He meant, "Outside of work, where I do nothing but post to/. all day long, I have a life other than the Internet, you know, what with all the BiMonSciFiCons and the SCA and Ren Faire and Dungeon Mastering and the 'networking' (read as: desperately trying to find a girlfriend IRL after all those "Crying Game" disasters of Internet dating...)"
I was attempting to bridge the gap between our understanding of selfishness and altruism, showing that what can be seen as selfless behavior is only enlightened self interest. I am a ntural believer in altruism, so it was hard for me to accept that we always actn out of our own self interest. Indoing so, I had to explain all of what I had previously thought of as "good" in terms of self interest, but it turns out that they are not incompatible.
I am also an Anarchist of the old school, Bakunin style. I perhaps lean closer to syndicalism than you seem to, but that is probably my radical labor activist background talking. I was an organizer with the IWW. Not many people know they still exist, or that as soon as Judi Bari started telling loggers that their rights as workers and protecting the environment coincided, someone decided to blow her up.
I agree that belief that naive selfishness is good is a horrible idea. But people need to be shown why that is true for them, rather than being hit over the head with abstract concepts like good, justice, altruism, or selflessness. As Robert Heinlein had Lazarus Long say, "Never appeal to a man's better nature. He might not have one. Appeal to his self interest instead." And so ironically, if we want to bring about a world of selflessness we have to use selfishness.
Property is about the centralization of will, through force if necessary, and so it is socialism by your definition. The Native Americans had very different ideas about property than European colonists did, but the colonists forced the natives to accept one centralized definition of property rather than let different ideas about property compete on merit. One can't in fact hold the standard definition of property and let that definition compete with others. One must stamp out all other definitions, because it is kind of pointless to have the idea of private property while letting people who don't believe in that definition use your property.
After all, if some group has not agreed to your definition, why should they respect your rights? There are plenty of cultures around the world that did have different definitions, but they were stamped out by those willing to take and hold property through force. That is why you see so few societies with different definitions of property, not because the standard definition won out in any kind of fair competition of ideas.
Ah, the personal anecdote. Always a sound model to build a philosophy on, because everyone knows that one's friends and acquaintances are always a perfect representation of the population as a whole. When you can't come up with a sound logical rebuttal to an argument, there's nothing like a personal anecdote to prove your point.
Your example is also self serving, in that it allows you to feel good about yourself, to believe that you are a better person because of your choices. It relieves you of the feeling that you should do something to help those less fortunate than you, because their bad fortune is most likely the result of bad choices.
Sorry for the sarcasm. You do have a point. I'm not advocating shielding everyone from the consequences of their choices. Just saying that we can look at the system and make it more fair to everyone. Excellence, hard work, and good choices should be rewarded while laziness and stupidity should be punished. Not to be too abstract, but bad choices do not come from within. They are the result of understandable forces at work in the real world, not the result of some abstract free will. The system can be optimized to result in more people making better choices. If free will were really free, that would not be the case.
I wanted to keep my pst short and sweet, but yeah, good ideas (some of which I also thought of, but not crashing races. hehe, that would be so fun!) Here's some more: You can have NPCs with different racing or technical skills, and to really make money you need to develop a team of drivers and mechanics. While your racing is based mostly on your skill, your NPC drivers skill is based on training and attitude. For instance, your best NPC driver's girl friend is kidnapped before the big race, and he can't concentrate until you get her back. Pit crew and mechanics would also have skill levels, motivations, and problems of their own.
The only motivations we have are self interest. Can't be any other way. Altruism is a form of self interest. You help others because it makes you feel good, or you want help in the future. We have cooperation built into our genes because it is more efficient than competion, so that is in our self interest.
Property is a socially derived concept, requiring social backing in order to enforce. Property removes freedoms from some in order to bestow more freedom on another, but I argue that the freedoms removed are more basic. Without fences, I can go anywhere. You have to initiate force to stop me. Perhaps it is in my self interest to uphold your right to do so: for instance, if I am also a property holder and want you to uphold my rights, too. What incentive do non property holders have to uphold property rights? What contract did they sign saying they wouldn't come on your land?
Thus capitalism is a form of socialism, in that it essentially relies on a handout of so-called rights even from those who do not benefit. It requires everyone, even those who do not hold property, to support the system, and enforces this through the threat of violence. The one value that people in a capitalist society do not get to choose is the value of property. All must uphold this value, like it or not.
Greed is built into the system from the get go. Capitalism is based on valuing greed over freedom. Taking what was once useable by all and calling it private, and backing that up by threat of force, is greed. It removes freedom from the many in order to bestow more freedom for the few, and that is greed, as defined by the capitalist system.
Socialism enshrines freedom over greed. What was once useable by all is still useable by all. People are not allowed to take away other's freedoms without recompense and agreement by those whose freedoms would be taken. There is nothing in socialism that says that excellence cannot be rewarded and laziness punished, and there is nothing that says that people can not have a choice of what system to live under.
Socialism promotes freedom, capitalism takes it away and gives back false choices: "Do you want to destroy the environment quickly or slowely?" "Well, neither!" "Sorry, the free market hasn't decided to present you with that choice." Capitalism is inherently violent: without the threat of violence, property could not be accumulated by individuals.
I think a racing MMOG could be a big hit. Set in the future, like RnRR, on a planet dedicated to racing. Players could get sponsors and race to build up winnings, which could be spent not only on cars and upgrades, but on a home, garage, and eventually a race track of their own where they could hold their own events. It wouldn't just be cars, either. As the racing capitol of the galaxy, the planet would hold everything from chariot races to hoverpod races. It's set in the future, so you could have alien factions and resurection technology for those unlimited class ultra-violent races.
Not quite how I understand it. Currently tier 1 providers can't charge google directly, they have peering arrangements where smaller providers have to pay. They aren't trying to get the government to force google to pay, they are trying to get the government let them charge google directly.
What makes you think the market can force neutral access? Remember Betamax? Undeniably the better format technically, yet the market chose the inferior format. The free market isn't magic. If people are too stupid to regulate something correctly, what makes you think they can acheive a better outcome through random purchasing? Besides, we are dealing with oligopolies here, there is no free market. Adam Smith's invisible hand only works in certain limited circumstances, libertarian rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
Wow, can I come live in your world? Are there magical unicorns and chocalate trees there, too? Because here in RealWorld land, I see stupid people rise to positions of power while smart, hard working people barely get by.
What a magical place you live in, where the system has no impact on all the rugged individuals, all of whom can rise to positions of leadership and power through the merits of their actions, regardless of their circumstances. Yes in Magical Individualist Land, if everyone makes good choices, no one will be stuck doing the shit jobs which will instead be done by garden gnomes, who like that sort of thing.
You know what's really pathetic? Smug self serving asshats who hold tight to their ideology in order to feel superior, never have to raise a hand to help a neighbor in need (He deserves it!), never have to work to change an unjust system yet feel that justice is being done, and just generally justify their asshatitude.
After all, is there any significant difference between capturing a scene from the real world and capturing a scene from a fictional world?
Yes, yes there are significant differences. You see, most pictures taken of virtual worlds are boring, have little artistic merit, and are of no interest to anyone outside the immediate circle of the person taking them, whereas most real life pictures are... Oh, wait...
He's thinking of giant space goats. Oddly enough, the first people he wants to go into space aren't scientists, engineers and great artists, but politicians, marketing types, and telephone handset sanitizers.
If enough people start hitting the library, you'll start to find ads in books. The greedy parasites won't be satisfied until they can beam advertisements directly into your brain. Can't we make it legal to hunt marketroids for sport?
That is open source's weak spot. Things don't naturally work well together. Like cut and paste or drag and drop in any of the integrated desktop environments out there. Things are getting better, but it took a long time. Dozens of widget sets mean dozens of ways of doing things in X. It's taken the entry of big players like Sun to come up with a true integrated office productivity package. And honestly most of the work that Distributions do is making things work well together, because they don't naturally.
Microsoft is very good at making their software work in an integrated fashion, at the expense of working well with anyone else.
Is some marketing or PR firm trying to use/. as an unpaid focus group? Don't tell 'em squat, people. Or lie.
Personally, I love in game advertising. The more the better. And it doesn't have to make sense in context. Just throw in product placement anywhere. Level 45 Druids drinking Coca Cola, love it! Barbarians in Hummers, oooh! Scary! Moto Razr communicators in Star Trek, Ginsu brand light sabers, Met Life insurance policies on your characters, bring it on! Right everybody?
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
(If you don't know what that's from, well, hand in your geek card on the way out.)
Making a "Bzzt" noise in order to show contempt for an opponents argument is just an appeal to emotion, and shows me you aren't really worth arguing with. State sanctioned violence does mean that the State commits the violence.
If you take what I belive is mine, and can prove so to a jury of my peers, then the violence is you face is from the muzzle or edge of my weapon.
The hypocracy in this statement is blatent. A jury is a form of State. Personal property requires little state intervention to remeain secure, but real property requires a state in order for you to exclude others from using it. How is it not initiation of violence to exclude me through force from using what was once a shared resource?
If you believe it is my responsibility not to take your property, is not the state dictating that through the jury system and it's sanction of your use of force?
The fact that you use the term Noblese Oblige indicates that you either do not understand the term or that you believe yourself to be part of a hereditarily superior class. Noblese Oblige indicates the idea that the nobles are obliged to help the poor, usually by telling them what to do while still keeping all the resources and power to themselves. It's a self serving and condescending attitude I find all too common among Anarcho-Capitalists such as Libertarians, which I am presuming you are, as Libertarians are just about the only ones who capitalize the word "State" these days, and you belive that the State serves no useful purpose. In it's current incarnation, it is harmful, but it is also helpful. That's not to say that a group of people couldn't decide democratically amongst themselves what the rights and repsonsibilities of each are to be, and that this wouldn't be a good state.
There are poor people who are poor because of bad choices, and rich people who are rich because of good ones, sure. But I'm sick of people's self serving ideologies that let them endlessly congratulate themselves and dismiss the suffering of others. People talk about choices, but theyu don't realize that not everyone has had the same choices presented to them. No one can choose a course they are incapable of conceiving off, and you don't get to choose which choices you get to make. It's not angst, I'm actually happy, married, and have a decent job. I also don't presume that my philosophy makes me any better than anyone else, because according to my philosophy, I dind't choose to be presented with the kinds of choices that led me down that path. But I still want people to think about the kinds of ideas they believe in and how those ideas manifest themselves into actions that cause unneccessary suffering in the world. The individualist ideology denies the idea that our actions are part of a vast web of casue and effect, that free will is somehow outside that chain, and that good and bad choices can offset any conditions. I see that as a form of insanity.
Also very close to the typical racist "Well I have a friend who's black!" defense. "Well I met a black millionaire once, therefore any black person can be a millionaire. If only the rest of them weren't so lazy and shiftless..." Sigh.
What can I say? You are absolutely right. I consider myself an Anarchist from the socialist end of the spectrum (As opposed to the capitalist end. Splitters!) so I know that the State and Society are two different things. Good to see someone else who understands the distinction.
You were lucky, even if you refuse to see it. You want to make yourself feel good by judging others when you haven't walked in their shoes. You want to feel free to ignore the suffering of others and so you make up stories in your head about how you made good choices and they made bad ones. You have no idea what free will really is or about how individuality is formed out of multiplicity. You refuse to look at the simple truth: there is an unbroken chain of cause and effect, and nothing in this world is a thing unto itself. Arguing with people like you is pointless and depressing, because you won't see the truth in front of your eyes, instead sticking to your comforting and self serving myths. Whatever, I'm out.
Moron. He never was a spammer. God knows how he got so many stories on Slashdot but it's not like he hijacked open relays and filled the editors inbox with junk mail. There's so many more creative insults you could dish out. Imply that he sucked their dicks: he's a whore! Imply that he bribed them, imply that his dad is their boss, or that he sold the editors drugs. AC, you seriously lack imagination if the worst you can think up is "spammer!"
The fear is not obvious, it is implied. What real person can compare to the fantasy presented in those ads featuring perfect people having outrageous amounts of fun? Real people fear that they fall short in comparison. The fear is not presented in an obvious way, but this is how all propaganda works: assume that what you wish to be true, is true. Never directly state what you are trying to make others believe. Never say that without buying our product, no one will like you, that won't work. Assume that people who don't buy the product won't be liked, and that buying the product will make one desireable, and write the ad from that point of view.
You live in Brazil, yes? Brazil is much more open in some ways than the US, more relaxed. I envy you. I know parts of Brazil are not so good, as anywhere, but the climate and culture are wonderful. I hope to visit there some day.
Scared of losing karma? Whore. Sure, the his name links to his blog, but the story doesn't. Anyone with half a brain could tell that is what I meant, so I think you are deliberately misinterpreting my post in order to make some kind of inane point.
Slashdot Mirror
He meant, "Outside of work, where I do nothing but post to /. all day long, I have a life other than the Internet, you know, what with all the BiMonSciFiCons and the SCA and Ren Faire and Dungeon Mastering and the 'networking' (read as: desperately trying to find a girlfriend IRL after all those "Crying Game" disasters of Internet dating...)"
I was attempting to bridge the gap between our understanding of selfishness and altruism, showing that what can be seen as selfless behavior is only enlightened self interest. I am a ntural believer in altruism, so it was hard for me to accept that we always actn out of our own self interest. Indoing so, I had to explain all of what I had previously thought of as "good" in terms of self interest, but it turns out that they are not incompatible.
Perhaps Mark Twain can explain it better than I.
I am also an Anarchist of the old school, Bakunin style. I perhaps lean closer to syndicalism than you seem to, but that is probably my radical labor activist background talking. I was an organizer with the IWW. Not many people know they still exist, or that as soon as Judi Bari started telling loggers that their rights as workers and protecting the environment coincided, someone decided to blow her up.
I agree that belief that naive selfishness is good is a horrible idea. But people need to be shown why that is true for them, rather than being hit over the head with abstract concepts like good, justice, altruism, or selflessness. As Robert Heinlein had Lazarus Long say, "Never appeal to a man's better nature. He might not have one. Appeal to his self interest instead." And so ironically, if we want to bring about a world of selflessness we have to use selfishness.
Property is about the centralization of will, through force if necessary, and so it is socialism by your definition. The Native Americans had very different ideas about property than European colonists did, but the colonists forced the natives to accept one centralized definition of property rather than let different ideas about property compete on merit. One can't in fact hold the standard definition of property and let that definition compete with others. One must stamp out all other definitions, because it is kind of pointless to have the idea of private property while letting people who don't believe in that definition use your property.
After all, if some group has not agreed to your definition, why should they respect your rights? There are plenty of cultures around the world that did have different definitions, but they were stamped out by those willing to take and hold property through force. That is why you see so few societies with different definitions of property, not because the standard definition won out in any kind of fair competition of ideas.
Ah, the personal anecdote. Always a sound model to build a philosophy on, because everyone knows that one's friends and acquaintances are always a perfect representation of the population as a whole. When you can't come up with a sound logical rebuttal to an argument, there's nothing like a personal anecdote to prove your point.
Your example is also self serving, in that it allows you to feel good about yourself, to believe that you are a better person because of your choices. It relieves you of the feeling that you should do something to help those less fortunate than you, because their bad fortune is most likely the result of bad choices.
Sorry for the sarcasm. You do have a point. I'm not advocating shielding everyone from the consequences of their choices. Just saying that we can look at the system and make it more fair to everyone. Excellence, hard work, and good choices should be rewarded while laziness and stupidity should be punished. Not to be too abstract, but bad choices do not come from within. They are the result of understandable forces at work in the real world, not the result of some abstract free will. The system can be optimized to result in more people making better choices. If free will were really free, that would not be the case.
I wanted to keep my pst short and sweet, but yeah, good ideas (some of which I also thought of, but not crashing races. hehe, that would be so fun!) Here's some more: You can have NPCs with different racing or technical skills, and to really make money you need to develop a team of drivers and mechanics. While your racing is based mostly on your skill, your NPC drivers skill is based on training and attitude. For instance, your best NPC driver's girl friend is kidnapped before the big race, and he can't concentrate until you get her back. Pit crew and mechanics would also have skill levels, motivations, and problems of their own.
The only motivations we have are self interest. Can't be any other way. Altruism is a form of self interest. You help others because it makes you feel good, or you want help in the future. We have cooperation built into our genes because it is more efficient than competion, so that is in our self interest.
Property is a socially derived concept, requiring social backing in order to enforce. Property removes freedoms from some in order to bestow more freedom on another, but I argue that the freedoms removed are more basic. Without fences, I can go anywhere. You have to initiate force to stop me. Perhaps it is in my self interest to uphold your right to do so: for instance, if I am also a property holder and want you to uphold my rights, too. What incentive do non property holders have to uphold property rights? What contract did they sign saying they wouldn't come on your land?
Thus capitalism is a form of socialism, in that it essentially relies on a handout of so-called rights even from those who do not benefit. It requires everyone, even those who do not hold property, to support the system, and enforces this through the threat of violence. The one value that people in a capitalist society do not get to choose is the value of property. All must uphold this value, like it or not.
Greed is built into the system from the get go. Capitalism is based on valuing greed over freedom. Taking what was once useable by all and calling it private, and backing that up by threat of force, is greed. It removes freedom from the many in order to bestow more freedom for the few, and that is greed, as defined by the capitalist system.
Socialism enshrines freedom over greed. What was once useable by all is still useable by all. People are not allowed to take away other's freedoms without recompense and agreement by those whose freedoms would be taken. There is nothing in socialism that says that excellence cannot be rewarded and laziness punished, and there is nothing that says that people can not have a choice of what system to live under.
Socialism promotes freedom, capitalism takes it away and gives back false choices: "Do you want to destroy the environment quickly or slowely?" "Well, neither!" "Sorry, the free market hasn't decided to present you with that choice." Capitalism is inherently violent: without the threat of violence, property could not be accumulated by individuals.
I think a racing MMOG could be a big hit. Set in the future, like RnRR, on a planet dedicated to racing. Players could get sponsors and race to build up winnings, which could be spent not only on cars and upgrades, but on a home, garage, and eventually a race track of their own where they could hold their own events. It wouldn't just be cars, either. As the racing capitol of the galaxy, the planet would hold everything from chariot races to hoverpod races. It's set in the future, so you could have alien factions and resurection technology for those unlimited class ultra-violent races.
Lost Vikings? How about Blackthorne?
Not quite how I understand it. Currently tier 1 providers can't charge google directly, they have peering arrangements where smaller providers have to pay. They aren't trying to get the government to force google to pay, they are trying to get the government let them charge google directly.
What makes you think the market can force neutral access? Remember Betamax? Undeniably the better format technically, yet the market chose the inferior format. The free market isn't magic. If people are too stupid to regulate something correctly, what makes you think they can acheive a better outcome through random purchasing? Besides, we are dealing with oligopolies here, there is no free market. Adam Smith's invisible hand only works in certain limited circumstances, libertarian rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding.
Wow, can I come live in your world? Are there magical unicorns and chocalate trees there, too? Because here in RealWorld land, I see stupid people rise to positions of power while smart, hard working people barely get by.
What a magical place you live in, where the system has no impact on all the rugged individuals, all of whom can rise to positions of leadership and power through the merits of their actions, regardless of their circumstances. Yes in Magical Individualist Land, if everyone makes good choices, no one will be stuck doing the shit jobs which will instead be done by garden gnomes, who like that sort of thing.
You know what's really pathetic? Smug self serving asshats who hold tight to their ideology in order to feel superior, never have to raise a hand to help a neighbor in need (He deserves it!), never have to work to change an unjust system yet feel that justice is being done, and just generally justify their asshatitude.
After all, is there any significant difference between capturing a scene from the real world and capturing a scene from a fictional world?
Yes, yes there are significant differences. You see, most pictures taken of virtual worlds are boring, have little artistic merit, and are of no interest to anyone outside the immediate circle of the person taking them, whereas most real life pictures are... Oh, wait...
No, no difference.
He's thinking of giant space goats. Oddly enough, the first people he wants to go into space aren't scientists, engineers and great artists, but politicians, marketing types, and telephone handset sanitizers.
If enough people start hitting the library, you'll start to find ads in books. The greedy parasites won't be satisfied until they can beam advertisements directly into your brain. Can't we make it legal to hunt marketroids for sport?
That is open source's weak spot. Things don't naturally work well together. Like cut and paste or drag and drop in any of the integrated desktop environments out there. Things are getting better, but it took a long time. Dozens of widget sets mean dozens of ways of doing things in X. It's taken the entry of big players like Sun to come up with a true integrated office productivity package. And honestly most of the work that Distributions do is making things work well together, because they don't naturally.
Microsoft is very good at making their software work in an integrated fashion, at the expense of working well with anyone else.
Is some marketing or PR firm trying to use /. as an unpaid focus group? Don't tell 'em squat, people. Or lie.
Personally, I love in game advertising. The more the better. And it doesn't have to make sense in context. Just throw in product placement anywhere. Level 45 Druids drinking Coca Cola, love it! Barbarians in Hummers, oooh! Scary! Moto Razr communicators in Star Trek, Ginsu brand light sabers, Met Life insurance policies on your characters, bring it on! Right everybody?
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
(If you don't know what that's from, well, hand in your geek card on the way out.)
Making a "Bzzt" noise in order to show contempt for an opponents argument is just an appeal to emotion, and shows me you aren't really worth arguing with. State sanctioned violence does mean that the State commits the violence.
If you take what I belive is mine, and can prove so to a jury of my peers, then the violence is you face is from the muzzle or edge of my weapon.
The hypocracy in this statement is blatent. A jury is a form of State. Personal property requires little state intervention to remeain secure, but real property requires a state in order for you to exclude others from using it. How is it not initiation of violence to exclude me through force from using what was once a shared resource?
If you believe it is my responsibility not to take your property, is not the state dictating that through the jury system and it's sanction of your use of force?
The fact that you use the term Noblese Oblige indicates that you either do not understand the term or that you believe yourself to be part of a hereditarily superior class. Noblese Oblige indicates the idea that the nobles are obliged to help the poor, usually by telling them what to do while still keeping all the resources and power to themselves. It's a self serving and condescending attitude I find all too common among Anarcho-Capitalists such as Libertarians, which I am presuming you are, as Libertarians are just about the only ones who capitalize the word "State" these days, and you belive that the State serves no useful purpose. In it's current incarnation, it is harmful, but it is also helpful. That's not to say that a group of people couldn't decide democratically amongst themselves what the rights and repsonsibilities of each are to be, and that this wouldn't be a good state.
There are poor people who are poor because of bad choices, and rich people who are rich because of good ones, sure. But I'm sick of people's self serving ideologies that let them endlessly congratulate themselves and dismiss the suffering of others. People talk about choices, but theyu don't realize that not everyone has had the same choices presented to them. No one can choose a course they are incapable of conceiving off, and you don't get to choose which choices you get to make. It's not angst, I'm actually happy, married, and have a decent job. I also don't presume that my philosophy makes me any better than anyone else, because according to my philosophy, I dind't choose to be presented with the kinds of choices that led me down that path. But I still want people to think about the kinds of ideas they believe in and how those ideas manifest themselves into actions that cause unneccessary suffering in the world. The individualist ideology denies the idea that our actions are part of a vast web of casue and effect, that free will is somehow outside that chain, and that good and bad choices can offset any conditions. I see that as a form of insanity.
Also very close to the typical racist "Well I have a friend who's black!" defense. "Well I met a black millionaire once, therefore any black person can be a millionaire. If only the rest of them weren't so lazy and shiftless..." Sigh.
What can I say? You are absolutely right. I consider myself an Anarchist from the socialist end of the spectrum (As opposed to the capitalist end. Splitters!) so I know that the State and Society are two different things. Good to see someone else who understands the distinction.
You were lucky, even if you refuse to see it. You want to make yourself feel good by judging others when you haven't walked in their shoes. You want to feel free to ignore the suffering of others and so you make up stories in your head about how you made good choices and they made bad ones. You have no idea what free will really is or about how individuality is formed out of multiplicity. You refuse to look at the simple truth: there is an unbroken chain of cause and effect, and nothing in this world is a thing unto itself. Arguing with people like you is pointless and depressing, because you won't see the truth in front of your eyes, instead sticking to your comforting and self serving myths. Whatever, I'm out.
The new spec lets you see the difference between green and grue, and also between blue and bleen. Riddle of Induction solved!
This sounds like rock and/or roll!
Moron. He never was a spammer. God knows how he got so many stories on Slashdot but it's not like he hijacked open relays and filled the editors inbox with junk mail. There's so many more creative insults you could dish out. Imply that he sucked their dicks: he's a whore! Imply that he bribed them, imply that his dad is their boss, or that he sold the editors drugs. AC, you seriously lack imagination if the worst you can think up is "spammer!"
The fear is not obvious, it is implied. What real person can compare to the fantasy presented in those ads featuring perfect people having outrageous amounts of fun? Real people fear that they fall short in comparison. The fear is not presented in an obvious way, but this is how all propaganda works: assume that what you wish to be true, is true. Never directly state what you are trying to make others believe. Never say that without buying our product, no one will like you, that won't work. Assume that people who don't buy the product won't be liked, and that buying the product will make one desireable, and write the ad from that point of view.
You live in Brazil, yes? Brazil is much more open in some ways than the US, more relaxed. I envy you. I know parts of Brazil are not so good, as anywhere, but the climate and culture are wonderful. I hope to visit there some day.
Scared of losing karma? Whore. Sure, the his name links to his blog, but the story doesn't. Anyone with half a brain could tell that is what I meant, so I think you are deliberately misinterpreting my post in order to make some kind of inane point.