Bartimaeus

LOL R00fles!

It doesn't have to be something you "actually want to do" for it to be something you want to be ABLE to do if you don't think royalty should be any more exempt from insults than the regular joe (or if you can envision a scenario...or if there's actually been one already...where it seemed appropriate for you to do so).

See my somewhat heavily edited post in regards to the U.S.'s success and such: I tried to cover that with the latest edit. I am fine with people with people have extremely negative opinions of the U.S. and the West: we're often worlds apart, in terms of culture. I was raised in mine and often have very negative opinions of things that happen elsewhere, and other people were born in theirs and often have very negative opinions of things that happen here. That's pretty normal: we're different. If they spout hatred and conspiracy theories and...whatever else against us, that's fine by me, as long as it doesn't turn into actions that infringe upon us (or others in their own country who have different opinions). It's within their rights, just as it's within our rights to ignore them and do differently. Western Europeans often like to make of the U.S. for being "backwards" in some ways, for its citizens' favorite sport being "handegg", for taking issue with our illegal immigrants trying to take residence (as, ironically - I think - they also often then have no trouble subsequently spouting hatred against all the Muslims and other peoples immigrating legally to their own home country for whatever reasons...), and whatever else: it doesn't really phase me too much, just as I'm sure any criticisms I have of their love for the dreadfully boring sport known as soccer (yeah, I went there, you non-anglo-saxon pansies, ) likely doesn't much phase them. I don't think hardly anyone on these forums legitimately straight up hates the U.S.: some have bones to pick with the U.S. that, yes, often make it seem like they have a very negative view of the U.S. when certain subjects are brought up. Again, I think this is pretty normal...in fact, let me correct that "some have bones to pick with the U.S." to "everyone in the entire world, including the U.S.'s own citizens, has bones to pick with the U.S.". That doesn't mean everyone hates the U.S.: they just hate certain things about it. People may even say they straight up hate the U.S...but most people, when pressed, will say something like, "well, I mean, I hate their GOVERNMENT...not everyone actually in the U.S." and similar stuff. Fair enough for me: I often feel the same way, theoretical U.S.-hater! Extremists may think they hate every single last aspect of the U.S....but extremists are usually the kind of people that are willing to do the whole "infringing on others" thing I mentioned, so I'm not really particularly concerned about them. If you're not willing to infringe on others in your hatred of the U.S., then you can't hate the U.S. that much...otherwise, you'd be willing to break that rule of ours. In conclusion, I don't think you need to defend the U.S. constantly: defend it when it's right and just to do so (and when it makes sense to you to do so...and hopefully when you can actually convince others that it makes sense to do so... ), and criticize it when it doesn't...just as everyone in the U.S. itself does. It's part of our process. (edit): Oh, also: I don't really care if their "hatred" of the U.S. comes from ignorance/exaggerations: that's something seems pretty native to almost everyone in regards to one or some things or another...still doesn't stop anyone from making judgement on those things, and there's no reason it wouldn't be applicable here. Que sera, sera, Bruce.

That depends on how you define a "patriot". You probably wouldn't think so, but others you're arguing against probably would... Being a patriot, to me, is, in general, supporting your country*...but also being willing to speak your mind freely about it, including criticizing it when you believe it does or goes wrong, so that we can realize our mistakes, potentially correct our course, and better ourselves for the future. It's also supporting/defending everyone in having their own opinions and beliefs, as well as exercising their freedoms, even if you personally find what they do with them repulsive and try to convince them to think/do otherwise - as long as they do not infringe on others. (e): In my opinion, a lot of people criticize the West (and particularly the U.S.) because they want the West to do better. Obviously, it's up to you to determine if what they're actually proposing as an alternative would be better, but regardless, if the intention is "make some changes compared to what you're doing now so things/you will be better", I personally think that's admirable and the very opposite of unpatriotic. Obviously, very extreme cases like "throw out all Western values and institute Sharia law!" are probably not gonna garner much support from me, but even so, I would support their freedom to at least suggest it...preferably quietly . (edit): *As an example, I would say being patriotic in this respect is...hoping your country continues to do well, that nothing terrible happens to it or the people within it...that it continues to be the country you love and want to reside within. You don't have to support everything it does, though: you can be a pacifist, for example, and personally wish that the U.S.'s soldiers were not involved in conflicts where people are getting hurt and/or killed...but to be patriotic in this regard would be to still wish them the best, hope that they all return home safe and sound (and, as a pacifist, without having had to have hurt anybody, particularly unnecessarily)...and that they generally succeed at their missions - outside of when they're doing things you personally find reprehensible, of course: you still support them, but not necessarily what they're doing, and you may wish for particular aspects of their objectives to not succeed (WITHOUT hoping that horrible things happen as a result): that is within your rights. This is patriotism to me. edit edit edit I like to edit

My problem with such an argument (and others like it you've made previously and in other topics), is that it is primarily emotionally/feeling-driven, not reasoning/evidence-based. Just your feelings are going to have a tough time convincing anyone of your side, my friend. So no, any supposed "anti-Western" bias those arguing against austerity might show doesn't really affect too much how I see this issue...once in a while, I even see a little wisdom in Volourn's posts...even underneath the constant hyperbole and personal attacks as it is. (edit): I should say...clear and extreme biases obviously can undermine one's credibility, of course, but unless it reaches obyknven (spelling?) levels, it's usually not enough to reject decent points/evidence out of hand. Even oby makes a reasonable point about Western hypocrisy/bias (IMO) once in a great while...though it's obviously never enough to convince me of all the other things he says.

How are his views mistaken? Going, "you're wrong: don't you think you should reconsider your views now (editor's note: lol) to be more like mine even though I'm not not gonna bother countering anything you just said? Also, these people that agree with my views are unbiased, and the people that agree with yours are biased, though I will fail to illustrate how...and by the way, here's some more condescension..." isn't exactly the most convincing argument for your side of the argument that I've heard. Nah that's just the SJ view we use to not hurt peoples feelings, someone always has to be right in this type of debate Barti you on my side right? I don't personally know enough about how economies work for me to feel comfortable in committing to a side. Interesting things have been said on both sides, and I'm leaning towards "austerity doesn't really seem like the correct course based on the evidence..." ...but the sample size is oh so small, and it's easy to look at the effects of certain actions in hindsight and go, "Yeah, look at what austerity/not doing austerity did!" ...if you're not considering how small that sample size is and the fact that there may be much more to do with it than just one particular factor. In my opinion, situations usually have a tendency to be much more complex than they merely appear, and if there were ever a complex situation, this would be one...so unless I become much, much more educated in the subject instead of just looking at what I essentially consider anecdotal evidence (such as that is present in this topic), I can't really convincingly take a side. Really, I just popped in to keep you on your toes.

How are his views mistaken? Going, "you're wrong: don't you think you should reconsider your views now (editor's note: lol) to be more like mine even though I'm not not gonna bother countering anything you just said? Also, these people that agree with my views are unbiased, and the people that agree with yours are biased, though I will fail to illustrate how...and by the way, here's some more condescension..." isn't exactly the most convincing argument for your side of the argument that I've heard.

All pedophiles, Gfted1? Did you mean all active pedophiles, or actually any and everyone who happens to feel attraction to children? I think it's kind of unfair to paint literally all pedophiles in that manner...who you're attracted to can't be much controlled, though how you act on such certainly can (...unless you don't believe in free will, but that just means you have to accept that society will punish those unlucky enough to not be born and raised "right", so it doesn't really affect the equation). It's considered a mental disorder for a reason.

An explanation for non-reddit people: when the accounts of the moderators of a subreddit are inactive for long enough, you can make a request to the admins to take over the subreddit in question. This basically never happens with larger subreddits, and seems to usually only happen when someone wants to repurpose a particular subreddit name (though not always; they may just wish to jump-start an inactive community). This also happened with the subreddit "gamergate", which anti-GGers got a hold of and permanently set it to redirect towards an anti-GG subreddit. I think both these cases are kind of BS and shouldn't be allowed, but that's just me.

Well, I thought they just tended to actually sound decent, as opposed to bad like most of the original artists they cover, but that's another way of putting it, I guess. @Woldan: I feel like I've heard this before...but I don't recognize the title/artist. Hm...guess that's ambiance-like electronic for you. I liked the sound clip at the end: I wish more electronic did that these days. Lots of electronic artists used to have those in the 90s and early 2000s (and probably farther back, but I wouldn't know about that), but it seems to have fallen out of style recently, from what I can tell. I love 'em: good way to help set the tone for and further define a song. Hope they come back in style someday. Here's a random song off a CD compilation I own that I liked for this reason. Quiet and almost a little ambiance-like, though perhaps a little more unsettling/menacing than normal. 162 - Outside the Mosque: http://puu.sh/iQjMi/ac2e317056.mp3

In point of fact, he is currently, legally speaking, perfectly innocent. (this post is only half-serious...or maybe quarter serious...or maybe three quarters serious: I'm not sure, )

But knives are so shiny. And frankly, it's you who misspell your words you dang colonials. Plus the Americans don't say Tomato sauce...they say Ketchup which confuses people when I travel to the USA. " Can you pass the Tomato sauce please " ....." huh... whats that " Hey, I'm an American, and I call most salsas you find in supermarkets "tomato sauce" or "tomato goop"...nevermind ketchup. Stupid American "salsas" primarily consisting of tomato sauce...euck. Homemade or bust.

I don't really have much of an opinion, because this isn't really a discussion of that much interest to me, especially given how played out it is by this point. You, on the other hand, are somebody I have to discuss things very frequently with on this board, and I really think it's detrimental to the discussions we have (as well as your points) when you do stuff like that: it's that type of stuff...as well your deflections or ignoring of it whenever it's pointed out, and then continuing to do that same sort of stuff in the future...that often makes it difficult to have a decent, rational discussion with you. See the final edit I had in my previous post, additionally. If you must know, though, I agree with Orogun: it seems likely that he's guilty...though I thought that long ago when the allegations were just beginning to surface based on the volume of the allegations...though I did not...and still have not...completely cemented that as actually "concurring that he's guilty", as you put it for Orogun (which is an additional part of why I took issue with what you said). The reason for this is the weirdness and fishiness of the entire situation: I still have a small, naggling doubt in the back of my head. But again, I think it's likely that he's at least guilty of some percentage of the allegations...and "some" is bad enough that even if the rest weren't true, it's still awful enough that it doesn't really matter.

A lame strawman? A strawman for what? I've pretty clearly spelled out that I'm not refuting the base points you're raising or the discussion you're trying to bring up themselves: I would actually be addressing those if I were...but I'm clearly not, which you've already pointed out yourself. I am calling you out on your dishonesty (edit: or incorectness in reframing the discussion and others' viewpoints: whichever). That is all. If you got it the first time, then why didn't you say so the first time...instead of deflecting back towards your original point that didn't have anything to do with what I said? (edit): If you're going to reframe the discussion and what people said to better support yourself to say, "ohoho, look guys, seems as though I was right, and all you guys shouldn't have attacked me so much earlier in the topic", and it's actually not very true...why shouldn't you be called out for that? That's silly.

Whats your point? I don't think Orog needs you to explain or justify his view Also no need to get defensive and try for some unfathomable reason to lessen the point I'm making. Cosby is a habitual predator who raped dozens of women throughout his career It would be nice if you acknowledged this instead of making some inane point about " what I said about what Orog said when he said...." Thats not the issue, this is about a celebrity who for years got away with committing sexual violence. Focus on the issue and stop trying to catch me out and question the semantics around my post My point is pretty self-evident: you misstated Orogun's stance for no real reason, made a generalization about posters earlier in the topic dismissing the accusations against Cosby as if a lot/the majority found them to baseless (which only a very few did), and now are making an assertion about Cosby being "a habitual predator who raped dozens of women throughout his career" as if that counters anything I said (at no point did I comment about Cosby's innocence or lack thereof). If you could stop all that nonsense, that would be great.

Orogun did not "concur that Cosby is guilty": Orogun stated that "at this point [it] is probably safe to assume he's guilty" (emphasis mine). Why do you have a tendency to mis/overstate others' positions, Bruce? This is not the first time I've complained about this... Furthermore, "dismissing [the accusation]" is not the equivalent of not immediately buying into the idea that it's true: there were only a very few people from what I saw earlier in this topic that immediately dismissed the accusations as being baseless: some just didn't go "welp, he's been tried and found guilty by the court of public opinion, so I guess it must be true!". Balance in all things, Bruce.

The Greeks also probably thought it couldn't possibly get any worse as the Ottomans humiliated them by vassalizing the remnants of their once great Roman Empire. Turns out, things can always get worse...half a millennium of subservience to the Ottoman Empire saw to that.

Yes, that was my point... Some people are not all people, and putting me into same league with these people offends me... I as a customer have my rights. And finaly these rights starts to be recognised in digital world as well... That's actually what I was trying to say, haha: the consumer rights of all shouldn't be stomped on because of the illegal behavior of some. It is unfortunate that it happens, though...

I've come to see the circus America, not some half-dressed tart(s) spouting dire warnings with little relevancy to the subject at hand.

Fair enough, you make some good points in support of reddit. I can understand why people would want to create an unusual or possibly older discussion like that example you gave about Frozen 2. You wouldn't have the same number of people participating in that type of discussion if you created a thread like that on these forums So then what went wrong in your opinion? It seems that the reddit admins don't really understand the relevance or importance of the moderators that maintain the smaller discussions and subreddits ? Is that why there is "reddit revolt " from some forums ? Small correction to what I said: I was actually trying to say Frozen...2 years after it was released. Not Frozen 2...years after it was released. Doesn't really matter, but Frozen 2 hasn't, you know, released yet or anything. I think a number of things went wrong...and are continuing to go wrong. Funnily enough, what Zoraptor and Barothmuk kind of mention one aspect of it: the terrible functionality of the website...though not quite in the way I think they were talking about. Moderators have to install third party plugins for their browsers to be able to moderate beyond anything besides basic functions. I didn't know this until recently, but apparently they've been complaining about this for years, with the administrators consistently promising change but delivering nothing. Another problem is the issue of censorship...the former CEO of reddit, some guy named Yishan, said that the stated ideal of reddit was to be a free speech platform. The current administration, under CEO Ellen Pao, has gone against this, saying that it is not meant to be a free speech platform. Even though this wasn't really true, in my opinion, even with the previous administration, they've certainly kicked things up a notch or two since, banning subs that are determined to be "harassing"...and being extremely inconsistent in doing so. I have mixed feelings about this: on one hand, I don't like those harassment subs myself...but I don't think they should be Big Brothered. I also think that a company like reddit should have the ability to clean itself up of content that it, and most normal people, would find reprehensible. What I would've preferred to have seen is removal of such offending subs from ever being visible from the /r/all front page (essentially, the page where all subreddits can be visible depending on some upvote/time created formula...which is the page that guests users see when they visit...as opposed to what is simply called the "front" page, which is personalized based on what subreddits you're subscribed to as a logged in user): not only would this clean up the site, it would decrease the likelihood of new subscribers/content for those subs. It also would've likely prevented the huge crapstorm calling out reddit for its censorship as well as its inconsistency: the subs that were banned were vile, yes, but there were many more just like them that have still not been touched in any way since. As a result of these complications, the userbase was kind of split on whether the subs being banned was a good thing or not: some thought free speech (to a point) trumped whatever reasons for banning them were, others hated the content so much they were simply glad that it was gone and weren't really interested in any such implications. Then there was the fact that Victoria, almost absolutely the favorite admin for being an apparently genuinely wonderful person as well as actually critical to some subreddits...the very large default subreddit iama as well as smaller subreddits who would do similar things and employ Victoria's services...was fired for reasons still not yet explained, and absolutely no communication about it was conveyed by the admins to the moderators who required her services in order for events in their subs to work. Furthermore, the admins have been pretty unhelpful even since the crapstorm: took a look at kirottu's post above, where you can see the head admin basically try and strongarm the iama science mods (who were going to do an AMA with Stephen Hawking before Victoria got fired) without offering any real information or *anything* concrete in return for cooperating. (EDIT: If you're having trouble reading that image, uh...I can't blame you. Took me a bit, too. Pay attention to the "to" and "from" fields: red kn0thing is the admin, the green users are the moderators, and when the message itself is green, it means the moderator is sending a message to that user. There are still a few odd bits - like, why does the admin repeat lines of what the moderator says and then stick on additional bits - but that should help.) Just stupid behavior on the parts of the admins. FURTHERMORE, what was probably the SECOND favorite admin was also fired recently...and for, get this...having cancer. That admin ran the reddit secret santa program, which you can Google if you want more information about, as well as this story, if you wish. Finally, Ellen Pao, the CEO, keeps going onto news sites like buzz feed and trying to downplay the events that recently transpired, as well as the complaints of the userbase, saying that it was "minor", and that most users did not really care about all of this. I don't know how much truth to that there is, but the fact of the matter is, you shouldn't be saying crap like that as the CEO of one of the largeset websites in the world...that just got more or less incapacitated by those so-called "minor" issues/complaints. Bah.

It's as moderated as the moderators want to spend time moderating it. Obviously, for the larger subs, it's harder to maintain a cohesive subreddit culture a la what you'd find here on the Obsidian forums, where you probably have sub-100 active posting users (particularly if we're considering different sections analogous to different subreddits: then the number is surely even lower for individual sections). That's the result of having thousands to tens of thousands of active posters...and that's why you branch out to smaller and more tight-knit subreddits. Besides for really rare cases, I never bother posting in the larger subreddits, because there's no sense of community and unless you're one of the first posters into a topic, basically nobody's going to read your post, anyways. Smaller subreddits, functionality and community-wise, are often pretty analogous to a forums like these...it's just a matter of finding them. Reddit serves as a great collection of little communities that you can integrate yourself into: if I want to discuss Frozen 2 years after it's released because I just watched it for the first time recently, reddit is pretty much the only forum-type website where I could possibly do that that's going to have any amount of activity...because though the Frozen subcommunity will be small by reddit standards, reddit is huge, and it doesn't take too much effort to stay "current" with smaller subreddits that are a little slower than others...and if something interest pops up, a bunch of people will still see it and be able to interact with each other...whereas a forums-website specifically dedicated to Frozen will surely have died off by now. Furthermore, due to the mechanics of reddit, subreddits aren't usually as susceptible to "forum politics" as much as actual forums...since it's much easier to hold people - even moderators - responsible for their insane actions/opinions via downvotes. This, in itself, sometimes has problems, but in my opinion, usually does a decent job at hiding stuff most decent people don't want to see and highlighting, at the very least, O.K. stuff. And if you want the stuff that's controversial, well, it's usually still there if not actually breaking the rules of reddit and/or the subreddit - just go down. "When people are allowed to say what they want with no sense of consequence they start to believe what they are saying and this leads to anti-social behavior and perspectives" They are held accountable: by moderators and by user downvotes: that's more accountable than you'd ever find on a forum like this, where people like Volourn are able to launch personal attacks constantly and with seemingly zero consequences...so I'm not sure what you're talking about. Reddit has problems, certainly...but so would any large website with its gigantic number of users in the larger subreddits. That's why you go to the smaller ones...and the ones not directly related to size are different, but IMO equal, problems compared to any forums. (e): English, more thoughts.

The amount of prejudice (and possibly ignorance) in this thread is a little surprising to me. What's made the lot of you hate reddit so much?

As some people in America do...illegally or at least immorally, I might add.

I don't think I've ever seen the actual word "customers" used in relation to redditors at any point over the past year or so I've been on reddit. Perhaps you've been on reddit longer than I have and know better, : I'm sure there are people who have, but I seriously doubt it's in any way a significant proportion.