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Cainehill said:
You didn't use a smiley. And you're bloody stupid if you think or expect that people can tell when you're trying to be jocular in a pure text medium when you _don't_ use emoticons or some other means to display the mood in which something was written.
This is a longtime problem with the internet and text mediums. Intelligent people, and even rutabagas if they're been on the net long enough, figured this out and use things like "  " or " <sarcasm> ... </sarcasm> " or whatnot.
You don't have the clues of tone of voice, of body language, and usually not even the benefit of some knowledge of the other person.
And you posted a one liner that was at least as easily interpretted as sarcasm or bitterness than good natured humor / joking.
That's ... not particularly bright. And even worse is your response of indignity because someone didn't have the telepathy to know how you meant it!
Oh - that'll be five pounds for the tutoring in basic communications theory 101. <img src="http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif" alt="" />
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Hello Cainehill - nice essay. I think you undervalue the power of language though. I don't think my one-line post was easily interpreted "as sarcasm or bitterness", unless I seriously overestimated my audience. So far you and Arryn seem to be the only people who misinterpreted it. I'm not saying emoticons aren't useful - they are indeed, and they can be fun - but they're not mandatory, except for the linguistically challenged. As you probably know, a large proportion of humour arises from ambiguity, and that's lost if you use a smiley.
Besides, my indignity was not actually at Arryn's misinterpretation, but at the nasty and supercilious tone of her reply. Even if I had meant it seriously (which would have been a little sad), it would not have warranted such an unpleasant response.
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Cainehill said:
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You also try to make people feel small by quoting their own text back at them, usually out of context. I can really see why some people dislike you. You give female gamers a very bad name.
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Oh, Goddess forbid that anyone use what someone wrote against them! Maybe you'd prefer that they editting your words, misattributed who said what, and used subtle innuendo in conjunction with the words that you didn't exactly say?
I'm also curious how Arryn used what you wrote out of context. After all - it _was_ just a one line sentence of a post. <img src="http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif" alt="" /> Hard to use that out of context.
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No of course it's better to quote people than to edit or misattribute - but if you deliberately change the context, that's still as bad even if you quote verbatim. I wasn't referring to Arryn's quoting of me in that particular instance, it was a more general observation after reading her Posts for several months, and a specific reference to her recent dispute with Pickles in another thread. But since I didn't bother to spell that out, I wasn't expecting anyone to know that telepathically ....
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