Who is your target audience?

[Banjooie]

[Continued from here: http://forum.insomnia.ac/viewtopic.php?p=8846#8846 --icy]

Since this thread is apparently an irredeemable trainwreck anyway, I'm going to take this time not to disagree with a single thing you've said, but rather ask what your intent is.

I've noticed that--given enough effort reading everything you've written on the site, that what you say makes a lot more sense. It's rather like a serialized novel: Things you write make assumptions based on previous things you write. I can understand from that point of view quite easily why people just coming in invariably seem retarded. On its own, without context, each individual article on this site basically looks like a series of 'I'm right, so shut up'. Of course you get negative feedback from that.

So what I will ask you: Who is your target audience? Who are you trying to convince you are right? You've written some frankly brilliant works here, but you take almost intentional effort to ensure that people who disagree with you lack the necessary information to properly contest your points, and act triumphant when you point out they have failed to read another article that explains an initial assumption.

What you've written about cheap tactics, for instance, I cannot find a single disagreeable point in. It is reasonable. It is rational. It has points and then it backs them up and cuts down considerably on the normal ad hominem you see out of most top-end players writing about players lower on the scale. That and the other article you've linked are astonishingly good.

I'm baffled, though. Remember, I am trying to drag myself out of the pit of retardation here, so bear with me, and feel free to link an appropriate article if I've missed it: Who is this for, then? You're not out to convince casual, dumb players like me of your points, clearly, or you wouldn't be so dismissive of every single one who comes in. You're clearly not here to show us the light or whatever.

What I'm left with is the assumption you've gone and written a bunch of extremely high-quality articles on the state of gaming, but you've specifically written them so they're only of value to people who already agree with you, and that confuses the goddamn hell out of me. Because that seems like a gigantic waste of an inordinately good writing talent, from where I'm standing.

[icycalm]

Since this thread is apparently an irredeemable trainwreck anyway

The TF2 thread is not only awesome in its own right, it's also the best TF2 thread on the internet. If you add the review to it it's the only TF2-related commentary worth reading. Only a retard would claim that it's a "trainwreck" -- i.e. you.

I'm going to take this time not to disagree with a single thing you've said

Seeing how stupid every single post of yours in this forum has so far been, you'd probably end up writing more retarded nonsense anyway, which would have likely been deleted. So it seems you made a good decision for once.

I've noticed that--given enough effort reading everything you've written on the site, that what you say makes a lot more sense.

Yes, it all depends on how intelligent you are. The less intelligent, the more you have to read before anything starts making sense. And if you are at the very bottom of the intelligence scale, it never does. A really intelligent person for example wouldn't even have to read a word on this site -- he would already have figured everything out on his own. It all is, after all, nothing more than common sense. I have still not attempted to say anything profound here, and I never will.

It's rather like a serialized novel: Things you write make assumptions based on previous things you write. I can understand from that point of view quite easily why people just coming in invariably seem retarded.

You understand fuck-all. Only SOME of the people "just coming in" seem retarded. Others seem quite intelligent. But of course it would soothe your ego to believe otherwise.

On its own, without context, each individual article on this site basically looks like a series of 'I'm right, so shut up'.

Yes, that is how a retard would see them, and this is why:

On the question of being understandable. -- One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is by no means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it incomprehensible: perhaps that was part of the author's intention -- he didn't want to be understood by just 'anybody'. Every nobler spirit and taste selects his audience when he wants to communicate; in selecting it, he simultaneously erects barriers against 'the others'. All subtler laws of style originated therein: they simultaneously keep away, create a distance, forbid 'entrance', understanding, as said above -- while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.
--Nietzsche

Of course you get negative feedback from that.

Let me tell you something here, son: you get negative feedback from EVERYTHING you write, regardless of tone, style or content. So it's not worth bothering with the expected response.

So what I will ask you: Who is your target audience?

Intelligent people who play games.

Who are you trying to convince you are right?

See above.

You've written some frankly brilliant works here, but you take almost intentional effort to ensure that people who disagree with you lack the necessary information

Yes, that's why everything is so well cross-linked on this site. Retard.

to properly contest your points

No one can properly contest my points. To do that one would have to have the power to change reality itself.

and act triumphant when you point out they have failed to read another article that explains an initial assumption.

I do not only act triumphant then. I act triumphant all the time, lol.

What you've written about cheap tactics, for instance, I cannot find a single disagreeable point in.

You cannot find a single disagreeable point with anything written on this site. Also, I didn't write that article. But I understand that if you have the attention span of a gnat that little fact might be a little hard to pick up on.

It is reasonable. It is rational. It has points and then it backs them up

Everything written on this site is reasonable and rational, and has points which it backs up -- but "reasonableness" and "rationality" are not universal among human beings -- every person has his own reasonableness and rationality, and those who do not share them with the author, any author, will never concede them to him; they will in fact go to their graves still claiming that he is unreasonable and irrational. There is nothing to be done about this: this is just how human beings work.

I'm baffled, though. Remember, I am trying to drag myself out of the pit of retardation here, so bear with me, and feel free to link an appropriate article if I've missed it: Who is this for, then? You're not out to convince casual, dumb players like me of your points, clearly, or you wouldn't be so dismissive of every single one who comes in. You're clearly not here to show us the light or whatever.

What I'm left with is the assumption you've gone and written a bunch of extremely high-quality articles on the state of gaming, but you've specifically written them so they're only of value to people who already agree with you, and that confuses the goddamn hell out of me.

It would, wouldn't it. This is what happens with people who share the democratic sensibility. They think that everyone should be made to understand -- that everyone is capable of understanding, and that we should all be one single happy family. Who will cure them of these hallucinations? Not I, that's for sure. I know what I am capable of -- and also what is beyond my powers. To make everyone understand -- we don't yet have the technology for that -- because technology is what would be required. Extremely advanced genetic engineering, to be more precise.

Because that seems like a gigantic waste of an inordinately good writing talent, from where I'm standing.

I don't have much of a "writing talent" -- I have a "thinking talent". Writing talent is overrated anyway, seeing as it basically consists in stringing together words in such a way as to produce an aurally pleasing effect, which, though pleasing, is by no means necessary nor extremely useful for the transmission of ideas, and can oftentimes even be downright detrimental (see Baudrillard). Writing talent is pretty much useless if it doesn't come together with thinking talent, but thinking talent can get along just fine on its own.

[Bradford]

This is what happens with people who share the democratic sensibility. They think that everyone should be made to understand -- that everyone is capable of understanding, and that we should all be one single happy family.

Precisely why the U.S. Constitution, for example, doesn't include the right of the people to vote in Presidential elections, nor (until 1913) were senators elected at all. Would Microsoft let the factory-workers participate in the selection of a new CEO? Of course not. Intelligent people (even those that support some variation on a democracy) understand that even though we may all ought to have equal rights, we are certainly not all created equal. Likewise the law guarantees freedom to speak our opinion (well, it does where I live; not quite as much were Icy lives), but does not make our opinions of equal value, nor protect our opinions from criticism.

All that to say - I've always thought that this website was for people who desire to dispense with the politically correct notions that poison the vast majority of media (particularly games journalism). This is the only place I have found where ideas about games can be discussed separate from the emotions of those who articulate the ideas. This website is the antithesis of the person whose response to the critism of a game is:

why are you getting so wound up? . . . so what if TF2 wasn't what you were hoping though? if you don't like it, play TFC and stop complaining about TF2.

For me, this website is even the antidote to such people - people incapable of discussing the ideas instead of the people proposing them. That's what happened on the removed rllmuk thread, and it was excruciating to read interesting ideas ignored in favor of acting like spoiled children. I certainly don't understand everything written here, but I am starved for the discourse that occurs here, and which is so difficult to find anywhere in life, much less on the internet.

At least, that's who I thought this website was for.

[icycalm]

Intelligent people (even those that support some variation on a democracy) understand that even though we may all ought to have equal rights, we are certainly not all created equal.

Which is why it would be physically impossible for everyone to have equal rights, and also why we don't have them currently, and why we will never have them. Baudrillard has already explained the absurdity of these so-called "rights":

We can no longer speak Evil.

All we can do is discourse on the rights of man -- a discourse which is pious, weak, useless and hypocritical, its supposed value deriving from the Enlightenment belief in a natural attraction of the Good, from an idealized view of human relationships (whereas Evil can manifestly be dealt with only by means of Evil).

What is more, even this Good qua ideal value is invariably deployed in a self-defensive, austerity-loving, negative and reactive mode. All the talk is of the minimizing of Evil, the prevention of violence: nothing but security. This is the condescending and depressive power of good intentions, a power that can dream of nothing except rectitude in the world, that refuses even to consider a bending of Evil, or an intelligence of Evil.

There can be a "right" to speech only if speech is defined as the "free" expression of an individual. Where speech is conceived of as a form implying reciprocity, collusion, antagonism or seduction, the notion of right can have no possible meaning.

Is there such a thing as a right to desire, a right to the unconscious, or a right to pleasure? The idea is absurd. This is what makes the sexual liberation movement ridiculous when it talks about rights, and what makes our "commemoration" of the Revolution ridiculous when the rights of man are evoked.

The "right to live" is an idea that sets all pious souls atremble, but when this idea evolves into the right to die, the absurdity of the whole business becomes obvious. For, after all, dying (and living too) is a destiny, a fate -- be it happy or unhappy -- and certainly not a right.

Why not demand the "right" to be a man or a woman? Or, for that matter, a Leo, an Aquarius or a Cancer? But what would it mean to be a man or a woman if it were a right? What makes life exciting is the fact that you have been placed on one side or the other of the sexual divide, and you must take it from there. Those are the rules of the game, and it makes no sense to break them. No one can stop me from claiming the right to move my knight in a straight line on the chessboard, but where does it get me? Rights in such matters are idiotic.

The right to work: yes, we have reached that point, thanks to a savage irony. The right to unemployment! The right to strike! No one can even see the surreal humour of such things anymore. Occasionally, though, a certain black humour does burst out here, as when an American condemned to death claims the right to be executed despite the efforts of umpteen human-rights organizations to obtain a stay of execution. This is where things get interesting. The list of rights turns out to include not a few bizarre varieties: the Israelis, for example, claim as a sort of right the fact that there are criminals among their number -- whereas from time immemorial, Jews were only victims. Now at last they can enjoy the officially endorsed luxury of criminality!

There can be no doubt either that the USSR, with Chernobyl, the Armenian earthquake and the foundering of a nuclear submarine, has take a giant step towards an extension of the rights of man (indeed, beyond the accords of Helsinki or elsewhere), for the Soviets have clearly laid claim to the right to catastrophe. It is indeed your most fundamental and essential right -- your right to accidents, to crime, to error, to Evil, to the worst as well as to the best -- which, far more than your right to happiness, makes you a human being worthy of the name.

In the sphere of rights the irresistible trend is towards a situation where, if something can be taken for granted, all rights are otiose [i.e. useless --icy], whereas if a right must be demanded, it means that the battle is already lost; thus the very call for rights to water, air and space indicates that all these things are already on the way out. Similarly the evocation of a right to reply signals the absence of any dialogue, and so on.

...

Yet it is precisely now that the rights of man are acquiring a worldwide resonance. They constitute the only ideology that is currently available -- which is as much to say that human rights are the zero point of ideology, the sole outstanding balance of history. Human rights and ecology are the two teats of the consensus. The current world charter is that of the New Political Ecology.

Ought we to view this apotheosis of human rights as the irresistible rise of stupidity, as a masterpiece which, though imperilled, is liable to light up the coming fin de siècle in the full glare of the consensus?

From Le transparence du Mal, Éditions Galilée, Paris, 1990 [The Transparency of Evil, Verso, London, 1993]

Intelligent people (even those that support some variation on a democracy)

As for those who support some variation of democracy:

Apart. -- Parliamentarianism, that is, public permission to choose between five basic political opinions, flatters and wins the favor of all those who would like to seem independent and individual, as if they fought for their opinions. Ultimately, however, it is indifferent whether the herd is commanded to have one opinion or permitted to have five. -- Whoever deviates from the five public opinions and stands apart will always have the whole herd against him.
--Nietzsche

Likewise the law guarantees freedom to speak our opinion (well, it does where I live; not quite as much were Icy lives)

The piece of dirt which I happen to currently inhabit has no effect whatsoever on my ability to speak my opinion -- I have no need for any "guarantees" from the law in order to do so. Freedom is not something that I expect others to confer on me -- it is something I take, come what may, and may God help whoever will attempt to stand in my way. Nietzsche has already explained this:

My conception of freedom. -- The value of a thing sometimes lies not in what one attains with it, but in what one pays for it -- what it costs us. I give an example. Liberal institutions immediately cease to be liberal as soon as they are attained: subsequently there is nothing more thoroughly harmful to freedom than liberal institutions. One knows, indeed, what they bring about: they undermine the will to power, they are the levelling of mountain and valley exalted to a moral principle, they make small, cowardly and smug -- it is the herd animal which triumphs with them every time. Liberalism: in plain words, reduction to the herd animal... As long as they are still being fought for, these same institutions produce quite different effects; they then in fact promote freedom mightily. Viewed more closely, it is war which produces these effects, war for liberal institutions which as war permits the illiberal instincts to endure. And war is a training in freedom. For what is freedom? That one has the will to self-responsibility. That one preserves the distance which divides us. That one has become more indifferent to hardship, toil, privation, even to life. That one is ready to sacrifice men to one's cause, oneself not excepted. Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts -- for example, over the instinct for "happiness". The man who has become free -- and how much more the mind that has become free -- spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats. The free man is a warrior. -- How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome, by the effort it costs to stay aloft. One would have to seek the highest type of free man where the greatest resistance is constantly being overcome: five steps from tyranny, near the threshold of the danger of servitude. This is true psychologically when one understands by "tyrants" pitiless and dreadful instincts, to combat which demands the maximum of authority and discipline towards oneself -- finest type Julius Ceasar --; it is also true politically: one has only to look at history. The nations which were worth something, which became worth something, never became so under liberal institutions: it was great danger which made of them something deserving reverence, danger which first teaches us to know our resources, our virtues, our shield and spear, our spirit -- which compels us to be strong... First principle: one must need strength, otherwise one will never have it. -- Those great forcing-houses for strong human beings, for the strongest kind there has ever been, the aristocratic communities of the pattern of Rome and Venice, understood freedom in precisely the sense which I understand the word "freedom": as something one has and does not have, something one wants, something one conquers...

From Götzen-Dämmerung [Twilight of the Idols], 1888.

All that to say - I've always thought that this website was for people who desire to dispense with the politically correct notions that poison the vast majority of media (particularly games journalism).

The "particularly" is not necessary. The regular media are just as bad in this respect as the specialist gaming media, if not indeed worse.

[/philosophy lesson]

[Worm]

On its own, without context, each individual article on this site basically looks like a series of 'I'm right, so shut up'.

99% of the negative comments about this site--including this one of yours--consist of either pithy remarks about the author or vague claims that the articles are "ultimately flawed," "too biased," or "lacking in support."

Take the RPG article, for example. If you think Icycalm has done a poor job of showing how things are, then all you have to do is provide a definition of RPG that is more accurate and can be consistently applied with useful results.

This is a simple test that you can do with any analysis. If you disagree with the way someone is talking about something, you can either show why that thing cannot be talked about coherently or propose an alternative.

I assume most people come to this site because they are tired of talking to people that do not even attempt such a simple test, just as they do not attempt to establish criteria in any of their other evaluations.

[Nervicide]

Freedom means that the manly instincts that delight in war and victory have gained mastery over the other instincts -- for example, over the instinct for "happiness". The man who has become free -- and how much more the mind that has become free -- spurns the contemptible sort of well-being dreamed of by shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats.

A while back, in twelfth grade philosophy class (we even had a textbook, a philosophy textbook! oh the lulz) when asked "what are your main goals in life?" by the teacher, almost all answered with "to be happy, to love others, and to be loved in turn", or something along those lines, but most used those exact same words! much to my exasperation.

When a guy I actually respected answered in the same manner, I really couldn't take it anymore and threw a pencil in the back of his head, calling him a faggot. The teacher jumped off his ass and immediately ordered me to step out of class...

The most attractive thing about the Insomnia forum is that you can't be a smartaleck around here, as I found out the hard way. This isn't just a forum for intelligent people who play games, but for intelligent people who play games and have the balls/desire to put their intelligence to the test... it's like the ultimate obstacle course for the clever gamer.

[Bradford]

Re: Icy's reply:

The Baudrillard and Nietzsche passages might be my favorite things I've read in a long time. Not because they're 'better' than anything else, but because they really struck a chord with me.

Also, I couldn't find the following quote regarding equality that I had meant to post with my original comments; it and the related concepts in Plato's Republic are why I still enjoy that book:

Democracy, which is a charming form of government, dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.

Republic (Politeia), bk. VIII, 550c

[icycalm]

The Baudrillard and Nietzsche passages might be my favorite things I've read in a long time. Not because they're 'better' than anything else, but because they really struck a chord with me.

They struck a chord with you exactly because they are better than anything else -- no inverted commas necessary. And it's not just you they struck a chord with -- they strike a chord with everyone who reads them, shopkeepers, Christians, cows, women, Englishmen and other democrats included. All the latter of course end up hating them for it, but hey, that's how philosophy works. It's not for little people.

The difference between the genius and the ordinary man is, no doubt, a quantitative one, in so far as it is a difference of degree; but I am tempted to regard it also as qualitative, in view of the fact that ordinary minds, notwithstanding individual variation, have a certain tendency to think alike. Thus on similar occasions their thoughts at once all take a similar direction, and run on the same lines; and this explains why their judgments constantly agree—not, however, because they are based on truth. To such lengths does this go that certain fundamental views obtain amongst mankind at all times, and are always being repeated and brought forward anew, whilst the great minds of all ages are in open or secret opposition to them.

http://insomnia.ac/essays/on_genius/

[icycalm]

Here is another great mind, explaining the reasons for the huge divergence of viewpoints between little and great minds:

That a false hypothesis is sometimes preferable to an exact one is proven in the doctrine of human freedom. Man is, without a doubt, unfree. But it takes profound philosophical study for a man not to be led astray by such an insight. Barely one in a thousand has the necessary time and patience for such study, and of these hundreds, barely one has the necessary intelligence. This is why freedom is the most convenient conception and will, in the future, remain the most common, so much do appearances favour it.

The whole business is hilarious once one has acquired the eyes for it. It is indeed, I believe, the greatest joke a human being can understand. Every single notion that is held among common people is false, and moreover the correct notion is not just simply different -- it is the exact opposite one.

And, to get an idea about what I mean by 'great minds', and how few people are included in them, consider that Noam Chomsky, an otherwise extremely intelligent human being, much superior to the average person in terms of brain structure, if nothing else, and having received some of the best education money can buy, and moreover having spent a lifetime doing little else besides reading (which is part of the problem, actually!), still believes that he has free will! This passage, for example, is incomprehensible to him:

The causa sui [Cause of itself. --icy] is the best self-contradiction hitherto imagined, a kind of logical rape and unnaturalness: but mankind's extravagant pride has managed to get itself deeply and frightfully entangled with precisely this piece of nonsense. For the desire of "freedom of will" in that metaphysical superlative sense which is unfortunately still dominant in the minds of the half-educated, the desire to bear the whole and sole responsibility for one's actions and to absolve God, world, ancestors, chance, society from responsibility for them, is nothing less than the desire to be precisely that causa sui and, with more than Münchhausen temerity, to pull oneself into existence out of the swamp of nothingness by one's own hair. Assuming it is possible in this way to get beyond the peasant simplicity of this celebrated concept "free will" and banish it from one's mind, I would then ask whoever does that to carry his "enlightenment" a step further and also banish from his mind the contrary of that unnatural concept "free will": I mean "unfree will", which amounts to an abuse of cause and effect. One ought not to make "cause" and "effect" into material things, as natural scientists do (and those who, like them, naturalize in their thinking --), in accordance with the prevailing mechanistic stupidity which has the cause press and push until it "produces an effect"; one ought to employ "cause" and "effect" only as pure concepts, that is to say as conventional fictions for the purpose of designation, mutual understanding, not explanation. In the "in itself" there is nothing of "causal connection", of "necessity", of "psychological unfreedom"; there "the effect" does not "follow the cause", there no "law" rules. It is we alone who have fabricated causes, succession, reciprocity, relativity, compulsion, number, law, freedom, motive, purpose; and when we falsely introduce this world of symbols into things and mingle it with them as though this symbol-world were an "in itself", we once more behave as we have always behaved, namely mythologically. "Unfree will" is mythology: in real life it is only a question of strong and weak wills.

The Chomskies and their like cannot make heads or tails out of stuff like this: they just see gibberish, lol. And then they write books! About politics and freedom and democracy!

Seriously, if you can understand this shit you don't need comedy shows -- the entire planet is a madhouse filled with clowns, and created solely for your amusement.