By the time I returned, I'd kind of decided that the better way to disagree is to be cleverer and nicer than the person you're speaking to. A good writer is a writer you can enjoy disagreeing with [...]
That's a really great point, but also something that absolutely wasn't the case with him (I'd be delighted if it has changed over time, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it hasn't). Enjoying having disagreements and still being on good terms is a thing that gets absolutely destroyed when condescension gets in the way, and unfortunately, there was a lot of it in discussions in which he participated (and believe me, the persons "on the other side of it" didn't really have to be condescending at all). The thing is: At some point, discussing things with someone isn't fun when he can't accept other opinions without debating them, or worse, belittling them, or when he can't let things go. And when the fun is gone, why should one bother to initiate a discussion that often ends up the same way anyway?
I'm not going to debate any of this, because I don't see a need to defend what has happened in the past. But the point that stuck out to me is the "fun is gone" comment, and that is exactly why I stopped posting here. I know because of my abrupt departure, people have put it down to individual posts or people, but that's not really the whole picture. Basically, I found that day to day it just wasn't fun anymore. Regardless of who started what (and I'm not denying my fault here), I just got tired of defending myself when people hold onto their grudges against me, even if justified. Sometimes it felt like the bad blood between me and other posters just perpetuated my behaviour, and fueled it instead of helping. I'm not putting blame on anyone else here, I'm just saying that I don't respond well to that. Sometimes it doesn't take much to escalate a debate on the internet.
I'm not sure if I'm sticking around, but either way, I'd be happy if people I clashed with regularly would just let the past lie, and start fresh. Some of these people have already made posts about me earlier in the thread, and I don't see a need to defend myself against them either. It's in the past, and digging it up is just going to take us back to square one.
As to whether or not I've changed over time, you can judge that for yourself based on my actions from now on. But please don't let my past behaviour affect that judgement. The main reason I came back here is because I didn't like the way I left here on a bad note. I don't want to spend any time here from now on defending or explaining what happened, because then it's not fun again.
So I'd not going to argue the past, because it's irrelevant. People can blame me, I could blame them, it doesn't matter. It was over a year ago. Just think of me as an entirely new poster who just happens to be wearing BlobVanDam's glorious e-peen attached to my crotch.
Oh, I have learned a long time ago that the internet's emotional memory is like 5 minutes, at best. At least to me it's all water under the bridge, and I'd be happy to see Blob post here again.
There's really no user I wouldn't want to see again, other than that kid from 5/8 whose user name I can't remember (he liked Ulver).
rumborak
Seriously, unless you have the same avatar, or were a diehard asshole, chances are I've all but forgotten about anything that happened. And for the most part, the people I clashed with are reasonable people anyway.
The few people still on my hitlist will be considered innocent until proven guilty. But keep in mind that in the original Transformers movie, the innocent ones were still fed to the Sharkticons by the Quintessons anyway. They were all like "SPARE ME THIS MOCKERY OF JUSTICE!" then the skull head was all like "INNOCENT. FEED HIM TO THE SHARKTICONS", then that squid robot thing pulled the lever anyway, and the other guy was all like "NOOOOOO!!!!!" then all of those Sharkticon guys ravaged him, and then that giant head spun around laughing maniacally, somehow misunderstanding the legal system entirely. Then some hair metal played, and some robots fought with some other robots, then Grimlock came in and was like "ME GRIMLOCK SAY GET THEM!". My point is that everything works out in the end.
Topic: BlobVanDam animation for JR (Read 10632 times)
