Too many people have peed in the pool

I understand what you're saying, but I think moron4hire has a very good point here.

There is no objective reading to be done here. You have available a single account from a single source. Despite having nothing but his account to go on, you think your interpretation is more correct. Despite him knowing this other person personally, in real life, and having been there in-person to witness body language and tone-of-voice, you think you are a better judge of that person's intent.

At the same time, of course, to you, moron4hire is just as random of a person as moron4hire's lunch companion, and equally likely to be the socially inept one of the two. So it's fine that you are skeptical of his interpretation; it's fine that you think he probably misinterpreted his friend's jesting.

But out of about three choices of how to respond, you chose the worst one.

a) You could have said nothing. Mildly amusing anecdote, skepticism registered, moving on.

b) You could have said something like, "I wonder if he was just kidding." Skepticism expressed without implying fault or incompetence, while leaving the door open for further, neutral discussion and elaboration by moron4hire.

But instead, you chose c) Explicitly accuse him of overreaction and misinterpretation, implying that you know better than him, despite his being there and your only reading his account, while also engaging in armchair psychoanalysis ("odd, and overly defensive, reaction...").

And that's just plain rude, as well as arrogant. It's basically the same as the "you put ketchup on your hot dog?!" reaction.

> I'm reading objectively and drawing my own conclusions rather than immediately buying into a single-sided narrative. That's what we should do when confronted with unfamiliar situations relayed by people we don't know, because it's the fundamental brick in the foundation of avoiding mobs, rash conclusions, beheading people over blogs, and so on.

Actually you're jumping to your own conclusions based upon a dearth of evidence. That's one of the causes of mob mentality. You think you're being objective, but you're actually just discounting his experience and drawing exclusively upon your own. And by accusing him of being wrong, you assert your own correctness and superiority, thus reinforcing your bias.

And this is the whole problem! People think they're being objective when they're merely replacing one subjective bias with another. No wonder there's so much arguing and misunderstanding in this world. :(

But that's just it: it wasn't logical or rational. It was irrational and biased, because he wasn't even present at the event in question. He dismissed the only actual evidence available (the first-hand witness account) and fabricated his own story out of thin air based upon his own life experiences. Then he accused him of misinterpreting and overreacting. Mind-reading is bad enough second-hand, but third-hand?

And this passes for objectivity, logic, and reason? And this makes you smile?

Of course, the joke's really on all of us, because this kind of human interaction/communication/judgment/reasoning failure has been going on since the begnning of time. It's not as if I'm not guilty of it, too. And by the time we overcome it (if anyone ever does), we die, and people who haven't overcome it take our place.

Perhaps the ultimate lesson is to lower our expectations. Haha.

Mute sounds great. It also aligns interests: if you want to be heard, you won't want to act like too big a jerk. Be interesting to see how the mutes are manifested: is it quiet -- you know you've muted me but I don't -- or more-widely communicated? Be great if the mute action was broadcast to appropriate players. "riffraff has muted smcnally." Then others would have less tolerance for my nonsense if they had affinity for you, or they might view you as overly-sensitive if otherwise. The latter would govern abusive or reasonless muting.

Then I'm sure you'll find it very easy to provide the study that confirms your claims.

You are the first person I've ever heard that called asking for evidence "superstitious". You might want to look up the definition of that word. Goddammit indeed.

Try not to get too touchy-feely in your reply, just give me the studies you are referring to.

Right; but the thing is, the only questions I ever have are the difficult questions. Easy questions are either:

* Something I can figure out myself if I think about it for a few minutes, or

* Already on StackOverflow or another Q&A site so I can look them up.

IMO if the site doesn't tackle difficult questions, what's the point? I don't need yet another site for easy questions, I need a Q&A site to get my questions answered.

RE: the answering my own question thing -

Yeah, the people in control of the site all have like 573453247,3048294723847 rep so they think nothing of saying "well doing action X should require rep" followed by the old canard, "it's really easy to get that much rep!"

I seriously wonder if any of those people have actually created a new account and tried to use their own website. Because there's SO MANY LIMITATIONS on SO MANY THINGS tied to rep, if you come in from the outside there's actually very little you can actually do. And there's no way to ease-in to using the site, because you can't (for example) post comments on other people's answers until after you gain rep.

So if you're like me, and you have no patience/desire to play the internetpointzzz game, nor did you start using the site "early enough" to benefit from its population growth, and the fact that early users could do a LOT more without rep limits-- then you're kind of just stuck in this weird no-man's land.

(I didn't use the site when it was founded because of it's bizarre and foolish insistence on using OpenID. Thankfully they've finally moved away from that.)

Theoretically, I could gain rep (by playing the game), then add a "bounty" to my difficult questions to get them answered, but I ain't got time for that! Who does?