PG: PIZZA PARTY! First 3 Game winning streak of the season

[Chalky_White]

Barnes must be an insane fantasy player.

yep, so happy i drafted him, he is a top 10 player in terms of fantasy ranks

Drafting him in the 4th round of my Yahoo league was the easiest decision i've made. Could tell with how Darko was hyping him that he would be given a huge role off the bat.

[lobosloboslobos]

I do dislike cultish behavior. I dislike factions and I typically will place myself outside of them if they are about "us" versus "them". I particularly dislike the idea that we are one great big happy family. We are here in a hyper-object behaving like an integral part of it. The hyper-object will persist no matter who is here typing. It would be a mistake to think that we owe anything to it. I is here to exploit the fact that each one of us is an observer where eyes have the means to secure revenues.

Hey mrdressup, although I recently challenged what I perceive as your intense and almost at times sociopathic negativity, I do appreciate this latest articulation of your unique outlook on this shared virtual space we inhabit called the Raptors board. In an earlier post you talked about us 'not owing the players anything' because they are 'unfeeling 'robots' whose only job is to drive consumer spending. Now say 'you dislike cultish behaviour' and since there are few activities so deeply rooted in cultish tribalism as sports fandom, I find myself wondering how exactly you conceive your meta-fandom? Why are you here? Why do you bother slumming it here in the cesspools of cultish fandom? And how do you operate in the rest of your life as an atomic outsider so unwilling to accept the validity of so many human relationships? I mean, I'm a pretty intense outsider myself, not a joiner by any means, but I have also gradually learned the value of authentic community, and how to create meaningful connections across all kinds of divides. It seems like that last bit is maybe lost in your hyperobjectified vision of the present, and of RealGM, deeply flawed and minimally self-aware though it certainly is.

[mrdressup]

I do dislike cultish behavior. I dislike factions and I typically will place myself outside of them if they are about "us" versus "them". I particularly dislike the idea that we are one great big happy family. We are here in a hyper-object behaving like an integral part of it. The hyper-object will persist no matter who is here typing. It would be a mistake to think that we owe anything to it. I is here to exploit the fact that each one of us is an observer where eyes have the means to secure revenues.

Hey mrdressup, although I recently challenged what I perceive as your intense and almost at times sociopathic negativity, I do appreciate this latest articulation of your unique outlook on this shared virtual space we inhabit called the Raptors board. In an earlier post you talked about us 'not owing the players anything' because they are 'unfeeling 'robots' whose only job is to drive consumer spending. Now say 'you dislike cultish behaviour' and since there are few activities so deeply rooted in cultish tribalism as sports fandom, I find myself wondering how exactly you conceive your meta-fandom? Why are you here? Why do you bother slumming it here in the cesspools of cultish fandom? And how do you operate in the rest of your life as an atomic outsider so unwilling to accept the validity of so many human relationships? I mean, I'm a pretty intense outsider myself, not a joiner by any means, but I have also gradually learned the value of authentic community, and how to create meaningful connections across all kinds of divides. It seems like that last bit is maybe lost in your hyperobjectified vision of the present, and of RealGM, deeply flawed and minimally self-aware though it certainly is.

We have the possibility to exploit what is at our disposal to provide us with something that has some degree of utility. RealGM is not likely to be perceived to be flawed if you are using it only for entertainment purposes. I would assume that this is the carrot that moves people to train their eyes here repeatedly.

If you must know more, I spend a lot of my day reading. That's just where I am in my life during the Winter. I am only physically active seasonally (I have a seasonal work schedule that maps very closely to the basketball season). This is a place I will visit on a daily basis. It's certainly not the only one. Basketball doesn't represent much of the time I spend entertaining myself. It is the thing that I consume that has the largest emotional triggers. I don't watch movies and don't read fiction. If you are asking why that is I will restate that this occurs because of mimetic mechanisms that I am sucked up by. There's a wave of emotion to sport that one can get caught up in. We borrow the energy of others and feed off of it. If the entertainment medium wasn't so great at producing that it would not float as a business. People tune in to be played by basketball, not to play basketball. I don't use it to feed a feeling that I belong to a family of like minded stans. You can also do the meta-basketball thing and be played by the basketball commentary game. It works perfectly well to serve the ball and have the serve be returned.

During the past 2 days I've started being misquoted and singled out for saying things that I have never said in a mimetic game of signaling out Barnes "haters" and piling on. This is all too common now. I attribute it to the Pensare Basketball phenomenon where some tune in and experience that person's neuroticism and overt scapegoating. That individual does it to recruit an audience mimetically, but it is being picked up as acceptable behavior, clearly.

I categorically reject the idea that I am a hater, whatever that means. Being critical is my overall game. Offering criticism is what I instinctively do when I encounter any overt suggestion that seeks to put beliefs in place (be they political or philosophical). If this place was overly negative I suspect that I would often react like a devil's advocate and criticize the effort. Despite what many would want to suggest that's not what this RealGM board is. It's not mainly negative. It's overly cultish in the sense of being a cult of personalities (Barnes being the obvious object of that now). I've been invited to "get out of here" by members of the "you are with us or against us" crowd. Who doesn't understand where that comes from? It is the most basic strategy in mimetic faction building games. One can object to being scapegoated as the face of a problem, or do what else? "Conform or be cast out" as Rush would have you sing to? Yeah, no. No one has to live in that sort of rulial space. Keep in mind that calling someone a moron here is not acceptable (it's a rule), but being made the object of a fake news campaign is not evidence of the transgressing any any rules. That tells you a lot about how the board itself is being formed by the propagandists here. It wants to recruit too. It feels it must cater to the mob, presumably. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it is getting increasingly difficult to see the positive in Barnes' contributions, because he has been turned into the object of cultish adoration.

I "get" that kids are ripe for falling prey to this stuff. Suggestibility is highest in youth and among simpletons. I can live with that. I reserve the right to get in front of attempts to have me be the problem. The problem is that there is no "your are with us or against us" rationale to live by outside of the mob. I don't feel that applies to me or you. For the record, I feel that Masai's interaction with the fanbase has been to stoke this sort of childish loyalty. This would certainly please his bosses. "We the North" was a business slogan that is heavy on recruiting everyone into a mimetically programmed faction that serves the business of basketball in Canada. An interesting way to play the game is to take from that in a way that has no cost to you. This is not what is desired in the glass towers.

[lobosloboslobos]

Spoiler:

I do dislike cultish behavior. I dislike factions and I typically will place myself outside of them if they are about "us" versus "them". I particularly dislike the idea that we are one great big happy family. We are here in a hyper-object behaving like an integral part of it. The hyper-object will persist no matter who is here typing. It would be a mistake to think that we owe anything to it. I is here to exploit the fact that each one of us is an observer where eyes have the means to secure revenues.

Hey mrdressup, although I recently challenged what I perceive as your intense and almost at times sociopathic negativity, I do appreciate this latest articulation of your unique outlook on this shared virtual space we inhabit called the Raptors board. In an earlier post you talked about us 'not owing the players anything' because they are 'unfeeling 'robots' whose only job is to drive consumer spending. Now say 'you dislike cultish behaviour' and since there are few activities so deeply rooted in cultish tribalism as sports fandom, I find myself wondering how exactly you conceive your meta-fandom? Why are you here? Why do you bother slumming it here in the cesspools of cultish fandom? And how do you operate in the rest of your life as an atomic outsider so unwilling to accept the validity of so many human relationships? I mean, I'm a pretty intense outsider myself, not a joiner by any means, but I have also gradually learned the value of authentic community, and how to create meaningful connections across all kinds of divides. It seems like that last bit is maybe lost in your hyperobjectified vision of the present, and of RealGM, deeply flawed and minimally self-aware though it certainly is.

We have the possibility to exploit what is at our disposal to provide us with something that has some degree of utility. RealGM is not likely to be perceived to be flawed if you are using it only for entertainment purposes. I would assume that this is the carrot that moves people to train their eyes here repeatedly.

If you must know more, I spend a lot of my day reading. That's just where I am in my life during the Winter. I am only physically active seasonally (I have a seasonal work schedule that maps very closely to the basketball season). This is a place I will visit on a daily basis. It's certainly not the only one. Basketball doesn't represent much of the time I spend entertaining myself. It is the thing that I consume that has the largest emotional triggers. I don't watch movies and don't read fiction. If you are asking why that is I will restate that this occurs because of mimetic mechanisms that I am sucked up by. There's a wave of emotion to sport that one can get caught up in. We borrow the energy of others and feed off of it. If the entertainment medium wasn't so great at producing that it would not float as a business. People tune in to be played by basketball, not to play basketball. I don't use it to feed a feeling that I belong to a family of like minded stans. You can also do the meta-basketball thing and be played by the basketball commentary game. It works perfectly well to serve the ball and have the serve be returned.

During the past 2 days I've started being misquoted and singled out for saying things that I have never said in a mimetic game of signaling out Barnes "haters" and piling on. This is all too common now. I attribute it to the Pensare Basketball phenomenon where some tune in and experience that person's neuroticism and overt scapegoating. That individual does it to recruit an audience mimetically, but it is being picked up as acceptable behavior, clearly.

I categorically reject the idea that I am a hater, whatever that means. Being critical is my overall game. Offering criticism is what I instinctively do when I encounter any overt suggestion that seeks to put beliefs in place (be they political or philosophical). If this place was overly negative I suspect that I would often react like a devil's advocate and criticize the effort. Despite what many would want to suggest that's not what this RealGM board is. It's not mainly negative. It's overly cultish in the sense of being a cult of personalities (Barnes being the obvious object of that now). I've been invited to "get out of here" by members of the "you are with us or against us" crowd. Who doesn't understand where that comes from? It is the most basic strategy in mimetic faction building games. One can object to being scapegoated as the face of a problem, or do what else? "Conform or be cast out" as Rush would have you sing to? Yeah, no. No one has to live in that sort of rulial space. Keep in mind that calling someone a moron here is not acceptable (it's a rule), but being made the object of a fake news campaign is not evidence of the transgressing any any rules. That tells you a lot about how the board itself is being formed by the propagandists here. It wants to recruit too. It feels it must cater to the mob, presumably. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it is getting increasingly difficult to see the positive in Barnes' contributions, because he has been turned into the object of cultish adoration.

I "get" that kids are ripe for falling prey to this stuff. Suggestibility is highest in youth and among simpletons. I can live with that. I reserve the right to get in front of attempts to have me be the problem. The problem is that there is no "your are with us or against us" rationale to live by outside of the mob. I don't feel that applies to me or you. For the record, I feel that Masai's interaction with the fanbase has been to stoke this sort of childish loyalty. This would certainly please his bosses. "We the North" was a business slogan that is heavy on recruiting everyone into a mimetically programmed faction that serves the business of basketball in Canada. An interesting way to play the game is to take from that in a way that has no cost to you. This is not what is desired in the glass towers.

Thanks for this thoughtful response. I definitely agree about the problematic (sometimes) cult of personality and the binary black-and-whiteness of much of the dialogue here, as there are a quite a few posters who just want to argue about unknown futures with unjustifiable certainty. And I also agree that overall this place isn't primarily negative, though to me that is a good thing whereas it seems that to you that just indicates a high degree of us being sheeple manipulated by corporate systems and slogans. And of course we are that to a degree, I'd say, just as we are cultish in our choice to cheer for the Raptors, but this isn't all simulacrum. The authentic parts include the actual effort and competition that takes place on the court, where real people are genuinely giving it their all. And it includes the dialogues that happen here, like this one but including plenty of others that are thoughtful and/or funny and/or creative. The strictness of your exclusion of any relationship tainted by commerce from the realm of the authentic or real is too easy for me, and not reflective of the diversity of human experience and community, which imo can often easily bridge intellectually imposed divides that others (especially bookbound academics) see as impermeable, and for which they fight for and against with every bit as much unwarranted black and white certainty as those on either side of the tj or calderon debate. Not saying that's you but that's my experience.

Given the vocabulary and models of understanding you are bringing into this discussion and the way you are using them, and of course given the incredibly mediated world that is the raptors and realgm, i can generally see how your take is valid in a sort of William Gibson ish way. I don't much keep up with current philosophical writings but to the extent I have been very engaged with them in different contexts in the past I have always found them interesting but inadequate to address the depth and breadth of our lived experience. but the world is certainly growing more complex by the day, and maybe there are new and better answers out there than there used to be.

[mrdressup]

Spoiler:

Hey mrdressup, although I recently challenged what I perceive as your intense and almost at times sociopathic negativity, I do appreciate this latest articulation of your unique outlook on this shared virtual space we inhabit called the Raptors board. In an earlier post you talked about us 'not owing the players anything' because they are 'unfeeling 'robots' whose only job is to drive consumer spending. Now say 'you dislike cultish behaviour' and since there are few activities so deeply rooted in cultish tribalism as sports fandom, I find myself wondering how exactly you conceive your meta-fandom? Why are you here? Why do you bother slumming it here in the cesspools of cultish fandom? And how do you operate in the rest of your life as an atomic outsider so unwilling to accept the validity of so many human relationships? I mean, I'm a pretty intense outsider myself, not a joiner by any means, but I have also gradually learned the value of authentic community, and how to create meaningful connections across all kinds of divides. It seems like that last bit is maybe lost in your hyperobjectified vision of the present, and of RealGM, deeply flawed and minimally self-aware though it certainly is.

We have the possibility to exploit what is at our disposal to provide us with something that has some degree of utility. RealGM is not likely to be perceived to be flawed if you are using it only for entertainment purposes. I would assume that this is the carrot that moves people to train their eyes here repeatedly.

If you must know more, I spend a lot of my day reading. That's just where I am in my life during the Winter. I am only physically active seasonally (I have a seasonal work schedule that maps very closely to the basketball season). This is a place I will visit on a daily basis. It's certainly not the only one. Basketball doesn't represent much of the time I spend entertaining myself. It is the thing that I consume that has the largest emotional triggers. I don't watch movies and don't read fiction. If you are asking why that is I will restate that this occurs because of mimetic mechanisms that I am sucked up by. There's a wave of emotion to sport that one can get caught up in. We borrow the energy of others and feed off of it. If the entertainment medium wasn't so great at producing that it would not float as a business. People tune in to be played by basketball, not to play basketball. I don't use it to feed a feeling that I belong to a family of like minded stans. You can also do the meta-basketball thing and be played by the basketball commentary game. It works perfectly well to serve the ball and have the serve be returned.

During the past 2 days I've started being misquoted and singled out for saying things that I have never said in a mimetic game of signaling out Barnes "haters" and piling on. This is all too common now. I attribute it to the Pensare Basketball phenomenon where some tune in and experience that person's neuroticism and overt scapegoating. That individual does it to recruit an audience mimetically, but it is being picked up as acceptable behavior, clearly.

I categorically reject the idea that I am a hater, whatever that means. Being critical is my overall game. Offering criticism is what I instinctively do when I encounter any overt suggestion that seeks to put beliefs in place (be they political or philosophical). If this place was overly negative I suspect that I would often react like a devil's advocate and criticize the effort. Despite what many would want to suggest that's not what this RealGM board is. It's not mainly negative. It's overly cultish in the sense of being a cult of personalities (Barnes being the obvious object of that now). I've been invited to "get out of here" by members of the "you are with us or against us" crowd. Who doesn't understand where that comes from? It is the most basic strategy in mimetic faction building games. One can object to being scapegoated as the face of a problem, or do what else? "Conform or be cast out" as Rush would have you sing to? Yeah, no. No one has to live in that sort of rulial space. Keep in mind that calling someone a moron here is not acceptable (it's a rule), but being made the object of a fake news campaign is not evidence of the transgressing any any rules. That tells you a lot about how the board itself is being formed by the propagandists here. It wants to recruit too. It feels it must cater to the mob, presumably. I'm not exaggerating when I say that it is getting increasingly difficult to see the positive in Barnes' contributions, because he has been turned into the object of cultish adoration.

I "get" that kids are ripe for falling prey to this stuff. Suggestibility is highest in youth and among simpletons. I can live with that. I reserve the right to get in front of attempts to have me be the problem. The problem is that there is no "your are with us or against us" rationale to live by outside of the mob. I don't feel that applies to me or you. For the record, I feel that Masai's interaction with the fanbase has been to stoke this sort of childish loyalty. This would certainly please his bosses. "We the North" was a business slogan that is heavy on recruiting everyone into a mimetically programmed faction that serves the business of basketball in Canada. An interesting way to play the game is to take from that in a way that has no cost to you. This is not what is desired in the glass towers.

Thanks for this thoughtful response. I definitely agree about the problematic (sometimes) cult of personality and the binary black-and-whiteness of much of the dialogue here, as there are a quite a few posters who just want to argue about unknown futures with unjustifiable certainty. And I also agree that overall this place isn't primarily negative, though to me that is a good thing whereas it seems that to you that just indicates a high degree of us being sheeple manipulated by corporate systems and slogans. And of course we are that to a degree, I'd say, just as we are cultish in our choice to cheer for the Raptors, but this isn't all simulacrum. The authentic parts include the actual effort and competition that takes place on the court, where real people are genuinely giving it their all. And it includes the dialogues that happen here, like this one but including plenty of others that are thoughtful and/or funny and/or creative. The strictness of your exclusion of any relationship tainted by commerce from the realm of the authentic or real is too easy for me, and not reflective of the diversity of human experience and community, which imo can often easily bridge intellectually imposed divides that others (especially bookbound academics) see as impermeable, and for which they fight for and against with every bit as much unwarranted black and white certainty as those on either side of the tj or calderon debate. Not saying that's you but that's my experience.

Given the vocabulary and models of understanding you are bringing into this discussion and the way you are using them, and of course given the incredibly mediated world that is the raptors and realgm, i can generally see how your take is valid in a sort of William Gibson ish way. I don't much keep up with current philosophical writings but to the extent I have been very engaged with them in different contexts in the past I have always found them interesting but inadequate to address the depth and breadth of our lived experience. but the world is certainly growing more complex by the day, and maybe there are new and better answers out there than there used to be.

I'm seeing things much more in a Stephen Wolfram-ish way these day. Where all basically just a different sort of observers that are close to, but not exactly, living our lives with the same "rules" for our internal games. The difference between a child and and adult can be as large as between a human and an an elephant if you ask me. Even though we are all humans we are clearly not "seeing" the world as being exactly in the same rule space. "You are with us or against us" is a sort of rule like that. It doesn't apply in my rule space. It becomes a challenge to coexist in different rulial spaces, and I'm not sure communication occurs on the level we think it does half the time. I feel I remember what it was like to be young, but whose to say that I do? I suspect strongly I was very gullible once to. Critical thinking is off the scale now.

I'm seeing the basketball commodity as a means to business ends primarily. These are corporate owned commodities to profit with. What it will get presented as to various observers will possibly resonate or not with them. Previously I mentioned that these guys are just performers to me. I expect them to put on a good show or else be criticized for not doing it. If I was King I would demand the same of my jesters. It's what they are paid to do, and I do find it humiliating for them to be in that position as grown adults, but they wanted the adoration from a time when that was appealing. Performers have this pressure to perform. From their point of view there's a very good financial motivation to be on the receiving end of whatever emotions come their way. Part of their maturing is to deal with that. They may very well want to pretend that the whole thing has a real positive meaning in the eyes of a child and cry or rebel when their owners trade them (a sign that there wasn't much maturity there yet). That can be part of their coping mechanism. A lot of these guys have mental blocks and money to show for it. For us who have to pay Bell and/or Rogers on a monthly basis we can be forgiven for realizing that nobody on Bay street cares a lick if we' re struggling at any given point. A sad enough rule in our world is that you are on your own to make yourself happy. God knows I was told this repeatedly when I used to work for the bank.

I certainly don't mean any harm to these guys. I will be the first to admit that some of the biggest emotional swings we experience are when we see someone like Gradey Dick figure it out and break out of his shell. It's the charm of having young players on the team. That's something we can relate to if we've ever felt that at some point in our lives. I just don't feel like it should be required that we baby anyone by fawning over them, Masai or ownership included. I recognize that part of me applying pressure to them is me seeing that as exactly what I am exposed to all the time. There are a lot of people in the Raptors PR department who would cringe from reading all this. They have their preferred narratives. We don't have to accept those as the gospel. They have their job to do in order that the whole enterprise grows.

As humans we have to recognize how important human suggestibility is. We are targeted from a very young age.