--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, TurquoiseB <no_re...@...> wrote: > > Twice in recent days I have decided to pass along a > questionable story because of an underlying intent, > a "deeper purpose" if you will.
Translation: Twice in recent days Barry's come badly a cropper, so he desperately needs to find a way to make his mistakes seem intentional. (Will he do the same with his multi-error post today about Salon's new design? Stay tuned...) I passed along a > story told by someone else over dinner about Alfred > Nobel and I passed along the Sarah Palin satire. For > the latter, I did check to see whether it was a satire > or not, but was foiled by Salon.com's Beta webpages, > which did not indicate one way or another whether it > was a satire or not. However, the piece *itself* clearly indicated it was satire. Most of the Salon commenters instantly recognized it as such simply from the content, even without having seen the "Fiction," "Humor," and "Satire" keywords. Why was Barry not able to tell that a piece mocking Sarah Palin was satire? Could it have been... ...CONFIRMATION BIAS? <giggle> For the Nobel story, I suspected > it might be urban legend but passed it along anyway > without checking Snopes because 1) it was a fun story, > and 2) it suited my deeper purpose. Mmm-hmm: "Isn't it cool when you find out that some of the world's greatest honors are *IN FACT* the stuff of soap opera?" (emphasis added) > My deeper purpose was to provide fodder for several > posters' confirmation bias against me and get them > to 1) demonstrate that they *are* stalking me, Given what Barry means by "stalking"--i.e., dissecting his stupidity, egotism, and rank dishonesty-- could there be any doubt in anyone's mind that some of us are "stalking" him? Why, after all this time, would he feel the need to "demonstrate" it, do you think? Plus which, the way to demonstrate "confirmation bias" would be to post something that *sounds* fishy, wait for the "stalkers" to cast doubt on it, and then show that it was true. Posting things that aren't true and claiming *after they've been debunked* that you done it on purpose doesn't have quite the same effect. Not to mention that doing so advertises your willingness to lie, and thus calls the veracity of your after-the-fact excuse in question. and 2) > "post out" faster. I would say that my experiment was > a rousing success -- they went crazy over my "errors" > and racked up well over a dozen posts detailing my > stupidity and their intellectual and moral superiority. (Actually there were only a couple. Many of the posts in the thread had to do with the elusive "Read more" keywords. Others criticized the satire itself and the distorted view of Palin that generated it. Barry apparently counted all the posts from Raunchy and me as "going crazy over" his errors. Looks like his confirmation bias is at work again.) As I've pointed out before, Barry's claim to have all this influence over other posters would be just a *bit* more credible if he hadn't posted a long rant awhile back about what he called "Internet Self-Importance Syndrome" and how ridiculous were the folks who claimed to control the behavior of other posters (see #229903). He claimed, BTW, that the way to squash these posters flat was not to pay any attention to them. <snicker> > Well, at least one of those posters can feel good about > her superiority all the way to the bench, as she sits > out the rest of this week. :-) See, the thing here is, *Barry* has to avoid posting out like the plague, because nothing would be more awful, as far as he's concerned, than to not be able to post, even for a few days. That would mean he was being *controlled by the rules*, and he can't abide any kind of external control; it deflates his self- importance, and that's intolerable to him. For others of us, posting out isn't such a huge deal. We have fun posting a lot when there are conversations going on that interest us, and we don't mind at all if we use up our posts before the week is out. We don't feel diminished when the rules kick in. <snip> > In recent days Rush Limbaugh has been hoist on > his own petard by someone posting a prank, seemingly > with the same *intent* that I made my two posts -- they > were interested in which big fish would "bite" on a > big, juicy worm-on-a-hook. Whereas the Palin satire wasn't intended as a prank, but Barry was taken in by it anyway. ;-) <snip> > On this forum, we see confirmation bias pretty much > every day. Those who have built up a distrust of the > TMO can find reasons (and *legitimate* reasons) to doubt > any supposedly benign story about it posted by a True > Believer. The True Believers, on their part tend to > exhibit their ongoing confirmation bias by stalking > the doubters. :-) Barry still entertains the hopeful fantasy that we go after him because he's a TM critic, rather than because he's such a thoroughly crappy human being. They can seemingly turn *anything* > a TM critic says into a terrible, nefarious plot aimed > at destroying their faith or destroying the TM movement > or destroying them personally. Except that it's only *some* TM critics who get rough treatment. Why are they disrespected while others are not? Inquiring minds... > This is just a reminder that doing this on a regular > basis can reveal your patterns of *intent*, and thus > make you a victim to anyone who wants to prank those > patterns. When someone seemingly presents you with > "the perfect opportunity for the perfect put-down," > they just *might* be doing so for their own reasons. Or they just might be doing so inadvertently, day after day after day, and then having to stand on their heads to make their constant string of bloopers seem purposeful. <snip. > For example, someone who might have a...uh...tendency > towards stalking might see *this* post as a "perfect > opportunity for the perfect put-down" of their normal > stalkee. They might even use up their last four posts > wailing on it Oh, one is more than enough, actually. And there's no need to "wail" on it. Barry's posts tend to be so blatantly self-serving that all one needs to do to discredit them is highlight what they say, and they pretty much self-destruct.
