Aldurin, sarcasm is dependent upon a previously established persona as a point of contrast. If you used to go around calling people assholes with sincerity, you can't just go AH I'VE TURNED OVER A NEW LEAF THAT HAPPENS TO LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE OLD LEAF BUT NOW IT'S SMIRKING A LITTLE.

Kyanbu and people talking at Kyanbu, I'd personally recommend skipping to the point where you all stop talking because between now and then the best you can hope for is only slightly-less-unpleasant-than-everything-up-til-now, which isn't particularly promising.

Jagos, you haven't said anything since I posted but what I posted is still true. I feel like reiterating that fact, because this thread is a carnival of tragedies, in which one heartrending atrocity is paraded after the other, as children look on and with tears in their eyes they turn to their mothers and fathers, those once trusted figures who brought them to this festival promising a night of merriment, and they say "but I thought you said God loves us."

This has been a bad day for General Discussion.

This wasn't meant as a "gotcha" thread in any way, shape nor form. So let me clear that air right now. I was trying to see how people would react to this news and as I said, I have a history of downer information. It's funny sometimes but I put this in general mainly for lighthearted reactions to this, whereas I usually post a lot of stuff that's SRS BZN in the discussion section about some heavy stuff. I didn't think anyone would start with the choking of throats so I just thought to myself "Hmmm... Wonder what people would think about this?" I am prone to irrational thoughts every now and again, and this is one of them.

No, Ben Stiller didn't steal $10 million dollars directly from the tax subsidy, but having read the other articles (since this one is part 4) there are a number of states that are clamoring to subsidize Hollywood movies even though it does nothing to help their local economies. Part Two shows how Wisconsin's subsidy didn't help them at all. The first article has a chart showing how the money for film incentives has increased over 20 years.

What Joe Karaganis did for the movie/ teacher aide comparison is show how NY contributed money to this movie while showing how teachers and their budgets were cut by about the same amount. To me, this is interesting because you can see how much that subsidy cost in quality education and puts this type of spending in detail for people.

I'm not going to get into rest but that's rather affrontive. Yes, you're still a cool person but I don't stay on the NPF forums all day every day. I will respond in due time and would like to be given that choice.

Food for thought, because even I know posting like that is something to avoid.
 

You may want to tone down a little bit, because as much as people belittle and argue with each other here, it's mostly either non-serious or discussion that they won't hold each other to too hard. Being directly negative and imposing towards people like what you're doing doesn't enhance any argument or discussion and can drive away people.

Having your little power trip from your recent popularity spike does not inherently justify such vile responses towards others.

Shush, Aldie. Just shush.

@Jagos: I'm not sure how you could have intended it as anything *but* a "gotcha" thread with your little, "What if I told you Ben Stiller stole 10 million dollars from teachers!" post, which is misleading and incorrect on a number of levels, especially for implying that it is somehow Stiller's fault that this happened. You don't make posts like that on accident. If you want to have a discussion about something, being intentionally misleading and failing to provide any meaningful information is not the way to do it.

EDIT: Also, everyone get off Kyanbu's nuts about the really dumb thing he said. It's just drawing out a conversation where one person is defending a dumb thing and other people are reading too much into that dumb thing, and it's making a terrible thread worse.

You're right in that this is just general discussion, and for that reason I would not be bothered by the way you chose to structure this thread if that was all that you were doing. But it wasn't, you chose to present the information in a way that was just as manipulative. Before you even start citing actual facts and sources you choose to lead into it with the most absurdly biased approach. You may not have intended for your thread format to have such a "gotcha" vibe and all of this could have been totally innocuous in intent, but when every post you make in this thread is propagandatastic enough that it looks like you're practicing to be either a cult leader or a FOX news pundit, I'm not going to immediately interpret it in a very friendly manner.

Again, I know this isn't the news board, and I'm sorry to everybody if my posting in this manner is inappropriate. I just respond poorly to the kind of intellectual dishonesty that this thread [appears as though it] represents.

I didn't mean to imply that I thought you should have responded sooner. I was just bringing your posts up again as a means of emphasizing how shit I think this thread is, so as to make that post more effective.

I'm not saying what I think about all this because Fifthfiend made a nice thread about me a month ago. I'm saying what I think about all this because it's what I think about all this. I'm sorry if you found my post hurtful, I genuinely am. It wasn't intended that way, and I can see why the presence of caps-lock may have been misleading. But I didn't say it because of my fucking ego.

EDIT - I do not rescind anything that I said. I just wanted everyone to know that it was not intended to be hurtful. I also do not think it was written in a manner that could realistically and effectively be interpreted as notably hurtful, given that my comment to Aldurin is helpful advice in a rather mildly snarky tone, my comment to Kyanbu & Co was only in regards to the state of their collective conversation and blamed nobody in particular, and my comment to Jagos was just neutral reiteration as a means of enabling a summing up of my annoyance with the thread in general. My failure to predict that some would view the matter differently was entirely reasonable.

Your posting in this manner is totes appropriate, as calling shit threads what they are has always been a totally okay thing that many participate in. In many instances, calling a thread what it is is the only way to get people to realize, "Hey, let's turn this shit around."

I don't know what gave you the idea that you're arbiter of good and bad posting around here, but please cut it out.

I am not backing down on what I said, since it's rare for posting like that to actually bother me. Sure people may say "Oh it's just Earl, nobody cares about him and his stupid posts" but I will still call out vicious posting when I am actually bothered by it. I won't care if people argue that I can't judge posts just because I'm not anybody else on the forum.

Dude. Seriously. Accusing Betty of being on an ego trip is at least ten times as douchey as anything you posted it in response to. Just fucking drop it.

Jesus Jumping Messiah, this isn't Kindergarten