“Nuh uh, YOU started it!”

ENOUGH!

It doesn’t matter. This is a minor, petty thing, and with the animosity building up, it’s threatening things that really do mean something–like my relationship with my brother, and my relationship with my fiance. This needs to end.

I had a phone call with Mike, and he doesn’t see this thread going the same way as Giuli or I do. That’s fine. He said we can all agree that regardless of who started it, we all had a hand in keeping it going. We also agreed that this isn’t going anywhere good, and it needs to be brought to an end. Now that everyone’s been pissed off, insulted, and has their feelings hurt, it’s time to end this. I’m closing comments on this thread.

Let’s remember this as a prime example of how not to conduct a discussion in the future.

Update: Ben emailed me a clarification on his remark above:

Ok, Miranda and I think we figured out why everyone thought I was being an ass. I didn’t mean to tie up Mike and leave him in the forest, I meant tie you and Giuli up as a cheap marriage ceremony. But I can see how it was not taken that way.

I don’t feel like I have to tolerate being talked down to by a child just because she read a book.

…
…
…
You’re two years older than I am.

Show me one case in which I made a personal attack that was totally unprovoked.

I already did–your first post in this thread, last line.

Trying to shout people down isn’t generally regarded as the height of good manners. Unless you’re going to tell me that you decided to use all caps and quadruple exclamation points to lend your argument that air of high-minded debate.

I did confess to exasperation, you’ll note. So, exasperation counts as a personal attack, but a personal attask (like yours in your first comment, last line) does not?

But, aside from hideously misrepresenting my words, this was just presumptuous and condescending. It was Giuli basically saying that she’s planning a wedding and I’m not, so I should just shut up and agree with whatever she says.

Isn’t that what sarcasm is? I haven’t seen a single comment from you in this whole thread where you didn’t misrepresent someone else’s words with great presumption and condescension.

Big mistake. I graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh, so I don’t feel like I have to tolerate being talked down to by a child just because she read a book.

OK, that crossed a big, BIG line. Whatever you might think of Giuli’s age, calling her a “child” is completely uncalled for. And if you want to measure penis size via number of degrees, you know I’ll match you bit-for-bit, so there’s no excuse to try to use a piece of paper as a cudgel. I resent anyone who does that–and being able to shut people like that down was one of my best motivators in those four years. So if that’s the game you want to play, things will get a lot nastier here really, really quick.

First of all, how is that a personal attack? She said something that makes no sense. I called her on it. And by the way, that was about 60 comments ago, and I still have no idea what she meant about the “sociopolitical implications” of wearing a veil. But hey, don’t respond. That’s fine.

Most people think that the veil is to hide a woman’s face so the husband doesn’t run off in an arranged marriage, or symbolic of the hymen, to let the groom know he’s getting a good deal on undamaged goods. In other words, it symbolizes the woman’s status as property, and the marriage as a business transaction. Giuli researched it and found out that wasn’t true, but that’s where her weeks of consideration came into play.

Now, as to how it represents a personal attack, if you think my exasperation counts as a personal attack, but you can’t see how a denigrating insult like that could be construed as one, then I can certainly see where you’re coming from. The only rubric I can find in your case is if “personal attack” means, “things that made me feel bad,” in which case, you’re incapable of personally attacking others, by definition. But I don’t think that’s something you’ll get a lot of agreement on.

What she said made perfect sense–the things in a wedding have implications. They’re symbols. They say something. We should be conscious of what they say. You ridiculed her for getting all worked up over “inanimate objects.” What you said made no sense. The only way your insult would have any founding would be if no inanimate object was ever attached with any kind of symbolic, metaphorical or sentimental value whatsoever. If that’s not true, then you were just being an ass.

Of course, some people might also find it a little insulting that you would thumb your nose at an organization like the Veterans of Forgein Wars. But that’s beside the point.

Giuli didn’t thumb her nose at it. She didn’t want to hold her reception there out of respect for their political beliefs. In Giuli’s world, everyone is defined primarily by their politics. According to her, it would be no better than an oil CEO trying to hold a gala on a wildlife preserve.

I can see that everything is nice and amicable before I started posting. I also notice that I’m the first one to actually question anything that Giuli said.

Really? That should come as a surprise to Peter and Ethan.

How is that an insult? I questioned her argument, and she responded by telling me that it’s all in a book. That’s exactly the same tactic that evangelicals use. If you’re using the exact same debate tactic as an evangelical, it’s not an insult to compare you to an evangelical. It’s just a statement of fact.

It’s also exactly the same tactic that a bibliography uses. You know what, Giuli and evangelicals also share other things in common: they both metabolize oxygen; they’re both bipedal; neither of them leave mucous trails behind them (well, except for Jerry Falwell).

Giuli has a few books on the subject. To provide you with a full list of counter-examples would require several book reports. Instead, she offered to lend you the books so you could read said counter-examples for yourself. You responded by saying you’d been “witnessed to.” You know, when somebody tells me about complexity and its diminishing returns, I don’t think it’s particularly “fundamentalist” to cut my own energy expenditure short and just tell them to pick up Tainter.

Are we just regurgitating whatever we read now without any kind of critical thought? You’re telling me that it would actually be easier for me to just go out and read all of these books than to ask my questions directly to the person who wrote the article?

If you’re asking her to repeat everything in the book, yeah, it’s reasonable for her to tell you to just read the book. Especially when she offers to lend it to you. That’s why we have bibliographies. It’s not out of line for an author to cite a source, and not provide a book report on it.

So no, I don’t think my reaction was out of line.

OK, you were mistaken. Now you know better.

You can’t just post these kinds of things and then act surprised when somebody asks you to back up your claims. If you can’t back up what you write, don’t post it.

Agreed. I’m not sure who you’re talking to, but yes. Well done with that straw man.

But, if we can return to the thread in question, Giuli did support her argument, in precisely the fashion used in an academic paper: she cited her sources. Now, with that fancy degree of yours, I’m sure you know the next step in the process of academic debate: you read the sources. You do not wait for the author to whip it up into a pabulum to be spoon-fed to you.

Not that we’re being just a little bit self-important, right?

Not in the least. Christian teens kill themselves all the time for that kind of rhetoric. It’s that ambience that makes them hate themselves, and in the end, kill themselves. Anyone who spews that rhetoric creates that ambience. Anyone who spews that rhetoric is a mass murderer. Anyone who tolerates that rhetoric helps the ambience to spread. Anyone who tolerates that rhetoric is an accomplice to mass murder. There’s nothing self-important about it. I was nearly implicated in mass murder, and did what I could to extricate myself. That’s no more self-important than it is to look for cover in a shoot out.

No, attacking a person is equivalent to attacking a person. Which you did … quite a bit.

I made maybe three. And then, only in response to personal attacks made by others. Show me one case in which I made a personal attack that was totally unprovoked.

You caught the same one I did for Ben and Jim, though I fail to see how “No it’s not,” can be a personal attack–even if I was exasperated at explaining it so many times and put it in all caps.

Trying to shout people down isn’t generally regarded as the height of good manners. Unless you’re going to tell me that you decided to use all caps and quadruple exclamation points to lend your argument that air of high-minded debate.

…then I’m going to need to adjust my count a good deal, because I didn’t include times when people were just plain old, garden variety sarcastic.

That was hardly just a “plain old, garden variety sarcastic” comment. If it was, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But, aside from hideously misrepresenting my words, this was just presumptuous and condescending. It was Giuli basically saying that she’s planning a wedding and I’m not, so I should just shut up and agree with whatever she says.

And it’s especially insulting when it follows her having the gall to just outright laugh at me. Big mistake. I graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh, so I don’t feel like I have to tolerate being talked down to by a child just because she read a book.

Mocking Giuli for considering the symbolism of items in her wedding was the first really nasty insult anyone made in the thread. Notice before that, everything’s nice and amicable–and look! People are disagreeing!

First of all, how is that a personal attack? She said something that makes no sense. I called her on it. And by the way, that was about 60 comments ago, and I still have no idea what she meant about the “sociopolitical implications” of wearing a veil. But hey, don’t respond. That’s fine.

Of course, some people might also find it a little insulting that you would thumb your nose at an organization like the Veterans of Forgein Wars. But that’s beside the point.

I can see that everything is nice and amicable before I started posting. I also notice that I’m the first one to actually question anything that Giuli said.

…but where it got really nasty was, again, with you, when you compared Giuli to an evangelic Christian.

How is that an insult? I questioned her argument, and she responded by telling me that it’s all in a book. That’s exactly the same tactic that evangelicals use. If you’re using the exact same debate tactic as an evangelical, it’s not an insult to compare you to an evangelical. It’s just a statement of fact.

If we all have to read this book in order to have any kind of intelligent discussion, then what was the point of writing the article? Are we just regurgitating whatever we read now without any kind of critical thought? You’re telling me that it would actually be easier for me to just go out and read all of these books than to ask my questions directly to the person who wrote the article?

So no, I don’t think my reaction was out of line. You can’t just post these kinds of things and then act surprised when somebody asks you to back up your claims. If you can’t back up what you write, don’t post it.

I know you were mad about the evangelical we drove off, but as we said then, it wasn’t for disagreeing–it’s because his talk is responsible for countless deaths, and allowing him to continue spewing that vitriol here would make us accomplices in that mass murder.

Not that we’re being just a little bit self-important, right?

Still, you do rise to her defense with perhaps more vehemence than you would rise to your own?

…and Jason is very defensive of his finance.

Nah, I’m actually fairly nonchalant about my finances.

My fiance, I can get defensive about, but I wouldn’t call it “very.” I let her know when she’s completely wrong.

Hey Mike? I noticed you didn’t include your response to me in your list there. I had considered it in good humor, but if you thought I was being an ass then I need to reconsider your response insinutating that I’d be lost and left alone in the woods. I must now challenge you to a duel.

Unless, of course, we can all agree that this has been kind of blown out of proportion. You know, like one driver getting lost in Austria-Hungry causing two world wars, nuclear weapons, the space program, the holocaust etc blown out of proportion. Well…maybe not quite that bad. But, come on? All this over the bridal industry? Come on. Jason and Guili don’t want an expensive wedding and don’t like the culture and businesses that make that difficult. Mike thinks there is good reason for their prices. Jason and Guili think that reason is profit. Mike thinks that it’s cost of opperation. etc. This is one of those cases that all of you can be 100% right without any adjustment of your point. Some of this stuff is made of expensive materials, some of it is not. And businesses will charge as much as they think people will spend, for a wedding this is more than for a birthday party. So, do they charge more? Of course they do, they’re a business not a charity. The deal with diamonds? What else where they going to do? If they want to make much money on a relatively common stone then they need to create enough demand to out weigh the supply. Photographers know that people will spend this much on a birthday, this much on a milestone birthday, this much on wedding, and this much on a funeral. These are not going to be the same amounts. So what do they charge? What people will spend. Same as anyone else trying to make money.

I actually stopped reading this a while ago as having a certain running around in circles quality to it. Miranda is the one that told me I was being mentioned. (Come on Mike, you know my sense of humor, did you really think I was intending to be insulting?) So I come to see what was being said about me, and I find you guys at each other’s throats over rhetoric? If this discussion can’t get reasonable then we really should take this in to the real world and stop jerking off online.

Maybe Mike’s right here and there should be talk about how disgreements like this one are handled? Mike disagreed with Guili, Guili doesn’t like long arguements online where she feels like she’s being dismissed, and Jason is very defensive of his finance. So there is certainly much adu here, what is it about?

Sorry Mike, I didn’t mean to come off as dismissive or insulting. Sorry Jason and Guili, I really wasn’t planning on tying you up and leaving you in the woods.

So basically, attacking an idea is, to you, equivalent to an attack on the person.

No, attacking a person is equivalent to attacking a person. Which you did … quite a bit. You caught the same one I did for Ben and Jim, though I fail to see how “No it’s not,” can be a personal attack–even if I was exasperated at explaining it so many times and put it in all caps. Nor can I see the personal attack in this:

The VERY SAME studio photographers who do weddings. That’s why, when I started this, I mentioned comparison of the EXACT SAME PHOTOGRAPHER, using the exact same equipment. But at the more difficult event to shoot (the game), the price isn’t even a quarter of what it is for the wedding. That’s because WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY HAS ZIP, ZERO, NADA, NOTHING TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.

You don’t want to count a snide little swipe like, “For indeed, it is inanimate objects for which I save my true rage,” but it counts as an attack if I get exasperated at explaining this for the umpteenth time, and put it in all caps? And while I agree that it has quite the sarcastic tone, if we’re going to include Giuli’s,

Soooo I shouldn’t trust a single word you say about, say, the !Kung because you’ve only read about them in books? After all, you haven’t actually met them in person. Just like I haven’t dealt with caterers or florists or officiants or locations or–oh, wait. Yes I have. Because I’m the one actually planning a wedding.

…then I’m going to need to adjust my count a good deal, because I didn’t include times when people were just plain old, garden variety sarcastic. I can assure you, though, if that’s the criteria, your “market share” here is going to go up drastically.

I agree, Jim’s message was way out of line. That’s why I wrapped him on the knuckles for it. Giuli isn’t particularly interested in defending her articles like a thesis–neither does she particularly care if you disagree. Neither do I. It’s not a circle jerk, and we do have differing opinions quite often. When it runs in circles, people get frustrated. When people turn nasty, the responses turn nasty.

This thread turned nasty right here. I can pin it down to the exact sentence:

And don’t even get me started on what I think of veils. For indeed, it is inanimate objects for which I save my true rage.

Mocking Giuli for considering the symbolism of items in her wedding was the first really nasty insult anyone made in the thread. Notice before that, everything’s nice and amicable–and look! People are disagreeing! But with your very first message in this thread, you made a sarcastic insult at Giuli, and you were responded to in kind. Next, I tried to explain Giuli’s side so you’d calm down and stop with the attacks, y’know, resolve it all amicably, and we almost had things calmed down until Jim and Ben took their shots, but where it got really nasty was, again, with you, when you compared Giuli to an evangelic Christian. You asked for evidence, but Giuli’s not like me–she’s not willing to write a 10-page essay summarizing the evidence presented in a book (see thesis #14 for an example of my own). Instead, she just offered to lend you the book. Your reaction to that was WAY out of line. That particular comment continued on with a good deal more in the way of sarcastic snipes and so forth. Giuli and I both made comments that continued to engage your ideas and ignored your sarcasm, but you followed up with another, even more sarcastic and personally insulting comment. At that point, yes, the gloves came off, and both Giuli and I responded in kind. From there on, it was pure slugfest.

So no, Mike, I’m not blind to the attacks that were made against you. I recognized them. But I also recognize the attacks you made against others–something that you seem to be turning a blind eye to. There are plenty of counter-examples to your notion that we attack people who disagree with us. I know you were mad about the evangelical we drove off, but as we said then, it wasn’t for disagreeing–it’s because his talk is responsible for countless deaths, and allowing him to continue spewing that vitriol here would make us accomplices in that mass murder. In this case–in most cases–the consequences are not nearly so severe. In those cases, the tone of the debate is generally decided by the one who takes the dissenting opinion. In this case, you disagree with pretty much everyone else here. That’s fine. But if you decide to do so in a sarcastic, hostile way, then you will be responded to in a sarcastic, hostile way–and if you happen to be completely outnumbered, that can make for a fairly unpleasant experience.

Nobody attacked you for disagreeing. We attacked you because you were being a dick about it.

You see, I also went back through the thread, and I came up with a very different count.

Ben wrote:

You know, we could just tie you up in the forest and leave you there until dawn. I won’t even charge for the rope.

Jason wrote:

The VERY SAME studio photographers who do weddings. That’s why, when I started this, I mentioned comparison of the EXACT SAME PHOTOGRAPHER, using the exact same equipment. But at the more difficult event to shoot (the game), the price isn’t even a quarter of what it is for the wedding. That’s because WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHY HAS ZIP, ZERO, NADA, NOTHING TO DO WITH THE QUALITY OF THE PRODUCT.

Jason wrote:

NO IT’S NOT!!!!

Jason wrote:

So far we’ve given you about half a dozen other examples, but the way you keep insisting it’s just DeBeers makes me think you’re being deliberately dense on this.

Giuli wrote:

Okay, I don’t want to be mean, but this made me laugh hysterically.

Giuli wrote:

Soooo I shouldn’t trust a single word you say about, say, the !Kung because you’ve only read about them in books? After all, you haven’t actually met them in person. Just like I haven’t dealt with caterers or florists or officiants or locations or–oh, wait. Yes I have. Because I’m the one actually planning a wedding.

Jim wrote:

Monogamous marriage is a pretty rare thing, culturally - and I get the feeling that Mike is harboring resentment that Giuli won’t go for that ever exclusive prize, polyandry. In a tribe of four, that would up the odds very favorably for Mike to get some before the collapse. Ah, the tribe hashes out it’s burgeoning culture…

Tip - weddings can be great places to pick up chicks - just not the bride. You know, our vestigial western ways and all…

Jason wrote:

Mike, that is the most idiotic thing you’ve ever said.

Just to name a few. And that’s not even including the general implications throughout this thread that anyone who doesn’t get the cheapest wedding they can buy is just stupid and that you’re not allowed to have an opinion on the matter unless you’ve read Giuli’s book.

The only personal remarks I’ve made in this thread have been in direct response to one of the statements above. But then, I did disagree with Giuli a lot. So if that’s your definition of antagonistic, I’m guilty as charged.

I don’t care so much about the fact that I’m the target here, although I do find it rather disturbing that you’re incapable of seeing that. Especially considering how much time you’ve devoted to protected “your woman” from my imaginary attacks. I’m much more concerned by the larger principle that is at stake. This shouldn’t be a place where people are not permitted to disagree. I’m one of the two founding members of Anthropik, and if I can’t express a differing opinion without having insults thrown at me, who can? Giuli said it herself:

I said I didn’t give enough of a shit about it to debate it for days on end. I also wrote an article on Generation Y. Guess what? I don’t care enough about that one to debate passionately about it for a week either. Believe it or not, not everyone is obsessed with constantly debating every single topic to death.

In other words, you’re fine writing articles as long as everyone is agreeing with you and telling you what a good job you’re doing, but if anyone actually questions anything you wrote, then that’s where we draw the line.

Really, if this site is just going to become one huge electronic circle jerk, then what’s the point?