Use of Tags

I think we all know who your supposed "victim" is. (I had to take him off "ignore" to check your "tags" issue). I don't think that the frustrated responses to someone who has been banned elsewhere for obvious reasons constitute a breach of social niceties. I suggest your "mental health/cruelty" issue is a straw man. The real problem appears to be how to deal with attention seeking coupled with arrogance and obscenities, and most of us would endorse your advice...

If you believe he is simply a jerk, that's fine. There are plenty around here and by some folk's estimations, I'm one. Even then, resorting to silly tags like the ones I related or the one someone used for this thread "Archetypal Pontificator" is childish behavior.

If someone actually believes the person in question has mental health issues, however, using tags like those described or discussing the issue in a thread in which the person is participating, is far more than a breach of "social niceties," it's insensitive and cruel. So take your pick, childish or cruel.

And when are people in this forum going to use the term "straw man" properly? You certainly haven't.

There is no problem with dealing with someone you believe to be attention seeking, arrogant and obscene. It's very simple, you ignore them. Anything more is, at best, superfluous.

Do you really believe that the person who has made it his or her mission to tag everyone of this person's threads with the same insulting terms is doing so as a service to other members of A2K?

Do you think that the people who are discussing the qualities of this person's writings as evidence of specific mental health issues, are doing him a service, or displaying some learned expertise?

I admit to making unkind tags once in a while but I pretty much take them down within seconds.

I don't like junk tagging in general, much less insult tagging, since the purpose of tagging is to make interesting subjects more accessible on google or whatever other search engines.

IMO you have set up the concept of "a mission" in order for you to attack it. Hence my use of the phrase "straw man". Similarly no "learned expertise" is implied by rejoinders in kind to facile statements like "you are all idiots".

My brain chooses the friends from the enemies and the enemies that pretend to be friends so accurately so, I always knew I could count on my brain to electromagnetically connect with anyone who truly speaks with their words to touch people with love, communication, intuition and a transcendent volume of thinking, living and doing. When I call you friend, I mean it, Finn.

Fresco, you don't "ignore me"; you "react" to me. Why do you react? If I am so worthless to you, all you have to do is ignore me, but instead you always have to talk behind my back, which is not "ignoring" me.

It's you cowering with your brain's stem between its membranes.

Wise men Listen

Foolish men Ignore

I think the foolish idiots on this site need to start reevaluating their excuses, as they are the ones that push others away for their own opinions, while down-voting and resorting to childish demeanor - whereas, I do not down vote, nor do I ignore my own people.

Everyone has their ass on backwards except a select few, such as Finn.

People need to remember that wise men are very rare compared to foolish men. Many people agreeing on the same thing, even when it's universally wrong, is not making it any more less wrong - it's what I like to call "discordant concordance"; stupid people agree with other stupid people, in the same manner as children agree with other children. We band together as a community, but frankly we do it more for foolish reasons than future reasoning.

There are two absolute ways for me to prove where I stand compared to where others stand:

A) I ask them, "What wars do you fight for right now?" They will only give me one, which I will then say accordingly, "I fight every war - including the hidden wars within us."

B) I ask them, "Can you do what I do?" If they say yes, I will then say, "Then make a stand without cowering away from it."

A man who has such a grand scope of reality is anything but the accusations given by his envious peers.

Don't you ever get tired of telling people what to do Finn? If you really cared about mental health you'd be writing to your representatives telling them to fund it better.

OEM is an attention seeking narcissist and if anyone wants to point that out to him, (and any new arrivals) then they can do it. The tags "ignore" and "troll" are quite useful in that respect. For the record I have him on ignore, but I'm thinking of taking him off and doing some tagging because I don't appreciate being told what to do by a control freak like you.

You're the real "freedom hater."

Looking on the bright side, you appear to have made a friend. How long is it since that happened?

Not really, but this time I'm merely suggesting that unless you deliberately wish to be cruel to someone who you genuinely believes has a mental health issue, you should be more circumspect...or your a jerk. I wish I could just tell people to stop being jerks, and have it so, but that doesn't seem to work. You've certainly proven that on multiple occasions.

Obviously (and it really is astounding that I have to say this) anyone can do just about anything they want to here. If a thread like this one actually stops someone from doing something they really want to do, I should try one that instructs everyone to empty out their bank accounts and send me all their money.

Childish behavior and comments are rampant in this forum, (e.g. "You're the real 'freedom hater'.") and no one can stop it, so, of course, you're free to tag someone's threads just because I suggest it's not very nice. (That'll show me!)

Have fun.

I suggest you investigate the nebulous phrase "genuine mental health issue" on which you rest your case. Note for example how the adjective "mental" has often been used for a range of aberrant behavior, for both social and political reasons. (Ref: USSR) The adage "It is cruel to mock the afflicted" is based on the assumption that "the afflicted" have no choice about their behavior. I suggest that none of us are making that assumption is this case.

I agree, and I don't appreciate someone trying to drag me into their therapy.

Yes. But it is not unlikely that some PhD student is writing a thesis right now on "Social Media as a Global Therapeutic Refuge for Parochial Misfits". You only need look at "virtual reality relationships" as background material for that.

As you can see Finn, they are all truly sick and mentally defiled by their socially engineered peers. They care not for their hypocrisy and delusional reality - they will make the great men suffer for their pitiful grain.

Everyone's childish except for you aren't they Finn. Those of us who have spoken out against your gun laws have been called "freedom haters " all the time with no word of admonition from you. Yet the second it's applied to a control freak who wants to micro manage everyone it's childish.

You're like a 13 year old girl calling everyone else immature, complaining about people's sense of humour, but never coming close to saying something funny yourself. Writing pages and pages of dull screed about how you're a nice guy really, (does anyone read that?) while you drink to escape reality, and tip heavily, because it's the only way to ensure someone will be listening to you, (or going through the motions.)

Is that how you act after the death of your wife? Sounds to me you need council.

All you have to say is, "maybe you're right", or explain yourself with poetry and poise, instead you make noise. Children do this. You might as well add "over" after "push". You reacted so fast to Finn's well endowed literary art skills - you left reason behind for emotion to preserve your pathetic image.

the first thing i do with an item is remove all the tags, especially shirts, i can't stand the feel of a collar tag on the back of my neck

Sounds to me you need counsel.

I think it is fair game to question some of the community practices here even if you aren't lily white yourself. We all know the Internet is a free for all, but if you are engaging in activities that cause the wider community issues, it should be open to debate.

I generally ignore the tags unless someone tags something as "spam". I'll typically pass those by without opening them. On the rare occasion someone has falsely marked a thread that way I certainly find that irritating, but not much I can do about it. I do find the insult tags to be a less than mature form of debate but it is the Internet and A2K is better than a lot of places, even moderated ones.

Not at all, and that is a particularly childish retort.



Everyone isn't childish, you are. I've not ever called you a "freedom hater" but even if I had, "You're the real freedom-hater!" would be a childish response. Like a kid saying "You're the idiot!", when he's been called an idiot.

I'm sorry if it disappoints you that I don't come to your rescue whenever someone calls you a "freedom-hater," (Lord knows you're demonstrating that you need the help), but frankly I don't pay attention to what anyone calls you, unless it's amusing. I do however, pay attention to what people call me, or accuse me of. You've made a ludicrous charge that I am trying to control people and micro-manage them. I've commented on what I believe to be a cruel behavior, and in so doing didn't single anyone out for rebuke or scorn. If you don't appreciate my offering my opinion on the behavior, fine. Say so and move on.



I see you're full of bile tonight. I hope you feel better having spewed some my way, but I've no desire to turn this thread into a back and forth with you. I prefer to spend my time writing dull pages in response to the comments of people I respect.

The insult tags are immature, but like you they don't bother me terribly. Usually I don't even pay attention to them (With this thread though, how could I not?).

My larger issue is with people who clinically discussed what they believe to be the mental illness of a another member who was participating in their thread. I'm not referring to comments like "So-And-So is a psycho!" Or "Don't pay attention to So-And-So, he just a rambling, lunatic troll." I'm talking about one or more posters matter-of-factly dissecting the manner in which the person writes, the terms of expression he uses, and so on, as if they were psychologists comparing notes on an interesting patient they both had examined.

It's more than possible that they simply wanted to insult a person they thought of as a jerk and figured this was a clever way of doing so, but if they really believed the person to be suffering from a serious mental illness, the behavior is not appropriate and it is cruel. Actual health care professionals wouldn't do it and decent people don't make fun of the retarded or taunt the mentally ill.

I noted it, it disturbed me and I commented upon it. This is not the first person it has happened with. Mentally ill people can be very obnoxious, very offense and very frustrating and their mental illness is not always immediately obvious, it can be mistaken as simply the behavior of a jerk (someone who obviously has emotional issues but is not truly mentally ill). People are insulted each and every day in this forum (not infrequently by me) and it is the nature of the beast and not anything I concern myself with, unless I feel that it is an unfair fight. Responding rudely to a "jerk" is not a big deal. Usually they will either mend their ways or depart from the forum. Sometimes though the person is more than a "jerk," they are a mentally ill person, and at some point that person we all believe is an obnoxious jerk will reveal him or herself to be what they actually are. Even if one is not inclined to "ignore" jerks, at that point, they should "ignore" the mentally ill poster.

And let me point out that if two or three posters are clinically discussing the person's mental illness then it would seem obvious that they have reached the point where they recognize it.

I'm sure the folks who do this have all sorts of excuses why they do, but they don't wash. I'm also sure they don't appreciate being called out on the behavior, and particularly by someone whom they already don't like, or who they have read, on more than one occasion, insulting another A2K member. That's fine, but I can say without qualification that I have never made fun of the retarded or taunted the mentally ill, once I became aware of their disability or illness.

There is one gentlemen in this forum whose inane and offensive comments I ignored for the longest time because I thought he was moving through actual senility, once that thought formed, it was obviously cruel to engage with him on anything but a positive level. This was over two years ago though, and based on his continued postings, it seems clear to me that he is not senile, just an old fart, so I've re-engaged. I can easily imagine someone now thinking or writing "Well maybe he is senile and you're just wrong. You're engaged in the same behavior as that you are criticizing you hypocrite!" Except that this would be inaccurate. I'm not criticizing anyone for failing to recognize someone is mentally ill, or being wrong in their assessment, I'm criticizing behavior I saw which it was clear, by the behavior itself, that the people employing it knew that their target was mentally ill (or at least they definitely thought that he was). This, in my opinion, is a significant distinction.

It's quite amusing that anyone would think that this one thread among so many others was an attempt to control or micro-manage the behavior of others. Clearly, I don't hold some lofty position of moral authority in this forum, and even if I did, I wouldn't be foolish enough to think it was an authority with much force of command.

It's interesting, but this thread relates in some way to the one you started about protecting or caring about your A2K image and self-censorship as a result. I knew, and addressed the fact in my opening post, that some would read what I wrote and think I was being hypocritical or judgmental, but the topic bothered me and I felt the need to comment upon it. I've done it and people are free to react to it however they see fit. It’s what we can here.