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Thanks, but I think I'll ignore the situation where somebody tells me about their crushing cancer diagnosis, and I just stare awkwardly for a while, and when they ask me what the gently caress is wrong with me I tell them "I couldn't think of a totally unique take on the situation that you won't have heard before"
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Nov 30, 2022 06:50
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I will fart in a mournful yet profoundly empathetic way, like the foghorn of a distant trade ship
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Nov 30, 2022 07:04
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i simply allow my malformed brain to continue feeling nothing
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Nov 30, 2022 08:45
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General Battuta posted:Like me, personally? Are you asking me to rephrase my posts? Or just people in this situation in general. John Lee posted:Thanks, but I think I'll ignore the situation where somebody tells me about their crushing cancer diagnosis, and I just stare awkwardly for a while, and when they ask me what the gently caress is wrong with me I tell them "I couldn't think of a totally unique take on the situation that you won't have heard before"
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Nov 30, 2022 10:41
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John Lee posted:Thanks, but I think I'll ignore the situation where somebody tells me about their crushing cancer diagnosis, and I just stare awkwardly for a while, and when they ask me what the gently caress is wrong with me I tell them "I couldn't think of a totally unique take on the situation that you won't have heard before" Get a load of Siri Keaton over here.
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Nov 30, 2022 13:21
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John Lee posted:Thanks, but I think I'll ignore the situation where somebody tells me about their crushing cancer diagnosis, and I just stare awkwardly for a while, and when they ask me what the gently caress is wrong with me I tell them "I couldn't think of a totally unique take on the situation that you won't have heard before" 
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Nov 30, 2022 13:48
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John Lee posted:Thanks, but I think I'll ignore the situation where somebody tells me about their crushing cancer diagnosis, and I just stare awkwardly for a while, and when they ask me what the gently caress is wrong with me I tell them "I couldn't think of a totally unique take on the situation that you won't have heard before" Ffs all that's being said here is don't feel you need to just mouth bland niceities and that someone who has been through it would have preferred to hear gently caress Cancer because it's a very appropriate response. You're getting actual data here. Absorb it. Fit gently caress Cancer into the slot where perhaps That Sucks might have crept out instead. No one is suggesting you should know how to react. Christ, I'm getting old and I'm having too many of these conversations with friends and I can tell you they mostly want to see a real, raw reaction to the fact that death has decided to be a twat and show up early. If you are in fact a stand up dude that's there for those so afflicted, great. I'm sure it's probably hidden in there somewhere under the brittle and aging layers of reflexive edge-lord. So many of us on SA have spent years draping ourselves in ironic bullshit. It's now calcified to the point that what once served as necessary emotional protection is instead poisoning our ability to read a room and share a moment. More generally, a good friend told me the worst thing was dealing with people's embarrassment over not knowing how to react. It meant that they were avoided instead and now they were isolated as well as dying. No one wants to be a visible reminder of our shared and impending mortality. Also that blog post was good.
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Nov 30, 2022 15:12
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General Battuta posted:Mishell Baker, who probably almost no one here has read, but who was for whatever it’s worth very kind to me, has incurable cancer and wrote a very brave post about it. https://mishellbaker.com/it-turns-out-im-dying-is-a-continuum/ Thank you for sharing the blog post, I am sorry for your friend
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Nov 30, 2022 18:17
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gently caress cancer.
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Nov 30, 2022 20:36
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ClydeFrog posted:Ffs all that's being said here is don't feel you need to just mouth bland niceities and that someone who has been through it would have preferred to hear gently caress Cancer because it's a very appropriate response. Or, like, the very real, actual events I experienced where somebody would say something emotionally fraught/devastating, and like five people would have a reaction, and I would be left with nothing, and people would be like "what is up with this guy," and I would explain that the gamut of responses had been covered and I didn't want to seem insincere or schmaltzy, and my autistic rear end was gently informed that the unique quality of the response didn't matter and that it was the commiseration of any response that was important. My scenario wasn't a hypothetical, it was something that actually happened more than once, and I think I'll listen to the people that I know who have actually expressed a preference rather that some rando on the internet who happens to shout that people like me are dicks and idiots. Because if I don't, the actual response is to avoid those situations entirely because people have strongly expressed to me completely opposite and incompatible demands, and then I'll be the one crying and chewing on my fingers like a fuckin' rat, and I'd prefer to live in the world where I respond how my friends and family want me to. I'm honestly not sure why people are saying I'm being, like 'edgy?' I definitely wasn't trying to be, and it doesn't match with my understanding of anything about it, but I sure got a strong response, and it's always super weird to me how people post their opinions as OBJECTIVE FACT in this thread and get zero pushback
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Nov 30, 2022 20:50
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thread's going great right now.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:02
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I started reading Blue Remembered Earth, book 1 of Alistair Reynolds' Poseidon's Children series. Pretty interesting world so far, kind of stringing along this plot though. Interested to see where it all ends up I guess it's supposed to span a huge time frame but 2/3rds through this book it's still the same characters/time 
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Nov 30, 2022 21:04
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W-woah...
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Nov 30, 2022 21:05
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Hey, I'd post about some kind of science fiction or fantasy book I like, but everything I like has had some people post in this thread like "this book is BORING and POORLY WRITTEN" so there's no point in saying anything different, I'll just make Posting Enemies ...I mean, maybe not Between Two Fires. I think the only complaints about that one were actually phrased as opinions. edit: Aard Varkman has the right idea, I should just post about John Lee fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 21:06
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John Lee posted:Hey, I'd post about some kind of science fiction or fantasy book I like, but everything I like has had some people post in this thread like "this book is BORING and POORLY WRITTEN" so there's no point in saying anything different, I'll just make Posting Enemies Just post
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Nov 30, 2022 21:09
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John Lee posted:Hey, I'd post about some kind of science fiction or fantasy book I like, but everything I like has had some people post in this thread like "this book is BORING and POORLY WRITTEN" so there's no point in saying anything different, I'll just make Posting Enemies Consider that threads get filled with group think because people act as you are doing now. Seriously it's ridiculous to bury your own thoughts to appeal to people you've never met on an internet forum.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:11
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John Lee posted:Hey, I'd post about some kind of science fiction or fantasy book I like, but everything I like has had some people post in this thread like "this book is BORING and POORLY WRITTEN" so there's no point in saying anything different, I'll just make Posting Enemies common problem on SA - a small number of goons with a discord managed to destroy the SA board games thread similarly. post through it, don't let jerks yuck your yum.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:17
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Nov 30, 2022 21:17
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If anyone has become someone's Posting Enemy because of different book opinions, I don't even know what. I like all sorts of stupid poo poo and I bet you all do too.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:17
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I dunno if I'm in a good state to make, like a full effort post about, but I enjoyed my time with James Morrow's Towing Jehovah. A drunken disgrace of a supertanker captain is visited by an angel and given a job: God is dead, and his miles-long corpse needs to be towed through the ocean and laid to rest in the Arctic. Eventually and obviously, other people get wind of the enormous corpse and join the pilgrimage, but a lot of questions arise along the way, like "What does it mean for God to be dead" and "Does it even make sense for God to leave a colossal physical corpse?" This isn't my favorite book, or probably even in the top five hundred, but I had a good time with it. Sometimes pensive, sometimes concerned with the realities of very slowly towing a huge (semi-organic!) object halfway around the world, it's a pretty melancholic book, which I enjoy on occasion. The prose is mostly serviceable-at-best, but on the whole it's a good enough book that I keep a physical copy around.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:28
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John Lee posted:I dunno if I'm in a good state to make, like a full effort post about, but I enjoyed my time with James Morrow's Towing Jehovah. A drunken disgrace of a supertanker captain is visited by an angel and given a job: God is dead, and his miles-long corpse needs to be towed through the ocean and laid to rest in the Arctic. Eventually and obviously, other people get wind of the enormous corpse and join the pilgrimage, but a lot of questions arise along the way, like "What does it mean for God to be dead" and "Does it even make sense for God to leave a colossal physical corpse?"
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Nov 30, 2022 21:30
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HopperUK posted:If anyone has become someone's Posting Enemy because of different book opinions, I don't even know what. I like all sorts of stupid poo poo and I bet you all do too.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:30
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Harold Fjord posted:Just post HopperUK posted:I like all sorts of stupid poo poo and I bet you all do too.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:49
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anilEhilated posted:I feel that book would be a lot better without its female lead who seems to only be there to show how Rough and Manly the captain is. Apart from that, I enjoyed it. I agree. I mean, in fairness, "boat captain' is prime cultural space to be masculinity-obsessed, and it's fair to be all "I'm emotionally unavailable because, you know, I hosed up my only job and now to top off that poo poo sandwich God is Dead," but I would have preferred she either have been a stronger character or held less of a position of apparent importance. I guess she serves a purpose of Default Conversation Partner, which is a fine role to have? Gaius Marius posted:Consider that threads get filled with group think because people act as you are doing now. Seriously it's ridiculous to bury your own thoughts to appeal to people you've never met on an internet forum. HopperUK posted:If anyone has become someone's Posting Enemy because of different book opinions, I don't even know what. I like all sorts of stupid poo poo and I bet you all do too. I mean... Okay, here's an example. I'm not picking on Runcible Cat in particular, bear them no ill will, just jumped back dozens of pages and grabbed a post. Runcible Cat posted:Reading Tchaikovsky's Cage of Souls . . .The protagonist is boring, the background is thinly-sketched and the prose is basic Now, I've never read this book, but imagine I did and I enjoyed it. What am I supposed to say? How would that conversation go? Me: "Actually, I enjoyed that book. I thought the protagonist was interesting, and there were a few bits of prose I liked. Them: "Well, you're wrong. Like I said, those things in the book are bad." Me: "Two people can't have, like, legitimately different feelings about a work? It can't produce entirely different feelings because of personality differences, or somebody having a different history?" Them: "Of course that can happen! With works of legitimately arguable value. But not this one, because as I said, it's bad." Me: "But it's bad because it's boring and basic! What if I didn't experience any feelings of boredom, and something about the turns of phrase thrilled or excited me?" Them: "Well, then you can't recognize objectively bad things when you see them, which doesn't speak very well of you." and so on. Like, half of the criticisms in this thread are like this, just Objective Statements of Fact about art, the enjoyment of which is obviously 100% subjective, and if I post anything that disagrees with these Objective Facts then at least one person will be like "What a loving dumbass, I already laid out the Truth about this book" and then I have to deal with both a personal and a philosophical disagreement
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Nov 30, 2022 21:50
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John Lee posted:I agree. I mean, in fairness, "boat captain' is prime cultural space to be masculinity-obsessed, and it's fair to be all "I'm emotionally unavailable because, you know, I hosed up my only job and now to top off that poo poo sandwich God is Dead," but I would have preferred she either have been a stronger character or held less of a position of apparent importance. I guess she serves a purpose of Default Conversation Partner, which is a fine role to have? I mean that's a whole conversation you just invented. You'd say, like, 'Oh wow I didn't find that at all, I really enjoyed it'. e: I mean some people in the thread have posted that they really liked say, Hyperion, and I can't abide Dan Simmons, even the stuff from before his brain imploded. It's all good.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:54
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John Lee posted:I dunno if I'm in a good state to make, like a full effort post about, but I enjoyed my time with James Morrow's Towing Jehovah. A drunken disgrace of a supertanker captain is visited by an angel and given a job: God is dead, and his miles-long corpse needs to be towed through the ocean and laid to rest in the Arctic. Eventually and obviously, other people get wind of the enormous corpse and join the pilgrimage, but a lot of questions arise along the way, like "What does it mean for God to be dead" and "Does it even make sense for God to leave a colossal physical corpse?" Morrow's got a bunch of fun stuff in the general 'satire often incorporating religious themes' vein, including a couple more books in the Dead God Verse. I'm personally a big fan of his short story collection Bible Stories for Adults. (You also might enjoy Parke Godwin's Waiting for the Galactic Bus/Snake Oil Wars duology, which are a bit more lighthearted but similarly use a science fiction/religious lens to satirize modern culture.)
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Nov 30, 2022 21:56
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John Lee posted:then I have to deal with both a personal and a philosophical disagreement You don't, is the thing. People can have different opinions. To me, coming in and saying 'I liked it actually and here is why ______' is not a reply to the OP really anyway, it is for anyone else reading the thread. Now I have a secondary opinion and might check a thing out I wouldn't have otherwise. If the OP replies in a way non conducive to a discussion, you don't need to deal with it at all if you don't want to. Just move on to the next thing.
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Nov 30, 2022 21:56
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John Lee posted:Like, half of the criticisms in this thread are like this, just Objective Statements of Fact about art, the enjoyment of which is obviously 100% subjective, and if I post anything that disagrees with these Objective Facts then at least one person will be like "What a loving dumbass, I already laid out the Truth about this book" and then I have to deal with both a personal and a philosophical disagreement I think posting is good. Also, not posting is good. I often not post. Posting about how you don't post because other posts might be written about your post is, unfortunately, not good (this is an opinion, not a statement of fact in case that's helpful). EDIT: not posting is not as good as posting, now that I've thought about it
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Nov 30, 2022 22:01
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Kalman posted:Morrow's got a bunch of fun stuff in the general 'satire often incorporating religious themes' vein, including a couple more books in the Dead God Verse. I'm personally a big fan of his short story collection Bible Stories for Adults.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:02
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John Lee posted:
You missed the part where half the rest of the thread comes in and comments anything from "I liked it for x reason" to "I too disliked it" I do generally think it's non valid to describe most books as "bad", because almost any book has some degree of merit from some perspective; see, e.g., Chuck Tingle. OTOH the whole LitRPG genre exists which both disproves and proves my point (I think that stuff is categorically awful, but lots of people think i'm wrong, and the people who write that stuff are cashing checks, so if I'm so smart and they aren't, how come I'm not rich?) I will point out one important forum rule that informs this context; attacking a *work* is allowed. Attacking *other posters* is not. "I think book is flawed because [reason]" is the sort of thing we can talk about. "I think you're a shithead for liking x" will earn vacations. (I don't know why you like something. Maybe you're hatereading it! The reception of text is inherently subjective!) Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 22:07 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 22:04
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:
If LitRPG is so awful, then why it good when numbers go up?  (It's because I've got a brain disease, that's why)
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Nov 30, 2022 22:11
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John Lee posted:I mean... Okay, here's an example. I'm not picking on Runcible Cat in particular, bear them no ill will, just jumped back dozens of pages and grabbed a post. HopperUK posted:I mean that's a whole conversation you just invented. I don't see many posts in here saying "ding dong your opinion is wrong"
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Nov 30, 2022 22:14
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Hieronymous Alloy posted:I do generally think it's non valid to describe most books as "bad", because almost any book has some degree of merit from some perspective; see, e.g., Chuck Tingle. There's a difference between 'bad' and 'unreadable'. Very few books are 'unreadable' but plenty aren't worth the hours it would take to read them (I consider these books 'bad'). In my reading tracker I have 21 books listed as 'bad'. So not many, all things considered. The only truly unreadable book I've attempted is 'brewing up a business' by Sam Calagione the Dogfish Head Brewing guy.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:15
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NmareBfly posted:You don't, is the thing. People can have different opinions. To me, coming in and saying 'I liked it actually and here is why ______' is not a reply to the OP really anyway, it is for anyone else reading the thread. Yeah, but then I'm on record as being a dumbass to at least one person in the thread*, and if I post that I liked twenty books then at least twenty people think I'm a dumbass, and soon the entire situation becomes untenable as people dislike me more and more. I haven't gone back and surveyed, but it seems like the small majority of discussion in this thread is negatively biased, probably for reasons like this where people don't want to contradict someone who's already being negative. *this ship has already sailed, lol Hieronymous Alloy posted:I will point out one important forum rule that informs this context; attacking a *work* is allowed. Attacking *other posters* is not. "I think book is flawed because [reason]" is the sort of thing we can talk about. "I think you're a shithead for liking x" will earn vacations. I'm not certain I understand all the nuances of the distinction here - like, "I thought the book was lame as poo poo" is obviously fine, because it's talking about your interpretation. "The book did nothing for me," also fine, that's about how you personally experienced it, people are free to disagree. "I was insulted by this thing in the book" definitely fine. But "The prose was bad" is an objective fact, not an opinion, right? Not a super-descriptive one, but, like, it's not saying "The prose fell flat for me" or "My history and experiences have formed me into a person who didn't gel with this book's style," but just that it's bad, full stop. Not the same kind of fact as in the specific number of chromosomes of a honeybee queen, but an obvious fact. And if somebody 'disagrees with' objective and obvious fact, then they're either trolling or stupid, right? They're wrong, and should stop believing wrongly. I mean, barring various edge cases like having weird neurological disorders. So it seems like saying that saying a matter of opinion is actually objective fact is by default an attack on other posters? Like, I don't see how it isn't - if I'm like "Blue is a terrible color for dresses, and pleats are a lovely and stupid design choice" and somebody I know is like "...But I wear a blue dress with pleats all the time," then my self-consistent response would be "Yeah, and it's bad and you're wrong to do so," and people would reasonably conclude that I was being a self-righteous dick by talking poo poo about a matter of opinion.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:39
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Bro you overthinking poo poo like crazy my dude
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Nov 30, 2022 22:40
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John Lee posted:Yeah, but then I'm on record as being a dumbass to at least one person in the thread*, and if I post that I liked twenty books then at least twenty people think I'm a dumbass, and soon the entire situation becomes untenable as people dislike me more and more. I haven't gone back and surveyed, but it seems like the small majority of discussion in this thread is negatively biased, probably for reasons like this where people don't want to contradict someone who's already being negative. If I post 'I just read Snow Crash, what a pile of poo poo' it is understood that this is my opinion.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:41
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John Lee posted:I mean... Okay, here's an example. I'm not picking on Runcible Cat in particular, bear them no ill will, just jumped back dozens of pages and grabbed a post. Actually no, I'd be curious about what you got from it that I didn't. Why do you think I (as your randomly-picked example) have the opinion that because I think a book is boring anyone else's opinion on it is worthless? Especially since that post is me explicitly asking for other opinions? We're all just chucking our subjective opinions out there. Some people may agree, some people may disagree, some people may even be arseholes about disagreeing and have to be told they're being arseholes, that's the internet for you, and some people may think hey I liked that too, I'll keep an eye out for the next thing that poster says they like even if they don't bother to say so. If you don't want to post you don't have to, you don't have to invent long conversations with people as an excuse not to.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:48
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I cannot remember the name of a single poster ITT who liked something I thought was bad.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:49
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anilEhilated posted:Does he get better at writing women? Haven't read it in a few years, so... maybe? Probably not?
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Nov 30, 2022 22:53
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Gaius Marius posted:Bro you overthinking poo poo like crazy my dude Same but I super appreciate you" just post"ing it. This helps understand how it might make others feel when I rag on dumb poo poo they like.
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Nov 30, 2022 22:58
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