Clarification: Get Lost
Gnilraps
Get Lost (Mandatory listening)
Day 2787 of the New World
July 8, 2015
Well so my last article (which I admit was pablum) did exactly what I expected it to do. It brought out three types of responses in the comments section.
1 - raving stupidity in the form of illogical counter-attacks. There are some citizens known for this, and their mechanistic responses are a thing to behold.
Here's a classic gem from Franklin Stone:
"The point of any good argument is pointless, otherwise there would be no argument...."
You are welcome, eUSA, for my public service in creating the opportunity to read such as this.
2 - politically motivated thoughtful disagreement. These responses are usually fairly boring, though I realize this makes me the pot calling the kettle black. My article itself was dreadfully boring (except for the line about aramec not playing the game anyway... that was funny) and politically motivated. And as pointed out by one of the better posters in this category, I tend to write very crappy politics articles. (I'd estimate that 95% of my political pieces over my 5 years of publishing this newspaper were written after consuming 3ish adult beverages. Since I am not given to consuming strong drink in quantity, 3 pretty much sends me into idiot mode.)
Here's an excellent example of category 2 from Josh Frost:
"With all due respect, instead of grand standing you probably would have been better served just messaging the POTUS. This accomplishes nothing."
See what I mean about boring?
3 - Honest comments which get right to the heart of what I had written.
This poster wins the comments thread ("You have successfully donated 1 Gold. If the user accepts, the amount will appear shortly in the citizen account.") by first summing up my entire article in one word, then stating his opinion of my writing in one word, then offering the only possible rebuttal - once more in just one word.
And so I was quite pleased with myself, having raised the bar on opportunities for all of this madness, while lowering the threshold of quality in the Media.
Buuuuuut now I feel compelled to clarify my position on people like Wooky Jack who, as one commentator suggested, is having a ton of fun playing this game.
What I hope to do with this article, actually, is begin a sensible discourse with all of you (carried out in your own newspapers, of course) about this game we share.
There is a prevailing idea among many players from all walks of eLife that when you oppose someone, especially if you have the audacity to do it publicly, you are expressing your desire that they would do one of the following things:
quit the game,
change their opinions to match your own, or
shut up altogether and crawl into a hole never to be heard from again.
There is an additional thought process that subscribes to the notion that if you disagree with or oppose someone publicly, it means that you hate that person and/or you can't stand his "game".
Nothing makes public debate less scintillating than puerile swats.
So I'd like to offer the following guidelines for understanding what it means if I write an article attacking you in eRepublik, such as what I did with Wooky Jack.
1 - If you are mentioned in one of my articles, I respect your game. This is true whether I am criticizing you or supporting your ideas. This would be a dreadful game if everyone were just like Gnilraps. Nothing makes this game more entertaining than adversity. If I want a boring victory, I'll play chess with my 6 year old son. I can kick his ass in chess and you probably think I love that.
2 - If you are from a party which is politically opposed to mine, too bad because you are totally wrong about nearly everything until it is time for us to ally for some politically motivated reason and then you are probably still wrong but I am far less likely to complain about it. I mean, that's part of the political dynamic for me. OK? Do you hate that about me? GREAT!!! Write an article about it for crying out loud.
Believe me, there's a solid 50% chance that I would have ended up in your political party anyway, considering this is a game and I picked my party for GAME reasons. I dunno, maybe there are some legitimate socialists in the SFP. There are probably a solid number of capitalists there too but when they log on to play this game they are socialist freedom party members. You think I'm USWP because of some deep-seated-personal-convictions-that-perfectly-align-with-my-real-life-views-on-oh-I-don't-know-gay-marriage?
Umno.
Look, sometimes my kid wants black, sometimes my kid wants white. When I play chess, I don't HATE the blacks. And if I do, that doesn't make me a racist. (Aside: I am so tired of hearing people in this game call other people in this game racists. Grow up people. You want to know what racism looks like? It's a white kid shooting 9 black people in Charleston South Carolina... because they are black.) When the white queen checkmates the black king... it's neither sexism nor racism... it's called a game.
Am I making my point? I'll be more direct:
Wooky Jack. He's an ingame political enemy. Thus I write a piece attacking him. Thus half of the tin hat brigade loses its mind. These are the roles we play. What I am saying is this: I enjoy you playing your role. Yes, even you Wooky, you traitorous anti-eAmerican, you.
(2.1 - And yet what I really grow tired of is when people get so wrapped up in this game that they lose track of the difference between the game character they are playing with {or against} and the person at the keyboard/mouse who is controlling the player they are playing with {or against}. I am desperately opposed to any and all of this crap. So when RGR threatened to break into my RL house after I PTO'd his stupid Political Party, that crossed the line. He permanently lost my respect. Wooky Jack, as far as I am concerned, would never do this. There have been a few other players in this game who have crossed this line. They've permanently lost my respect as well and I do well to ignore them.
I suspect many of us have experienced the emotional crossing of this boundary line. I would guess that if you have been at all active in this game, you've run across someone who has pissed you off enough to want to knock them over the head with a rubber mallet {or at least fart in their general direction}. Most of us know how to handle these emotional reactions. We identify them, perhaps step away from the computer for a while, and they pass.
And in the best of eWorlds, we return to our keyboards and we attack them ingame with ingame arguments. And people get outraged.
And for the record, I almost always put into this category a confusion of Real Life USA with eUSA... As if eUSA can't have a dictator because rah!rah! Democracy! Or because of something Abraham Lincoln said while sitting on the shitter, we need to fear using certain game mechanics to the best of our ability. The only known exception to this is Phoenix Quinn who has made an eCareer out of adapting RL philosophies into the eRepublik world. But his adaptations are for entertainment purposes. That is why they are exceptional. But the rest of you doing this are, in my opinion, advocating stupidity.)
3 - Nearly every "issue" worth arguing about in this game is a virtual construct. We play a game that mimics reality, but it is not reality. And so our Military Units are neither military nor units. Our eCountry is all e, no Country. Our factories, inventories, energy bars, Soldier of Fortune Medals (you suckers!), and every other thing in this game are VIRTUAL.
Therefore all of our debates are virtual. If I am attacking you, I am virtually attacking you. If I am supporting you, I am virtually supporting you. If I hate you, I virtually hate you. If I shoot at you because you are pig-disgusting??? I am virtually shooting you, but it is because you are actually pig-disgusting. cf. eSpain.
Why have I belabored this point in another blah, blah, blah article (yes, Shiloh, I see you coming!)?
Because I am asking you to step up your damn game.
Stop crapping in my comments thread with your idiotic responses that fail to respect the activity I am trying to add to the game by writing my garbage articles to begin with. Here's a Gnilraps protip: The purpose of every article I write in this game is to generate activity.
And I would trade 115 comments in one of my articles with a dozen decent articles published by you EVERY TIME.
So quit treating me like I'm your enemy and start treating me like I'm your... "enemy".
And trust me, if you're ever in my neck of the woods (think greater Philadelphia), I would jump at the opportunity to hang out over a beer or coffee. Because we play a game together, and that makes us friends.
Now get lost unless you agree with me.
(Custom) Tracker courtesy of Mike Ontry's Hit Tracker.
You may now return to your regularly scheduled clicking
Comments
LET THE COMMENTS BEGIN!
"except for the line about aramec not playing the game anyway"
Agreed.
Aramec, who?
You know Alzheimer's is a terrible disease, you should really get that looked at.
kk
NEEDS MORE GREELING!!!
VOTE IF YOU READ THIS ARTICLE
ARTICLE IF YOU VOTE THIS READ
Aramec I need you for my show 🙁
Where and when, babe?
No mention of this guy?
I know that you write well and I look forward to a new 16 shells, but your last article was trollish.
Say what you want about SFP, but those article hurt the community.
You do realize that by trying to define the "community", you are doing the same thing that you accuse the elitists of doing.
My point is that this IS our community, and it was never more vibrant than during those days when Parties were aligned against one another on an ongoing basis, struggling for power creatively.
My article really wasn't all that trollish, though it was overtly political. The only person I actually trolled in that article was aramec.
I do not define what the community is, the community does....
I do not start a Revolution, the Community does...
Until you understand that you understand nothing....
SFP is community too. You just have a different definition.
Frankling is that you writing it or not you? Because you seem to be the voice of the community but than your not really. It's starting to get confusing as to whether you are confused or the community is confused. Please clarify.
Too many layers of confusion in that statement and I'm not opening that can of worms.
It means that I have a voice in the community, but only one; it takes many voices and many ideas to define a community.
Ravingly stupid comment here followed by a rather tasteless insult to your mother.
If it was so stupid then why'd you PTO it?
Psh.
And it's on land stolen from the Native Americans....
No more Native to America than I am.
I prefer to call them "Pre-Colonial Americans", as that serves descriptive as well as historical justice.
Oh. And it was stupid precisely because it was yours. Once I took it, it was no longer stupid.
Ya it was. It became Oblige's personal puppetry party.
It was only cool otherwise.
You only won because CG got mad at me and split the vote, and then the second time your bots came out in full throttle to beat Hanibal.
lol. "my bots".
sorry, not me.
This made me lol
Ronnie...
...just shut up.
I feel like you're infringing on his sense of "community."
Then you should vote for him next time he runs for CP so he may spread his community across eUSA, plus you and your friends spent -what- like a year infringing on his 'sense of community'; but ofc you did it for the good old eUSA -right?
\o/
Some comments taken out of context, but over all a hit....
You are a PRIME EXAMPLE of someone who KNOWS how much I like them despite being on opposing sides of many issues.
if we are here for fun, using "out of context" seems like a LOT of fun...
Wow.. we agree. Has that happened before? I think GOTJ, BB and I just had a conversation about the hole..community and sides thing yesterday.
I still don't wanna write an article though.
Franklin Stone
'The point of any good argument is pointless, otherwise there would be no argument....'
Gnilraps
'If you are from a party which is politically opposed to mine, too bad because you are totally wrong about nearly everything until it is time for us to ally for some politically motivated reason and then you are probably still wrong but I am far less likely to complain about it.'
Pretty much makes any argument pointless in the end, I'm just saying....
R E S P E C T
This is, imo, FAR superior to your previous article. I think I like you better without the 3ish adult beverages.
I am thinking about writing an article in response to all the hype of the last few days, one which will probably please neither political side. This one of yours adds both perspective and incentive.
@GoTJ and Gnil : From my perspective, we are all part of many intersecting communities, composed of parties, MUs, odd assortments of friends/eFamily from many places we have picked up along the way, and yes, the eUS as a whole, perhaps even the whole eWorld. Community is what you make of it, and only you can define it for yourself.
And yes, if I ever get to the greater Philadelphia area, it would be a pleasure to look you up.
I start to like how you put things into perspective
I like it and I hoped you liked mine
"when RGR threatened to break into my RL house"
That's pretty funny...in a 'what a shithead' kind of way.
too long; only read half-ish of it.
But Gnil, you should know that the fun in playing the game you're talking about is not mentioning that it is a game.
Stop ruining immersion, you failure.
Damn...
Nice to see that stupid hasn't died in eUS. eRepublik is not a cure for boredom, it is boredom. Pressing fight isn't fun. Reading long winded articles isn't fun. Passing pretend legislation isn't fun. Winning or caring about who wins pretend elections isn't fun.
Watching people get their knickers in knot over this game is fun. You gotta realize that for every "elite citizen" who wants to control things, there are 50 more who simply want t piss on their parades. That's what's fun, pissing on people. Open up and embrace the stream.
that's not fun that's trolling/stalking/borderline immature
You know you like it
Go ahead and think I'm stupid because I find the fact that the inner circle of same old same olds of the government want to call people traitors for fighting against a dictatorship that was installed purely out of not wanting to fight against a foreign threat. And that is entirely what it was for, because there is no other benefit of it, Other then Control.
I fought where I was meant to fight, and the censorship of Greeling is complete and utter BS. And anyone who supports it needs to be taken out back and beaten.
Greeling and WJ were both censured for the remainder of the Congressional Term and yes, both of the censures are BS....
Greeling asked to be censured. He literally asked to be censured. He also said that he didn't want to fight his censure and was taking a break from congress. gjgj
Believe WJ also asked to be censured and I don't believe he fought it either, so your point is what?
[removed]
Voted for the PQ exception.
Well shit that plan Wooky and I had to break into Gnil's RL house and kidnap his dog seems a little overboard now...
...don't forget his computer and any bags of cheetos he might have laying around.
OH!
You said overboard...
Yes ofc...that is a little over the top