If you haven’t already taken a look at the first part of this grand analysis, please do so. Now that you’re caught up…

Page 2

A large-scale pattern begins to emerge from sweatervest’s posts on the second page of the topic. Most notably, right at the top, he gives us a “treading water” response to Ryoko’s prior words. It is generally either a large, confusing, unnecessary masterpiece that we get from him, or something like this: a weak poke at the Psycho Hose Beast and his CLIQUE regime (implying that “trolling” is defined as disagreeing with him and therefore us) and an equally weak (and personally insulting) agreement with my brief thoughts on general linguistics just before this message. I mean, I had more or less given up on Pfhorums by this point in the CLIQUE game, and I was doing a halfass job at making jokes, but I still felt the need for recognition of my strong wit from both sides of a given argument. I looked in the wrong place in this thread and eventually gave up (I didn’t even read this whole thing until today, such was my despair). Oh well.

Let’s move on. Ryoko takes the bait and becomes less distant to the developing flame war, and quickly abandons his status quo appearance of enforcing some vague rules while passing by. With the words “You made a statement” and the specifics that follow, he has already given up the self-control it would take not to post like a madman here. To quote Chilron, “But he was just getting started…” An apt phrase, not just because of Ryoko’s increased involvement, but because patrick makes a guest appearance and adds his own contribution to what is fast becoming a War of Definitions:

‘trolling’ as the demonstration of thinking so muddled that it simply must be a put-on–it’s either that or untreatable mediocrity.

example: beating out a tattoo of ‘yes it is’ and criticizing one’s interlocutors for lowering(!) the level of discourse in the thread.

God bless you, patrick, whoever you are. A patrick post is usually the zenith of any given Pfhorums thread, but there is still quite a bit more to look forward to.

Ryoko treads a little water, too, by getting vague again and telling sweatervest he best give up. Maybe things are cooling down, after all? My stupid block quotation and brief coolege reference only reinforce the sense of closure: the thread is flagging, let’s move on, here’s some best of luck advice from Ryoko and a bitter allusion to the spiritual defeat that irons met at school. Case closed, seems to say the concise runaround that is basically Treellama’s trademark thanks to this entire experience, exemplified in post #26. I can see him sagging further in his chair as he types, or perhaps programming a logic bot that will type these messages for him.

Then the bomb drops: sweatervest’s block quotations are getting larger, he’s using simulated laughter, he’s becoming a sarcastic, defensive prick. And here is where it kicks up a notch: “I mean, I am like 6 credits away from a B.S. in Mathematics and not much further away from one in Physics…” Further insistence such as, “I haven’t given a reputable source on 2.5D because I don’t know where to look for such a thing” (emphasis mine) followed quickly by a statement like “it also pretty much echoes the wiki article” is only self-contradictory icing on the very fattening cake. We’re moving into Real Life Territory, slapping down personal credentials, and gearing up for intellectual duels of extreme caliber. The first person to call the cardigan on these shennanigans is Ryoko, a blunt man if ever there was one. His automatic defenses that he is “not really that invested into what 2.5D gaming is” and that he’s “trying to enforce level-headed discussion” (that’s all) probably only fool him, if that.

The Vest disappoints us by being kind of logical and reasonable for a moment. The mindblowing NO Us and infinite loops of finger-pointing keep him afloat for now. Remarkably, he consoles Ryoko: “Dude it’s perfectly fine for you to say I’m wrong.” As we have seen and will continue to see, this is simply not true at all. I do some meta-posting; there is already a sense that this is something special, not the normal “sleepy” stuff we have seen recently on Pfhorums.

Now, look, Ryoko has a way of uttering absolute truths without even trying to back them up, so sweatervest’s frustrations with him are somewhat justified. But if he generally gives us truth, proven in 99% of cases, and we’re not fatasses lounging at an academic conference, why do we need proof or justification? Anyway, he does the aforementioned dance for a few sentences, and we see not only a large quotation:original content ratio, but also a nested quotation. Oh God. Even if it’s accidental, it’s a strong foretaste of the battle that is on the verge of erupting. We get the philosopher’s favorite phrase, “burden of proof” dumped, and I wonder idly if someone needs to prove that the burden of proof exists. In public, I throw another stupid comment into the waves. Am I even trying to be clever or at least funny here? It doesn’t seem that I am. :C.

Sweatervest treads water some more, but manages to turn up the heat a little, in post 33. Of Ryoko he asks the haughty question “Are you qualified to make such a judgement?” (is sweatervest, really?). The language gets stronger and cardigan blows things out of proportion when he tries to claim that Ryoko can’t possibly know what sweatervest was doing before he posted, although he forgets that Ryoko can deduce he wasn’t researching very well simply by the quality of the answers. He does it again some sentences later: “Now you claim to know what I was doing with my life before I started posting here!” If anyone sounds reasonable, it’s this guy. True to established form, sweatervest ends with his own special brand of NOU burden of disproof.

Ryoko does what he can to impede a troll or perhaps enrage an honest man, and sweatervest tries more of this:

To little avail: Treellama has his act together and is hitting his stride, quoting the Wikipedia article that sweatervest both explicitly and implicitly used as a basis for “research” in order to discredit him in one of his “B.S.” fields of expertise. This is part of the revolution we experience in the definition of “STOMPED.” (For the record, aside from the continuing battle for a concrete definition of “2.5D,” we have already received an apt defintion of “trolling” from patrick, and now this). We get a breather from Ryoko, who points out that sweatervest is being unreasonable. Sweatervest, in kind, tries to dazzle us with a little Math Knowledge, but he receives yet another lesson in STOMPING one minute later from Treellama, who chops the man in two with the beautiful line, “I hate to break it to you, Mr. Math Major, but 2.5 is not an integer.”

The page ends with more circular logic from Mr. Cardigan, and the telling (although here admittedly quoted out of context) words “it’s news to me and frankly I don’t understand it.”

Stay tuned for more!