust me. Again, sorry to make you blow your top. Sorrier that you're having a hard time understanding why. If you've been reading this only to prove how correct your predictions were, stop. I have no skin in this game and if you left after this you'd be just another in a long line of people who come to Hubski thinking that oversharing is the same thing as empathy so they never really learn how to talk. I'm speaking to you, 7% person to 7% person, in an attempt to uncloud your eyes from the humanity. It's nice here. We get along. When we don't, we rarely call each other motherfuckers. Go or stay. Up to you. Generally when we see someone making dire exclamations they've made their mind up and it's beyond our influence. I don't know how many hours of server time I've burned personally trying to get people to stay. Rest assured there's no reward. Yet I do it anyway. So does everybody else. Because Hubski is better.
Yeah I think I have to agree with kleinbl00 here. I'm not talking about the reddit discussion but the one about why you feel you're constantly picked apart and attacked. On the last two things I posted here, you were the first (and only one) to comment. I mean, cool I like discussion! But while I don't have the skilz to actually understand why something about your responses irked me. I was ready to reply on a very defensive tone but toned it all down considerably. I thought "why am i so bothered?" re-read your comment and didn't find anything to be hostile about so I toned it all down and replied in a friendly manner. I figured it was my insecurities projected on you and you were not to blame that I felt a certain way. We then proceeded to have a perfectly cool interaction. But then I noticed other people misinterpreting your comments in other threads too. I don't have any specific advice and I'm sure you don't mean to but there is just something in the way you say things that puts people on the defensive. Conversations get heated from that point on. You're very intelligent tho and I hope you stick around. Just... I don't know, try to be a bit less.... eh... arrogant? Nah, that's not the word I'm looking for but something along those lines. Does that happen to you outside Hubski?
Tag me when you do run that game, I'll participate if I've got time :)
This is the question that got me to respond after this long. I've thought enough about what I'm going to say in response, and it isn't getting anywhere. No matter. I've been looking over my past comments. Is the word you're looking for "aggressive?" That's the vibe I'm getting from myself. I don't mean it, but I can see it. And there is no other place, offline or online that gets me the kind of reactions I get here. I'm trying to think about what I say here a few times before I write it, so bear with me. I don't know what's different here compared to other websites. I don't speak any differently here than I do anywhere else. It's confusing to me when I get negative reactions to things I don't think are offensive. I'm certainly a large part of the problem (acting like a dick on purpose does not help the issue of being perceived as one), but I don't know how to change the way I talk and act. I'm bad at long posts. I was going to remain silent and lurk after my original post, but after thinking about it I realized that it would probably come across as whining. This is as much as I can get straight in my head right now. Tomorrow I might tackle the mountain that is the other response. I've certainly read it enough times to get a grip on it. Hopefully this isn't beating a dead horse.Does that happen to you outside Hubski?
Hey Waterford, I badged kb's reply because it was an amalgam of points that he made to me several years ago, and seeing them being made again, not in the exact same way but still as articulately, brought me back. But I don't want it to seem like a snub against you, like there's this hubski squad that's ganging up on you and we pat each other on the back and give each other these "badges" and high-fives and are super smug about all of it. I realized that unless I added a reply, my badge lacked context and could be very naturally assumed to be a kind of congratulation at your expense. It's not. What it is is that I see something in kb's response that I think is very important. It's a bit of a call to action. To do something really, really hard. To look at yourself. To be able to recognize and make sense of what you see and then think on it and even maybe act on it. I know that a lot of goodness comes from being able to listen to others and find the truth in what they're saying, even if they seem a bit cuntish or rude. It's a skill so hard though that even with the patience of a dozen zen monks people spend their lives never getting good at it. To be able to look at a pattern of reactions in other people and maybe draw a similar thread about yourself, and then use that thread to inform future behavior. What kb did was try very empathically to get you to look at yourself -- you, who is a total stranger to him, a username on a website. Most people won't ever give you the time of day. Fewer people would do it with any modicum of thought for your feelings or wellbeing. And this might sound super mushy, but I'm sending you super good vibes over the internet right now.