Gus may have left, but he is not forgotten. Overly sensitive? Yes. Loved by all? Possibly. Reviled by Jerri Blank? Undoubtedly. This is to continue the discussion in the EE thread. </creole ned>
He quit the forum because of people poking fun at his overly-pedantic "___ isn't funny because ____" posts? Seriously? I guess some people really do bruise easily.
Well, this is better than being known only as That Guy That Spams the Bargains Thread. I think. On the subject of Gus, I think he should resume posting because while he may have been guilty of a bit of over-analysis at times, he was also an interesting and articulate poster and such people should always be welcome here.
I thought he quit because someone claimed he resembled Kip. edit: I wish he'd return, too. I found his camera & photography advice to be quite valuable.
I've loved Gus longer than any of you, since I was on the official Heroes of Might and Magic boards and Gus was getting death threats along with anyone else associated with HOMM IV and, er, the Forge. And I say it's wicked of him to deprive us of his telescope photos. What's wrong with a little pedantry? Better than being known as the little pissant without taste or discrimination who likes everything.
You overgeneralize. The sufficiency of the pedantry is dependent solely upon the extent of correction necessitated by the erring post, I suggest.
Probabilistic analyses indicate the sufficiency of a little pedantry to be a four-sigma event, and therefore presumed not relevant.
I don't nor didn't want him gone either, but nobody "made" him leave. He made himself leave. He could have taken the jokes made about him as, you know, jokes as well as friendly criticism and not insisted on derailing the image and gif threads with Angry Cat replies incessantly. Instead he flipped out about it and finally left, I guess. That did not have to be the only other option. It felt a little like he didn't really respect our perspective on it. I am an asshole and I used to be far worse, but I realized (upon reflection and listening to legit criticism about me from others) that that kind of shit gets old and I have tried to change my ways.
I agree. And they are. If there's an issue here, it's on Gus's end, not on ours. A good-natured joke about one's posting style isn't unwelcoming, it's what constitutes acceptance around here. :)
When some of my posts resulted in many lemons being thrown at my head, I found it best to make lemonade from them.
Things that are probably not going to result in the return of Gus Smedstadt, No.673 in an occasional series: Making threads to discuss specifically whether or not he's a thin-skinned crybaby and how we would totally have handled it differently if we'd been him.
It is what this sub-forum is for. Talk of Gus, and not shit that people overheard, was the main conversation in the EE thread above. This conversation is happening, this thread is not encouraging it. ETA: And if people in the community are talking about someone, I think it would be better to have that in the open so that member can see/read it instead of it being buried in some random thread.
Agreed. Transparency is always preferable in these things. If Gus thought everyone held him in disdain this open discussion has shown otherwise. There are people here who have known each other for 10+ years and that brings with it a level of familiarity. Would he stop talking to "real life" friends if they started goofing on each other at the Thursday night poker game? He's going to have to grow a thick skin to deal with some of the jokes; like how jerri has come to own the humorless lesbian moniker rather than let it bother her.
This is stupid, and patronizing to boot. He doesn't need advice on how to be an adult from this community as demonstrated by his ability to walk away from it, and that response when he found something distasteful in the way people treated him is actually exactly what he should have done according to his own values. It's certainly preferable in my opinion to turning into a Gus minstrel show* that shows he's willing to overcome x hazing ritual that obviously bothers him for real. Note that he didn't even do the dramatic farewell, he just left, which is textbook classy behavior and indeed leaves the door open for changing your mind if people just leave it alone and stop judging and metajudging his conduct on a weekly basis. You want an in-joke, fine, but realize it comes with a cost. This is an exercise in appeasing community conscience, and it's embarrassing. Not everyone needs to fit in the same way. *Note: this is not the same as genuinely changing your mind over what bothers you or what you agree with.
I love Gus, he starts out with great marksmanship and fairly good other stats, too, though he is a bit expensive.
Alternatively: A bunch of people are sad that a guy they have enjoyed being part of Internet communities for years with up and left without so much as a good-bye, and wanted to talk about it.
Yeah, that's why at post #1 it already had behavior modification commentary at its root. "Without so much as a goodbye" implies that someone who feels he is being harassed owes the harassers (in his eyes) an explanation. Obviously I don't share his values in this respect, but there's a different between empathy and the pretense of empathy as a social ritual. Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference, but as someone who is pretty conflicted on the whole thing I had no problem picking it out in this case. Why is it so bad to just want to be left alone? Why is it so bad to not give a damn enough to be lured back by a temporary lull in hostility?
Of course he doesn't "owe" any of us anything. I was snarking with the intent to illuminate that a bunch of people -- myself included -- aren't approaching this as a competition or a way to "win" against Big Ol' Prissypants Gus or anything, but just kinda bummed that a guy they liked having around decided to stop coming around. [Full disclosure: I teased Gus personally at least once about his tendency to walk all over a joke with his particular brand of overanalysis. It was done with no malice, and I don't feel particularly bad about it because I've given and taken much, much worse here and elsewhere and I certainly wasn't aware that it was a sore spot with him.]
Yes, hazing is a ritual prized by groups precisely because it engenders durability and a sense of uniqueness in the community, but you don't get that without some painful exclusivity. That's why hazing doesn't go away, ever, and that's why it's always the rejected/rejecting person who's at fault when perceived from within the group. The point is that snark or ignorance wasn't a defense of the innocence of people's actions then, and it's not one now. It's an explanation, yes, but that's not the same thing. Some people just opt out when these things happen, and there's not a happy resolution when the processes that make social groups cohesive get put in front of everyone. Sometimes people change their minds and actions when these things happen, and sometimes they have a nice group hug to reassure themselves that everything is just like it was before someone's feelings were hurt. Obviously, I'm not speaking as someone outside of the process, and ordinarily I would just stay the fuck out because there's no profit in being that guy when the outcome is predetermined. But I think it's good to be clear on things every now and then.
This is pretty much how I feel. I liked the guy and even though I found his humor analysis after every few posts in the various pic/gif threads to be pretty annoying, I didn't want him gone because of it. But it wasn't my decision, so whaddayagonnado.
I've known Gus for years, going way, way back to The Motley Fool days where I first met him (and I believe Rimbo, for those that know him) probably a decade ago. I initially found Gus odd, because he is very intelligent, is extremely insightful about game design and other topics, and he's highly articulate. He rarely (if ever) engages in flame fests. He has a really dry sense of humor that, for lack of a better term, I'd describe as "British" (although he's not). To some degree he's a nearly ideal forum participant. We were friendly enough that we started playing City of Heroes with some of my friends and using voice chat. To put this in perspective, take your worst stereotype of online gaming, slurs and expletives and all, and crank the gain up to 200%. That was what playing with me and one of my friends was like. "HEY FUCKTARD, WHY'D YOU AGGRO THOSE MOBS? KNOCK IT OFF!" "NO SHIT YOU DUMB BITCH, JESUS, WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS GUY?" Gus: "Hmmm..." Gus stopped playing with us for some reason. I didn't even think much about it, I just thought he was busy, so one day was like "Hey dude, how come you never group up with us anymore?" And he politely said that our behaviour was off-putting and so chose not to join up anymore. He didn't make a big deal out of it, didn't berate us, didn't say "Fucking grow up", he just left since it wasn't fun anymore. Oh. Color me a little embarrassed at that point. I realized, hey, that type of frathouse hazing isn't cool to everyone and, check this out, it's not because someone else is humorless. It is supreme bullshit to act in a manner that someone else finds offensive and then make it their problem by hiding behind the excuses of "You have no sense of humor" and "I was just kidding!" I say this as the guy that used to use those excuses all the time. Because at the extreme you get guys defending their actions with the dreaded "politically incorrect" label. Some people do not enjoy insults-as-affection -- oh, hey, no shit! But I found this very difficult to understand for a long time, since among all my college friends, this was how we interacted. No one took it personally when they were told "HAH I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU BOUGHT THESE PIECE OF SHIT CERWIN-VEGA SPEAKERS!" because they'd just respond "IT'S ONLY BECAUSE THEY'RE THE ONLY SPEAKERS LOUD ENOUGH TO DROWN OUT YOUR MOM'S SCREAMS WHILE SHE'S RIDING ME YOU LITTLE BITCH" And it's not like Gus is alone in this, there are a ton of people like this -- in fact, I would hazard most people are like this, but forums like this self-select for people who enjoy those types of jovial, negative interactions. Even if we don't perceive it as trash talking, teasing someone about something they said or how they're perceived can tweak people. Point being, Gus isn't humorless, he's just got a different sense of humor than some of us here, just like the LPers do, just like YOUR MOM DOES.
So you're saying that you turned him into a Juggalo, and now he's following ICP on the road? YOU MONSTER.
I'm going to point out that you wouldn't have this thread if you ignorant cockmongers were just a little more sensitive and less quick to name-calling and mean-spirited jokes.
