I would like to alter slightly a quote by Mark Twain as advice on how to handle a current immature word salad twit who many are finding annoying.

The original:

"Never argue with a stupid person, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."

My updated version for RFM:

Never argue with twelve year old dicks. They will attempt to drag you down to their level and will arrogantly believe that they have beat you with their silly prattle.

Good advice to remember. In regards to current situation and TBMs who are still in the cult.

Your thoughtful posts have been a great addition to the board. I am sure many lurkers who don't post yet benefit from the conversational arcs you and others like you inspire.

It's nice to have you here, thegoodman. You bring a fresh point of view.

Soft Machine Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> It's nice to have you here, thegoodman. You bring
> a fresh point of view.


Done & Done Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your thoughtful posts have been a great addition
> to the board. I am sure many lurkers who don't
> post yet benefit from the conversational arcs you
> and others like you inspire.


Thanks you guys.

Amen.

I agree, too.

Do you mean "boor?"

/remedial schoolteacher voice off

And yes, I find boors boring...

Boor = someone in the act of booing, saying "Boooo", at others. Usually in regards to a poor performance.

The church must be in a severe decline. They are hemorrhaging their very elect. RfM is being blessed with errant priesthood.

[CZ: I think my quasinym (as opposed to pseudonym) is obvious enough...]

It cuts both ways. If you do not confront and listen, you will never learn.

I like to listen to people about lots of things. But their world views and how they think I need to validate them are often too much. Just look how different they are and what a spectrum.

Another person's world truth seems to be some of the most boring stuff around. It is a matter of scale. Opining about grand scales of entire hugely populated countries and the whole human world is reducing it to a nutshell. And often in it the meat doesn't taste good.

Busy Signal Busy Signal Busy Signal

Some things aren't worth 'learning', and I'm comfortable with the knowledge that I don't understand opinions with which I am not in agreement.

Is it possible that I'll 'miss out' on some critical piece of knowledge? Sure, but I already have that certainty! No one learns all there is to know.

Having survived the mormon church, I think I'll survive not 'getting' the twit-ish thoughts of aberrant (to me) personalities.


And, no, Rodney, we can't all get along.

Your continued survival is your most endearing quality.

He is the undead.

Unfortunately, at least one guy has arrived at a way to troll/disrupt this forum without getting kicked off. How many of the names are the same guy, I am sure I don't know. But the signal to noise ratio has been greatly reduced in the past year or two.

I will listen to almost anybody
I seldom dispute their word
I always evaluate what they say in my mind before responding
I try to remember t hqt you cannot deal rationally with an
irrational person!

As much as I loathe the immature (even compared to me, and I'm not exactly the most mature poster here) trolls, I have to admit that replying to them gets us all nowhere.

And then there are the immature boars. They crap all over everything, trample the garden and dig holes all over the place. Euwwww.

I've learned that when I post my opinion on community message boards. You are not going to persuade everyone. I've learned to tell myself, "You've made your points, you can move on." Better that than arguing with fools. At various points during my stay on RfM, it's been the same way.

We had one very argumentative board member a number of years ago. I think he used to often post after he had been drinking. IIRC his name was MJ. I remember frequently trying to smooth things over with him, but it was a full-time job. He ticked off a lot of people.

One night even I was so frustrated with him that I started a (pretend) drinking game. Every time he stated his signature catch phrase that was meant to shut others down, I would reply, "One drink," "Two drinks," Three drinks," etc. He was so apoplectic when I did this that he about blew a fuse. I don't know if he left after that, or was kicked off, but we never heard from him again shortly thereafter. lol

Now I know "the rest of the story" maybe. Thanks.

He was pathologically angry.

Funny D&D, just last night I had the same thought but about trying to teach a pig to sing... Feeding a troll does no one any good, even the troll.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2020 03:37AM by Susan I/S.

The problem is we are such optimists that we think maybe we have found the one pig in a million that we actually could teach to sing. So we try. haha.

It's a kind of altruistic urge, giving the benefit of the doubt, that the pig or such just hasn't thought things through completely enough. I often get stuck engaging when I think that there must be just one perfect argument, framed the right way, that'll open their eyes. I don't think it's bad to go into situations, unsuspecting that everyone you possibly meet online isn't being genuine in their passion statements. I often save myself the trouble when reading topics where I just observe interactions between posters and in reading, realize when they do, that the person they're interacting with is not responding in good faith. So, that's a saving grace. If I occasionally fall for something that ends up not being a real conversation, there are others who can read along and reach the same point I did without ever having to fall into the trap themselves.

Perhaps this situation is what BKP meant when he said "Some things that are true are not very useful."

I guess to once again alter a quote, I would say, "Sometimes common sense is not very useful."

You can't keep talking to horses with someone who keeps switching the conversation to mules. Suddenly the horse conversation is half jack-ass.

>>I often get stuck engaging when I think that there must be just one perfect argument, framed the right way, that'll open their eyes.

Yeah, it's difficult to avoid that temptation. That's when I tell myself that I stated my position well, and made my points. I'm not going to convince everyone. And I don't worry about having the last word. Some people think that they've "won" the discussion when they have the last word. Let them think that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/19/2020 05:16PM by summer.

Winning (said Sheenishly)

:)

Some people must always have the last smiley face. . .

;)

:)

☺



Edited 10 time(s). Last edit at 11/25/2020 10:28AM by Elder Berry.

Do people on RfM who continually cop threads with protracted back and forth, off-topic, bantering in an attempt to outdo each other in the cleverness of their soundbite "humor" count as "immature bores?"

I think so.

I would much rather read a thread offering sincere but mistaken on-topic nonsense, than read a thread that is high-jacked by repeated off-topic, one-liner nonsense.

Strikingly, it is often those who engage in such back and forth bantering that are often the most critical of the "nonsense" they (often mistakenly) see in others.

...would I rather...read posts by trolls who come here to lie and stir up the purpose of the board? Or would I rather read genuine interactions by people who have learned to recover from Mormonism with humor intact? Really?



Oh! Oop! I did it again you guys. It was just so convincing.

I agree with this. Relaxing and enjoying life and becoming free enough to joke around and especially about one's former serious faith life is a method of healing as well as evidence that it is occurring and/or is well along the road to being whatever passes for recovery in any individual's life.

I don't underrate the power of humour and the freedom to joke around to help people get past the big huge boulder in their road, whatever its source.

And as Mormonism is the religion of "no loud laughter", it is doubly important and effective to find one's funny bone and use it freely, imho.

I remember well a delightful missionary sister who had the loudest most raucous delicious laugh that was infectious yet we all had to stifle ourselves due to the injunction against loud laughing and many people looked upon her with distaste, frowning their way through life instead of enjoying such a vital and lively young woman. Sinning because you laugh? Ridiculous!

And in these times and this year loud laughter is needed. Nelson won't be saying that tomorrow.

I only do it because of the effect it has on my income stream.

Do you think I would do ALL THIS for free?!!?


Although I may cut back a little in December because it's JoJu's birthday on the 23rd and I wouldn't want to be disrespectful of the man whose importance is second only to Lao Tzu and his Tao.


Did you ever get flipped on the butt by a wet Tao in gym class? Okay, that's my last one until this evening.

A wet Tao?

Be water, my friend!

I was the Tao boy.

What--you know the Falwells?

HA! You win. Even makes up for the many other misses.

Intimately.

Somehow that is believable. Hahahaha.

I think the thread copping humorists are trying to point out to the immature bore that they might be taking themselves a bit too seriously, and they should perhaps settle down and have a laugh now and then, relax a bit.

Case dismissed!