Please Continue the Thread Battles

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


I certainly enjoy some of the sideshows that we have going on here. Some of the unique personalities. John Lear used to liven things up a bit.

But what i propose is not only to impact users by providing consolidation of quality content, but also increase the "unique hits" that the board needs to increase the ad pricing.

I mean, i am idealistic and all. But reality is reality...i am sure they would like more money (and we would like more site upgrades ).

It is nice to have folks like yourself on here with the extremely insightful ideas. Having more would be better, right?

I wonder where Zorgon is, speaking of that.....

Originally posted by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Since each side feels the other is 100% wrong, that does end up making nobody right!

I'm not wrong! You're wrong.



I'll have to remember the 99%/1% thing, I am already versed in how difficult it is to get people to accept anything that doesn't fit into their neat like boxes... perhaps quantifying in such a way makes it easier still.

reply to post by 23refugee

Don’t feel bad I once accidently set a church on fire, during the service. Let’s just say there were a lot of happy NFL Play Off fans in the congregation who were thrilled the service was called early! My 3 minute career as a Candelabra Boy was pretty much in shambles and beyond resurrection though!

ATS can be a brutal place some days when you run smack dab into a flash mob or a forum gang on the opposite side of an emotionally hot issue.

It gets a lot easier to deal with though when you realize that they are the ones who are really angry and insecure though, and they are. Posters who have a hard time being civil almost always are.

Thanks for posting, and welcome to ATS!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


You know, I gotta agree with the OP here. Sometimes opening up your own thread, although seemingly self centred, is the only way to get your point across.

I must admit that all too often I see someone who does research and states their point in a lengthy and orderly fashion get little to no replies or quotes later on in the thread when they really took five to ten minutes just writing out a response. Unfortunately, at the same time it's quite normal to see someone write something as simple as "There is no god" or "There is a God" (just as examples) and they get a bajillion replies and quotes which eventually turn into just another flame war.

I'm all for people expressing their opinion, but often I think long replies go unnoticed too often and people skip over them (myself included) whereas you have a much better chance to get a response from the readers and discuss your views if you have your own thread.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan

I wonder where Zorgon is, speaking of that.....

I haven’t seen Zorgon on any of the threads I have been posting on for months now.

I wonder if he’s become an ascendant Master?!!!!!

Remember some posters wouldn’t seem half so brilliant, insightful and thoughtful if they didn’t have something a bit duller and less flamboyant to shine against in contrast.

It’s a new car sales trick, get the car they are looking at off the lot where all the cars are new and look great and show it to them in a parking lot on the wrong side of town full of beat up old clunkers!

Water has a tendency to seek it's own level, and the like minds do end up gravitating towards one another.

The nice thing is though that a fair number of ATS Members stuck in the left/right paradigm, do end up finding their way out of it right here.

Now if only we could get them to stop abandoning the left/right paradigm for the up/down paradigm!

Working on it! Back to the drawing board!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Thanks so much for the warm welcome.

I'm no shrinking violet, but I think my experience bolsters your point.

I'm sure a lot of people prefer to chat at the edge of a party
rather than wade into the slugfest breaking out near the keg.

Originally posted by 23refugee
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Thanks so much for the warm welcome.

I'm no shrinking violet, but I think my experience bolsters your point.

I'm sure a lot of people prefer to chat at the edge of a party
rather than wade into the slugfest breaking out near the keg.

The best part of ATS is away from the slugfest. Find threads that are informative. Speak on what you know, and you will fare well when a debate gets heated.

I employ a simple method, when i am cautious enough to do it right: if it is getting heated, and i really don't have a lot of knowledge, i pose my statements like questions, or something innocuous. This gets me the feedback i need to inform myself, and helps me avoid the flames.

After a while, you know who to read, and who to ignore.

But don't ever let some schmuck cost you your civility.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Guilty. In fact my green thread below in my signature started as a post in your 322 thread. Then it grew and grew. Not so much an anti-thread but a wanted to get some attention from it thread. Still waiting for you to pop back in. New stuff.

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


I employ a simple method, when i am cautious enough to do it right: if it is getting heated, and i really don't have a lot of knowledge, i pose my statements like questions, or something innocuous. This gets me the feedback i need to inform myself, and helps me avoid the flames

Thank you for the advice. Sadly, as a Hillbilly way up north, I've had to rely on this method for years. I almost never say exactly what I mean. Doesn't seem to translate well.

Originally posted by timewalker
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Guilty. In fact my green thread below in my signature started as a post in your 322 thread. Then it grew and grew. Not so much an anti-thread but a wanted to get some attention from it thread. Still waiting for you to pop back in. New stuff.

Actually in my humble opinion you did the right thing in starting a thread that dealt with a different dimension that you wanted to expand upon.

Rome has become popular again, and there are a lot of very different aspects in regards to the One World Empire and it's history and its mysteries and its on going conspiracies to spawn a host of threads that compliment, but do not actually compete with one another, because there are so many different aspects.

In fact Rome should have its own forum! To think once upon a time it always did!

The thread versus anti-thread is a very different kind of trend.

reply to post by For(Home)Country

I'm all for people expressing their opinion, but often I think long replies go unnoticed too often and people skip over them (myself included) whereas you have a much better chance to get a response from the readers and discuss your views if you have your own thread.

To a certain point in the thread versus anti-thread battles there is some truth that sometimes the most poignant counterpoint gets lost in the heated shuffle of emotional pro and con debate on the issue.

Not to long ago on a thread bashing gays by Christians I placed a post that was largely overlooked in a topic that was generating a page of responses every five minutes and had blossomed to dozens of pages within scant hours.

Another poster picked up on that post and created the anti-thread based on it. True it was flattering the amount of mayhem I can cause, but the reality is that the whole anti-thread concept is more about counting coup than anything else.

This is really just wanting to see how many numbers exist on either side of the thread versus anti-thread, two sided entrenched arguments.

It’s kind of like the World Series, each team plays some away games, and each team plays some home games.

It really is nothing but the creation of a home stadium for the opposing team in the ‘thread’ that then becomes the ‘home team’ in the anti-thread.

People keep score based on stars and flags, much the way they would at the World Series through runs, strikes and outs.

They are cyclical topics too, where everyone plays a couple of games in their own home stadium thread and a few games in the opposing team’s stadium thread and then they take a month off and revive the issue.

It’s arguing for the sake of arguing.

Now when it comes to some real and genuine conspiracy related topics the truth is that some of the threads I have hijacked become a better platform for my research and theories than some of the threads I originally author.

Put forth sound and well researched arguments and theories and people are going to begin to notice them and you no matter where you post them.

The thread versus anti-thread is really nothing but gladiatorial team competition with each team creating its own venue for its supporters.

The truth is most of them would argue the issues in the path of a speeding on coming train!

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-Analysis of Selective Exposure to Information

Individuals strongly committed to certain religions often avoid contact with information or people that can tempt them away from their doctrine. For example, science teachers at a public school in Arkansas were prevented from discussing evolution following complaints from religious parents, teachers, and faculty (Wiles, 2006). But what is the extent of people’s inclination to receive congenial information? Is there a predominance of exposure to information that confirms pre-existing views? And, if there is such a bias, is it mitigated by factors that highlight the benefits of reaching accurate conclusions? Research on information exposure,

www.apa.org...

This whole thing reminded me of a little gem that S-Dog left on a thread not too long ago. This article is quite intriguing and covers most of why people need to feel validated in their beliefs. This is a good one to remember.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Well, you know I lov the thread wars. I was seriously laughing all day long yesturday. Man, thread wars are seriously one of the most entertaining things about ATS....
That is until your thread gets booted to BTS

Originally posted by trueperspective
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Well, you know I lov the thread wars. I was seriously laughing all day long yesturday. Man, thread wars are seriously one of the most entertaining things about ATS....
That is until your thread gets booted to BTS

You know, I am all for people venting and ranting on occasion, it represents an important safety valve in the psychological and physiological makeup of most people.

Yet, the truth is the majority of the tread versus anti-thread battles are really not conspiratorial in nature or even alternative in nature, save for the minor conspiracy of forum gangs perhaps conspiring and collaborating to launch a thread or anti-thread regarding little more than fundamental basic belief systems of sexuality.

There just is nothing really intellectually noteworthy in most of those and they do belong on BTS in most cases.

If it’s not conspiratorial in nature, or truly alternative in nature, ATS just really isn’t the place for it in my humble opinion. There are so many blogs and boards on the internet that deal with left/right paradigm issues, why clutter up Above Top Secret with these things, when that’s not really at all what the site is aimed at?

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler


Agreed. well said, ATS to me is a source of alternative news and perspective. The occasional side track into a good thread war only serves as pure entertainment and a break from the mundane. ATS would be no fun if we all thought the same. We'd be zombies!!

Originally posted by trueperspective
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Agreed. well said, ATS to me is a source of alternative news and perspective. The occasional side track into a good thread war only serves as pure entertainment and a break from the mundane. ATS would be no fun if we all thought the same. We'd be zombies!!

You mean we aren't Zombies? It's alright to go out in the day? Maybe even go to the beach...even date girls?

Are you sure?

Originally posted by jackflap
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-Analysis of Selective Exposure to Information

Individuals strongly committed to certain religions often avoid contact with information or people that can tempt them away from their doctrine. For example, science teachers at a public school in Arkansas were prevented from discussing evolution following complaints from religious parents, teachers, and faculty (Wiles, 2006). But what is the extent of people’s inclination to receive congenial information? Is there a predominance of exposure to information that confirms pre-existing views? And, if there is such a bias, is it mitigated by factors that highlight the benefits of reaching accurate conclusions? Research on information exposure,

www.apa.org...

This whole thing reminded me of a little gem that S-Dog left on a thread not too long ago. This article is quite intriguing and covers most of why people need to feel validated in their beliefs. This is a good one to remember.

This is basically what the thread wars; the thread versus anti-thread concept is all about.

People seeking validation through a might makes right, strength of numbers approach that really in and of itself doesn’t prove anything other than a rough estimate of people weighing in on one side or the other.

So much of our reality is based on heavily indoctrinated shared belief.

In some bizarre way, people with very rigid beliefs almost feel like the person who doesn’t share them is getting away with something unfair that they aren’t entitled too.

We see that a lot on the pro-authority threads, whether it’s pro healthcare, or pro taxation, or pro police state, there is a certain percentage of people who really believe that they are at a disadvantage and going to be penalized themselves by other people opting out of the system.

They always take it to emotional extremes too, “oh you don’t want to pay your code violation for jaywalking, I suppose we should let murdering pedophiles go free too!” is their typical response.

A couple of days ago an observant member picked up on an alternative news piece that all of the Nation’s Capitol Law Enforcement Communications were down, and some posters thought it was an open invitation to the criminal and less law abiding element to go out and commit mayhem if they knew the communications weren’t working.

Amazingly they forget that such minded people go ahead and do that when the communications are working! The net difference in crime as a result of the communications being down was negligible to non-existent, yet somehow most people believe it is a heavy handed and intrusive line of authority that keeps us all in line and from running amuck.

Nothing could be further from the truth, those who are personally inclined and predisposed to lawless behavior don’t care that there is Law Enforcement, and those who aren’t inclined and predisposed to lawless behavior keep themselves in line and not the police.

Police in most cases don’t even prevent crimes, they simply respond to crimes that have already occurred. Yes taking a violent criminal off the streets once they have committed a crime keeps that particular individual criminal from committing more offenses out on the streets, but it does nothing to deter those who are in fact predisposed to that type of behavior who are still out on the streets.

In other words it doesn’t change the human condition or people’s predisposition, you can lock up pot heads all day long and people will still smoke it, you can stop paying your taxes and the government will still get the money it needs for weapons.

The point is what most people do believe is highly imagined; it just seems believable to them because so many other people imagine it too!

That’s what the thread versus anti-thread wars are all about, groups of one people who imagine something who are virulently opposed to groups of other people who imagine the opposite.

Yet meanwhile what ever has them so incensed everyone else just keeps on keeping on regardless.

Kind of silly and fruitless, unless you stop to consider most of it is people simply revalidating their own belief systems.

reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler
Yes. I was probably posting in response to what For(Home)Country posted about wanting to get your point across.

I saw what was going down yesterday with the christian/atheist thing.

Originally posted by timewalker
reply to post by ProtoplasmicTraveler

 

Yes. I was probably posting in response to what For(Home)Country posted about wanting to get your point across.

I saw what was going down yesterday with the christian/atheist thing.

Previously the most recent case before that was Christian versus Gays, and Gays versus Christians.

When they occur they are really about lifestyles. Each lifestyle feels threatened by the other, and each lifestyle feels the other lifestyle is what’s wrong with the world.

The funny thing is of course neither the average Christian or the average Gay person will try to force their beliefs on someone in casual social situations. The average Christian might let slip a “Thank God” here and there, the average Gay person might let slip a “Oh Mary please” here and there, but the truth is its always the extremists on either side of the spectrum who tend to drive the drama and spectacle of highlighting the differences in lifestyles.

As a person who is not religious and not gay it’s easy for me to view the lifestyle spats in a detached way and realize they are much a do about nothing.

The root of the problem really is the baseless stereotyping that each side of the thread versus anti-thread crowds formulates when casting with a broad brush the individual moral values of the other side of the coin.

I have seen some gay people who are so law abiding and so conscientious they wouldn’t spit on the sidewalk.

I have seen some religious people who are so amoral and criminal minded as to make Ted Bundy seem tame by comparison.

But people are foolish when you paint a whole lifestyle based on those extremes and stop considering that lifestyle is an individual preference.

Who people are at their core, is who they are at their core. Once they reach early adult hood those core values are usually unchangeable for the most part.

We can’t control how other people think about us individually or if they want to stereotype us individually or what values and morals they want to then assign to us erroneously based on those stereotypes. Yet in truth what does it matter what others falsely want to believe about people they have never met or really know and lifestyles they have never participated in.

People end up taking those accusations and misconceptions as personal insults and then want to defend their virtue, which in my humble opinion is just silly to be insulted personally by the statements of someone who doesn’t actually know you personally.

ATS’s motto which is to deny ignorance is in many ways an almost impossible task in regards to those who purposefully with to be ignorant in regards to the stereotyping they create to categorize people, because the truth is fact based arguments, and logic means absolutely nothing to people who purposefully wish to remain ignorant to validate their world views.

Its not a matter of explaining things to the ignorant minded because they really won’t accept any explanation that would alleviate their ignorance because in reality that ignorance is part of the lifestyle that they are leading and how they validate that lifestyle as being superior.

Lifestyle preference arguments are never ones that can be won and people have a tendency to then put each other into a corner over them that it seems all they can do then is fight simply for the sake of fighting.

That’s part of human nature, but one might want to believe ATS with its deny ignorance motto, and it’s dedication to seeking out the truth in all things regardless where it might lead, is really just not the place to have futile lifestyle arguments.

Especially when no one participating in them has an open mind because they have contrived to enter into the arguments with a preset stereotypes they insist on assigning to people.

It really is nothing but baiting, and hating, as Rodney King once famously said “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Thanks for posting.

Flag for the humor.