With all of this, if you want to take issue with me being below the perfect ideal, you can. I respond here not to try to climb back on some pedestal, but because I see what I'm describing here as important distinctions that you (and others) are clearly missing.
This was literally the first thing I addressed
https://forums.realgm.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=64&t=2369735&start=260If you're to ignore my reply to address other people's low hanging-fruit, I'd ask you not pretend I did not directly engage the thing you are saying was "missed" just because you didn't address the reply:
"Overthinking Basketball" pays off "Thinking Basketball" puns the original name while also summarising a primary criticism of his work: they addition of assumptions without justification.
That which works on multiple levels tends to draw more engagement, so there is function to this even if you think humor is not worthwhile inofitself. "Gleeful negativity" is not inherently problematic, and I find it paticularly not so here. As a powerful figure who millions treat as an academic, extra engagement and a little fun(and a lot of saved syllables) calling attention to Ben Taylor's work doing something which, at least in Heej's opinion(and mine), is vey much anti-intellectually rigorous, seems perfectly reasonable; a societal good even.
At any rate, if you want to meaningfully progress this thread(not the literal thread here) you've started, focusing on the effects of "gleeful negativity" or whether Ben's work really does "overthink basketball", seems like a far more productive route to me then telling a bunch of other people "i understand you want to appy that standard on me, but that is not the point".
Doctor MJ wrote:OhayoKD wrote:Doctor MJ wrote:I'd ask you to remember that that's what I've been trying to do as you mock me.
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Laughing at an idea you propose is not the same as mocking you
Not as different as you think.
Listen, from a moderating perspective, degrees of directness matter. A moderation team has to decide what degrees they will tolerate and what they won't, and the more you try to crack down on the implicit, the more you realize you the slipperiness of pragmatic communication. Realistically we can crack down on explicit behavior and try to hold a line of being nice and respectful, but that's about it.
But if Person A says something sincere, and Person B responds by making a show of being amused by how wrong they think the other person is, it's naive to think that Person A won't take that as insulting.
Person A may feel a way about it, but I'd say that's just the price of business in the marketplace of ideas. There is merit to encouraging focus on arguments and not people in most cases. I do not think there is merit to protecting ideas, and I think people presenting ideas should be expected to accept that people can feel how they feel about said ideas, and express their opinions on said ideas honestly.
OhayoKD wrote:and isn't meaningfully different from this:
I can acknowledge being a bit triggered by the post Game 7 responses, and the reason more than anything else is that it was a Game 7 in a 7 game series where hot/cold shooting had everything to do with the difference between the 1st & 2nd halves. Minnesota EARNED their win without question, but in terms of people pontificating about "things they knew" ahead of time, it makes me snort.
Think I covered the rest with my previous reply.
How is it different? Let's count the ways:
1. He was making a statement in response to me about something I specifically said, I was talking about a trend I was noticing more broadly.
You being vague and including more people does not strike me as "kinder" and is frankly less productive than Heej focusing on a specific concept.
2. He was responding to me making a factual statement, while I was talking about people taking a victory lap over others.
He clearly disagrees with that statement being factual, but sure, if we take voicing your thoughts on opinions as an offense, you can say "they started it".
3. He specifically chose to use the verbiage "Laughing my F***ing A** Off" as an immediate response to what I said, while I only used the word "snort" after explaining the details of what I was taken aback by.
Both denote laughter, you're just being more novel-ly about it. Heej also explained the details of what took them back with far more specify so there's that.
And why are you missing it? I'd say because you're used to internet norms that make you feel like I'm being dense when I object to them. When I say "you wouldn't say this to my face", there's admittedly a lot that goes into that, but a critical aspect of internet text conversation is that people have come to see things that would clearly be seen as instigations for a physical fight in person but on the internet - where that's not possible - people have come to think it's normal conversation that no one has any business objecting to.
"Overthinking basketball" would not be considered "instigating fight worthy" nor would Heej laughing out loud and/or using LMAO irl. What I'm willing to say in real life is largely much stronger than what I say here because this board is far stricter in terms of conversation than actual irl is.
In actual irl Heej could flat out say "that's dumb" or even "you're dumb" for saying this, and assuming his timbre isn't too harsh, you making a big fuss would read to most people as defensive. There are contexts where addressing you that way would be problematic, but in normal conversation without any hierarchies or strings attached, you would be considered the abnormal party, not Heej.
The reality is that literally everything that would be disrespectful in person is also disrespectful in text, and us getting used to those disrespectful tones is something that goes right along with us being more interested in finding a player/coach/etc to mock after (or during) a game instead of focusing on the actual nuts and bolts of the play itself.
Reality is making fun of multi-millionare athletes is fun, that's why most basketball fans will sometimes do it. And again, you are the one in this thread who is doing the most to sidestep basketball discussion. There was plenty of basketball in the comment you replied to from Heej, and "Ovethinking basketball" does function as a prompt to discuss basketball more. Instead you wanted to gesture at some societal thing without actually exploring it beyond your initital impressions. So here we are.
The most noteworthy exception that I saw? The Thinking Basketball videos. There you specifically had a guy focusing on basketball details cranking out content rapidly. Not saying Ben's perfect or that he's the only one doing good stuff, but it's a stark contrast between what he's focused on and what's being focused on in here currently, and that can't help but make me raise my eyebrows because:
a) He came from here.
b) He's getting referenced here by people making mocking statement ("Overthinking Basketball").
c) I'm encountering people here who are talking like they know basketball far better than everyone else.
This is why I say to people: If you can do what he's doing but better, you should go do it.
Also addressed previously, but again, Ben Taylor's opinions have given him a platform and power. If society is working properly, responsbiliy, expectations, and criticism should scale accordingly.
The volume of content he is producing does not actually address the criticism here, nor would the time he spends on the subject("many a academic has spent excessive time on a subject only not actually gleam something useful for the perspective they are positing or exploring).
It is good for Ben he was willing to do the work to get his platform, it is not germane to whether he should or should not be subject to "gleeful negativity". Neither is whether he came from this forum(frankly i find internet-space tribalism unusual, but emotional attachments form on the internet too I guess).
There is also a benefit to projecting confidence in your takes tonally, and again, the approach Heej is taking is pefectly normal in "irl conversation", specifically those surrounding sports.
But when I see people taking these in-your-face victory laps, that's not what I see. Oh, folks may be right where I'm wrong on particular things, but if this is their touchdown celebration, they aren't going anywhere with that knowledge, and nor are they supporting a community that will help others to get to that point.
Speculative, and so far, you haven't connected the dots here. What even is "going anywhere" in the first place. If its getting paid for content like Ben Taylor is, or if it's getting work with professional nba or wnba teams...well that's already happened for members of the "new wave" of Realgm, so exhibiting "gleeful negativity" may not actually be as counter-productive as you presume.
When this place becomes a place where we see each other as rivals rather than comrades, we learn less about the actual game, and that sucks.
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Are we learning less about the actual game though? Was the value od DHO's, and what is and isn't a horn whatever, standard conversation in the good old days where everyone was everyone else's comrade? I think you're prematurely assuming that which yields emotional comfort automatically yields superior practical results. Competition has it's perks, even when it doesn't involve a ball.
What are we even doing?
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