What am I looking for... I don't see just... GAH!Originally Posted by Rii
Much as I'd pay the cost of a transatlantic flight just to see this happen, by the time a band's has fans that dedicated they've clearly already sold out and become uncool.
It really kicks off with -
- but actually it gradually sneaks up on the reader over the course of the rant before mugging them at the end.This is the soundtrack to American conservatism. Naturally, conservatives won’t claim “TiK ToK” as an anthem—many will profess to be appropriately scandalized by it—but nevertheless it articulates the conservative worldview as well as anything I can presently point at.
I decided to like Ke$ha after being exposed to that link. True story.
Last edited by Rii; 18-08-2011 at 06:52 PM.
What a bullshit. My comments got deleted w/o any warning.
Given your reaction to their deletion I don't doubt their deletion was reasonable.
A good thread that has, sadly, been hijacked by yet another squabble between two people. I would like it if there was less of that. Perhaps you people can create a dedicated "Talk about issues with other forum members" thread, so that those of us who would like to stay somewhat on topic can do so, and those of us who don't want to deal with Forum Politics can really decide to not read all about it? Either way, let's get back on topic:
I can think of a few main reasons why it looks like there are many 'anti-conformists', but before we dive into that, I'd like to throw out some meta-talk about discussions and debating in general.
The main goal of discussions and debating, I think, is to learn more about the subject matter by discussing opinions and (sometimes, but not often) facts. The focus lies on providing insight into various opinions, rather than on trying to convince someone else that one opinion is better than the other. Debates serve the purpose of determining why someone has a certain opinion. This can be useful, especially when making a decision that has effect for a large group (politics!). If there are no decisions to be made, discussions and debates can allow people to learn new stuff. "Why are you wearing a dirty white shirt, rather than that clean black one over there?" "I am sitting in the sun" "I'm sorry, I don't understand how that is relevant" "Black clothes get hotter in the sun than white clothes" "Oh, I didn't know that. How so, exactly?", etc.
Now, I happen to believe that if there is any kind of 'purpose' in life, it's taking input, processing it, and outputting it again. Hopefully, that would lead to the improvement of humanity as a species, no matter how insignificant the improvement may be. I think this might explain why I am attracted to proper debates and discussions: I can use them to achieve new levels of knowledge. If I don't learn anything new, though, I might have taught someone else some new tricks or insights. If that didn't happen, at least I spent my time on something I enjoyed doing. Thus, a discussion is almost always something good and positive, to me.
Now, I guess (hope :P) there are more people that share this point of view with me. I doubt, however, that many people have this "let's have a nice and intelligent debate!" idea consciously when they write a new thread. Here's a rough list of reasons why I think people may write a new thread:
-Share information with others ("New trailer for this game, someone might like it"). This may spark a discussion, or lead others into contributing more information ("You've read book X and liked it? You might like book Y then!").
-Writing about frustrations / figuring out if a frustration/opinion is shared with others ("Is it just me, or..."). If you find out that you're the only one who has a certain frustration, you might find out why that is and if you're perhaps misinformed, which may lead you out of your frustration. If you find out that everyone else shares your frustration, that's social bonding right there! Might even make some friends with that!
-Generic discussion of opinions. It doesn't happen often that a thread is actively made with this in mind, but a lot of threads change into a discussion of opinions gradually.
Now, here's why I think that you often see this 'anti-conformist' phenomenon:
Agreeing with an opinion brings nothing new to a discussion, or is hard to write in such a way that it *does* bring something new to a discussion
Sure, I could write "I agree", but that would bring absolutely nothing new to the discussion. The only thing I could really do to get the discussion further, when I agree with the original poster, is write about arguments that the OP forgot to mention. On the other hand, if I disagree with the OP, I could write a lot about various arguments that support my opinion, and I could write about opinions that counter some of the OP's opinions.
[b]Many threads are made to talk about things in a negative way / talk about frustrations[/b.
We all know them. The 'complain about X' threads. "Origin is crap!", "Deus Ex to be region-locked!", "Battlefield 3 to require always-online internet connection!", "Some id Software guy is being an idiot!". These are all threads that have been thrown around here during the past week that have been all about someone's frustration with something. These kind of threads tend to be very different from threads that start off in a positive way ("This game is awesome!"). I have no idea why this is, but it always seems as if 'positive' threads are always filled with people who only think positively about something, whereas 'negative' threads contain people who all have their own very different opinions.
There are many people here with vastly different backgrounds.
Especially with the recent talk of gaming business, DRM and distribution networks, it's no surprise that there are many people with different opinions. Some people have never owned a console and thus might not have any negative experiences with major publishers. Other people are into obscure game genres, and find themselves not often playing major titles by major developers. Some people are programmers, others are artists. Some people have experience with Linux, others do not. Because all these people have various different backgrounds, they have vastly different priorities. Someone who has experience with Linux might think that the open-ness of a system is way more important than integration of a system with social networking. Programmers tend to think more about the long-term issues a system might have (bugs, etc.) plus any advantages a system provides a company when compared with an old situation ("This new system allows us to push content to all players of the game simultaneously, thus making sure that everyone in our awesome multiplayer game is always running the latest client, so we can automatically update our servers in case wild bugs appear"). Consumers, on the other hand, may be eager to look only at the disadvantages ("I'll have to always be online to use this new system!"), not realizing that there might be a good reason why certain decisions have been made. Because this community appears to be more varied than most communities, it means that more people have an opinion other than the opinion of the masses, and that you'll thus get more 'anti-conformist' opinions. There may also be some hidden motives at play here. I'm a Programmer with some Linux experience, and I really want to see a proper package manager in Windows. If I can back Origin against Steam and hope that it'll lead to a unified global package manager for Windows due to a lot of people complaining (look at what happened to Web standards after Firefox and Chrome became popular), that's a win for me. :)
Supporting a part of something does not mean that the person in question backs the entirety of the thing in question.
When someone agrees with a part of a system, it does not mean that he agrees with the entire system. For example, I like Origin's automatic updates, but I don't like buying stuff from Origin. Sometimes, because of a language barrier perhaps, this may not be too obvious. The context of a discussion also matters. If someone is claiming that Microsoft sucks in a discussion at some Linux community forum, I'll happily voice my opinion that I think that Windows 7 is the best OS currently on the market. Likewise, if someone claims that Linux Audio is poop, I'll happily defend it where possible. I could back something like Steam in a Windows-using community ("It sort of does package management for Windows games!"), but I could also tell people in a Linux community about my hatred for Steam's closeness and vendor lock-in.
I guess the main point is that depending on the community you're in, an opinion will either be mainstream or not. Some communities may think that Steam is awesome, wheras others may think that it's horrible. Because some people are part of different communties, you'll notice that a few people appear to always be an 'anti-conformist', but they probably share way more opinions with you than you'd initially think...
Luckily, because we are all internet people, we can safely assume that all the rest of us are all 15 year old boys with chips on our shoulders so we don't have to actually worry about arguing with each other.
Anyway, for some reason in the past 6 months I've become a sucker for reading crazy comments by people who infuriate me, it's part of my 5pm wind-down activity at work, so I'm quite happy, the ratio of those on RPS is good enough for me. I love most of you people and want to give you virtual eHugs.
@ Megagun: that's pretty insightful post. I think in the main issue is how people voice their contrary opinions. If they provide a good reason for, say, thinking Half Life 2 sucked, and don't insult other people's opinions, I don't think people will react badly. I think because the internet is devoid of tone of speach and body language, it's all too easy to write something that will offend someone, so you should make an effort to make sure it doesn't.
@p7uen: I actually like reading Wizardry's arguments now
heh. they are interesting even tough i don't agree often with them :P
I understand where bilbo is coming from. He is excited about a game most people hate/are not interested/make jokes about... and say how inferior it is in comparison to a game he is not interested at all.
that behavior irked me too when Alpha Protocol was released a year ago...
So do I Land squid, he's just as extremist as wulf but each post is about 1000 words shorter but just as divisive. I'd rather read a forum of 100 people who can articulate their disagreement (in 2000 char or less wulf) than 100 people who all agree.
The scary thing about this thread is that it supposes that most Rock Paper Shotgun commentators are conformists.
"You go up to a man, and you say, "How are things going, Joe?" and he says, "Oh fine, fine — couldn't be better." And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Well, they're conformists to the prevailing opinion among RPSers
About everything? Creepy.
"You go up to a man, and you say, "How are things going, Joe?" and he says, "Oh fine, fine — couldn't be better." And you look into his eyes, and you see things really couldn't be much worse. When you get right down to it, everybody's having a perfectly lousy time of it, and I mean everybody. And the hell of it is, nothing seems to help much." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Well I'm mostly indifferent and on the whole people just piss me off, and personally I think you're all a bunch of twats anyway. We all are, and the people who don't think they're twats are the biggest twats of all. So frankly I've never been too bothered by what people say on here or anywhere else.
Lets face it, the internet has become a mouth piece for people who want to get things off their chest and vent their spleen as it were.
Every day we are surrounded by people that piss us off and fill us with anger and hate; at the work place, on the roads, the people in your neighbourhood. If that wasn't enough you pick up a paper or switch on the TV and you get more loathsome people thrust in your face for you to hate and despise.
But what can we do about it? Can we scream and shout at our tormentors? In most cases, no. If we did we'd run the risk of losing our jobs or starting a fight with all the inevitable repercussions. So what do we do? We just take it like a slap on the face; we turn the other cheek and just bottle it all up. We let all that fear hate and anger heat up and boil inside of us, just waiting for that moment, that one little thing that finally forces the pressure building inside of us to go pop.
Enter the internet, with it's countless outlets for public "debate" on just about any topic you could care to name and millions more you couldn't even begin to think of. If you look at any forum on the internet, ANY forum, and you will find people on there writting angry hate filled posts about this that and the other. Around the world right now there are literally millions of people logging onto forums and comments sections and opening their safety valve and venting off some of that pressure, letting out little blasts of steaming hate and anger. Just a little bit mind, because ultimately the internet has no soul, it has no substance, it can't feel your pain or your anger and all your words may as well be piss holes in the snow.
Letting rip at some one and then kicking all their teeth out; now that's catharsis.
Last edited by Chaz; 20-08-2011 at 09:35 PM.
I guess you are free to leave anytime.
Have you considered Yoga?
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