Not this again.
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Dont you know me well enough by now to have seen the huge flaming implied /s to that bit you quoted and that even though I’m the token Orthodox Jew here I’ve very vocally defended belief and non belief of all stripes many a time?
Also aside from the fact my Jewishness, and aside from any internal Jewish controversy about public menorahs, come the time when people are actually persecuted for festivus or festivus poles are legally banned, maybe then I’ll get fussy about this particular thing.
Of course this again. See above.
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Probably the same odds as the Gävle goat getting burned down.
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I read that as “my softest farting couch” and thought it was a great idea.
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For me, and I suspect for a lot of other people, sarcasm is going to be dead for the foreseeable future, the same as satire. Especially in their weaker “implied” varieties.
It’s not you, or anything you’ve said; it’s just everything in this lousy last year that’s worn me out. The last two years, if I’m being honest. And anxieties over the coming four.
So I’m worn out from all this “trying to figure out who’s actually a jerk, and who’s just pretending to be a jerk and will get all passive-aggressive if I don’t correctly figure out that they were just pretending”. If you’re going to say something which in your head is sarcastic, and you don’t mark it as such explicitly, that’s totally fine, but understand that I’m going to assume you meant it seriously, and I’m going to make assumptions about you based upon a literal reading of what you’ve written. And I’m likely not the only one who’s doing so.
Because there are people who say these things and mean them seriously, and I have no way of knowing whether or not you’re one of them. And I’m so very very tired. And I wish that people who are actually on the same side of a conversation could be supportive of each other instead of pretending to be trolls.
But I don’t have control over that, so I’ll make do. Just please understand that I personally am no longer willing to expend my limited supply of mental energy in figuring out whether something posted by someone whom I don’t already know well is meant to be taken sarcastically or not.
tl;dr: If something has a “huge flaming implied /s” in your mind, then maybe it deserves to have at least a small, non-burning actual /s in actual fact.
Or maybe it doesn’t need to be said at all.
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Sometimes things do need to be said over and over and over. Sometimes those of us “on the same side” need to be prodded and teased a bit.
Considering how the spectrum of those under the banner of atheism argue about what is what, they often make yeshiva students look like tight lipped yankees. The pure devotion to the cause, the evangelical behaviors of some in the spectrum perfectly mirror a kind of messianic urge often seen in the West.
In this particular case, the mixing of the a-theist cause and politics perfectly mirrors the urge of some American Christians to insert their views into the public space. Unfortunately for those erecting this pole, the chances of many passers by understanding the message will be lost in the political aspects.
As for the last two years and the coming four, well… us Jews have been dealing with much worse for far longer. Humor is part of how we cope.
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ha-ha /s
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With respect, I disagree in the strongest possible terms. Particularly when such “proddings” and “teasings” are delivered over the Internet by people we don’t know, whose motives we don’t know, and whose body language and facial expressions we are unable to read to gauge their true intent.
Particularly when they’re then going to follow up by posting a affronted paragraph complaining that their words weren’t supposed to be taken literally, that obviously they were supposed to be interpreted as sarcasm even though there was nothing there which would have indicated such a thing.
And then when called out on that, another paragraph explaining that no, their earlier comments weren’t actually implicit flaming sarcasm as had been claimed immediately before, but that they were actually just “proddings” which it’s important to keep making even regarding touchy subjects and even when one allegedly shares the same point of view on a topic as the people being ‘prodded’.
To be frank, under these conditions it is difficult to discern any meaningful difference between ‘teasings’ and wilful driving trollies. At least to my eyes.
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Considering that comment history is available for users here, it shouldn’t be that hard to tell one from the other.
While theism or the lack thereof may well be a sensitive subject is it reasonable to dismiss others before understanding them?
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Why a goat?
On the contrary; when we’re speaking of strangers on the internet, it’s entirely reasonable to dismiss those who think it’s important to “prod” people they don’t know about touchy subjects by arguing for positions which they don’t actually hold.
Because frankly, I have better things to do with my life than engaging with that.
All the best.
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Sweet jumpin jehozephat! I’ve been dismissed with a gif!
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All your posts here earn you extra 
s today. Thank you.
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Thanks for trying.
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Well, that’s literally true, in the strictest parsing, I guess. But there are atheist religions (at least one of which is older than the Judeo-Christian monotheisms*), and I know plenty of atheists who are religious (my church is pretty welcoming and nondogmatic). There are also atheists who frame their beliefs entirely in reaction to the faith of their parents, community, or culture, and such people often embed the precepts and practices of the rejected milk religion so deeply they are (like Satanists) best undersood, theologically, as heretic schisms of the religions they’re rejecting**.
In connection with Festivus and FSM I generally see more impish, impious freethinkers than grim, religious atheists. And it seems like any religion group that can’t tolerate the former probably deserves having to endure the latter ;).
* Making no claim to authority by antiquity, just being clear that this isn’t some new or Blavatsky era phenomena.
** Understandably, adherents may react with rage if you point that out.
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