On the note of childishness, I'm not entirely fond of misdirection, so I might as well point it out - I never even implied that Ryu's post was antagonistic, or that a lack of polite form indicated a post was "childish". What does indicate such, among many things, is a blatant lack of consideration for the implications or effect of one's post in any conversation.
On the note of childishness, I'm not entirely fond of misdirection, so I might as well point it out - I never even implied that you implied that Ryu's post was antagonistic, so I'm not sure why you felt the need to respond as though I, or anyone else for that matter, had accused you of saying otherwise. You did dismiss the majority of posts in this thread as "childish" shortly after you criticised me for not being perfectly polite in my opening response to Seifer, so I presumed the charges were related; I apologise for making the assumption. In any case, tell me, what in any of Bandito's posts in this thread is a "personal attack", as you have claimed elsewhere in the thread? He opened this thread by pointing out statements Seifer made and suggesting that he should back those statements up in real life. How is that a personal attack, or for that matter, even particularly antagonistic? Seifer has responded to this by flaming him in virtually every post he has made in this thread, ironically while accusing Bandito of "flaming." The vast majority of what Bandito has done in response has been to turn most of Seifer's statements in on themselves, and in some cases he has actually given him some genuinely helpful advice that, if followed, would have saved a Seifer a lot of grief ("grow a pair," "If you do not want people to see a statement of yours, DO NOT POST IT"). Again, I do not see this as particularly antagonistic. So who exactly is being "childish"? Seifer could just abstain from posting in this thread if he wanted to, or he could simply have politely declined the offer, both of which would have provided Bandito with absolutely no ammunition for an argument and thereby saved Seifer a lot of grief.
Moreover, just because a post is not phrased as politely as possible, as many others in this thread are not, does not mean that it is created with "a blatant lack of consideration for the implications or effect" it may have. Should people be required to tiptoe around expressing themselves just because a poster has shown himself or herself to be incapable of taking criticism? There's no rule on the internet sparing people's feelings. Indeed, sometimes causing offence is the best way to induce a positive change in another individual. Certainly, if it is done often enough for precisely the same reason, an intelligent individual will be able to see the common thread in cases in which he is offended. There is a very common trend in the exchanges in which I have seen Seifer participate: someone disagrees with him; he takes offence and begins to hurl insults; he is both mocked and presented with serious advice for doing so; he responds to both with further insults; repeat cycle until he feels need to leave forum. This is effectively how it proceeded on TLS, and it appears to be how it proceeded here (although I have admittedly not read all posts in this thread). Life essentially presents us with the same lesson repeatedly until we learn from it. At some point Seifer is going to have to learn deal with honest disagreement, or even a fair bit of mockery, without utterly blowing up as he has done here in thread after thread here. I only learnt to deal with such matters through a process of baptism by fire on the Internet; thus I cannot see antics like the ones in this thread as particularly harmful in the long term.
That said, I don't doubt that Bandito almost certainly doesn't have such noble goals in mind with his posts; he had seen little reason to believe that Seifer would respond to this thread by doing anything other than flaming him and demanding his removal, as he predictably did. But how is he being the "childish" one here by laughing at Seifer's constant temper tantrums or giving Seifer the genuinely helpful advice to "grow a pair"? You stated in your OP that he was likely to become an "anti-social, delusional sociopath" if people continued laughing at such behaviour from him. Don't you think you might be engaging in the slippery slope fallacy, or that that's a little harsh? Bandito seems intelligent enough to be able to tell the difference between laughing at someone's constant temper tantrums on the internet and the behaviour of a remorseless socipoath. Why does he have a social responsibility to treat Seifer politely in the off-topic forum, where Seifer can just ignore it?
In short to sum up my actual feelings on the matter (from elsewhere):These people are very slippery and easy to be antagonized by if you don't recognize their petty tactics, so I really can't totally blame Seifer. He's probably learned a lesson from it, but such lessons can be learned in a far more civil manner, so I see no truly viable justification for the attackers in that thread.
I have no doubt that if Seifer had taken the high road and not responded here, they would have continued following him around antagonizing him in every thread, which was having visible effects on how irritable he was with other members. To which I can also not wholly blame him - he was feeling a desperate need to prove himself after being repeatedly shat upon by this mob.
I'm fairly certain he hasn't learned a lesson at all, since as far as I am aware he has accepted no responsibility for engaging in precisely the kind of behaviour for which he has criticised others. He could easily have defused this
entire situation by admitting that he overreacted in various threads and that he had often done things which he had criticised others for doing. Had he done that, I am thoroughly convinced that the vast majority of people who have been criticising him would have accepted that there was little chance of further manipulation resulting in the desired response, and therefore would have simply given up responding to him.
You speculate that people "would have continued following him around antagonizing him in every thread," yet fail to provide a single example of this alleged antagonism. I have reviewed most of Bandito's posts toward Seifer in the last several weeks, and the vast majority are considerably
less antagonistic than any post in this thread, and simply consist of him rebutting his points. There are a few that could be considered as questionable, but Seifer has rebutted to Bandito with language at least as severe, so I can see no particular grievous offence in these cases. guitar_dudester you might have a point with, but seriously, one person is not a "mob," as you claimed in the quoted section and have claimed elsewhere in this thread. I can't even find anyone else who posted anything questionable in this thread and also posted between the two times this place has been linked on TLS. Perhaps there are users I am simply unaware of whose post history I have not searched, but in any case I am simply responding to the evidence which I have reviewed.
In summary, what I take issue with in all of your above characterisations, and the primary reason I have written such a lengthy rebuttal, is your implication that people are being in any way "childish" by responding to Seifer's constant flaming with anything other than politeness, or that "almost no one in this thread has demonstrated" the ability "to conduct [themselves] on the internet." Certainly it is not
nice for people to respond to his poorly conceived arguments by mocking them, but as far as I'm aware there's no rule that people have to be
nice here; just that they have to refrain from flaming, which the vast majority of responses in this thread have done by every operative definition with which I'm familiar. It may be regrettable if Seifer chooses to leave the forum because he feels he has been unfairly treated in this thread and elsewhere; however, in taking offence at behaviours in which he himself has engaged on numerous counts all across this forum, he is the only one whom I can consider to have been behaving "childishly." Certainly, you can feel free to criticise Bandito and others for driving him off when this is a forum primarily presented to hacking projects. However, that is not what you have done here; you have directly insulted their maturity instead. I find this to be highly questionable.
edit: I should add that, on rereading this thread further, I suspect we may have completely different operational definitions of the word "antagonistic."
