There is a different between writing a persuasive paper, which that article is clearly intended to be, and my posting candid replies to people's comments. If no one is persuaded by anything I say, it doesn't hurt me at all, so I'm not about to spend a week preparing my replies, if someone sounds stupid, I'll say that. If you can't, for example, see the difference between an article in the New York Times having to shy away from offending people, and posts on an mIRC forum, well then I guess that explains why you'd write such a reply...
And as for parabrat:
Oh come now, Its hardly insulting to point out that any individual's values, ethics, attitudes and behavior, good or bad, impact others. To blame the internet or anything else for all the ills of the world, when its the people who USE the internet that take part in whatever behavior is absurd. Surely not a news flash or insulting to say its people that make the world go round.
It's offensive to me "Everybody, repeat after me: 'Hello, my name is _______, and I operate a .com business. I'm sorry.'"
I've worked for 2 .com companies, and co-owned one. I'm not at all sorry for it. If trying to make an honest living providing a service to someone is something that I should be sorry for, well then I guess I'm living in the wrong country, because I thought that is what America was all about, but I must be mistaken if I have to appologize for having worked for businesses that were unsuccessful. And then it's talked about us .com'ers "greed and waste" As I said, I've been with 3 .com companies, none of them had "wine-tasting breaks" in fact I've never been to any wine-tasting parties ever, the 'thousands of employees' well the .com company I'm currently seeking employment at has an employee base of 15 people, and the 'gold toilet flushers' the only thing that was made out of gold in any of the .com companies I worked at was the gold paint used on the logo, and that wasn't even real gold. Are you telling me I shouldn't feel insulted being told I'm a greedy wasteful person who should appologize to the world?
Saying that "you usually get the opposite result, more of the undesired action simply because people will usually do it out of spite" is saying that MOST ppl are spiteful and immature. Now there's an insult! I must admit tho, seeing you say "NEVER insult your audience" did give me a chuckle, thanks.
Again I go back to saying persuasive writing, thats different than general comments which is what I'm posting on this forum. If you've ever seen me debate, or read any papers I've written, you'd clearly see that when I plan out my paper/speech it follows that rule very strictly. As I said above, if no one here is convinced by anything I said, it doesn't hurt me at all, so why should I bother writing up 20+ drafts of a reply to someone's post? If I have something I want to say, I'll say it. This is hardly a formal medium, I'm writing what comes to mind, I'm not taking the time to edit it thoroughly, and from the posts everyone else makes, that seems to be the way everone does it. Oh and by the way, you don't agree that most people are spiteful and immature? So I take it this is the first day you've come to these forums and you've never read more than 5 posts here? Because if you had, you'd agree that I'm right. Like a certain guy named "loser" who decided to post the same post 5+ times even though it kept getting deleted, or that other guy "therat" or something like that who decided to do nothing but swear and insult everyone, and I could list many others but I'd rather not turn this into a 50 page reply.
