The Glade 4.0

Obsessed much?

Ditto.

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Ya know, for someone who's accused RD of trolling in the past, I'd say this right here is quintessential trolling.

The OP was presented in a non-objectionable way, and you added nothing to the discussion other than to poke at RD.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

I dunno. I think the question is fair. You could make the argument that while his verbiage is not confrontational, the fact that he posted it at all could be construed as a 'poke' in and of itself...

how on earth is it a poke? Are statistics & demographics somehow now offensive?

Please enlighten me how posting statistics on religious demographics can in any (reasonable) way be construed as a poke.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Because the result of bringing up religious topics in here isn't in any way predictable or anything.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Because RD is a godless liberal, and he recently started a thread where religious folk got upset.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

So because, predictably, people will respond poorly and can't stop themselves from reading topics they aren't interested in but will upset them, RD should self-censor what he posts based on their potential responses?

And accordingly, him choosing to post something that isn't happy puppydog's that everyone likes should be construed as obsessed/trolling?

Even though there might, possibly, be other posters here how would be interested in the topic and ensuing discussion?

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

...

Posting things that inflame people and get them to respond poorly is pretty much the definition of trolling. There's also the fact that he's posted 2 religion topics in a row now, neither relating to any real event going on and one of them just being a rather pointless flamecomic.

He's not trolling very hard, but he's trolling.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Remember folks, trolling isn't trolling when the target is religious folks. That's somehow different from every other kind of trolling.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Wait, is that the criteria we're going to use for 'trolling'? More than one thread started in a 3 week span with similar topics that might have gotten people upset?

Nah, trolling would be posting things like "Religion is really stupid. Here's reasons." Or Man, I can't believe there are actually people that think the Bible is a trufax account of actual things that happened. Here's a link that shows how retarded they are."

Y'know, trolling.

RD just posted a link without inflammatory verbage.

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Holy shitsnacks!

This board, I swear.

Posting things that people respond poorly to is not trolling.

Posting things with no intent other than to get people to be upset and respond poorly is trolling.

The fact that some people here get upset by anything on religion, even though it would be an interesting discussion for a significant other section of the board, does not make a completely non-inflamatory topic on religious demographics trolling.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

Ok cool, not trolling. So what's the conversation? We are almost through the first page and I don't see it materializing yet.

edit: Nevermind, we are on page 2 now.

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The criteria for trolling is things that tend to inflame a given community. Are you going to argue that religious topics DON'T inflame this community?

And where's the actual discussion value in either topic, especially the first?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

So.. what was the intent behind the comic? Was there room for actual productive discussion there?

Not really. This post maybe more so, if it weren't an obvious follow-up.

Seeing as it's RD, I'll grant that it's probably not intentional, but it sort of appears that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is not the only forum with strongly differing community viewpoints I've seen that comic posted on.

On all the others, it led to great discussions about how Christians can be perceived, how to alter perceptions, and how different other subsets of the population in general view Christians.

The main difference? None of the Christians on the forum immediately responded defensively. They were able to see that there was some truth to the perception, and some truth to the reaction, and respond accordingly.

IMO, the problem isn't with what RD has posted, it's with how a select few of you consistently respond.

Also, as to why there isn't discussion? There was a derail with a troll post very shortly into the thread. Several troll posts, actually. Especially so since one of the primary definitions of trolling is to distract from the topic of discussion with something likely to elicit emotional response.



Is then a quintessential troll post. It offers nothing related to the topic at hand, and serves to derail (effectively, it seems) the rest of the post with an inflammatory discussion.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

First off, I will reiterate that RD is a godless liberal with no intent but to troll good, honest, god-fearing forumites all day long.

Second, the reason nobody's had any sort of discussion yet is because by the fifth or sixth post, any potential for discussion on demographics breakdown had been hijacked. I move that instead of trying to defend his position, Nephyr use his super mod powers to split the offending posts into a new thread titled, "Religious People Acting Butthurt." Then you can all go do something fun, like argue with Taly about what the Bible says.

Alternatively, what we're seeing here is everyone who's mad that Nephyr locked their previous religious butthurt thread continuing to vent their frustrations. Lots of luck, Nephyr.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Hey now! I wasn't the one that locked that.

But yeah, I see a decent discussion up until the "Obsession" Post.

That said, Coro makes a good point. Yay to the supermod threadsplitting power.

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Darksiege: You are not a god damned vulcan homie.

That was me, but in my defense I did have two reports requesting it.

Asking who all is "going to burn in a very special level of hell" is about statistics and demographics. It's also a poke.

Offended? Sure you are.

So, see? That's how it's done. Me personally, I just totally stop visiting the thread when I'm done, going as far as to stop reading it altogether, hoping the other guy still wants to wrestle. It's more satisfying than arguing.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Ah.

so bringing up a topic you don't like = implying someone is guilty of a felony


Got it.

I don't see that as a particularly good discussion, seeing as it (unsurprisngly) treats this perception as bad just because it's about Christians, and it being their responsibility to change the perceptions of other people - people who are not inclined to change that perception regardless. It's not very hard to figure out that no matter what Christians do, there's some people that will always find a reason why it's unacceptable, and if there isn't one, they'll do something like.. create a comic that distorts the actual Christian perspective, and then put it forward claiming it's just a way to start a discussion.



Well, since you seem to have missed it, maybe that's because on those boards you don't get a bunch of other people making comments to the effect of "just goes to show there's nothing more annoying than a well-intentioned person of faith".

Furthermore, complaining that people respond "defensively" is a bullshit tactic used by high school girls to get away with passive-aggressive targeting of people they don't like by making generalizations aimed at groups that are acceptable targets. Usually, you see it with comments about "males" and "Sexism" and if the males object it's "why are you getting so defensive?" and it's very effective with high school kids because they don't know how to respond to what amounts to an ad hom.

Making a claim that someone is "getting defensive" is a distraction technique aimed at criticizing them, rather than addressing any counterpoint they might have to make - exactly what you're doing here. There WAS a discussion to be had, and it actually started BEING had when Shuyung brought up the fact that people with any type of belief can be annoyingly passionate about it. It had nothing to do with anyone "getting defensive" - which is a cute way of saying "the Christians are supposed to just sit there and let everyone else take their potshots and not respond".

Don't talk about people "getting defensive". It's an utterly illegitimate line of discussion.

Furthermore, there wasn't any problem here with people seeing "some truth to the perception" either; there was a problem with the non-Christians seeing that there was truth in that perception with them, as well, and also with beliefs that are strongly held but not religious in nature.



Yeah, the "select few" being the Christians that won't just roll over and say "oh yes, that's just so awful of us, however can we stop people from having that perception of Christians, even though they obviously WANT to have it and cannot under any circumstances tolerate anything remotely positive about religion, nor any criticism of nonreligious people's behavior."

The "select few" that are the problem are those that can't let a religious issue pass without getting their digs in. RD knows they exist and he knows perfectly well what they do.



Unfortunately, there's nothing to discuss in the first place. Ok, this is the percentage of non-Christian, non-affiliated people. What's the point of discussion?

Oh that's right, there isn't one other than "hey guys, religion!" What are we supposed to talk about? That's not a troll post so much as feeding a troll.

It's also interesting that Arathain's comment gets criticized, but obvious trolling like "well, large numbers of people around this country didn't even know Muslims existed before 9/11" goes unnoticed.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This might gain more traction if you were a little more inclined to admit that you made some very ill-advised posts in the past. Out of curiosity, I looked up the "breath play" post, and sure enough - at the time, Lenas said he wouldn't be disciplining anyone (that anyone being Nitefox) for reacting the way he did to your comment. It also contained you making some bullshit excuse about "Regional differences" as if everyone doesn't know what "breath play" means, rather than just admitting it was a dumb comment to make and apologizing.

I don't think anyone here ACTUALLY thinks you're a pedophile, and if they do.. they're an idiot. That said, a little less self-righteousness would probably be in order; some of the stuff you have said has been a little creepy even if it was unintenional and unfortunate implications that made it that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."