Complaining about Hell threads that aren't our Business
This discussion was created from comments split from: pease the unappeased....
These posts moved to give The_Riv and Caissa the opportunity to show the rest of us how things should be done.
Dafyd Hell Host
These posts moved to give The_Riv and Caissa the opportunity to show the rest of us how things should be done.
Dafyd Hell Host
Comments
I assume the OP had other matters on their mind than your entertainment. What's your excuse?
I don't need one. I was on the Olde Shippe, and remember what realized Hell Thread Potential looks like. This ain't it.
Ah, if only there was some decent ranting, venting, and personal disputes. "Then," as David Letterman used to say, "you'd really have something."
Where is style?
Where is skill?
Where is forethought?
Where's discretion of the heart
Where's passion in the art
Where's craft?
--from the song "Liaisons" by Stephen Sondheim
Do you know what's tedious for other people? Nostalgia.
Statler or Waldorf you are not.
Where is the style, skill, and forethought in "What a tedious Hell thread"? I'm asking because I don't have my microscope with me.
If you want an entertaining Hell thread start your own instead of droning herewearenowentertainus on threads where people have more pressing things to do than perform for nostalgic old gits who either can't be arsed to be interesting themselves or just can't be interesting.
I take "other people" to mean yourself. I can live with that.
Erin or Rook you are not. So what.
Check the bedside table of your significant other when you get home. Voilà.
Is that what I did? Droned? In five words?! Amazing. Normally that takes a number of strikingly similar posts. I kinda feel as if people who post at length on recreational discussion boards don't have more pressing things to do. A more pressing thing for you to do would be to find something with which to light that flamethrower of yours. Right now, ISTM, you're just dribbling fuel down your leg.
Dafyd Hell Host
"These posts moved to give The_Riv and Caissa the opportunity to show the rest of us how things should be done."
Your behaviour isn't worth being discussed as Ship business. How about you return to the posts to the Hell thread where they rightly belonged?
And it is a problem for me and the ship that I'm not good at staying angry. It just isn't good for me to do things like that. I used hell appropriately, blew off some frustration at another shipmate, and moved on like a well adjusted person does.
Apparently this is creating a problem?
Y'all are kinda entertaining. Is it my fault that people expect angry people to turn their stupid petty spats into some kind of verbal gladiatorial combat as in the days of @RooK and tomb of yore?
This is all very strange to me, and yet familiar. Maybe f-book and bsky did something to my internet addled brain. Sorry, guys.
https://forums.shipoffools.com/discussion/2666/hell-guidelines#latest
Too right. Anger is not cathartic; expressing it makes it breed, nursing it burns me up. All that 'raca' shit.
Ye Owd Sioni
Just saw the clip and had to smile.
I’m sure Gramps49 can do irony when the need arises.
But...what do you do if your honest, neutral opinion is that someone is being foolish and the only polite thing to do is advise them of the fact?
Sometimes clue bats need to be employed. God knows I've needed them sometimes. And I am quite capable of defending myself, as evidenced.
As a wise man said far better than I, and more productively:
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
Answer the argument rationally without getting personal. Starting a thread naming a fellow shipmate is inviting a pile-in.
He was wise. And the internet hadn't been invented yet.
Fairly answered. I think this ties back to the "raca" thing. Sometimes the discipline of keeping your temper cracks, when it does it's better to start a hell thread. Maybe I should've waited longer so I could've stayed mad longer?
That seems weird. And I'm sorry, I'm just not that invested in this place to micromanage my emotions for y'all's entertainment.
And in my defense, the pile-in is somewhat on him because I wasn't the only one getting ticked. There is demand for catharsis here.
From what I understand, no one actually said what you typed, and especially not Gandhi, who may have eventually become a little bit wise, but was also a little bit racist. YMMV. Hop along, now.
If that's the worst I've got, I think I'm doing pretty well. Fairly called out. I'll be on my way.
I was on the old ship and remember both Erin and RooK told the peanut gallery to fuck off. If the hell hosts aren't doing their duty, shame on them.
It invites a pile-in on the named person, or the OP. Snippy sniping is not piling-on. It's 100% noise 0% signal.
I think expressing anger can be cathartic. But it depends on our relationship and attitude to our own emotions. Letting the sun go down on our anger has never been recommended, but this assumes quite a lot about how much agency we have about managing our anger. And there are quite a lot of standards at play, when you consider which members of our societies are most at liberty to express our anger.
Am I missing something? Is there some fundamental or categorical difference between the nature of the advice you give and the nature of the advice you receive?
That does appear to be part of the idea.
This is a public forum. Every post is performative.
The reviews and the feedback are mixed. In terms of successfully arousing negative emotion in the audience, it could use some work. Although, part of the magic of this particular theatre is that the audience can step onto the stage.
LOL, they told a lot of people to do a lot of things. "Ah, yes, I remember it well." Doesn't @RooK emerge from the shadows every now and then?
I have an abiding affection for the guy. Though I also feel for him.
There are some people who get to be such grand personae that they leave marks on the world that become personalities of their own, which may or may not resemble the person that actually made the mark. Or even if they do match, the person will continue to grow, and the mark turns into a grave. A tomb, as it were.
Zombie Apocalypse, anyone?
If one is using the word "fool" in mockery, always.
Let me try this, though FFS, it feels like an incredible abuse of Hell to be doing this kind of "headology"*
If I insult you by calling you a fool, I'm not taking you seriously, I'm saying that I can't understand you and you're not worth understanding. I think that's the meaning that Jesus alludes to in the Bible passage mentioned up thread. It's a refusal to engage.
Ironically, using the word "fool" in that way makes me stupid because I'm not smart enough to work out your stupidity.
Still with me there? OK...
If I say you are being a fool because I do understand you, that's another conversation where I am trying to communicate with you as someone of superior understanding, and I am - either being subtle or not - presuming to teach you. That's called being condescending. It's also an insult, but it's a nice insult. Especially if I don't realize that you - the person I'm dealing with - are smart enough to realize that you're not as stupid as I imagine.
OK...now I'm reconsidering after that insight and it's too much bloody work to redact all of these words, I shall plow forward on this new insight!...
This is why Jesus Christ says that good little Christians™ shouldn't call people "fool," because either way it's a presumption of superiority. And there's not so much space between the kindly superiority of a wannabe teacher and the contempt of a narcissist.
One way or another, we're all human. Including the bigots.
Hm...one more thing...
Of course, sometimes one gets angry in dealing with people who just can't live in the same moral universe, and so anger is inevitable. That's why I often put on social masks or grotesques like "I'm a hick" when I wander into Hell. I might turn myself into a literal bullfrog and start calling people flies to make it more blatantly obvious since apparently "hick" is too subtle. Dammit, I do enjoy subtlety. I know it's kinda wrong to be like this, but sometimes you just have to vent. Think of it as a puppet show.
And there should be ways to bridge cultural gaps in ways that do not convey contempt or hatred. I think for me I can put up with a lot of misunderstanding and confusion...which may explain why I'm sometimes a font of misunderstanding and confusion...as long as there isn't contempt. But I don't have much tolerance for contempt outside of official channels.
And that was the basis of our grievance. I don't mind that you think I'm wrong. But you have no business junior hosting me or telling me that I don't know about the ins and outs of American racial politics when...I live in them.
* Credit to the late, great Terry Pratchett for that reference.
I'm assuming that your remember my mentor, the great TomB, in which case: well played.
Addressing the nostalgia-based content, with nods of agreement to @pease and @Bullfrog: fuck you, SHITHEADS¹.
Pardon the projection, but - I think we² meant well.
Reference the series Letterkenny to get a sense of the deeply Canadian art of competitive insulting, also known as "chirping". It is what I though I found when stumbled into Hell, and what I enjoyed practicing.
What I've come to realize, entirely too late, is that there are some unspoken assumptions involved. One, is that while creatively insulting someone can be a sign of respect for their acumen and an invitation to vent and play, to anyone not versed in such purile hijinks it just looks like dropping your pants like an idiot and flashing everyone your bits. Two, is the assumption that everyone on this then-new medium had equal access and ability to participate. How wrong I was about this is my own fault, and so wildly untrue that there is no atonement possible.
Meanwhile, it hurts what I call my soul that there are so few people worthy of chirping with here now³, AND a surplus of folks blind to their own privilege who provide only complaints.
¹ - I miss Pyx*e.
² - "We" being the Hellhosts and active Denizens of yore.
³ - That's not a dare, exactly, but also a recognition of how busy my life is these days. #teenagers
I, for one, really enjoyed your spats of yore.
Fun fact! I think I might be the only paid Crewmember ever of The Ship. Albeit in a roundabout way: I used to book off "Hellhosting" time on my salaried timesheet, and my engineering manager said, "Fine, as long as it stops you from making people in the office cry." They did not get their money's worth.
Well, blame @pease for asking me a question that required some thought, and blame other certain shipmates for telling me that I was hard to understand. It takes a lot of words for me to say things clearly when what I'm trying to say is bloody complicated.
And if @Dafyd has a problem with me either as shipmate or host, he's fully free to pick it up himself. We're all grown ups here, right?