Why prefer a lie when the truth helps more?
Apr 10, 2019 13:23:43 GMT -5
Post by edmonddantes on Apr 10, 2019 13:23:43 GMT -5
Okay, so there's this trend I've noticed in online arguments.
It goes like this: A lot of people seem to be compulsive liars, to such an extent that they will insist on a lie, even if A) that lie is easily debunked and B) there's a true statement they could use which would be much, much more helpful to their argument.
Here's one I witnessed on another forum a long time ago. So there was this guy who was popular with a lot of people there, but he had a known criminal record (he had admitted as much)--things like shoplifting. But then one day he got into an argument where he disagreed with someone else, and as always happens in nerd culture, that person he disagreed with got all mad and started attacking him. One claim that Madboy (as I'll call the attacker) made about Admitted Shoplifter was "you're a pedophile!"
Admitted Shoplifter is like, "huh?" Dude had a family and two kids of his own at the time, and nobody had ever accused him of anything of the sort before. Indeed right off the bat nobody took Madboy seriously.
Yet Madboy insisted on this line of attack. Shoplifter even tried to help the guy and said "you know, you could attack on something I've provably done, like the whole 'shoplifter' thing." But Madboy insisted on spurious claims of pedophilia anyway.
....
For an example of one that happened to myself personally. On another forum... well, at the time I was going through a phase of being a hardcore Japanophile. Like literally it was a period where if it wasn't Japanese, I didn't care. And like I would always see something like Dragonball Evolution as Americans trying to copy the superior culture... I think all nerds go through that at some point, and hopefully we all grow out of it (looking back on my content back then makes me cringe).
Anyway, at this time there was some moron who was mad at me basically because I told him he was wrong about something and my argument was stronger than his, so he proceeds to become obsessed...
... And during one debate, out of nowhere he blurts out that I'm a fan of the American Godzilla (the 1998 one, as the other american Godzilla didn't exist yet).
Now, my own reaction to this was to just raise an eyebrow and point out the whole "extreme Japanophile" thing, and most other people there admitted the argument didn't make much sense (and some said even if it did... who cared?)
Now if you wanted to attack me, you could probably find actual bad things I'm a fan of... I can't think of anything right off hand... but what I don't get is why this guy picked something so blatantly wrong and nonsensical.
And again, he stuck with it, and kept putting it out there even though nobody was buying it. Like, why?
.....
I was gonna bring up a third case, but it might be a little controversial. Well, short version is on youtube there's this "rational skeptic" community whose haters often accuse them of being misogynist. The problem? A lot of these "rational skeptics" are either married, or are actual women (in fact one, Shoe0nHead, is the most popular of said community).
Again, some of these "rationals," like the infamous Sargon of Akkad, have done actual bad things. But I only know about that from other members of their same community. I never hear it from their ideological opposites, who instead seem content to just accuse him of things like racism, misogyny or supporting nazis... which in his case MIGHT be true, but they're such overused claims by said ideologues that they're in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation of nobody taking it seriously.
Like, if you want to prove to everyone what a terrible bad person someone is, why would you stick to something that you pulled out of your ass, and not instead just start every conversation about Sargon with "Oh, you mean the guy who closed his Patreon account and then lied and claimed they kicked him out so he could start a controversy?" I mean, one of those A) actually got him a lot of hate from his own former supporters and thus would easily turn anyone else against him and B) is something you could actually prove.
......
The internet... its like playing Super Bomberman, and most of you are actually trying to do strategic things. And then one of the players keeps putting his bomb in his starting corner and blowing himself up, and he wonders why he keeps losing, but he keeps doing it because he's convinced that eventually he's going to win using this tactic. And he is apparently still enjoying the game.
Like, imagine if someone's house was lined with c4 and you knew it and in fact had the trigger button on your desk, you could blow them up anytime you want, and you've been obsessed with killing this person for years... but now that the ball is in your court, you instead decide to throw paper airplanes at them on a windy day where the wind is blowing AWAY from them, and hope they die of a papercut, and everyone is telling you that you should just press the damn button, but you insist your paper airplane assassination is gonna work... just, what the hell are these people thinking?
Why does this happen? Worse, why does it seem like *everyone* does it? Are we all Bond villains?
It goes like this: A lot of people seem to be compulsive liars, to such an extent that they will insist on a lie, even if A) that lie is easily debunked and B) there's a true statement they could use which would be much, much more helpful to their argument.
Here's one I witnessed on another forum a long time ago. So there was this guy who was popular with a lot of people there, but he had a known criminal record (he had admitted as much)--things like shoplifting. But then one day he got into an argument where he disagreed with someone else, and as always happens in nerd culture, that person he disagreed with got all mad and started attacking him. One claim that Madboy (as I'll call the attacker) made about Admitted Shoplifter was "you're a pedophile!"
Admitted Shoplifter is like, "huh?" Dude had a family and two kids of his own at the time, and nobody had ever accused him of anything of the sort before. Indeed right off the bat nobody took Madboy seriously.
Yet Madboy insisted on this line of attack. Shoplifter even tried to help the guy and said "you know, you could attack on something I've provably done, like the whole 'shoplifter' thing." But Madboy insisted on spurious claims of pedophilia anyway.
....
For an example of one that happened to myself personally. On another forum... well, at the time I was going through a phase of being a hardcore Japanophile. Like literally it was a period where if it wasn't Japanese, I didn't care. And like I would always see something like Dragonball Evolution as Americans trying to copy the superior culture... I think all nerds go through that at some point, and hopefully we all grow out of it (looking back on my content back then makes me cringe).
Anyway, at this time there was some moron who was mad at me basically because I told him he was wrong about something and my argument was stronger than his, so he proceeds to become obsessed...
... And during one debate, out of nowhere he blurts out that I'm a fan of the American Godzilla (the 1998 one, as the other american Godzilla didn't exist yet).
Now, my own reaction to this was to just raise an eyebrow and point out the whole "extreme Japanophile" thing, and most other people there admitted the argument didn't make much sense (and some said even if it did... who cared?)
Now if you wanted to attack me, you could probably find actual bad things I'm a fan of... I can't think of anything right off hand... but what I don't get is why this guy picked something so blatantly wrong and nonsensical.
And again, he stuck with it, and kept putting it out there even though nobody was buying it. Like, why?
.....
I was gonna bring up a third case, but it might be a little controversial. Well, short version is on youtube there's this "rational skeptic" community whose haters often accuse them of being misogynist. The problem? A lot of these "rational skeptics" are either married, or are actual women (in fact one, Shoe0nHead, is the most popular of said community).
Again, some of these "rationals," like the infamous Sargon of Akkad, have done actual bad things. But I only know about that from other members of their same community. I never hear it from their ideological opposites, who instead seem content to just accuse him of things like racism, misogyny or supporting nazis... which in his case MIGHT be true, but they're such overused claims by said ideologues that they're in a boy-who-cried-wolf situation of nobody taking it seriously.
Like, if you want to prove to everyone what a terrible bad person someone is, why would you stick to something that you pulled out of your ass, and not instead just start every conversation about Sargon with "Oh, you mean the guy who closed his Patreon account and then lied and claimed they kicked him out so he could start a controversy?" I mean, one of those A) actually got him a lot of hate from his own former supporters and thus would easily turn anyone else against him and B) is something you could actually prove.
......
The internet... its like playing Super Bomberman, and most of you are actually trying to do strategic things. And then one of the players keeps putting his bomb in his starting corner and blowing himself up, and he wonders why he keeps losing, but he keeps doing it because he's convinced that eventually he's going to win using this tactic. And he is apparently still enjoying the game.
Like, imagine if someone's house was lined with c4 and you knew it and in fact had the trigger button on your desk, you could blow them up anytime you want, and you've been obsessed with killing this person for years... but now that the ball is in your court, you instead decide to throw paper airplanes at them on a windy day where the wind is blowing AWAY from them, and hope they die of a papercut, and everyone is telling you that you should just press the damn button, but you insist your paper airplane assassination is gonna work... just, what the hell are these people thinking?
Why does this happen? Worse, why does it seem like *everyone* does it? Are we all Bond villains?
