[Mykeru]

@Riley Casey 1932 wrote:

OK, this game appears to have found the bottom of the hill. Thanks for playing.

In other words, you’re saying “I have no idea what ad hominem is, I frequently use terms I don’t understand and I can’t be taught”

@CCrew 1933 wrote:

Every board attracts crackpots. We found ours.

I asked for a definition of “ad hominem”, you don’t get any credit for giving an example of it.

[Mykeru]

@CCrew 1928 wrote:

Wow. Im impressed. Not.

If you said something after that, I didn’t bother reading it.

Let me ask though: What’s it like being stunningly unoriginal? Does it hurt? Does it bother you? Or is it like one of the forms of dementia where you are completely unaware of your cognitive deficits?

[Mykeru]

@Riley Casey 1925 wrote:

If you feel the need for ad hominem comments or even just plain slurs in the future I invite you to message me directly.

I know you didn’t realize there was going to be a quiz, but just out of academic interest, as someone with a degree in Analytic Philosophy who has studied sentential logic and formal and informal fallacies: Do you even know what “ad hominem” means? Can you explain it? I ask only because 99% of stupid people think it means “name-calling”.

I’ll even give you a hint: The reason why “ad hominem” (properly defined) is fallacious is because it’s related to a couple of fallacies of relevance, the Red Herring and The Genetic Fallacy.

The joy of being me, of course, is that I can call people names all day long and not actually commit ad hominem.

[Mykeru]

@CCrew 1914 wrote:

Darn… chill a bit. Take a breath…get a cup of coffee..something.

Now, that said, here’s an opposing viewpoint. [/quote]

Unfortunately, when I tried to multiquote Mark Blacknell, vBulletin ate my entire extensive, very funny and essentially game-changing reply that would have lead to wolves and sheep laying down together…

mostly in order to have hot bestial sex.

And no, I can’t be assed to reconstruct it.

What I will say is that, assuming you don’t have Aspergers’s Syndrome and can help yourself, don’t lead in with that patronizing, mocking crap and then offer an opposing viewpoint. It looks like you are attempting to be reasonable, but not before you get some candy-assed little dig in

This is someone else’s house. If I walk into someone else’s house I can fully expect not to be asked to curse in front of their kids. I can be asked to not smoke in the living room. I can be expected not to kick the cat out of it’s favorite chair. I can also expect to be shown the door if I get too unruly. I pretty much (try to) behave myself in that fashion here because I *think* I know the main focus of why this board is here and I’d say your diatribes are indeed counter to that.

Second: I’ve seen that “This is someone’s house” analogy before. In fact, you’ve repeated it word-for-word as I’ve seen it before. In which case, you are not an original thinker presenting your original ideas that I actually have to bother to respond to. You are just some guy with nothing better to do than parrot some asinine argument.

Now, here’s a cracker: STFU.

P.S. To Mark: I stand corrected if in any way, by assertion or implication gave the impression or by omission of action allowed the impression to stand that PINE was anything but the 2400 baud communication version of PONG.

[Mykeru]

“Sorry Joe Chapline is a moderator/admin and you are not allowed to ignore him or her.”

Damn.

Well, at least I can unsubscribe to the thread.

[Mykeru]

@Joe Chapline 1900 wrote:

“Now, I just noticed some WABA mod deleted my ENTIRE POST responding to ****** above, without leaving any indication that I responded. “

I deleted your post because it contained a personal attack. I intended to immediately post a reason for deleting it, but I was stuck on a commuter train and found my iPad could not deal with the image verification field. I agree this was not a good way to do it. Being on a moving train also would have made it difficult to edit the post, which also would have been better. I did scan it to see if there was anything about bicycling that could have been left; didn’t see anything.

I’m also editing this post. From here on out, please refrain from personal attacks, including name calling.

I apologize. I apologize that I’m going to have to explain this to you like you’re six years old.

1. I had already figured you were on a train rather than, say, a bike. It wasn’t a stretch.

2. That you were on a train is no excuse. What you should have done is waited until you were able to properly moderate rather than deleting the post out of hand

3. Look at the post I responded to in a manner which you refer to as “name calling”:

Such an awesome thread. Car trauma, crackpot sociological theories, poking fun at other peoples superstitions ( always other peoples because after all we don’t harbor any superstitions ) , fear and loathing and the odd ad hominem here and there. Thanks for a fun read folks LOL

Of course the only safe way to ride after all is to remember that – Cars are out to get us

That’s a troll. I generally don’t use the term because it’s been subverted to mean “anyone who disagrees with me”. That post contains a number of ad hominem assertions:

A. That this thread contains “crackpot theories”, so therefore the people making them are crackpots.

B. That the thread contains poking fun at superstitions, and that the people who do so not only have superstitions (which I personally find offensive), but therefore those doing so are hypocrites.

C. Assertion of unjustified paranoia, “cars are all out to get us”.

All of which was posted in a mocking tone which had absolutely nothing to contribute to the discussion.

So, I responded in kind. Among the things I wrote was the obvious observation that asserting something isn’t making an argument and that it’s not the cars that are the problem, but the people in it, indicating the posters general inability to figure out how things work.

You may have not liked the tone of my response, but now we are in the position of having to take the word of the person who deleted the post that my response was mere “name-calling”, something which you seem to selectively recognize when you see it, which leads me to:

4. Why does someone who makes a mocking, trollish post that contributes nothing get a pass from you? Did it contain anything “helpful, respectful, inclusive and all of those other feel-good words” as gregbilling put it? My guess is that you really didn’t read the post I was responding to, or didn’t understand it, both of which I would think would be essential to effective moderation.

5. What should be moderated are posts which expose personal identifying information, make believable real-world threats, contain spam posts or links to malware, or intend to topic hijack. Moderating for something as nebulous as violations of some undefined rules of netiquette, not even obscenity, is a complete can of worms.

6. My suggestion is based on this particular instance is that you stop moderating. You are not good at it, and you don’t understand what it is you are supposed to be doing.

For yet another example: you edited out the user name of the person I was responding to,””Now, I just noticed some WABA mod deleted my ENTIRE POST responding to ****** above, without leaving any indication that I responded. “?

Are you serious? What possible purpose did that serve?

The hallmark of bad moderation is when the moderator begins to drop the standards for content requiring moderation in order to have something to moderate, and so exposing Lord Acton as an optimist.

@gregbilling 1901 wrote:

I’d like to say from WABA perspective, I’d prefer not to have to be as involved moderating (or at least monitoring) the forums. I have other plenty of other work to do (as do the other moderators). It’s not a freedom of speech issue or “divine right” that I feel to moderate, it’s about keeping this forum open to discussion from all members of the cycling community. Please feel free to express your thoughts and ideas but without personal attacks or profanity. Pretty simple. I get requests almost daily from area cyclists looking for information and a place to connect with area experts on bicycling. I send them to the forums because almost thing discussed and talked about has been just that: helpful, respectful, inclusive and all of those other feel-good words. Let’s keep it that way.

Thanks to everyone for being a helpful and respectful members of the forums!

(I’ll see you all out on the roads as 100% daily bike commuter, rain, shine, snow or cold)

I would like to say, as a member of WABA, I would like to have more than a “send us your dues, sign our petitions where we do your thinking for you and shut the hell up” relationship with the organization.

As far as “helpful, respectful, inclusive and all of those other feel-good words”, that’s nonsense. I’m participating in a forum. I’m also a mean, bitter, sarcastic, intolerant-of-stupid sort of person. Tolerating stupidity tends to encourage it, and I’m working on making a better world here. Unlike some people.

I’m not a minimum-wage guy on the 11-7 shift dressed up as Goofy who has to meet the expectations of light-hearted cheeriness required by the management of the Magic Kingdom.

Now, take your high-faluting ideals about “keeping this forum open to discussion from all members of the cycling community” and actually apply them.

I swear, as someone who has participated in online discussions since back when PINE was cool: There’s an online analog to the Drake Equation. One can predict whether a forum will survive and thrive, or descend into acrimony caused by capricious moderation or suffer the living death of being a mere echo chamber, based on a handful of stupid, ultimately intolerant, and basically schoolmarmish assumptions of the moderation. The worst assumption, of course, is that everyone participating in the forum has no greater purpose than to be the organizations’s happy parroting PR proxies.

Very quickly, vague, capricious, and inequitable moderation makes everything a meta-discussion about the discussion. Like this.

The way you avoid that, of course, is not to moderate in such a way that you expect everyone to be a dutiful clone of your own idealized self-image.

[Mykeru]

Yes, I rode in to work today, immortalized in the post Todays’s Snow Biking Video.

Now, I just noticed some WABA mod deleted my ENTIRE POST responding to the sarcastic [deleted], without leaving any indication that I responded.

Deleting someone’s entire post is bad enough form, but from the point of view of responsible moderation, just dropping it down the “memory hole” is high-handed and incredibly bad form. Along with the asinine thread proposing to drop the hammer on “offensive” posts, which no one could define and was closed when the discussion rose above their intellectual pay grade, I have some serious doubts about adults being in charge around here. *

Oh well, the delete-happy [deleted] in question was probably stuck on the metro and had nothing better to do but enforce a happy-bunny echo chamber.

Maybe that will change when the weather is bright and sunny enough that even the most timid shrinking violet dares to get out on two wheels again.

*Allow me to apologize for the strident tone here, which is solely used for the express purpose to mock blatant stupidity.

In all seriousness, I’m sort of a free speech absolutist and I’ve seen the devastating effects of high-handed and capricious moderation on many a forum. However, it’s a lot easier, and more fun, to get snarky because trying to explain all this to some [deleted] who thinks he’s moderating through divine right and would just delete a post outright is right up there in sheer futility with volunteering to be conductor of the all-pig chorus.

[Mykeru]

I was seriously reconsidering emerging from the bunker this morning.

[Mykeru]

@acc 1868 wrote:

No, I believe it was Mr. Blacknell who wanted to throw you into oncoming traffic. He probably knows you better.

I had my own near death experience not augmented by hallucinogenic pharmaceuticals but rather with a bike and car so I would not wish that on anyone except a particular cyclist who decided standing on his brakes was a good strategy when I was about three feet off his rear wheel two weeks ago. But I digress… When the POS car flattened me and I was looking up at its undercarriage I had the irrational thought, “Dear God, I’ve always owned lousy cars, driven lousy cars and ridden around in my friends’ lousy cars. Couldn’t I at least be hit by a Porsche?”

Which is another way of saying you’re a hippie? Well, a hippie into status when it comes to being run over, anyway.

And

1. I may be wrong, but I get the impression Mr Blacknell should be doing more commenting on UnSuckDCMetro this time of year, and

2. No one knows me, and I like it that way.

[Mykeru]

@acc 1840 wrote:

Glad to see you made it home alive, thanks be to…. oh nevermind but I was rooting for the poo-flinging chimpanzee.

So, you’re not glad. You wanted to see me turned into a Belgian Waffle?

[Mykeru]

@acc 1832 wrote:

Silly me, I thought it was their 501(c)(3) status that distinguished a cult from a religion. In my experience a cult will not open their financial books but the mainline religions are only to happy to show you where the money goes.

Have a safe ride.

I was raised a Roman Catholic. Of course, I became an evangelical atheist once my brain grew in.

That’s some funny stuff.

[Mykeru]

@Mark Blacknell 1831 wrote:

Well, you’re just a basket of flowers, aren’t you?

Where’d that come from?

I want to find the person spreading slanderous rumors like that and slap them with a cease and desist.

[Mykeru]

@eminva 1825 wrote:

Well, just look at the last 60 years of automobile advertising — it’s obvious they’ve been trying to sell us a lot more than mere transportation for decades.

I wonder if the contempt that some drivers have stems from the opposite impulse of must-be-a-DUI/illegal immigrant — that being able to pedal to work is a luxury they couldn’t afford. To the uninitiated, they might think that to be able to commute by bicycle, one must have (1) more leisure time (it takes longer than driving, and if you have to get to the day care center by 6 p.m., that’s a non-starter), (2) fewer obligations (picking up two kids from day care, running errands and taking the kids to soccer practice are also incompatible), (3) more discretionary money (a nice enough bike costs a fair chunk of change) and (4) good health. I’m not saying this is what I think, I’m just considering what their thought process might be. I consider all these obstables to be surmountable, and indeed, I have figured out ways around them.

My bicycle commute started six years ago with a revelation. I usually took the metro to work, but for two weeks I had to drive because of a summer camp my son was attending near my office, but out of metro range. I saw all these people on bicycles who looked like me. Prior to that, I had never considered it. Over the years I have arranged my schedule so that it is doable even with family obligations, and have increased my commitment after moving eight miles further from my office. I hold out hope that some of those drivers, not the hostile ones maybe, but some of them will look at me and all of you and the light bulb will go off in their minds, too.

I got Bike Snob’s book for Christmas, and he posits that the way to get motorists’ and public officials’ respect is not so much through advocacy, but through sheer numbers. The more bicyclists out there, the less they can ignore us. Not sure if he’s right, but if he is, I don’t think we are at that tipping point yet. I’d love to see us get there.

Liz

@acc 1826 wrote:

And I agree, the more cyclists, the more noise we make, the more likely we will achieve respect and not just notoriety.

Sheer numbers, of course, is what distinguishes a religion from a cult.

[Mykeru]

@CCrew 1822 wrote:

Oh yeah. I have 4 cars, but I’ve heard that one so many times I’m just pre-emptive and throw it out first

Well, with all undue respect to Sigmund Freud and everything he was utterly wrong about, sometimes a cigar is not just a cigar.

My bicycle isn’t a vehicle. More is tied up in it. For me, biking is a challenge and a discipline. Which is why I not only bike all season and in all weather: That’s the point. Sure, it’s exercise, but it also carries me out of the mundane and makes for a little daily mini-adventure. I know some people think they’re “saving the planet”. In fact, that was the grating chant on the one DC Critical Masshole ride I ever participated in “Ride a bike! Save the Planet!”, said in exactly the same tone as Gerald Broflovski in the South Park episode “Smug”, just without overt smelling of their own farts.

Similarly, cars are an overt status symbol and a way for otherwise unimaginative people to tell others “who they are”. A couple years ago I had a 17 year old Toyota that I bought new and was basically running into the ground. It was never a beater, never failed to start or ever broke down until it gave it all up in a massive piston rod throw. Anyway, I dated a girl a couple of times who took it on herself to announce “If we’re going to date, you’ve got to get a new car”. For which I was thankful: The car allowed me to find out who she was without wasting too much time.

Also, let’s face it: Cars are two tons of armor on wheels. Imagine this: Someone steps in front of someone in a cross walk, which makes the person who was stepped in front of make the point of stepping in front at the next crosswalk, and on it goes, until the pedestrians start cursing at each other and flipping the finger. That never happens. But put them in a car, and it’s commonplace. Not only are cars status, but they allow people to vent hostility in a way that reduces personal risk to themselves. That is, in a cowardly sort of manner.

So, when bikes and cars intersect, there’s a weird dynamic. The guy in the car thinks he’s one up on the bike, because, after all, he has a car. What’s more, he’s protected, and if he’s the sort of sociopath/narcissist that’s so common in DC, not getting respect from someone he thinks, by definition, is beneath him is really going to burr his ass. What’s more, on a certain level the car driver must also be aware that, in this instance, he’s outside the adventure that is biking. Yeah, he’s got a car, but it’s mundane. He knows he lacks the discipline, physical prowess and increasingly necessary courage to be a cyclist in a car culture. So, that’s all the more reason for the car driver to want to put the cyclist down.

Personally, I think it’s a measure of how pathological we are as a society that something as simple as biking vs motoring has all these undercurrents of money, power, status, hate, repressed eroticism and resentment.

[Mykeru]

@acc 1815 wrote:

DUIs and Illegal Immigrant Status? You mean it has nothing to do with a Lycra fetish? I’m soooo disillusioned.

Actually, it’s more of a black latex fetish but 1. Not on me and 2. It’s way off topic.

That’s another thing. If you follow sites like Fark, as I do, you can always count on one of the “i hate bikes” threads that some motorist poster will go on about having to stare at a guys ass as it pistons up and down clad in black Lycra. Not that there’s anything wrong with that™, but a lot of motorists have a definite latent homo-erotic fixation.

[Author]

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