| |
|
id: It's a very good point. The problem is that I am simultaneously depressed and bewildered by Reidcourchie. I can't understand how he can act in this way unless it follows the pathology of some recognised condition, so I seek to understand on those grounds. However, I also know on some level that it isn't - that this is just him, and that makes it hard to react with the sympathy that I should have for him. Which is itself ableist, in a way - it presupposes that people with recognisable conditions deserve sympathy, whereas people who are just a bit unplayable do not. I don't even know if there's a word for that. So, I think that my reference to Reid possibly suffering a cognitive problem (Reid used the term "learning difficulty, I believe, to suggest that I had. I did no such thing) is maybe not entirely sincere, in the sense that I am pessimistic about the possibility that the explanation would be that clear, nor ironic. It was an attempt to make sense of what seems a nonsense. However, it was no doubt unwise even to approach those waters.
And this discussion is making me sad, in part because I know that the fact that I am in it is a sign that I am near the end of my considerable resources of tact and energy. It also makes me sad because ultimately one ends up just like one's interlocutor, which in this case is a step down for me so shocking as to make me very seriously question the wisdom of continuing to be a member of this board. One has to repeat what one has said in the face of the opposite number spinning off into progressively more strident and random self-exculpation, and one also has to repeat oneself because no worthwhile content is added. But does one, really? Everyone here already has their reading. Reid will not be compelled to look at what he has written. The haustrolls have never let the actual structure of words arranged into sentences affect their fantasies. The members with worthwhile things to add either checked out already or already understand what has happened.
Reid has now reached the stage where he is not only saying the same things, but actually using the same phrases over and over again, in the hope presumably that it will somehow hypnotise the reader. Arbiter arbiter arbiter. A comforting word, it seems, which means simply "does not agree with Reid", a particularly arbitrary action when he says things like:
You are one who's been using words like stupid, histrionic and a liar
Having apparently forgotten just who shot first. Or perhaps deciding to avoid that inconvenient truth. As we have established, he will not remember what others say or what he has said from one post to the next. Can one, put simply, be that stupid?
Opinion opinion opinion - what is simple and obvious fact - that he responded to Flyboy's statement without having read it correctly, and has been trying to drown this out with bellowing ever since - what a child of twelve could easily work out from the simple process of cause (a comment on "some people") and effect (a complaint - dishonest or amnesiac, who knows? - that Flyboy was describing the action of all of Barbelith). Reading reading reading opinion opinion.
Debating debating debating - how untrustworthy those who do use words, who know what they mean, who understand the basics of following or putting together an argument are. How justified it is to lie and lie again - for example by claiming suddenly, as arbiter, that to reference another and an ongoing thread is somehow cheating, along with knowing what oneself and others have said - no rare nobility this, as it appears .trampetunia also forgot that he had himself said that he understood why his comment could easily have been read as homophobic, but he has at least not disregarded this post of mine and the subsequent reassurance that I had no intention of suggesting that he _was_ homophobic in order to keep the dishonest ad hominem flowing, as Reid has, speaking apparently as his representative. .trampetunia, you might want to think about whether you want this advocate.
Minutiae minutiae - how strange that whatever Reidcourchie sees as minutiae dovetails with what he is wrong about, either again through carefully-tended ignorance or dishonesty. These "minutiae" that somehow had him rotting a thread on the banning of another member of Barbelith to try to bludgeon those who have pointed up his inability to read simple English. How strange that the failure to read all the words in a sentence has been relegated to the world of minutiae, despite what one might see as the "substantive" effect of sending Reid out on a threadrot wankathon.
Oh, and some of these minutiae are semantic - a word that has already beeen used more times than I can count on Barbelith to mean "cheating by putting words in rows". I remain astonished that one can pay so little attention to Barbelith not to notice this - don't tell me, Reid, opinion opinion opinion arbiter arbiter reading.
A little abuse, and then, which admittedly was very funny, a spelling correction made in the belief that spelling and grammar are the same thing. From a man who appears to suffer from a wasting disease of the comma, this should not be surprising. Understand, Reid: I commented on the paucity of your grammar because it makes it hard to understand what you mean. You did this because you wanted to score a point. That pretty much sums it up.
But all of this hapless flatwormery would be of little import if I had been better rested, and (and this is perhaps key) Reidcourchie had not begun this entire campaign of blather in defence of white straight male privilege.
Still, ultimately I have let myself and the side down, because the time I have wasted speaking to a man whose arguments would only make sense to those unhappy little haustrolls creeping around the guttering I might have spent actually making a worthwhile contribution to Barbelith, or encouraging those who do. Reid has simply been doing what he is able to do. In that sense, at least, he is blameless.
This has been the weakness of a day. I hope it will not survive midnight. |
|
|
