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The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: May 21, 2012 - 03:31 Reply with quote Back to top

I don't think I was going out of my way to offend anyone. And I don't know that in that context, in that blog, at that time, that anyone was offended. Were you perhaps? And if so, why? Or maybe just the idea that someone isn't tip toeing around when they chose their words might me be mildly offensive. I can easily see that too.

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f_alk



Joined: Sep 30, 2005

Post   Posted: May 21, 2012 - 16:56 Reply with quote Back to top

I prefer the use of smileys to the use of offensive words.
VoodooMike



Joined: Nov 07, 2010

Post   Posted: May 22, 2012 - 00:31 Reply with quote Back to top

The_Murker wrote:
Nothing is more meaningless than writing something obviously negative and sticking a Very Happy at the end of it. Used in the "proper context" or not, it's lost in a sea of misused or sarcastic smiley faces. They have no power. They cannot undo what you have typed. Cannot mean more than you have meant.

I don't think people are trying to make them "mean more than they meant" (what the hell is that supposed to mean, anyway?) - they're trying to use them to convey intent on something that they think people will take badly. Whether or not it works, of course, is unpredictable... just as whether or not people will take the words the right way is anyone's guess. Just one more tool in your conversational toolbox.

The_Murker wrote:
Does licker light somebody up with the highest permitted levels of scorn and then ruin it all with an ill-placed digital grin? NO! He hates who he hates, and he doesn’t ruin it with mixed signals. Haters... hate. Lovers.. love. And for heaven’s sake, anyone with an education, choose your words, then hit the period key.

Speaking your mind, whatever you happen to think, is never a good idea on internet forums because there's one or more people out there with the ability to delete what you say or ban you from them, and those people will eventually do exactly that if you speak your mind openly and frequently.

Any time you have more than one person, you have politics.

Purplegoo wrote:
I for one have not been deliberately confrontational or argumentative (well - not counting logical argument, more over just being playgroundy) in this forum since I learned my lesson about such time wasting a long time ago, but I know what I write has been, on occasion, misuderstood over the years as being needlessly inflammatory.

Hey, who are you and what did you do with the real Purplegoo... whom I've seen do plenty of petty, argumentative, content-free postings since "a long time ago" happened?

I'd toss a smiley face in there, but, y'know..

pubstar wrote:
I had an English professor who would mark points off for these 'cheap' ways to convey emphasis. If you don't feel your sentence says what you want it to say without italics, you didn't choose the right words. Clearly, smiley faces are used to convey different meanings than just emphasis, but I think a parallel can be drawn. So in that sense, I completely agree with you: smiley faces are bad writing.

For formal writing all of that is true, but you have a very different audience in those cases. Think, instead, of writing standard copy where you actually have to restrict yourself to writing at a grade 8 level since you want to be able to effectively communicate with the general public.

Is it that the general public is totally incapable of understanding big words and shifting tones? No, its that they're lazy and stupid and are probably going to skim what is being said. Emphasis like bolding, underlining, italics... works to hand-hold those idiots so that they get what you need them to get out of what you say. People in that elusive three-digit IQ range may (no guarantees) actually use their full brain when reading, but it's still unlikely. Your english professor has to... he's grading you, not deciding if he gives a shit about what you're saying. He already knows he doesn't.
The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: May 22, 2012 - 11:09 Reply with quote Back to top

It's M-official, smiley usage down 1.1%.

"Speaking your mind, whatever you happen to think, is never a good idea on internet forums because there's one or more people out there with the ability to delete what you say or ban you from them, and those people will eventually do exactly that if you speak your mind openly and frequently."

I'm not sure this point is well thought out. Don't try to convey what you are thinking, lest you get banned and not be able to convey what you are thinking?
I’d rather use the words I think I need to convey my meaning to whomever it is I’m trying to communicate with. What happens after, happens after. But at least I tried, and hopefully it was making the effort that was the point, not an actual need or desire to change the world via internet forum. Koadah has a good point, unlike the blog comment, a rant’s audience is kind of everyone, so perhaps I needed to choose more carefully, and I see now I made an error and missed my mark.

Playing devil's advocate with myself, in the original rant I did not simply use the term gay in isolation. After calling smiley's gay, I said by that I meant “they suck.” If I felt the need to clarify one term with another, I could have just saved the effort and said SMILEYS SUCK instead. So why bother? I bothered because gay is what I meant. Defining it with "sucks" was a failed attempt at clarification. Failed because I see now it’s not really what I meant. And likening gay to sucks was quite possibly offensive. A poor choice of word. “Sucks” is most certainly negative. So from that, one might easily assume I would also think gay in every possible sense of the word is also negative. That is not true, and warrants saying here. Being gay is neither good is bad, it is just being something. Anyone who has a problem with someone else’s orientation being gay is a mental midget.

Acting “gay” is something else. The rant intended to liken the use of smiley faces to acting in a gay fashion, which outside of the rant sounds much too serious. Now that Gay Pride Parades are popular the world over, I can point to my intended meaning much more easily than I can with a vague grade school notion of girl’s toys on clothing. With the help of the Valley Girls and the city of SanFrancisco I can say..
“Smiley faces are so gay pride parade.” That is what I meant. What’s wrong with a gay pride parade? Nothing is wrong with a gay pride parade. I just don’t keep one in my living room. We don’t have one in Toronto every day. That’s all.

I’ve edited the original text to reflect this pure stroke of genius, as PGoo has already edited parts of it anyway, so it wasn’t 100% Murker. I realise that this removes the possibility of anyone being offended by my original writing, but it wasn’t meant to offend in that manner anyway. If that makes a few of the resulting comments less clear, I apologise.


Last edited by The_Murker on May 22, 2012 - 13:21; edited 1 time in total
koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: May 22, 2012 - 12:48 Reply with quote Back to top

Maybe you should quit while you're ahead. Wink

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The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: May 22, 2012 - 13:17 Reply with quote Back to top

"Ahead" is generous!

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SillySod



Joined: Oct 10, 2006

Post   Posted: May 24, 2012 - 13:18 Reply with quote Back to top

You're all idiots.

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The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: May 24, 2012 - 14:02 Reply with quote Back to top

Perfect non-use of a happy face. Very well done indeed.

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PurpleChest



Joined: Oct 25, 2003

Post   Posted: Aug 27, 2012 - 20:06
FUMBBL Staff
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I wear my crocs with pride. I go shoeless indoors but frequently pop outside for a smoke. So choosing between slippers and crocs, I take crocs as the lesser of 2 evils. Mine are plain black however. So i try to make them invisible.

I also speak my mind on the internet, and in RL you'll find me to be absolutely the same guy. I have long suspected that the people puporting to be someone different in real life are usually explaining away being an unspeakable arse online, and usually are pretty much the same in real life too. The effort and concentration of maintaining a 'character' prevents most people from being anything other than themselves. Indeed the anonimity of the net means people are sometimes more themselves, as the social pressure to internally edit isn't there.

As to smileys, I am indifferent. Yes they are ugly and a little lazy. But language, especially in a polyglot environment like fumbbl, continually changes and evolves. Smileys exist and perpetuate as people feel they convey meaning well. Even if that meaning involves several layers of irony. So? Yes the meaning is inexact. But certainly it conveys a meaning.


Finally the use of 'gay' as a pejorative, that's just never going to be cool with me. Firstly its offensive. And secondly it directly contradicts your rant on amulets. It conveys meaning, but innacurately. Are you being ironic? No one in my friend circle would use the term as an insult un-ironicly, so maybe. Do you mean to imply that gay things are bad? For religious reasons? Moral? Ethical? there are an array of reasons put forward for such a stance by the thankfully dwindling few. While thye share a target, very little else is their stance is common, so clarity of thinkling behind this signifyer is important. To me likening smileys to gayness or gay pride means you are praising them for their courage, applauding their spirit and seeing them as camply entertaining while personifying tollerance and diversity. From the context this seems unlikely. So your intended meaning is lost to me in a wash if tasteless possible bigotry, clear missunderstanding and localised cultural reference. But if you just mean a bigoted insult, shame on you, and maybe try to grow up eh?

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The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: Aug 31, 2012 - 11:40 Reply with quote Back to top

'Off Topic' dosn't hit the highlight reel at the top so I'm surprised I caught this quarterly follow-up.

"..your rant on amulets" Sorry, I don't get this reference at all.

I didn't re-read the whole thread to see the specific wording of the comments you were touching on, so I'm not sure what your second paragraph was referencing.

You think smileys are ugly, a little lazy, and inexact. Makes perfect sense to me. I was initially just poking fun at some well written coaches, harping on the smileys. I'm pretty much done with poking fun in the forum, after missing the mark here more than once amid all of the non-native english speakers and sensitive souls.

I think I was clear in my explanation of the gay reference, so the last scentence seems unnecessary, but I can see how your profession would require you to put in an anti-bigotry statement whenever possible.

In my book "gay" is now short for "Gay Pride Parade." And that implies loud, proud, unconventional, flamboyancy. 'Nuff said really. You're not a fan of the reference, for your stated reasons. I get that. I made a long anti-anti-gay post somewhere in the forum or on a blog, so I feel we've nothing to discuss there.

Smileys... so ubiquitous their "unconventional flamboyancy" is becoming the new norm. A parade in every post. I care less than the rant indicates, but still not a fan.

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Whitmire



Joined: Dec 08, 2011

Post   Posted: Aug 31, 2012 - 13:51 Reply with quote Back to top

Sometimes when I'm alone I roflcopter.

Crocs are good for hospital workers and the like who need to stand on their feet for hours and hours and need light, easy-to-wear, breathing footwear that can be washed off blood easily. I'm not one of them, but I understand why they'd wear crocs.

Since this seems to be a come-out-of-the-croc-closet thread - or any closet you might still inhabit -, I'll let you know that I have sometimes used crocs at the cottage. In the wilderness nobody sees your footwear - or any wear for that matter (not that I have any).

And... I... made it... without smileys! Yes!

Now you can't tell what up there is true and what's a joke. Bwah-ah.
The_Murker



Joined: Jan 30, 2011

Post   Posted: Aug 31, 2012 - 16:00 Reply with quote Back to top

.."In the wilderness nobody sees your footwear -"

Wanna bet. Setting aside the search and rescue technicians who find your corpse after you've had an accident, all of those animals in "The Green Forest" see your foot wear every day. You know, the talking rabbit, the cleaver mice, and the dangerous fox. And they're all suppose to be terrified of the giant human farmer in the scary masculine boots, not rolfcoptering at the neon orange rubber slipping around in the long grass. I'm pretty sure pigeons have attacked Croc wearers in NYC just for fun.

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