should read

“the school social”

As the eternal refrain of my school reports put it “…more attention to detail needed…should not blog drunk, etc, etc”

Oh I fully agree. Except in the case of Homer Punxton.

But whatcha going do in the case of someone who has no arguments? Only a pathological hatred of “luvvies” combined with a totally luvvie attitude.

A good blog is like a good pub. And no one likes their local invaded by that little attention-seeking dork with the emotional intelligence of a yabby that turned up on his own to the school school with a half a bottle of creme de menthe, spent the night in a corner sneering at everyone else, then threw up on his rented frilly tux, got cleaned up by a teacher and then tried to pass it off for the rest of the term as a “statement”.

Someone once said that everyone you meet in life is basically a variation on the 30 or so archetypes you encountered at school. I remember the likes of John Luvviefield from way back then. The kinda of wannabe teacher’s pet that even the teachers didn’t want as a pet.

…if you believe in communism or satanism, I probably won’t even pretend to be polite to you…

I guess the less I say about last night’s sacrifice of a virgin goat to the Dark Lord Josef, the better. Otherwise we’re never going to get along.

Even more specifically, the point generally seems to be the involvement (co-option, voir slavery) of the most successful people in society.

Maybe your experience is different.

But I think Ken is right that even if you can ascertain characteristics, they don’t give you enough of a picture to tell you if you would ‘like’ the person, except in extreme cases. If nothing else, they might be quite different in ‘real’ life. Also, I certainly don’t base my friendships on any more than the broadest ideological compatibility (ie, if you believe in communism or satanism, I probably won’t even pretend to be polite to you), and I wouldn’t think this was very common outside of the extremes.

“…you can’t in fact IMO form any meaningful view about personality from the fragment of it that’s revealed online.”

Totally disagree, Ken, and I don’t believe you really believe it either. You might have a point regarding individual comments, but consistent and prolific commenters like Mr G here you get to know too well, unfortunately.

Have you ever met JG? I haven’t. If you haven’t either, I don’t really follow how you could have formed a view on whether you like him or not. Presumably you mean that you find his expressed online opinions and the way he expresses them irritating. I often do too, but that isn’t the same thing as “not liking” someone at all. Although I ocasionally transgress, I still maintain the position that we should always stick with attacking bloggers’ or commenters’ arguments rather than their personalities, not only because doing the latter unnecessarily raises the heat of debate but because you can’t in fact IMO form any meaningful view about personality from the fragment of it that’s revealed online .

Sure. What would you like to know? Though to be honest I think I’ve told you all there is to it. I was mortified and learned an invaluable lesson about researching and writing.

I was saying Boo-urns.