Best 4 person all caster/priest group

[Toxigen]

you can square my pickle

[Troxx]

I’d rather cube it


Still laughing at DSM for violating the spirit of this theorycraft exercise. He wants to be allowed to pocket a cleric because he knows it’s the only way he can rationalize not including one. Why not just pocket a druid so we can skip those too! Always have aoe/ports/potg and clicky RoTg! Why consider a wizard when you can just pocket one to rationalize not giving up hate/sky?

Lol

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Troxx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I’d rather cube it


Still laughing at DSM for violating the spirit of this theorycraft exercise. He wants to be allowed to pocket a cleric because he knows it’s the only way he can rationalize not including one. Why not just pocket a druid so we can skip those too! Always have aoe/ports/potg and clicky RoTg! Why consider a wizard when you can just pocket one to rationalize not giving up hate/sky?

Lol

Please show where OP prohibited pocket characters. Making up rules to support your argument is silly. Pocket characters are a normal part of the game, and there is nothing that is excluding them. Same with mules, mules are allowed too.

You continue to show you don't understand what a pocket character is by claiming you'd have a pocket potg druid.

[bcbrown]

I don't often get to use my training in semiotics and semantics, so I had a little fun with this. I'm well aware DSM isn't going to engage substantively with anything I write here.

One of the primary tensions in lexicography is between prescriptive versus descriptive definitions. A google search gave me this summary, which I like: Descriptive lexicography involves describing the words and meanings as currently used. Prescriptive lexicography suggests how words should be used correctively. In other words, prescriptivists believe words can be used incorrectly, while descriptivists believe words are used, and all we can do is describe how they are used.

I tend to be side with the descriptivists. The Oxford English Dictionary's distinctive feature is the extensive examples of how a word has been used historically, which is descriptive. And the use of an examplar is a pillar of child language aquisition; if a child asks "what is a stop sign?", and you answer by pointing and saying "that is a stop sign", you are using the object you are pointing at as an examplar of the linguistic/semiotic concept "stop sign".

So when trying to approach the concept of trolling, I think it's perfectly appropriate to point at a language example and say "that is not trolling" or "that is trolling", and that action of pointing is the action of definition. When I point to the quote from Jimjam and say "this not trolling" I am providing a part of my definition of trolling.

But I do also think there is value in providing a more explicit definition. More definitive, if you will. For that task I turn to etymology. I ground my definition in the context of the Usenet era, and acknowledge the evolution through the forum era (of which this is a living relic), into the social media era. In the Usenet era the name for offensive messages was "flaming", and I'll provide a loose definition of "excessively insulting disagreement". To flame someone was to disagree with them using offensive and deliberately insulting language to demean.

I feel like the word "troll" is more associated with the forum era, although I'm sure it has its antecedents in the Usenet era. To troll someone is to use minimal effort in writing bad-faith posts to elicit maximal emotional response in the target. It's asymmetric posting; to win at trolling is to care very little while making your target care a lot.

An important part of trolling, in this context, is effectively affecting an ironic voice. It's employing double-speak, intended to be interpreted sincerely and authentically by the target, while those "in on the joke" need to be able to interpret it ironically. If no one sees the ironic interpretation the poster comes across as a fool, and the troll is ineffective. If the target can access the ironic interpretation than no one is fooled, and the troll is ineffective. So a good troll has to create a double effect - the right people interpret it seriously and the other right people interpret it ironically.

As an aside, I found David Foster Wallace's essay E Unibus Pluram: Television and Fiction to be very influential on my understanding of irony, and highly recommend it: "I want to convince you that irony, poker-faced silence, and fear of ridicule are distinctive of those features of contemporary US culture that enjoy any significant relation to the television whose weird pretty hand has my generation by the throat. I'm going to argue that irony and ridicule are entertaining and effective, and at the same time they are agents of a great despair and stasis in US culture." Available here: https://jsomers.net/DFW_TV.pdf

Irony is especially relevant to the concept introduced in the social media era: shitposting. I would describe it as weaponizing bad faith arguments to advance a message that is the inverse of the naive interpretation of the message. Another definition that I think could bear fruitful exploration is that shitposting is an artistic form exploring the boundaries of poe's law: any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

In the social media era trolling acquired a new meaning, that of the "troll farms" of Russia: posting disinformation and misinformation on social media in service of an ulterior aim. That meaning is not relevant here.

To summarize: Flaming is saying "you're so wrong that you're clearly an idiot". Trolling is engaging in asymmetrical emotional warfare. Shitposting is communicating a message in the bad-faith form of its negation.

From here we need to take a decidedly more academic turn. One important linguistic distinction I've been careful to make is to almost exclusively refer to trolling as an action, not a descriptive label. DSM's descriptive language frequently privileges adjectives, labels. When you label someone, you obliterate all of their other attributes in order to emphasize one. It occludes the multitudes that comprise a person behind a single aspect. To explore this we need to discuss the General Semantics of Count Korzybski, especially as interpreted by S.I Hayakawa. Korzybski opposed the use of the verb "to be" for identity and predication functions.

The downside of using "is" is that it collapses all the possibilities of reality into two binary options, "is" and "is not". It also hides all the other contexts within which the subject can exist. This can be hard to understand. I'll try to give an example. In college I occasionally smoked cigarettes. At my peak one winter, I smoked 4-5 cigarettes a month, at one or two parties a month. Otherwise, rarely more than one every other month. One night, leaving a party with a couple friends, I bummed a smoke from someone for the walk home. One of my friends, clearly disapproving, said something like "so you're a smoker, huh?". I responded that I was not a smoker, and I still maintain that. It would be accurate to say I occasionally smoked, though. The difference is between adjective/noun and verb.

The only aphorism from Korzybski to permeate the popular consciousness is "the map is not the territory". This was best illustrated in the short story by Borges, On Exactitude in Science, which I shall quote in full:

...In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast Map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

So, if a map is an exact replica of the territory, it becomes useless; a map's value is as much in the information it elides as the information it provides. The humor of the story is in the absurdity of a map that elides no information. As an aside, the primary source, Sience and Sanity by Korzybsky is thoroughly unreadeable. But Language in Thought and Action by S.I. Hayakawa is very accessible and well worth reading. The Tyranny of Words by Stuart Chase attempt a similar popularization, and is more accessible while being less insightful. There's also some wiki links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred...i#%22To_be%22; the "Anecdotes" section in the second link is well worth reading.

And, so it is when one says "A is a B". By labeling A as B, one elides all information from A except the B-ness. It's reductive. Much more informative is instead to describe behavior. And so I prefer to interpret trolling as a behavior, an action, a verb. Not a label, an adjective.

This is why I prefer to approach your question as "has Troxx trolled", or "does Troxx sometimes troll", or something along those lines. I would note that in the example I provided, the quote from DSM to Jimjam was "Please stop trolling threads" - an action, not a label. Troxx provided this definition: Trolling is the act of intentionally stirring the pot to get a reaction while having no actual interest in the topic at hand. This is also an action, not a label.

So now we can approach your question. Is Troxx a troll? Well, I reject the premise, as I wrote above. Has Troxx trolled? Well, he once said he's engaged in that sort of behavior in the past, and I take him at his word. In this thread, though? He's certainly done some flaming, and you've both engaged in shitposting in the form of repetitive no-information posts.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

I am disappointed. In the end Bcbrown wrote a lot, which I read, and dodged the question on Troxx almost completely.

His post is mostly about trying to prove why he thinks the word describing Troxx should be "flamer" or "shitposter", rather than "troll". We disagree on the definition of troll, and honestly that is irrelevant to Troxx's factual behavior.

At least he admits Troxx has trolled, flamed, and shit posted. But he is trying to significantly downplay it, hence the long meandering discussion about the word troll first.

The behavior is the core problem, and Troxx is behaving very poorly. If he doesn't attack me, I don't need to defend myself. It is really that simple. It is pretty obvious Troxx is a troll, and Bcbrowns's word games are not enough to change Troxx's past actions, which are easy to look up in the post history.

[eqravenprince]

Holy crap, I was killed by a wall of text

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by eqravenprince [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Holy crap, I was killed by a wall of text

You're not missing anything in that wall of text either. The only relevant point Bcbrown made was that he agreed Troxx has trolled, flamed, and shitposted. He tried to obfuscate this as much as possible via text wall, but I consider it progress. People are slowly seeing reality.

[Troxx]

Originally Posted by DeathsSilkyMist [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

I am disappointed. In the end Bcbrown wrote a lot, which I read, and dodged the question on Troxx almost completely.

Nah. He answered you. You asked him what his definition of a troll was. He gave it to you quite brilliantly. Then he answered.

Originally Posted by bcbrown [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

So now we can approach your question. Is Troxx a troll? Well, I reject the premise, as I wrote above. Has Troxx trolled? Well, he once said he's engaged in that sort of behavior in the past, and I take him at his word. In this thread, though? He's certainly done some flaming, and you've both engaged in shitposting in the form of repetitive no-information posts.

Bcbrown that was a wonderful read. I did enjoy your example regarding smoking, the is vs is not and the noun vs verb. Unfortunately I don’t know that DSM has the requisite number of functioning neurons to comprehend that totality of your response.

[DeathsSilkyMist]

Originally Posted by Troxx [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Nah. He answered you. You asked him what his definition of a troll was. He gave it to you quite brilliantly. Then he answered.



Bcbrown that was a wonderful read. I did enjoy your example regarding smoking, the is vs is not and the noun vs verb. Unfortunately I don’t know that DSM has the requisite number of functioning neurons to comprehend that totality of your response.

He did admit you were trolling, flaming, and shitposting, so the question was answered in that sense. Remember I asked him if you were a troll or not.He just encapsulated that admission in a wall of text to obfuscate this point as much as possible.

And yes, it is clear you would agree with him, as he used your definition of trolling. It is a silly definition you are using to walk back your admission of trolling. Bcbrown's bias also shows when he simply takes your definition of trolling wholecloth.

https://www.esafety.gov.au/young-peo...0cause%20drama

Here is a better definition of trolling:

Trolling is when someone posts or comments online to ‘bait’ people, which means deliberately provoking an argument or emotional reaction. In some cases they say things they don’t even believe, just to cause drama. In other cases, they may not agree with the views of another person or group online, so they try to discredit, humiliate or punish them. This may include online hate – personal attacks that target someone because of their race, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation or disability. The troll may also encourage mob mentality, urging others to join in the attack so it becomes a pile on

This describes your behavior perfectly, including attacking autistic people lol.

[eqravenprince]

Simple definition of a troll - a person trying to provoke and upset others online for their own amusement. A whole lot of people guilty of this and didn't need a wall of text to do it. But I find it amusing, so I guess that makes me a troll if this post provoked or upset someone.