Yesterday, because I was in a silly mood, I decided to make an exception to my Do Not Bother To Read rule and reply to several people here...as an experiment. Trying to capture it in a haiku, this is what I came up with:
Throwing four dogs an attention bone then waiting to see what happens What I expected to happen happened. They perceived my comments as initiating a "dialogue," and more revealing, as if by making them I had issued an invitation to them to *argue* with me, in some kind of silly quasi-intellectual dick-size contest. This is not to be. :-) They all went back on the DNR list immediately after my experiment, and I haven't bothered to read any of their followups, except to note in Message View that they made them. This explanation -- that I was inviting them to *demonstrate* WHY one shouldn't bother with them -- will in all likelihood not reach them. They'll ignore it, pretend that I'm really engaged in some kind of dialogue or argument with them, and continue to imagine that they're not only engaged in some kind of duel with me to establish dominance, but that they're "winning" it. THAT is exactly why I don't bother with them. THAT is why they're on my DNR list, and shall remain there. Life's too short to bother to interact with people who have established a history of trying to turn every interaction on this forum into some kind of imaginary contest that they can "win." Let them do this with people who like that kinda stuff. I don't. I look forward instead to having actual "no need to 'win'...just having a fun discussion" interactions with people who have evolved past the level of trying to establish dominance -- dominance of their egos, and dominance of their ideas. I look forward to khazana108 being back, because he "gets" that kind of interaction, and I look forward to similar inter- actions with other people here who have established a history of being able to maintain that kind of non-attached, non-argumentative real dialogue. And I leave the world of *imaginary* "dialogues" -- the kind that exist only inside the heads of those stuck in them -- to those stuck there. May they "win" these imaginary arguments all they want, and declare "victory" all they want. They're talking to no one except themselves, and those silly enough to listen.
