- CrazzySnipe55
- |
- Fabled Legendary Member
Posted by: x Foman123 x
Posted by: Helveck
But are you saying it is wrong to show someone when they are being idiotic and how dumb it is to do so?Yes. If I used this thread to tell you that you are an idiot and stupid (and I do not think that and I am not implying that at all, but just for hypothetical purposes), how likely would you be to think "oh wow I must actually be an idiot"? What about CrazzySnipe, who also favors this course of action?
Not at all, I would wager. Instead, you would come back with reasons that you're not an idiot, and intimate instead that maybe I must be an idiot. The argument would go on, and others would join in , and soon the thread that I didn't want to see discussed in the first place would grow to nearly 100 replies.
In the history of the internet, nobody has ever successfully convinced another person that they're stupid. You can't and won't do it, no matter how many of "you" gang up on the person. There is, therefore, no scenario in which posting your opinions on the "stupidity" of another person's thread has ever had a positive effect.
On the other hand, there are numerous scenarios, even right here on these very boards, where a thread with zero or very few replies (whether as a result of the thread being boring or as the result of a moderator lock) results in positive behavior change over time by the OP.
To me, these observations are basic online community sociology, guys. Not too complicated.There is a stark difference between someone acting in a way that is generally agreed upon both by society and any given sub-society (for example, The Septagon) as either unacceptable or inappropriate to the point where any given person's continued use of said action constantly evokes a rapid flood of people pointing out that actions unacceptability or inappropriateness.
Yes, the masses or the people who dominate any given culture or group aren't always "right" by all outward and objective appearances (/activategodwinslaw), but if someone wants to continue to act in a manner which is adverse to the norm of any given culture or group, then they should certainly not do so in the hope that they will not suffer any sort of objection to their action(s).
If you join a My Little Pony forum and do nothing but discuss how terribly written you think the backstories for all of the ponies are, then you're likely going to be shunned from and rejected by the majority of the community. While that's a bit of a different example as it's violating the basic tenants of the reason for the existence of the site (the people on it think MLP is the -blam!-), the same goes for any unwritten behavioral rule. These aren't even things specific to Bungie.net.
If the unwritten rule in this situation is:
Don't post stupid -blam!- or make stupid threads about stupid things that make no sense or have no point. Then it should not take very long at all (especially with the length at which some people have been with the community) to understand and recognize what that community considers to be "stupid", "-blam!-", "mak[ing] no sense", or "hav[ing] no point".
If you want to be in the "Kids Who Wear Red T-Shirts Club", you're gonna get some grief if you show up in a Blue sweater. People aren't going to ignore you until you get the hint that you should probably change the garment covering your torso, they're going to ask you how you could be so stupid as to show up to a KWWRTSC meeting in a Blue Sweater, and tell you why that's stupid.
The point I'm trying to make is that it's not hard to figure out what a community considers to be stupid, and that continuing to do things said community considers to be stupid should be and should be anticipated to be met with objection by said community. Leaving people alone to do stupid -blam!- doesn't make them do less stupid -blam!-.
(I apologize for my continued use of the s-word in this post; I'm not in the mood for eloquence.)