Arguing on the Internet is like…
August 10th, 2008 . by Andy (TANcast's #1 Ear-Rapist)There is an old adage, relative to the life of the Internet at least, about how arguing on said Internet is like… well, let’s just say it is likely to prove that both sides are idiots.
Just after George Carlin passed, I came across yet another best-of-Carlin compilation on YouTube, but the person who posted it used every inch of the “About this video” area to argue that the September 11 terrorist attacks were actually perpetrated by the United States government. I gave him 1 star and left a comment chastising him for trying to conflate Carlin’s well-reasoned diatribes against abuses of power with a delusional belief that there is some shadowy conspiracy that committed mass murder on live TV and yet managed to hide its activities from all but a enlightened few on the Internet who are trying to “show us all the truth”. He had a bunch of links that supposedly proved his claims, but, as TANcast proves, having a website is not the same as being smart or knowing anything.
What followed was a fairly telling discourse, presented here without edit for your enjoyment. I say telling, but I have only a vague idea of what it says and about whom.
My initial comment and responses will be in deep blue and his responses will be in hot pink italics, as I think that is funny and am not a mature person. I’m also not turning the URL in his comments into a hyperlink as I won’t give those retards any more traffic than they already get. I’m not including his actual “About this video” section for the same reason.
This is my website, so fuck it: I do what I want.
Anyways, it all started when I left this comment for him on YouTube:
acrobat741: Why did you hijack George Carlin’s work to push your conspiracy theory?
George was too smart to believe empty-headed bullshit like this, so its a bit of a dick move to try to push your own idiot agenda on YouTubers using his good name.
He responded some time later with:
Conspiracy theory? Yeah right. Like Iran-Contra I guess.
So I’ve hijacked Carlin’s work?
Lol you might as well not read my info. Write to your MP.
Oh do awake from your programmed delusion.
FYI, here are some other ’empty-headed’ folks:
http://patriotsquestion911.com/
PS: poor manners indicate deficient upbringing
Overcome by his rhetorical aptitude, I replied:
I take it all back. Clearly you are superior to the rest of reasoning humanity, having seen behind the lies and being bold enough to pepper YouTube with the truth. Kudos to you, and all the best on your journey to enlighten the masses.
http://www.debunking911.com/
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=76025
http://forums.randi.org/forumdisplay.php?f=64
I’m sure the links above and all the concrete data (which is not the plural of “anecdote”) that they cite are manufactured or mistaken, so I look forward to your resounding victory as you reply to them all with your own provable facts.
Just FYI, Iran-Contra was a conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory. Not sure if you knew that, but I can recommend books if you’d like to learn more.
Penn & Teller – 9/11 Conspiracy Theories
Taking his own previous advice about manners and upbringing, he offered an olive branch:
i’ll be polite: fuck off
go play with the other paedos
I noticed that he might have made a small error, so I sent back:
You forgot to call me Hitler.
You also forgot to call me gay.
It looks like he blocked me, though, so I’m afraid he may never find out about his oversight or get to correct it.
At least I have this hateful picture remind myself that I probably shouldn’t have done any of this:
I am so, so sorry...
August 10th, 2008 at 6:34 pm
Ya know….if this page had forums, you could have invited him over to discuss this….
August 10th, 2008 at 6:36 pm
it’s okay…internet assholes get the better of all of us sometimes…
I just hope you’ve learned.
August 14th, 2008 at 11:58 am
Tony, I started to write a flip answer but then decided to give you a real, honest one.
At this point, with the amount of comments coming in I just don’t see the need to set up something more varied and branching (“reply to X”, “quote post Y”) than the default “we post, people comment/reply” paradigm. provided by WordPress. I’ve got a day job and a baby on the way, so administering a whole other server application, trying to integrate it with the main blog (when, as you can see, the blog itself needs more than I give it), manage user logins, kill spam, track abuse, and so forth just isn’t something I can handle right now.
If there were more (like dozens of) people commenting and more (like dozens of) comments from them per post then we’d need at least a more flowing comment system in WordPress, if not a forum (bbPress?), but for now it is a nice-to-have, not a must-have, and I’m in “must” mode.
When I FINALLY get a better theme done for the blog we’ll have a few more ads running (all from Google, and probably go text-only) and a PayPal donation setup (just in case someone hits the lottery and thinks “I’d sure like to have more TANcast in my diet”) and maybe the ad income will be more than a dollar a month and I can pay myself (or Tim or Noah) to admin this part-time or something. Realistically, though, TANcast will probably never even pay for its own hosting and domain registration fees, so forums will arrive if/when I finally get better at all this, if/when we have a lot of active (responsive) readers, or whenever Hell finally freezes.
August 14th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Hey Andy, no worries. Just running off the “Why don’t we have forums” theme from a few shows ago.
Trust me, I’ve started forums….it sucks when you put a lot of work into it, and five people show up, and three are admins. I understand.
You guys already have a good setup going here, and I’m digging on it, for what it’s worth. Thanks a lot!
August 19th, 2008 at 9:00 am
Well, because I hat to see anyone’s work (even the work of idiots) left unfinished, allow me to say for him, that you are Hitler and gay, and a bunch of other things meant to hurt your poor widdle feelings, in an attempt to boost my own really low self esteem, because we all know that calling people names over the internet, is one way to prove just how awesome we are.
Now on to the part where I say what I actually think, and that is simply this…. I would have done the exact same thing you did, Andy. And when he blocked me, I probably would have made a video calling him an idiot, because calling people idiots, is what I do. I’m addicted to it. It’s a sickness, don’t judge me. Cokeheads can’t quit coke, drunks can’t stop drinking, and I can’t stop calling people idiots, when that’s what they are.