Proof of the PPOT anomaly
 

Interesting experience tonight, especially given the recent discussions about people's behavior on this forum and the overall decorum of PPOT.

A friend of my wife invited us over for dinner to meet her husband and a few other couples. One of the men is a civil liberties lawyer here in Texas and a card carrying member of the ACLU. He apparently litigates cases for the ACLU against the government all the time. I spent most of the night talking with him and the other guys about various topics, everything from football to kids to politics. Myself and one of the other guys were conservative, another guy who was a civil lawyer was middle-left and the ACLU lawyer was pretty hard left. Anyhow, we had a very polite and interesting discussion for over 4 hours over beers, dinner, football and whatnot. Although I disagreed with some of his views, I listened to his positions and then responded with my own, which he also listened to. We found that many of our ideas were similar, we simply differed on how to put those ideas into practice. Not once were the words commie, pinko, neocon, mouthbreather, Bush'ist, asshat or nazi used. Contrast that to the discussion that occurs on this forum and you begin to see just how far from reality PPOT is.

:D

Re: Re: Proof of the PPOT anomaly
 

Sometimes it is both good and bad. I think it can be good to have an anonymous place to express your thoughts without fear of social or life consequences. However, often that anonymity leads to complete disregard for the value of the person you are speaking to. That's when you get the amazing flame wars that occur on the net.

When used properly the term "asshat" can carry a conversation all on its' own.:D

He was lying to you the whole time, probably a better actor than lawyer. You should have never let him in your house or even in your neighborhood. He is worse than cancer. He is the lowest of the low, a scumbag amongst lawyers. But that's just my opinion. ;)

Believe me, real life or internet I would have asked him to leave the second I found out he was associated with the ACLU.
I'm surprised he didn't trip over your sprinklers and sue you for a million dollars.

EDIT, LEGAL DISCLAIMER: the above is a hypothetical opinion based on hypothetical people I haven't met and in no was should be twisted or warped or perverted into meaning anything other than what i meant, even if it means some scumsucking civil lawyer has to be honest for the first time in his life.
But I mean that in the nicest way.....................

I wear my asshat with pride.

Re: Proof of the PPOT anomaly
 

Sounds like a dull party...;)

I believe the anonymous nature of the internet encourages people to act out behavior that they would not normally display. Example is people placing naked pics of themselves or others on a website.

Civil people in open conversation will normally listen to someone's ideas but not immedaitely call them an a$$hat, as opposed to here, we immediatley launch into a rant, dumping our bucket with complete disregard for others. Not everyone does this but some are more experienced than others.

I was thinking that it would be interesting if when someone posted an idea, they had to defend their position at the start, not be free to respond to gabs by the audience. This would cause some folks to give more thought to their posts and actually give some thought as to how others might respond. It might also eliminate some of the endless posting of other author's ideas.

Personally, I have good friends that do not agree with my thinking but we do not come to blows when we get together. We tend to have more logical discussions and try to develop a better understanding of what the other is thinking, I don't immediately tell them to fuch off.

Some people here have no interest in developing friendships with others because they believe they will never meet. As a result they would just as soon piss the other person off and then move on to the next victim.

Another problem with the internet is that print is one-dimensional. Without body language and visual queues, text could easily be taken the wrong way. Also, one can't fully explore feelings and provide dialog re: same in a forum. Additionally, forums don't allow body language, which IMO is probably contributes at least 50% to communication.....

What you describe is the norm. It's not the people here, it's the nature of the venue that will always lead to misunderstanding.

OK CC, let's see a little of your body language. ;)

Jigglin' my jiggly butt....

:)

now i remember why i stopped in.

Personally, I have a rule (acutally, its more of a guideline) that I won't say anything here that I wouldn't say to someone's face. But most of you are right, without the face-to-face, you tend to get carried away. Case in point, I had dinner with Rodeo and had a great evening. We didn't even discuss politics.

I call commies, commies in person, as well as on the internet. A commie is a commie, period. An ahole is an ahole. Am I more civil in person, absolutely not.

As an example I told the daughter of Steve Saleen that she could not park her FORD car in front of my house, or for that matter anywhere on my block. NO FORDS IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD!

Call a spade a spade. Fords are one step below a VOLVO, a commie car if ever.

Now there's a reasonable man.

Snow

WTF do you drink in the morning. Ford owns Aston Martin, Volvo, etc. They are a struggling american company.

Eh! Leave him alone. He's probably just ashamed to know Porsche once worked with Hitler.

An american company thats SINKING fast.

And so Saleen's daughter is supposed to have something to do with that? Good gawd, man! What are you handing out for Halloween? Rocks? :p

Jack may revell in that fact...who knows? ;)

Must be why you have so much time to spend on the internet.

I'm gonna buy some late '70s Fairmonts and Grenadas for $8.00 a piece and park them up and down his block. It'll look like an episode of Charlie's Angels.

Re: Proof of the PPOT anomaly
 

What your evening's conversation proves, beyond doubt, is just how socialist neoconservatism is. You want the same things as the hard left guy and only disagree on how to get there.

You are once again correct, Pat.

In fact, the part I left out was when we huddled together in the corner and discussed our needs for Lebensraum...

In Bush'ist speak lebensraum = spreading democracy world wide. No matter how many people they murder to do so.

Pure Trotskyite socialist to the core.

Isn't "Lebensraum" German for "spreading love"? Sorry, my German is a bit...nonexistent.

Lebensraum was the Nazi term for "living space" if I'm not mistaken. It was their policy of annexing and conquering their neighbors to allow the German people to have "living space".

It was a facetious comment in repsonse to Patsy's usual drivel.

living space is correct.

The whole Nazi idea was to conquer an area, eliminate the residents, and import good, solid German stock to populate the now vacant spaces.

Eliminate enough of the aboriginal population to enable enslaving those remaining was the idea.

The bush'ists don't plan to move to Iraq, but they are quite willing to enslave anyone necessary to achieve their stated goals.

Another take on this: what about online arguments developing into flame wars in a forum where there's a chance you might know or meet the person in real life? Case in point, I recently got into a bit of a flame war (or at least one-sided insult-fest) on the rennlist Canada forum. I've never met the other party in person (at least not to my knowledge) but very likely will run into him someday as we both attend the same track events. He took issue with my line of questioning and ended up resorting to somewhat humourous insults (none of which I got because I didn't know the references he was making). Would the conversation have deteriorated so badly in real life? Not likely. Would we be acrimonious if we were introduced by screen name in real life? I would like to think not, but maybe.

I'm not so sure. I think there comes a point where someone's actions online might begin to color your perceptions of that person if you met them in real life. I think this only applies to the extreme ends of the spectrum, the trolls as it were.

By definition, you're a troll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll

Kingmaker!

Reference to George Carlin and his observations on human nature, and considering the internet is about as separate as people can be from each other:

"Have you ever noticed that the further away an individual is, the bigger the ********* he is?"

I must share a personal story.....

I could not stand Fintstone. He was going to go to that Vegas thing. At lunch, I was telling a couple people that I do NOT want to meet that *********. At drinks that evening, he claimed he was "Tabs friend." I talked to him for an hour before they told me who he was. He joined us the next day.

But honest to God, he is one of my favorite people here. I dont' want to describe him so as to ruin his "on-line persona gig"....but I have the utmost respect for that guy (just not his management techniques LOL, side story....).

I'll never ASSume anything again about people on this board....

Are you saying that Fint is a flaming bleeding heart in real life?

I dunno, there is a pretty good group of PP 944 (and Porsche owners in general) here in S. Cali. and most of them show very little interest in meeting me, perhaps because of my inane ramblings here in PPOT. I try to interject so much silliness because so many people do seem to take the Internet way too seriously IMHO.
:D
So where can I get one of those asshats anyway? How much do they cost and do they come in different colors?

No. And he knows I'm not either.....

Fintstone has one, but I think it's on his butt so tight that he'd have a devil of a time getting it off to give it to you.