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40oz

People suck

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Actually... no they don't.

 

In this world, we are all surrounded by generally good people. People do what they do, often with the best intentions. They want to be happy, and they want other people to be happy too. People don't like bad things and we work together to keep all the bad things out so we can enjoy the good. We're all very similar in that way.

 

Everyone shapes their our individual perspectives through their life experiences. Unless you are omniscient, you're bound to put your attention in some places -- for good reason, and accidentally form blindspots in other places.

 

It happens. It's normal.

 

These blind spots are very difficult to detect on your own and we have to rely on other people to help us find them. It happens to me too. Some people go for decades without knowing they're there, and it can sometimes take just as long to delete that extra baggage they've been carrying for all this time.

 

Look, I get it. When people make jokes about things I say, I know you feel you're doing a service for yourself and everyone who reads it. It's entertainment! And I respect that. It's good to clue each other in about stuff and simplify things so that they're easy for each other to understand. 

 

But the reason I'm writing this is that I've talked to people who have similar experiences to me. My experience with the internet involves a lot of different strangers I don't know a whole lot about yet. Among these strangers, a pretty large percentage of them seem to speak to me in a manner that seems as if I wear all my prejudices and phobias on my sleeve. That in a matter of a few posts, the conversation has already gone so far off the rails and into memes and expressions of disapproval before there is any context to start with.

 

People are not that simple. It takes a long time to know what someone's all about. Some people make mistakes, and most of the time they don't even know they're doing it. It's not their intention to fuck shit up. I get the impression that a lot of people here don't seem to think that way, or worse, they once did, and their opinion has changed. 

 

We need to talk to each other. Like actually talk to each other. Not fill the forum with memes and jokes and puns that only your friends will like and understand. I trust that everyone here really is working towards being a good person. We're not all that different from one another. 

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27 minutes ago, dew said:

Blunt time: this is very obviously a follow-up to the locked down "shitstorm about Uganda" thread. A thread in which you mocked several people for supposedly not understanding your posts and in which you declared that racism is purely subjective. I find your preaching about friendship and inner kindness completely hollow.

If you dislike the person you're hearing the message from, that doesn't make it wrong. I'm sure you believe you're writing that negative post for a reason that yields a net positive in the long run, right?

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I think this is a little too meta for a public discussion.

 

I'll try to expand on that in a bit.

Edited by GuyMcBrofist

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1 hour ago, 40oz said:

We need to talk to each other. Like actually talk to each other.

y'know you first have to not hide behind the "you should assume I don't know how to talk!" excuse before you complain about people not talking to others correctly

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While I'm not entirely sure about the whole 'shitstorm about Uganda' situation, the thing we need to remember is that we're all apart of a community and that even though we have similar interests, we're all humans. 

 

What do humans do? Make mistakes, we fuck up, say shit that's out of line, and hurt the people we like and care about whether we mean to or not.

 

The point I wanna make is that nobody is perfect, no matter how hard we try to do the right thing, (or what we consider the right thing), it doesn't get across to other people the same way as we may intend but that doesn't mean we should shame people, or burn them at the stake for simple mistakes.

 

If there is one thing that makes a community stronger, and strengthens bonds between people, is accountability and honesty. I think sometimes we forget the reason we come to this forum, to express our interest in the same game that all brought us here. We should celebrate the fact that we are all different, yet we have the same love for the same game. 

 

Sorry if this is really preachy, unrelated, or whatever, but I get a bad feeling whenever community drama starts to heat up or people have open conflicts throughout the forum, and hope we can all keep the peace. 

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I think I understand what you're trying to get at. You're trying to promote more constructive discussions on the forum by appealing to more lines of inquisition, rather than quick conclusions or offhand remarks/memes?

 

And this is because a majority of people don't think that deeply about this stuff so a good portion of your conversations go downhill?

 

If all of the above is the case, then what do you expect by pointing this out and making a suggestion? You already have two people in this thread giving you blowback for it. How long will it be before you or someone else makes a mistake responding to them, and then another mistake happens, and another, and this thread becomes unsalvageable?

 

Maybe it's better just to work privately towards being able to handle others' misinterpretations or descents into non sequitur with well thought out, constructive responses (or in some cases, no response) to what they are saying. While at the same time evaluating your own statements and people's responses so that you can better represent or even drop your own ideas.

 

I think my best piece of advice I can give is that if we are trying to build a nice community here, sometimes the best way to do that is to pick out a select few people who you feel well engaged with and just ignore the rest.

Edited by GuyMcBrofist : Tried to clarify something

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7 minutes ago, A7MAD said:

Nice Clickbait title

Oh, you said this 1 second before I do...

 

To be honest, you want people actually talk to other people, but you start a "conversation" with a title like this. It's sort of difficult to convince others, I guess.

Edited by GarrettChan

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11 minutes ago, GarrettChan said:

To be honest, you want people actually talk to other people, but you start a "conversation" with a title like this. It's sort of difficult to convince others, I guess.

It's the people who seek confirmation for people sucking that need to hear this message the most.

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1 hour ago, 40oz said:

If you dislike the person you're hearing the message from, that doesn't make it wrong. I'm sure you believe you're writing that negative post for a reason that yields a net positive in the long run, right?

It's not about whether it's objectively right or wrong. It's about the intent behind it.

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1 hour ago, 40oz said:

If you dislike the person you're hearing the message from, that doesn't make it wrong

And if you don't like the message you're hearing, it doesn't make the message wrong.

 

Also I have to wonder why it's always the others... It's not the first time "somebody didn't get it right", when you voiced your opinion on something, clearly.

 

So when are you gonna start "becoming a better person" by making yourself less misunderstandable, instead of ranting about how others need to be more forgiving, or how the internet is the problem because of what Memfis pointed out?

 

Not that Memfis is wrong with what he says, but if you're saying shit like "racism is subject to the eye of the beholer", then I don't care if you're smiling at me, giving me presents while kissing my feet, or calling me goddess... You're wrong regardless. Don't believe me? Put "racism" and "definition" in your search bar and see what comes out. So easy, even a 6 year old can do that, my son just tried and it worked perfectly fine... He's 6 by the way.

 

2 hours ago, 40oz said:

People are not that simple. It takes a long time to know what someone's all about.

It does not matter what you are all about. What matters is what you put down, that's what people see and respond to. And this isn't the first time somebody tells you about this, either. This also isn't your first day on the internet, for that matter. Why are you so surprised that people interpret a one-liner with objectively wrong content in a way that you have not intended?

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24 minutes ago, dethtoll said:

It's not about whether it's objectively right or wrong. It's about the intent behind it.

Precisely! 


The gut reaction to adversity is that the person is intentionally trying to fuck shit up. I trust that nobody here brings on a disagreement with the intention of hurting that person personally. Well... except for dew.

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6 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

It does not matter what you are all about.

Do you really believe this? 

 

You wouldn't tell that to your son would you?

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12 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Precisely! 


The gut reaction to adversity is that the person is intentionally trying to fuck shit up. I trust that nobody here brings on a disagreement with the intention of hurting that person personally. Well... except for dew.

That sound you hear of a plane flying overhead is the point you just missed.

 

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Is there good intent behind that point?

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15 minutes ago, Nine Inch Heels said:

Why are you so surprised that people interpret a one-liner with objectively wrong content in a way that you have not intended?

Is it the one-liner with obectively wrong content, or is it the response? *snicker*

 

See how vague things can be?

 

Pointing to a dictionary definition is quite frankly, an amateur move. Do you think art and music are subjective? Guess what, those are in the dictionary, so they are actually objective. If you disagree with that, then you are stupid. I hope you get my point.

 

I'm not going to argue one way or the other on whether racism is objective or subjective. But if any of you want to, and that's all of you who talked about it, you're going to have to do a hell of a lot better than that.

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4 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Do you really believe this? 

 

You wouldn't tell that to your son would you?

Yes, I would tell my son that if you're communicating with anyone who isn't a close friend - hell, even with close friends - that it really doesn't matter who you are or what you've done, how you say stuff is absolutely vital.

 

Because people can change for the worse, people can show sides of themselves they've never shown before, people can have opinions that seem incongruent with others they've shown. It does not matter if someone has historically been an all-loving messiah figure that can seemingly do no harm - they can still come out of nowhere with bigotry or general assholery and be completely, 100% serious.

 

But if you really want to put all this emphasis on what you are all about, you really seem to have never been hated or hurt by many people just because of a fundamental part of who you are, and yet you turn this into a problem by treating people who have been as miscreants for acting reasonably suspicious. You just don't seem to understand the concept that anyone - even those you've grown close to - can suddenly spring out with hatred or mockery of your very existence, or even outright try to make your life worse just because of prejudice.

 

Look, you are trusted to be a decent person by default; if you weren't, nobody would bother to interact with you. It's by your own actions and words that you break this trust and get people against you, and you won't get that trust back by complaining about the results of your own actions.

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1 hour ago, Memfis said:

The more I use the internet, the more I start to feel that it's just not very suitable for that kind of stuff.

This times a hundred.  Unless you are discussing something with easily demonstrable or objectifiable outcomes (or at least a reliable place you can double-check someone's claims), I'm pretty sure no-one has ever convinced anyone, of anything, ever, on a public forum.

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42 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Do you really believe this? 

Why else would I have said that? I seriously and genuinely do not care what sort of person you think yourself when I read something you wrote that I disagree with. Why should I care? Should I tell you that a misinformed opinion of yours is valid if I knew you personally? Should I tell you that you're wrong when in fact you're right, because I dislike you? Absolutely not.

 

If you seriously think people are gonna make the lengthy effort to understand what you're all about, just to not misunderstand some random person on the internet (of which there are quite few), you're asking quite a bit. If you want to be understood, make yourself understood, I'm not doing that work for you, I shouldn't, and I don't think anybody else should do that as well.

 

Instead of advocating that people need to give you and everybody else the unconditional benefit of the doubt at all times, you should actually be advocating that those who feel misunderstood take some of their time and explain their POV in further detail (preferably in a level-headed way), if they want to be understood in the long run. That's how it works.

 

You don't make people better at expressing themselves by asking others (readers or listeners) to be more "lenient", you make them better at expressing themselves by asking them to explain themselves more clearly, and perhaps bringing up a question or two, if you're so inclined. And if you do not want to do that, fine by me. That's your choice to make.

 

If you think I misunderstood something you said based on a response I gave, you can always try and rectify the issue in question, but you bloody well don't get to demand that I think of all the possible ways to interpret your stuff and then pick the one option that favours you the most.

Edited by Nine Inch Heels

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13 minutes ago, 40oz said:

Is there good intent behind that point?

In that I would hope it would reveal something to you about yourself, yes. But you seem to lack the self-awareness necessary to grasp it.

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1 hour ago, 40oz said:

It's the people who seek confirmation for people sucking that need to hear this message the most.

Since English not being my native language, I sometimes can't get some obvious points, so tell me if I misunderstand your point. I think you meant this message is for those people who think others are not good?

 

To be honest, usually I don't want to participate in discussion like this because of being not good at English. However, this title attracts me to click in here, and this title gave me negative feeling before actually reading. That's why I said this title is not good for this type of discussion. These negative feelings can carry to the judgment of written words, just like what you said. It's sort of difficult to convince people carrying a negative feeling. Memfis did say something important because Internet isolates so many feeling that we usually need. We can only guess what people are actually thinking behind words, which is not precise at all.

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3 hours ago, 40oz said:

People are not that simple. It takes a long time to know what someone's all about. Some people make mistakes, and most of the time they don't even know they're doing it. It's not their intention to fuck shit up. I get the impression that a lot of people here don't seem to think that way, or worse, they once did, and their opinion has changed. 

Not entirely sure what you're even trying to get at with this thread, but:

 

Most people aren't quick to jump to conclusions; it would be weird if we all were. If I'm meeting someone the first time I'll often go out of my way to be friendly and helpful to them. Same goes on a site like Doomworld.

 

But we have pattern matching brains and are quite capable of reaching conclusions about people. Suppose the first time you meet someone you observe them say something unkind. Well okay, maybe they're just having a bad day today. If they do the same thing the next time you see them, and the next, then it becomes hard to avoid the conclusion that this person is probably an asshole. You can make up all kinds of rationalizations for why they behave that way; they're a complex person and difficult to get to know; they're just misunderstood; they had a traumatic upbringing, whatever. In the end it doesn't really matter. Trust, but verify.

 

A couple of notes on that "Uganda" thread: I for one had never heard of this meme before, so I was mostly just very confused. People brought up racism but that wasn't even the reason Linguica gave for killing the thread. It certainly seems vaguely racist but I don't for a second think that was Jaxxoon R's intention; he's been here a while and doesn't have a history of racist posts. See above; I don't usually brand people as racists just  because they posted something silly one time.

 

3 hours ago, 40oz said:

We need to talk to each other. Like actually talk to each other. Not fill the forum with memes and jokes and puns that only your friends will like and understand.

Amen to that. Doomworld is not 4chan or some other meme playground, and that's why the thread was killed.

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2 minutes ago, fraggle said:

It certainly seems vaguely racist but I don't for a second think that was Jaxxoon R's intention; he's been here a while and doesn't have a history of racist posts. See above; I don't usually brand people as racists just  because they posted something silly one time.

I'm pretty sure nobody in that thread was calling him a racist racist, moreso pointing out that he was contributing to something that was racist. English doesn't really have a set of terms for the difference between these concepts, or the levels of racism in general ( aside from casual racism, I guess ).

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I usually don't participate in these kinds of topics these days, but the damn title drew me in. Curse you all. :P

 

First of all, sometimes people do suck. It's unhealthy to start with such a premise (or leap to a conclusion too early), but at some point one has to realize that There Will Be Bastards*. Pretending otherwise is denying reality.

 

On that note, I really don't get where this "why can't we all just get along?" theme has come from. Even if we just consider differences of opinion where neither side is fully correct (i.e. 99%-or-so of the time:P ), you're inevitably going to run into cases where the divide is irreconcilable. Whether it's just a severe difference in philosophy or opinion, a bad history, or just a personality style clash, there are certain humans you just can't put in a room together without them trying to tear each others' throats out. It happens.

 

"How can we improve our interpersonal relations?" is a fine question and goal, but IMO it's vastly incomplete without also considering what to do when (not if) one runs into a case where it just ain't possible. With that in mind? Sure, let's all talk. Let's just not waste time trying to rebuild bridges between warring nations.

 

[*Post-disclaimer: I am not sneakily referring to anyone when saying this, BTW. My shitlist is quite small, and if someone's on it, everybody (including them) already knows it. :P ]

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I uh, I wish I was on the knowledge-level of everyone here. How do people get so smart on this forum?

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Sure thing that a stupid meme divided the people by half.......amazing people, eh?

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Yeah all this over a fucking meme of all things, rofl. I haven't a clue what to make of anything or anyone in this tbqh.

 

edit: Actually I'm reminded of a thread a few years back, I think geo made it and it was something "Cats or Dogs and why," and he made it to demonstrate that anything discussed on this forum would end up in some tangential argument, and it bloody did too.

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