In post 1109, Amrun wrote:@Farkran: I think the ideas behind what you are saying are sound. People should not be excused from making scumreads, and should be accountable for their progressions.
However, the way you’ve gone about it here just leaves me wondering if you’re really digging for intent. A couple of times I really felt like they were misrepresentative of what was going on at the time, or like focusing on the surface and not what’s underneath.
Ok. Can you talk to me about what, specifically, i misrepresented in my cases? Where i focused on the surface rather than digging below it?
Especially the second part - this is a thing i got often recently, every time i was town and the comment came from town. I don't even want to argue about our alignments right now, i mean, ultimately the purpose of any in-game exchange is to discern alignments, but right now i don't want to focus on the "we're town" aspect of my sentence. I want to see where you found that i was mistaken/misrepresentative/superficial, and what should i have done differently in your opinion.
I'll start by saying that it is not true that i don't look for intent behind words. Words are the first thing you are "hit" with when reading a post, of course - the first impression you get is that given by the what words were used to build your sentence, the "Tone". The second is the "Content", which is the whole sentence and its meaning, and it's different from tone in that it is WHAT you are saying rather than HOW you are saying it - two sentences which are utterly and literally the truth about a specific argument, could be vastly different in tone, and that could lead to believe the truth is offered by an instinctive person (usually, indicative of town - you could stop there to form a tone-based townread) or structured (NAI - you need to delve deeper). Third in line there is intent, or WHY did you say what you said. When the tone is structured and the content is truthful, you may ask yourself if the post, despite being the truth, was offered with helpful or malicious intent.
To provide a concrete example, i had to reread Hectic's ISO a couple times before realizing that his progression on Chara was scum indicative. Why did i re-read Hectic specifically and not another player? Because i was skeptical about Hectic behavior during the end of d1, specifically starting from his interactions towards Chara. Then, the d2 post where he promotes a spare on its slot rang another bell to me, that resonated with his previous d1 post where he voted Chara. I went back and checked, and found out that the first fight vote wasn't particularly off tonewise or contentwise - but when Hectic enters d2 promoting a spare on Chara, i asked myself what was the purpose of that. How could it be a genuine scumread? Why would hectic place a pretty much vanity FIGHT vote on Chara for so little reason, when he was strong on his own spare (and ultimately on sparing suji too)? Why does Hectic enter d2 with a preference for the 4-spared route and includes Chara in it, after what happend there? I thought of one possible reason: distancing. And that's the second bell that alarmed me: why isn't Chara AT LEAST a bit paranoid of this, instead introducing itself by healing hectic? Why didn't it ask Hectic for an explanation? That is, because Chara accepted the distance put between them as a good thing. That's what led me to think they are the most plausible scumteam right now. Everything that i can think of right now would match this theory. This does not mean it's 100% correct, but i do want to pursue it, engage more with the people involved (nothing from Chara made me change my mind, though), and possibly get a flip to learn more.
There are other scummy slots out there, like Psyche and Replica for instance, but they are... different. I already explained myself, but to reiterate: they both seem more wrong than scummy. There COULD be scum intent behind their posts (psyche pushing for a very weak spare-based strategy including himself, Replica using math to conceal potential spare pushes on partner, etc), but it may also be explained by them just not being able to see eye to eye with me. By discussing a lot with Replica, i think that's more likely the case. He's pretty much as passionate as i am about his opinions, he is consistent tonewise and contentwise, despite being inconsistent logicwise and being unable to associate math with psychology/sociology. Psyche is a bit "worse" than replica, alignment-speaking, because he refuses to engage completely with me, but as i said the fact that he is mocking me (i don't mean this offensively, but you are fooling around with me and my reads, psyche) rather than defending himself, attacking me or trying to pocket me is... not what i would expect from a scum with his player profile.
