Comments | yndy: One-upsmanship... Late Night Musings

yndy

One-upsmanship... Late Night Musings

Aug 11, 2007 02:28

I suspect this will fall on deaf ears for the most part - or would if I were speaking rather than typing - given that it's late on a Friday (early on a Saturday?) and headed into the dulldrums that is LJ on the weekend. Still, this is when I'm thinking it, so this is when I'm writing it. The half-dozen of you refreshing your FL in the hopes that ( Read more... )

Comments 14

knightofwinter August 11 2007, 09:03:54 UTC

Meh.
I could point to the same tired "truth" that every human is competitive, or the "fact" (and it is one) that anonymity makes for more belliocse people...
But it's been said, and said again.
There are those out there who are so small and petty that their goal in life becomes a quest to show how much better they are than everyone else.
How do they do this?
It's called "blinding with bullshit".
Every bullshit tirade has a small bit of fact. And in truth, the selfsame fact is repeated to the point of being nauseating (I'd say ad nauseum but it'd be pretentious ( ... )

yndy August 11 2007, 10:09:51 UTC

well hello there ( ... )

knightofwinter August 11 2007, 18:04:30 UTC

I really need to stop making blanket statements ( ... )

yndy August 11 2007, 19:48:25 UTC

well then!!

Damn glad to meet you... and I'll reply more in depth to this a bit later - I'm headed out to a social event (eep!) but did want to acknowledge this and to let you know that I'm adding you to my FL if that's okay with you.

:)

Thread 5

fragbert August 11 2007, 15:17:22 UTC

I have to agree with Winter.

The main contributing factor to the overwhelming amount of intarweb assholery is because NO ONE IS HELD PERSONALLY ACCOUNTABLE.

When I went to school, you always ran the risk of the person you flamed overhearing you and coming to kick the snot out of you, publicly, painfully, and humiliatingly.

Alas, like most everything else these days, personal responsibility and accountability have gone the way of MTV: the name itself is an oxymoron.

unixronin August 11 2007, 16:35:52 UTC

Okay now seriously... what was the anonymous-guy's objective? To convert the OP to a different way of thinking? To gently point out an error in the thought process? Nope. No way. The guy was out to "win" some nebulous point. Out to prove to some fictional audience that he was smarter/better/cleverer than the OP. But honestly... when was the last time an anonymous commenter anywhere ever changed anyone's mind? And moreso, how can you "win" when no one even knows who you are?

I think the MO here is, if you "win", you claim credit ... if not, you quietly walk away and try it again somewhere else.

Why they bother is a mystery to me.

sistersolace August 11 2007, 18:02:10 UTC

a friend of mine used to give out e-paperclips to people who seemed determined to Win Something by making snarky, smarter-than-you comments. heh.

i am competitive at a lot of things, but i'm also non-confrontational, so i don't really get the urge to troll. even anonymously. (i can't handle people yelling at my anonymous persona... how sad is that?)

silveredmane August 11 2007, 18:55:55 UTC

I subscribe to the Conflict Resolution perspective that every action is divided into three parts: the intention, the action and the effect, and that only the doer knows the intention and only the receiver(s) know the effect.

Inundated as we are (culturally) with pop-psychology it's "natural" for us to ascribe intention to someone's actions and then remember our ascribed intention as part of the action.

I'm not able to see how ascribing intention is helpful or useful outside of clinical psychology courses, and even then it's a dubious pursuit because we can't really understand anything that's been plucked from its context ( ... )