I am making this post because I was absolutely amazed at the reply made by LWPD to Hegemony. I refer of course to the one with the heavy quoting.
Paint had made a very good post about how TNA buy rates were not up during the "Joe era"...if you can call it that since he hasn't had the belt. He then appeared (to me) to speculate on the future direction for Joe, and that his push may have disappeared.
Hegemony then made a very good reply, saying that he thought that the failing was TNA's booking team and disagreeing with a couple of the other points. He even accepted that Joe might not be to everyone's taste, but asserted that the failing was not entirely Joe's.
Paint then posted a reply that astounded me. Hegemony has already responded himself, and I am not trying to defend someone who can look after themselves, but it upset me that Swarm can engage in some banter and get banned, but LWPD can post this and nobody cares.
Right…
“Ironically experience has taught me that 'very interesting' is an open that seldom comes from someone who is truly 'very interested' in productively exchanging ideas with an open active mind. Let's see what we have...”
What exactly does this mean? It doesn’t actually make a point, it is just a patronising opening that sets the tone of the entire response. It is an attempt to make the reader believe that Hegemony is not interested in productively exchanging ideas, thus prejudicing them against him in the upcoming debate. It is a transparent attempt at character assassination. Why say it at all ? My personal belief is that LWPD does not understand that most people on this board post quickly and in a conversational manner, using phrases they would use in speech. There is absolutely nothing to read into the use of the word “interesting”, except from someone who does not post in this manner, and makes no allowance for those who do.
We continue…
“Had you read more carefully you'd see that I never 'assumed' that a change was 'imminent'...nowhere did I say that and you're the only one participating on this thread that misunderstood. BTW...the 'that you assume' line followed by a misinterpretation is a very off putting combo.”
LWPD wrote quite clearly in his original post that
“When Fat Joe came out last night he had him do a 'Samoan Dance' entrance. Now that VR is starting to job him out more frequently...don't be shocked to see him completely 'repackaged'....either as more of an 'ethnic' Umaga type Samoan...or maybe even Rikishi style (with dancing, the stink face, etc.)”
By making that statement it is clear that he either believes a change is imminent for Joe or he has written an absolutely pointless statement that is just plain confusing. For someone who writes as clearly and thinks as carefully about every post as LWPD, it is ridiculous to assume from that post that they don’t believe that it is likely or worth writing. Let me try…”don’t be shocked if Undertaker wins at Wrestlemania”. Is it unreasonable to read into that that I think Undertaker will win ? Possibly, as I don’t actually use those words, but otherwise what is the point in saying it. I might as well have said “there may be a winner in the Undertaker match, or it may be a draw”. I think we as a community are trying to share opinions, and LWPD carefully phrases statements so that nothing has actually been said. Why can he not actually stand behind something which may be proved wrong in the future? There is no shame, it is just speculation…don’t be afraid of it. It is also an off putting combo to make inferences and then weasel out of it in a playground fashion. Hegemony was not the only person on the thread who misunderstood, he was the only one who did understand.
Next…
“Which is something I would know fairly well since I am the one who posted said dance routine right here on this very forum when it happened. BTW it's Liger (as in a Lion/Tiger hybrid).”
Yes, you would know, so why did you make no mention of this when you originally posted, and then use it as a weapon to gain a measure of petty intellectual superiority over the person you are responding to ? It makes no sense, and there has been no rebuttal of the point at all. As someone whose principal form of debate appears to be to find facts that suit and ignore those that don’t to create the illusion that you are correct whereas everyone else merely has “an opinion” and is interpreting the facts in the wrong way, it must have been embarrassing to have that one thrown at you, hence the incredibly juvenile attempt to make Hegemony look silly. The incorrect spelling does nothing to lessen the strength of the argument. BTW, it’s Samoa Joe (as in the island).
“The muscular appearance of the Fat Joe doll is indicative of the fact that the company chose not to represent his physical appearance accurately...which is precisely what I said. What WWE does with the presentation of similar merchandise is irrelevant to what was being addressed.”
It is not irrelevant, it is incredibly pertinent, and it completely invalidates your cute little aside at the bottom of your post. Most wrestling toys since the attitude era have been caricatures of the human form. This is therefore accepted in the toy industry as what their market wants and so the TNA and WWE toys look nothing like their counterparts. This demonstrates that TNA’s choice of body shape was completely independent of their faith in him. The WWE had massive confidence in the Rock but his toys’ body shapes did not match his. WWE had faith in him, and chose to show that by giving him a push rather than by creating a realistic toy. It is obviously ridiculous to show your confidence in someone by making their toy pear shaped, you show you confidence in them by making and marketing the toy in the first place.
“What's recurring is your tendency to create 'ghost points' to argue against as if you are having an interactive dialog. Pointing out that Samoa Joe is not a ratings or PPV Buy success is not the equivalent of blaming him 'for the failings of an entire brand of professional wrestling'. It's not even close.”
But it is exactly that. You said they had given him a massive push, that poor writing didn’t matter and that, and this is key, “SJ has equaled little in the way of ratings increases or PPV Buys”. You have linked them, and presented no other possible reasons for the low buy rates. How do you measure Joe as buy rate success ? Easy…did buy rates go up when he was in the top matches ? No they did not. Would things have been different if his mega push had included the title ? If other top level story lines had supported the product or that they didn’t have a stupid 6-sided ring ? Maybe they would, in which case Joe wasn’t a buy rate failure, everything else was. The only way to justify your blanket statement and subsequent brush off of the riposte would be to get a time machine and do the same storyline but with Rhyno or someone else instead of Joe. We can’t do that so we have to guess.
What is actually recurring is your insistence on picking the exact words used and twisting them to make your poor fellow poster seem foolish without adding anything yourself to the debate. You said Joe was responsible for low buy rates. Hegemony disagreed and thought it was the booking. That is the substance of the points, not the exact words, but of course if you focus on the exact words you can never be caught out. If you go into a restaurant and ask for some water, and the waiter brings you a glass of water, do you get angry because they brought a glass as well ? That is a ridiculous example, but no more ridiculous as the argument employed in the response to Hegemony’s post.
Finally…
“While I admire your enthusiasm...it came at the expense of attaining a comprehensive understanding of the very post you were responding to and 'arguing against'. It's also worth noting that using terms such as 'a bit presumptuous' and 'a bit premature' further weaken the appeal of your post. Such terms come off as condescending...which in the long run hurts the effectiveness of even a strong argument because it makes 'the poster as an individual' come off as unattractive to invest time reading.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this was 'out of character' and that for whatever reason you just had a whack posting effort. Please don't prove me wrong....I'd hate to have to add you to my 'ignore list'.”
This is without a doubt the most condescending thing I have ever read on these boards. You are attempting to portray yourself as a wise old master that every other poster aspires to be like, and that with time others will be as enlightened as you are. It is very magnanimous of you to give the benefit of the doubt, and I believe you have had a whack posting effort, by grossly overreacting to a perceived slight against you by use of words that you found offensive, (such as “assume”), and have attempted to “tell off” Hegemony like a child for daring to disagree with you or try to debate with you.
Bottom line: if you post a set of facts with a definite and obvious bias, you cannot attack someone for inferring an opinion from that choice of facts. Everything put up on this board has an agenda, by the very nature of deciding to post it. You are not a great and impartial being; you are accountable for what you post, and if you are so thin skinned as to feel the need to launch an attack of such depth and effort over the use of such words as “assume” and “presume” you can count yourself very lucky that Swarm has never turned his attentions to you.
This is a stupidly long post and has taken me 2 hours to write, and now I am not sure what I intended to gain from it. I know I will get a huge amount of hatred from it, and probably an incredibly vicious response from LWPD, but I felt that, although name-calling is obviously bad and results in bans and the like, intellectual bullying, and attempts to publicly humiliate someone (although, as I have already said, this one failed completely as Hegemony responded perfectly adequately on his own) need to be called, and to this point I think only PH has ever attempted it before.
