First of all, thanks for your thoughts.
Quoting
amberlita (view post)
like having to wade through these inane spats to get to the stuff I find genuinely interesting to read
I wish the overall argument that ensued had been briefer, but in my view, my criticism, and many of the points I've raised in this discussion, are not "inane."
Quoting
amberlita (view post)
a number of people here are able to engage with him without it devolving into a forum scrap.
If others prefer not to criticize Irish for whatever reason, that is their prerogative. As I mentioned, I also can't afford to frequently douse myself in temporary misery, so I can't call out everything that is objectionable to me. I thought this instance was irritating and egregious, and I had the clarity on hand to address it, so I did. I'm assuming that sweepingly blaming the "forum scraps" on the folks who have have opposed Irish in past arguments — not saying you're doing this — seems too facile a summary (given, for instance, the examples I've linked to here and in my other post, among other complicating factors).
I'm not arguing that your point here is without merit, though. However, I'm hesitant to assume that
all of his skirmishes — in which his writing style abuts against various dispositions — should be connected to this idea that folks are inexplicably failing to politely endure what may have been, depending on the situation, his unfair or problematic communication.
Again, I know this isn't your point — you're wisely noting that there might be missteps on both sides, or that Irish may not always be to blame for the "scraps." Valid point. I'm just taking this opportunity to share my own thoughts. Of course, sometimes reactions are warranted. You'd have to go case by case. Peace is always better, but some of his posts — the condescending, carelessly worded, or combustible ones — don't always lend themselves to peace, so I can imagine why some people get offended or miffed (this is not to say that there is no situation in which Irish's actions can be defended, or that there haven't been excesses on
both sides before, or that Irish has never received unfair treatment, etc.).
Quoting
amberlita (view post)
I'm not defending Irish or his posting style.
Understood and, insofar as his problematic posts are concerned, appreciated
(I'm carefully wording this because, of course, I don't believe all of Irish's contributions to this forum are without value).
Quoting
amberlita (view post)
You did put a lot of thought and care into your original post. But you also put subtle digs. […] you dressed up some insults on him (the dig about his obsession with his forum reputation is obvious to me a euphamistic attempt to call him a loser) and when he responds badly it's all "Irish won't respond to my argument".
Given what you're saying here, I'd like to address this (your "call him a loser" claim). I will accept that as a potential implication of my post: I'm sorry for that, Irish. It was not my intention. Also, Irish, I'll go ahead and apologize for any unfairness or missteps made in this thread or any other thread that irritated or offended you. I'm also sorry for any aspects of my posts that upset or irritated
anyone.
While I do not think that euphemistic reading being shared here is necessarily "obvious," I won't deny its validity as a potential interpretation (more on this in my third paragraph).
I'm not going to arrogantly state that there's no room for improvement in my posts, or that they are magically free of indelicacies or harshness. However — and there's a distinction here — as I said before, I do not regret making my justified criticism in the first place, nor do I regret choosing to defend it. The term of address — "twenty-nothing" — was unambiguously insulting, and Teen Vogue's attempt at offering its readership different, thoughtful content shouldn't have been met with ipso facto condescension.
Moreover, I also think any perceived weaknesses in my transmission should first be viewed in the context of the discussion and the way it flowed. For instance, Irish carelessly dropped absurd stuff like
"I don't give a shit, bro" (a gross harbinger of the dismissive responses to come) and that's when I thought it necessary to more accurately describe his original remarks as "stupid" (this inadvertently supplied him with his next distraction).
I will not dismiss the possibility that I could have, or should have, softened aspects of my posts (the "speculative reading" of his comments, for instance).
However, I also don't believe that anything in my posts actually precluded Irish from acknowledging the severity of a patently clear error. I mean, you can do both (complain about my transmission and thoughtfully acknowledge your own error). After some of his recent posts in this thread, I suspect the resistance to acknowledging the error has a lot to do with pride. Said error was still given careful, considered treatment within my first post; the silliness of the remarks he made in
his post, which I quoted (I also could have quoted more; check his post), ought to have spoken volumes. Yet his first response was immediately disappointing, and then there were all the others that followed.
Feel free to criticize any awkwardness in the execution of my posts — that's only fair — but I don't think it makes sense to use such complaints as a means of evading a legitimate criticism. I think he latched onto things, like rightfully calling his remark "stupid," in order to deflect the criticism at hand. This, to me, was transparent.
Again,
I want to stress that my intention was never to sublimate a "loser" accusation into that sentence about a "message board career." I apologize if people detected such implications and if they seemed pronounced. That was not my intention. I do not think Irish is a loser, stupid, worthless, etc. I never intended to indicate he was a "loser," or anything like that, in any of my posts. The "??" I used was because I actually still don't quite get why Irish once wanted to delete everything he had written on here (I didn't look far enough into the context). The idea of mass deletion in and of itself is not inherently silly, nor can I say Irish's reasons (which I don't know anything about) were silly. As I said before, his overall contributions to this forum are not negligible.
There's no shame in caring about your forum posts. I mean, I fastidiously edit almost everything I write because I'm so anxiously concerned about getting my meaning just right (and I still end up failing sometimes). The "message board career" was meant to suggest a careful or ardent attachment to one's online contributions, and it's therefore a term that also applies to myself and my attachment to
my posts and my concerns about my own writing style. But it was not meant to say that such an attachment is inherently bad or risible. I used that term to raise the idea that he'd privilege the usual tenor of his specific contributions — the forcefully stated, merciless style he uses sometimes — at the expense of a more critical examination of his own posts.
I explained why I think he's fussily concerned with his posts (again: I am, too, in my own way), and how, in his case, that has negatively manifested when he, say, lashes out at users that interrupt what I suspect is his desired flow of infallibility.
In other words, I was anticipating a rebuttal wherein Irish aggressively dismissed my claims. I anticipated this because past events have made me believe that he would do so, that he's fussy about his message board reputation, and that he wants to maintain a sustained version of his occasionally declamatory, intransigent, online voice.
I had reason to suspect that he prefers to think of himself as unerring and that this would color his response to me, as it seems to have coloured his responses to others in specific situations in the past. So, I expected he would value these aspects of his writing more than the idea of deigning to admit an error. The "message board career" comment was also meant to invoke how,
over the years and in different ways, Irish has intermittently but problematically leaned into his style. None of this is meant to suggest a "loser," a mean-spirited and inapplicable term I can't recall using even in other contexts, but rather the hazards of his elected approach. Again,
my use of words like "career" and "fussy" referred to his seemingly intense valuing of his own style style/posts, which is not inherently bad or even that unusual. At the same time, I was predicting he'd go too far by choosing to honour the idea that his style was unassailable — by deflecting, dismissing — instead of acknowledging his error. I was expecting a privileging of the ego over reason and decency (this is not to say this is what Irish always does, but that for some reason — perhaps wrongheadedly — I preemptively expected it to crop up here, in this situation)
Condescension and intense, no quarter, uncharitable barrages of opinion-as-fact amounts to a poor way to even semi-regularly communicate with people. My vehemence here (or in a few other situations with other users, wherein something offended me) is not comparable to the excesses of Irish's style, which encompasses not just this one argument
but, in different ways, many posts over the years (here's other, more recent examples — here and here [the latter being, as with the blow-up in response to [ETM], a rather poor response to jests/needling from another user]). Distinctions matter:
My own heated words were about the latest consequence of his occasionally heedless writing style — the ignorant remarks about Duca and Teen Vogue — which I carefully outlined. I earnestly defended my view in this thread; he did not effectively address the criticisms. By making the "message board career" comment at the top of my post, I was hoping to preemptively steer him away from that sort of behaviour, but perhaps that was an ill-advised move. Otherwise, I think my post was mostly carefully worded, and the criticism concerning his odious comment about Duca and Teen Vogue more than warranted a reasonable response.
Again, in this situation, the way he latched onto imperfections, ostensible or otherwise, and used these to dismiss a clear point came across to me — and still does — as a deflection. The fact that he later returned to this thread, and repeatedly doubled down on the very thing I was criticizing him about, revealed that he was ardently interested in amplifying — not just evading — the repellant qualities of his remarks about Duca and Teen Vogue.