Youth soccer referee dies after attack

Be happy for the ones who left and found better uses for their time. Can we not be happy for them?

 

2 + 2 = x

Most people don't need to know x.

 

Look, don't get me wrong, I know that in broaching the subject, *particularly* as the rawest of newbies with no cred whatsoever, I'm setting myself up for heaps of verbal abuse and a world of grief. I'm voluntarily taking on the role of Sisyphus and picking out as big a rock as I can find at the base of a extremely steep hill.

I also understand that there are people here who are extremely firm in their (sometimes extreme to either side) convictions, and who express them in exaggerated terms for conversational effect and shock value. I understand that some of you guys have been wrangling with each other for years and cordially detest each other. I also know that sometimes people stir the shitpot just for the fun of playing the griefer.

It might also be worth pointing out that some of what gets said in here would get you punched in the mouth if you weren't playing internet tough guy.

I'm not going to roll in here and try to play the politeness nazi, finger wagging when threads exceed my threshold of civility. I figure that writing what I have in this thread has overtly put the subject on the table for discussion, and that's really all I wanted to accomplish. I'm sure that there's nothing truly new being said here. I was just getting it off my chest. I did it for me, because I thought it needed to be said, not because I thought my distilled wisdom was going to really change anything. This is one helluva good board when it functions well. I've read countless bon mots, putdowns, comebacks, puns, shrewd observations, and just plain good lines that made me grin and say to myself "Well Played!". My wife hears me giggling to myself at the computer desk, or I call to her, "Oh, you just won't believe this shit!" and I read her something.

@OOP - I stated above how I came to be here, with a link to verify it. I can't link back to my thread where I discussed it elsewhere for backup as it is within a hidden board on a college fan message board, and I'm not an admin... and besides, what is there is by definition said in confidence. It's true though. Believe what you wish.

@Fart - One, I felt that I was somewhat trespassing, that I wasn't the intended user or a member of the club. I know that there is no barbed wire keeping out the non-journalists, but I felt that as a matter of courtesy that I'd let this board be. I also spend quite enough time posting various blather across the internet as it is, and didn't want to take on yet another board. Given the tenor of some of the arguments here, watching was far less stressful and more fun than getting caught in the crossfire looked to be. I actually had put in to join once, maybe a year back, but the application was never approved, I never heard anything back, and I shrugged and said "Fuck it, maybe that's an omen" and didn't pursue it.

I'm no one's sock puppet. I'm not trolling. If it makes it easier for you, think of it as me coming to this board to play a role. As to "being lectured", don't think of it that way, think of it as being called on your bullshit. I've been on a burn ward. I've been on a burn ward in a children's hospital. I just figured that walking in here and starting to insult people in a thread where civility is being advocated for was rank hypocrisy of the first water.

@Chet Yeah, that's pretty much it. I could roll in, check new and old threads, get informed and amused, and pop back out on my own time and with little effort. You never know what will get linked to here... like, say, that gun show in Oklahoma where the doofuses shot a 105 howitzer downhill into a valley and hit a house three miles away. Never saw it anywhere else, but when I put it up in a politics board thread it sure was fun. You can't make that shit up. When howitzers are outlawed only outlaws will have howitzers? The only thing that stops a bad guy with a howitzer is a good guy with counterbattery fire?

I guess if nothing else I have announced my presence with authority. That's just as well, because my curveball sucks.

 

Noted.
You're dealing with the green dragony depths of envy and resentment here.
The rivalries and petty jealousies go back many years.
The principals themselves don't event know what the fk they're angry about anymore.
One guy's opinion- the closure of the Politics Thread ensured that a river of shit would flow out into the open. That choice was made consciously and with open eyes.
It's more than a little sad that working professionals are forbidden to discuss, say, the ISIS debacle.
Yknow, the one that might eventually wipe us all off the face of the planet.
We can talk about colostomy bags and men's urinals and the sex appeal of teen models. We can definitely do that unchecked.
That's the real business end around here.

 

Neutral Corner, could you give some names of the civil posters on the other board that used to post here? Just user names, not trying to get you into trouble by outing anyone, even though it's another board.

 

These good ole days you speak of never existed. The poo flinging, political pissfests, ad hominem assaults and locked threads have always been a prominent feature of this place. In fact, it used to be considerably worse. I remember when this place was a madhouse with the mods tolerating far more open warfare over politics and everything else than they do today.

Yet, strangely enough, the site was actually better overall back in those wilder and woolier days. Far more people were posting, including a wider variety of creative and intelligent posters, and there was considerably more engaging and entertaining (and often downright hilarious) discussion being squeezed in amongst all the chaos.

 

Yes, I'm tilting at windmills. I may have actually gotten old enough that I have become susceptible to the Old Man's Disease of "Things Were Better Back In The Good Old Days". Sucks to get old.

And I'll be the first to admit that I don't go back far enough here to know how things used to be back in the day.

@Fart - "One guy's opinion- the closure of the Politics Thread ensured that a river of shit would flow out into the open. That choice was made consciously and with open eyes."

I think maybe that's a fair assessment, I dunno. Perhaps having a politics board that is clearly marked "Here there be Dragons, Abandon all hope ye who enter here" might do something toward confining the worst and most poisonous exchanges to a clearly marked free fire zone. Then again, virtually every thread with any political angle to it seems to quickly escalate beyond positions, logic, and debate and into full bore personal attacks no matter where it starts out.

When it comes to moderating this place, herding the saber-toothed tigers, well... I know I sure as hell wouldn't want that job. What the parameters are, what the behind the scenes discussions are, I don't know. Given that I wouldn't want the job I'm certainly not going to try to tell them how to do it. What I *am* trying to do is to call on the posters as a whole to try to use a bit of vitriol for emphasis instead of turning on the fire hose routinely.

@cjericho
As far as naming names, two things: One, I really don't want to start calling people here out by name. This is difficult enough without adding that to the stew. The closest that I've come is to suggest looking at the locked threads and which posters escalated things, and even that is subject to the reader's opinion. One person's ad hominem attack is another person's reasonable retort.

Two - re the other board, I wasn't so much saying that I saw "reasonable posters" there as that I had seen people who used to contribute here a lot, people who I didn't really realize were gone/infrequent until I saw their names popping up over there. Some of that is no doubt perception on my part, maybe they're still here more than I realize. At least at this point in this furball I find myself reluctant to start naming names, because if I say that X poster was someone whose opinions or writing style I admired, then I suspect that Y person here who hates X's guts will kneejerk put me on his shit list and tune out anything I say from that point forward. I'm trying very hard to play this straight. My screen name wasn't randomly chosen.

Basically, I'm talking about people who contributed interesting stuff here or were simply very obviously fine writers, even in a casual setting such as this. I may come around to naming some later. I'll add that I really have not spent extensive time over there. I'm sure that there are plenty of warts I had not noticed. For me to pull up a list I'd have to go back over there and mine it for a while, taking names. There is a natural ebb and flow to message board participation anyhow, it just seemed to me that I kept reading screen names and saying to myself "so that's where he/she's gone to."

I'm very aware that I only have surface knowledge of this board, and of a limited time frame of it at that. I don't know the ancient enmities, the cliques, the history, what goes on in PM or hidden boards, etc.

God help me, I'm no saint and not trying to set myself up as one. I'll shamefacedly admit that I did indeed click the link in the Colostomy Model thread. It's hard not to sneak a look when you pass a wreck on the highway.

I enjoy someone with a high mastery of insult and invective laying the self-righteous low. I really don't have a problem with shit throwing and name calling in a general sense, especially if it's funny. There seems to be a small core of posters who have gotten so impatient with and tired of each other that they get outright poisonously nasty with each other over even minor offenses. Some of that shit needs to be taken to PM's. Not everyone is interested in having that sewer dumped out into the middle of the family room floor. It can be a pretty vile stench.

 

Fart, you know that you and I don't agree on this, although I like to think we have reached a level of general detente.

To me, the perfect world would be a board with all the variety of discourse we have here -- even political -- coupled with the level of civility exhibited on the other board, as Neutral Corner alluded to.

I doubt we'll ever reach that balance here, but anyway.

And it's not lost on me that this has been me on many occasions. I'm working on that.

 

As Kissinger said of academe- the politics are so intense because the stakes are so low. That is what this place has always been.
Peace is good. I have said many times in public and private I'd buy any of my adversaries drinks and dinner.
The search engine here is very handy. Go search circa 2006-08 and see how much "civility" there was on this site.

 

The Penn State deal was sort of a turning point for me. There were a lot of hurt feelings and I suppose I've made an effort not to lay things out on the table since. There are certain people who still haven't let that go.

 

Neutral Corner may not have been chosen by accident, but that doesn't mean it is true. Beyond that, I've said all I have to say on the subject of this "newbie"....at least for now.