meta-stoush
I'm a bad person, such a very bad person
There are some worthwhile thoughts on the patterns of people arguing with each other on the internet here at unfogged.
…What I really want out of an argument is clarity: I want people to know exactly what I mean, and to know exactly what they mean, and to be able to state clearly in which regards we agree and in which we disagree. I don’t like unexamined comity.
I think this attitude freaks people out on a lot of issues, particularly but not exclusively gender issues. There are areas where people think that your position on a set of issues defines you as a “Good Person” or a “Bad Person” (there are, of course, areas where that’s really true – I’m mostly thinking in this argument that people are being fuzzy in how they think about it), and they want to be on the “Good Person” side of the argument. And they see people standing roughly on the “Good Person” side of the argument (say, opposing torture), and really want to come out of any discussion affiliated with the “Good Person” side of the discussion.
Now I know that I have a terrible fixation for endless internet arguments with other people, up to and including a bit of mutual abuse. Maybe that appetite for perversity itself makes me a Bad Person, I don’t know. The pattern of internet argument that’s always infuriated me most isn’t that participants assert individual moral qualities to their opponents, Good or Bad, because that’s really only an enjoyable way of collapsing an argument that’s probably gone on too long. No, the most frustrating act of internet bastardry is the act of attributing individual goodness or badness to somebody’s willingness to keep arguing.
I mean, it’s a joyful thing to dispute. I hold that truth to be self-evident—and if you’re one of stoush.net’s rather small group of frequent readers, I think you do too. If you think like me (and if you don’t, of course, you’re a useless fucking arse-clown) you’ll agree that it’s not a moral failure to despise consensus and want to thrash out particular arguments fully, even if it means feelings get hurt. To restrain conversations to protect the egos of participants is to infantilise them.
Let’s all spend a little bit of time in the next week or two of the Federal election really getting to know the people we’re arguing with, and doing a bit of arguing with people and positions we’d probably ordinarily agree with, by sincerely and truthfully calling them arse-clowns.
That's not a flame war. THIS is a flame war
I swear, I shall bow down before any Korean high school student who ever comes here to stoush. You shall own all discussions, Korean youngsters, and I shall concede any point of disagreement. You’re quite right, of course, whatever was the matter of dispute.
Would you like lunch? A beer? Your bicycle washed? More RAM for your no-doubt already oh-so-very-leet computer? Credit for whatever bizarre role-playing game fills your evening hours between frenetic ego-destroying study sessions? Just say the word.
A group of 28 middle school students turned an online chat into a gang brawl after an escalating war of words online.
In another incident, the fight was recorded with images and videos posted online.…Hyon-P, a compound word derived from “hyonsil” (reality) and an online game term “Player Kill’s P,” is spreading among people more involved in their online lives than their real ones.
The 28 students are not the only ones who experienced Hyon-P. Two teenagers scuffled on Kangnam Boulevard, one of the most crowded areas in Seoul, last September after they got into a row on a Web site known for its members’ activeness. Their punches were recorded and uploaded on numerous Web sites, and the footage became one of the most searched-for video clips on portal Web sites.
Here is an artist’s impression of the event.
On your marks: steeeee-yoush!
The Prime Minister says the exchange between one of his MPs and the Opposition Leader Kim Beazley does not reflect well on either of them.
Bah! Let’s have a read of the language used.
Mr Beazley labelled Mr Tuckey as “weak” and the Liberal backbencher called the Labor leader a “fat so-and-so”.
“This is not about Liberals, this is about you mob,” Mr Tuckey said.
“Take your tablets mate,” Mr Beazley said.
Politics genuinely ought to be about a bit of tension and the lack of bipartisanship. Contest and inevitable conflict is the job we demand of our representatives.
(That’s why they’re so often so odd as human beings).
I’m proud, proud to see the word ‘stoush’ return to headlines and to the vocabularies of subeditors across the nation. Let’s all be part of the revival.
Amen, sing it ABC.
Firing Rockets and Dropping Bombs in Glass Houses
Let’s tempt fate, here at a site not unfamiliar with glorious embarrassing mistakes, and mockingly quote from Rafe Champion at catallaxy who with melodrama and entire disregard for actuality, barracks for the IDF side of the “two-way turkey shoot”:*
The UN has done nothing to prevent rocket attacks and raids launched from South Lebanon. The Lebanese government has similarly done nothing, while Hamas set up a state within the state to pursue their murderous campaign, using innocent people as human shields. What have the warm and tender-hearted protesters of the moment done in the past to the protest the crimes and the intentions of Hamas?
Hamas need to be eliminated from South Lebanon and if the UN and the Lebanese are not prepared to do it then the Israelis are surelyu [sic] entitled to do so themselves.
Bolding is mine. It’s a difficult thing to pick a side in such a perverse conflict, and I can only assume that getting the formal title of one of the major participants totally wrong makes it far easier.
*Tim Fischer’s words, as heard at NSW Parliament House during the launch of Paul Davey’s The Nationals.
UPDATE: edited to reflect the real world (by Jason).
Who is the laziest Stoush blogger of them all??
Tinker, Tailor, Fyodor, Lunch
According to my instructions, I left the chalk mark agreed as the ‘all clear’ signal against the bus shelter underneath the Parramatta Road footbridge, and waited for the courier to arrive. Adjusting my beret to a crisp horizontal, as is my habit, I was shaking out my umbrella and hoping that I wouldn’t have to use the fallback plan for the clandestine rendezvous, when up pulled a nasty yellow Sigma with a thin dodgy looking character at the plastic steering wheel.
Our Man In Dili
Add this blog to your bookmarks for the next little while or so.
Even if the OZ embassy is now surrounded by well-trained armed soldiers with night goggles etc., the rest of Dili appears not to have changed an awful lot.
I believe fighting is still going on and there is a lot of general lawlessness. I came across a guy who has fled his home because there were (in his words) people everywhere around his home, machete-ing each other. This was around 7:30pm. I hear the occasional gunfire in the distance and there has been the odd one much closer.
The euphoria before dark has evaporated fairly quickly.
The power is still on (in my part of town) and the phone lines and mobile phone network still work (and the internet).
I slept OK last night but tonight feels tenser than ever, particularly without the benefit of armed soldiers with night goggles outside.
Thus, I Curse Thee, Bike Thief
It is I, Liam, High Priest and Arch Witch Doctor of The Church of the Victims of Bike Theft who speaks. Hear youse!
Canberra Airport Stoush Trifecta!
The ABC uses the word:
Senator Heffernan was involved in a verbal stoush with NSW Nationals Senator Fiona Nash at Canberra Airport yesterday.
As does the Australian:
Labor says Prime Minister John Howard must discipline Senator Heffernan for a public stoush at Canberra airport yesterday in which he told Senator Nash to “blow it out her backside”.
And we can multiply our dividends upon reading the Sydney Morning Herald:
The stoush follows Senator Nash’s threats to never again put the government ahead of hr party when voting in the Senate after the Liberals welcomed Senator McGauran into their party.
Stoush! Stoush! Stoush!
UPDATE: In Steve Lewis’ editorial on AWB:
But it’s not just the stoush between the wounded Nationals and their Liberal brethren. There is the appearance of a policy vacuum after the reform helter skelter of last year.