okay first off I just want to say welcome and that I like the cut of your jib. some of your analysis was really really astute; I think it just took you a while to warm up. some of your earlier questioning e.g. around Shoshin gave off an energy of "posting for the sake of posting". where I think you wound up being the day one mislynch is largely process of elimination. as a collective, we had townreads on pretty much every slot except for you and DENMON (at varying degrees). Aday phases get really interesting when one step beyond this happens, and you realise that someone in the "POE pool" is actually town, and suddenly we're all forced to reassess which of our townreads we're wrong on. when you're in the POE pool, it's very very difficult to score townreads because people naturally confirmation bias themselves towards their townreads being right; which means by default they're confirmation biased towards assuming their POE scumreads are correct.
and to your credit: I started to reassess my read on you at the end of day one. your posting got really intriguing and I think if we'd had another few days we probably would have reached the point where the POE was {DENMON} only and we needed to reassess our reads. I doubt we catch Shoshin d1 (her greatest strength as scum is that she posts very, very well) but if we'd nailed you as town we would have been a step closer. and I think we nearly got there.
first recommendation I'd make, is to back yourself more. this is really damn difficult when you're newer to a format (or just to a community
) but projecting confidence and charisma is often the key to kicking ass in a social game. if you have a look at your early ISO, some of the things you were picking up on in Shoshin's and my posting looked quite semantic and it was tricky to see where you were coming from with the questions. to someone trying to parse your alignment, I was left with an impression of "this could exactly be 1) town who is curious about our posts, or 2) scum who just needs to post something so they don't feel like they're lurking".and in hindsight, I think there's a chance you were onto something with Shoshin. I might go back and recheck these posts to see if there's another way you could have phrased your questions/stances. but if you'd taken a line of "I don't like shoshin doing _____ and I think it comes from scum", rather than "Shoshin I think you're doing _______. Do you agree?" then I think your case would have presented as more assertive and it might have helped you with feeling more confident in what you were feeling uncomfortable about.
this is the trickiest piece of feedback to give, and it's something that 100% gets easier with more experience and once you feel more comfortable with a community. I suspect there's a decent chance you really did have a fluke good scumread on Shoshin right at the start of d1 and let us talk you out of it. let me know if I'm not right on this tho
the other thing I'd recommend off the top of my head is just posting more.. not necessarily nolifing the game and sitting on the thread all day (The Way of the Duckling), but I think in general 3 medium posts are often more effective than 1 lengthy post.
this probably sounds a little crazy but for example if you lay down a quick write-up of how you're feeling, then do a second post with some post by post analysis, then a third post with either reinforcing your original thought or changing your mind based on your findings: that presents a 'read trajectory' with time stamps in a way that could easily be edited in a larger post. from a viewer's perspective, it let's me see maybe slightly more of your thought process but more importantly proves with more certainty that you're not making up your thought process
the other thing this allows us to do is to better catch you in real time. if you're onsite for half an hour, for example, being able to exchange half a dozen quick posts with someone about why you're thinking something/directly compare reads usually shows more nuance of thought process, which in turn is more town indicative.
I hope this massive wall of text has some kinda valuable stuff in it. if there's anything you disagree with or want more on just hit me up
