dawnbreak wrote:
well said Thoreau, if this turns into the almaright v's dogsmilk show I'll be less inclined to visit.
I think you are both decent guys but dragging personal beefs from another forum to continue the same old agrument is a bit immature, no?
Perhaps we could set up a subforum just for you two and we could take bets on who would win...I could make some money

Believe me, you really needn't. I've said my piece and I'm not interested in repeating the past, redoing subjects that have been done to death or being drawn into a repetition of old arguments thatshould be laid to rest. I could predict everything that will be said and none of it will be anything new. Unlike Spinal Tap it's not something you want lots of repeat viewings of. Stagnating in the same pond is not the way forward.
In retrospect, I think I pushed myself into a corner on the DIF. HD was the first subject I posted on there and because I know more about the subject than the average man on the street (though still a tiny fraction of the enormous subject) I kinda got eternally drawn into it, particularly when you see things being said that are flat out wrong and there's pro-Nazis all over the place it feels sort of compelling to start wading in. What Andy said right at the beginning sort of resonates because in the end you end up letting yourself be pushed into a role by other people. You're playing the game of constantly indulging people and fueling the fire. In the early days it was interesting because a good debate should stimulate you to find out more things and I went off and found out about things. In the end, I was posting on autopilot because I'd heard it all before. So then you have to ask yourself, why the fuck am I doing this? What is it achieving? If I'm not getting anything out of it, why am I still posting the same replies to the same repeating posts years later? I could write posts pages long about what I think is just methodologically wrong with HD straight off the top of my head. So haven't I done that now?
Then the thought occurs that a lot of this stuff turns into man geek stuff. Beyond people who have a political agenda on whatever subject, it strikes me it degenerates into these obsessive wars. On one hand there's discussion about whatever topic and what people think about it, on the other it turns into an obsessive pursuit. The Holocaust, 911, Kennedy, the moon landings, whatever - it becomes a kind of ongoing, neverending battle that will run and run and run. Now I'm a bugger for that because I can be very argumentative. But then I think you have to take on board it's about as productive as a Come Dine With Me marathon and internet arguments do get old. I think the DIF was bad for me because it became The House Of Arguments that came to define the experience. Worse, you get people who are determined to start on the same topics over and over and over (that's not a pop at amaralsright btw, i was thinking of other people on a variety of topics), but you become exactly like them because you leap in over and over and over. One one hand I'd look at someone like tinyint or hadaka jimmy and think why are they so obsessed with banging on about Holocaust denial or why Hitler was wonderful like posting it constantly on the DIF means shit or will ever achieve anything, on the other I was essentially becoming the same by behaving reactively. Their obsession becomes your obsession.
Re-evaluating I've come to the conclusion that if you want to move out of that position, it's best to choose debates that are defined more along the lines of
well I don't get that, is there an answer? as opposed to
no! that could not have happened! - So like with the Holocaust I've kind of figured if people are starting out from an entrenched denial position, it's probably best to leave them to it unless it's in some arena solely dedicated to that because arguing with a view that's fixed to begin with isn't going to achieve anything. It's a fascinating subject, but not fascinating if it's just a debunkathon - you're not actually discussing anything, just arguing you know there will be no resolution even if you carry on for ten years. So where I'm at now, I really want to debate things that aren't starting from a pre-ordained (never)finishing point. Without meaning to sound arrogant, I know more about the Holocaust than Amaralsright does (by that I mean I won't learn anything from him or hear anything I haven't already), I know exactly what he thinks, I know exactly what I think about what he thinks - so what is there to discuss? What is there to gain?
To be clear, I have no beef, nor am I intending to continue anything that as far as I'm concerned is ancient history there's no point in revisiting anyway...that's assuming it ever happened of course. Who's to say all those old threads weren't faked?
If push comes to shove, I'll go back to the DIF and take the piss out of tinyint LOL.