Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Imperium]

Glad you came out. We are going to go sleepy sleep now but good luck - project town like you've never projected town so you don't get shot!

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Either I took too long to get ready, or I'm too tired too early to catch Duchess.

Things to do tomorrow, I'm not able to try and push my luck with energy drinks here, so it'll need to wait for tomorrow or Sunday (Saturday is booked for me too heavily to guarantee literally anything.)

PEDIT: Oh, there's Duchess! Hi. You have like, a half hour before I need to be passed out, and I'm taking my meds as soon as I send this post. So its going to be time limited chatting, but I'm here till that time is up.

I don't disagree with you that STT's argument about IRL circumstances or MUSH explaining that her time may be limited is any indication of scum. That''s quite underhanded from STT and I'd like him to reconsider at least that aspect of their read. The instances about MUSH's extrapolated reads however rung a bit of truth, and I do see why STT would make those conclusions. I'll give you one thing I don't like about that wall now that I've actually read it and it's that STT seems to be mostly convincing himself in real-time. The wall goes through 'the effort is townie' to 'but the meta is scummy' to 'that reasoning about IRL circumstances justifies the inconsistencies' around to 'OK, OMGUS.'

The problem relies on the fact whether you believe STT thinks it's worthwhile to push someone like MUSH because let me be honest, there's a reason (no offense MUSH) most people do not respond to her walls. Why not pick an easier target instead of engaging yourself with a possible conundrum. This is not the basis of liking STT, rather there's just a lot of headway given.

Just caught this in time, but please actually check Zdenek in Death Curse because that's literally the exact thing that happened there, and also in one of the newbie games (2028? last one I played) word321 tried it and I caught scum there too (shame his replacement fooled me)

People see "weird player" and think "aha, I can get a push on this" and it's never going to work with me, but it doesn't stop them from trying

Phones about to die back soon

But I want to leave by expanding on this rushed crap post I made.

Certain scum /love/ to try and push me in the early game, because they don't understand how I'm getting townreads. It's weird as hell to me, and it never works. Seems to have no correlation to skill level or experience. Word321 in Newbie 2028 was a ton of logical fallacies and purposeful spin doctoring of my posts that reminds me of STT's later posts attacking me. Zdenek led in with a push on me based on "making excuses" with the escape hatch of "does anyone know if this is something MUSH does" -- also very reminiscent of STT's push on me, except Zdenek made the mistake of trying that in a game where a decent chunk of the player list knew my play.

This wasn't OMGUS. I have repeatedly pointed out instances where I scumread players doing very similar things to STT, and they were in fact scum each time. You can also check the inverse: it's possible to check almost any game I'm in and see where scumreads of me come in and I /don't/ immediately scumread back (2028 is a special case, I was having a horrible time during that game). Isis in Death Curse scumread me early on, and I pushed on that and ended up accepting the reasoning as decent enough even though even Isis no longer scumread me by that point. Zdenek, by contrast, didn't even strictly scumread me, just made a half-hearted push, and got a scumread for his trouble.

I /push/ anyone who scumreads me (because that's an opening for interactions that will be content rich and help me and others sort), but I only /scumread/ people who scumread me if it is deserved. It was in this circumstance, for reasons I've explained over and over, including yet again in /this/ post.

Of course, all the explaining was a waste of time and energy since I no longer think STT is definitely scum. Data still required there, I'm sure as hell not townreading. That said, the reasoning I was using doesn't hold with Bayesian-bots since they aren't beholden to such limited ideas as good and bad faith.

I still wanted to make sure it was clear that I wasn't asspulling or OMGUSing as most seemed to be assuming. This has a basis in actual play experience and actual details in the actual post STT actually made.

[Duchess]

I took your advice and read page 19 through several times without stopping to try and pick at any of the individual posts, and I went back and read their earlier interactions in the same way. Far and away the most glaring issue I have with page 19 in particular is how many times Cakez completely changes his stance while keeping the exact same energy in his push. I know Imperium commented on his moving of the goalposts which I assume is referring to the same habit I'm seeing.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

That seems accurate to me. I was uncertain if it was potentially personal conviction causing Cakez to put the cart before the horse or not, however. I've seen townies do similar things before, and most often I see it from skilled players who have a history of games together -- they have a very intuitive gutread on their counterpart, and they just try and rationalize it any which way they possibly can.

[Duchess]

Imperium did mention having seen Cakez act similarly as town before, so they might be writing it off as stubbornness, but I don't see how you can completely alter the very foundation of an argument and keep pushing it without even a pause or an acknowledgment that a different road is being explored. I understand how you can see that as stubborn town, or a personality trait (bullheaded, simply refusing to admit when wrong), but it reads to me as if losing the argument has much more significance in Cakez' mind than simply letting a scumread loose, if you catch my drift. The fact too that Cakez, if I am recalling correctly, reignited the argument several times, leads me to believe he may see it as an inevitable 1v1.

[Duchess]

Nasty rogue comma there.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I saw both Imperium and Cakez rekindling the discussion on multiple occasions, myself. I didn't do a count of who did it more, though.

What I'm concerned about here is this: if Cakez has a strong, overwhelming sense of Scum off of Imperium and is town, I can see Cakez assuming that the familiarity and the strong gutping override logical debate, but that he has to be /convincing/ somehow to ensure his pet scumread gets shot. I think many people forget that having many different arguments that you abandon rapidly as they are shot down weakens how people perceive your argument as a whole rather than strengthening it, but I understand the impulse and am often tempted to succumb to it when it would serve me better to say "Fair, but I'm still scumreading them and you can't stop me."

In that case, it could be an SvT interaction still, but one where Cakez is the townie, and that flips the gamestate for me due to how difficult I'm finding it to parse what Cakez and co. are actually perceiving.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

To rephrase that last part a bit more bluntly, if Cakez is actually town in this interaction and Imperium is scum in it, then the gamestate is very likely to be scum-controlled, and information is being spun to keep town from finding each other. In such a case, I'm inadvertently on the scum side of things, and need to very rapidly figure out how I got here and who I was taking cues from.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Meds have kicked in. Leave me your final response and I'll get it when I wake up.

[unwnd]

Imperium did mention having seen Cakez act similarly as town before, so they might be writing it off as stubbornness, but I don't see how you can completely alter the very foundation of an argument and keep pushing it without even a pause or an acknowledgment that a different road is being explored. I understand how you can see that as stubborn town, or a personality trait (bullheaded, simply refusing to admit when wrong), but it reads to me as if losing the argument has much more significance in Cakez' mind than simply letting a scumread loose, if you catch my drift. The fact too that Cakez, if I am recalling correctly, reignited the argument several times, leads me to believe he may see it as an inevitable 1v1.

With Imperium? Could you explain this thought further?

Do you guys know what I realized I've been missing my past few games. It's actually talking to people instead of shading them from afar and pretending they're not listening. I have a scumread on you Duchess and I'd like to sort it out. I'm not sure where I started to think being all haughty with my reads was fun or even engaging for others.

[Duchess]

These are the two long posts Imperium has made about Norfolk, for context.

Spoiler: The more recent, onset of the page 19 exchange

sigh you guys are completely missing my point. So either I'm being unclear or you guys are just not actually comprehending what I'm saying. I think Lotus is the only one that has interacted with what I'm saying and catching what I'm meaning.

I'm not arguing that norfolk is town. I'm saying that his original posts were not that scummy to warrant being on everyone's scum lists and to get the type of pushes that cakez/unwnd/ducchess gave. So far Not Mafia has called norfolk town, Mush hasn't given a read I don't think, and then remove Norfolk himself. That leaves 8 players who have called him scum, some with reasoning that I don't buy/I think is odd.

If he is town, then he is being pushed/scumread by scum as an easy push. If not_mafia and Mush are scum, we're looking at 2 in that pool of 8. I don't currently think both of them are scum, which means more in that pool of 8.

If he is scum, there are bussers/distancers about and I'm trying to make sense of the pushes and reasoning there to try to determine who's being genuine and who's going along because it looks good. And unwnd being like yeah shoot him he's a slanker, but not taking about other ones who have as many or fewer posts than norfolk feels wrong on so many levels. Cakez pushing him in ways that make no sense whatsoever and trying to tie me to Norfolk when he's seen me push against reads and try to make sense of them in previous games is really weird as well, and I don't buy that his read is coming from a genuine place. It just feels all kinds of wrong.

I don't know why this is so hard to understand. Regardless of Norfolk's alignment, the reads on him are weird. I'm trying to read the people who are reading Norfolk who's reads don't read genuine to me.

Spoiler: And this is the earlier post to which they both make reference

ATTACK ON TITAN!

So Norfolk has a handful of games in the newbie queue and exactly no completed games out of the newbie queue. He doesn't appear to be a lurker as either alignment, and he's stated in one of his newbie games that he doesn't like the pressure of being scum or a power role.

Which means his opening posts here quite frankly are either or. They could easily come from inexperienced town who doesn't want the pressure of having a gun early because they lack confidence. It could also yes come from nervous scum.

I don't think his opening posts are all that scummy because they can as easily come from town who doesn't want the responsibility of fucking up early as it can from scum who's afraid of getting shot, but I don't think there's any real way to tell the difference right this minute. I just find the super push there from his first two posts pretty scummy, and if he is scum I bet there's some bussing in there because scum love to find their partners scummy for not very scummy stuff.

I don't like unwnd's posts regarding this at all. We're two days in the start of a two-week deadline with not even 20 pages in. It's super misguided and kinda scummy to be advocating for a shot here right now for slanker shot. We have no idea whether or not norfolk will start actually posting, but based on previous games he should regardless of alignment. If he's scum, we get oh look everyone thought he was scum but no associatives to speak of, and we potentially go right into one of us eating a night kill before any impact can be made, which means we're not too far ahead.

That's best case scenario. Worst case scenario is he's actually town, given a power he doesn't want and is uncomfortable with AND we lose netflix.

Acting like it's misguided not to just go for the slanker when you can't be a slanker at the beginning of the game is really weird.

This is so disingenuous
You literally wrote a wall defending Norfolk
For you to backpedal here and go "whoa I wasn't actually townreading them" feels like a lie

This is obviously an extremely poor interpretation of the wall in question. It is not possible that Cakez (regardless of alignment) actually read 334 before posting this, and yet the language he uses is strong and persuasive (backpedal, lie), like he has no reservations against pushing Imperium on a false premise.

This is why Imperium's defense is so bizarre to me.

What about our defense did you dislike?
What part of it was unreasonable?

It feels very unearned
Why are you going in to save someone so hard who (at the time) had made four posts?

[quotes 334]
Where did I call him town Cakez?

At this point it's not even about the Norfolk read
It feels like your play around them is incredibly posturey and setting yourself up to look good whether it flips town or scum

Now that he has been directly faced with the post he is deliberately misrepresenting, it's not about the Norfolk read anymore. Not because Imperium forced Cakez to actually read what he was talking about, mind you. "At this point" does not at all imply "now that you have pointed that out". It implies that it hasn't been about Imperium's Norfolk read itself for some time now, not even 4 posts ago when his problem was very explicitly about Imperium supposedly backpedaling on their read of Norfolk.

From SirCakez' point of view at this time, it does not logically add up for him to keep pushing that they have backpedaled (which he is still doing in this post by saying Imperium have been deliberately shifting their posture). The whole reason Cakez has shifted to his "it's not about the read anymore" stance is because Imperium just showed they never townread him in the first place. How can you acknowledge 456 ("it's not about that" implies "your point is technically correct but doesn't matter right now"), and in that very same breath keep pushing that they've been artificially posturing around Norfolk?

You never did actually call him town directly yes that's my point
The impression of anyone reading that wall without context would be that you townread the slot
Because why would you go so out of your way to defend someone who is null?

This is getting confusing. 7 posts ago, the "point" was their flipfloppy read of Norfolk, and then it wasn't about their read of Norfolk anymore it was about looking good no matter the flip, and now it turns out this whole time the point was actually that they are fencesitting. How do you get from "It's scummy that you called him town and then backpedaled" to "It's scummy that you haven't made a stance on him" in such a short span? And without even acknowledging your own shift in position too ("yes that's my point" very much implies "that is what I have been saying").

While I'm thinking of it, by the way, even if Cakez wants to come and tell me I'm somehow wrong about what his intentions were behind his words when I keep saying (x implies y), it is obvious from the language he is using that he is at least ok with them being widely interpreted that way.

That wall is a giant fencesit basically if you're not committing to call Norfolk town

6 posts ago, Imperium was "going in to save someone so hard". Literally the post before this, Cakez calls it a hard defense ("you go so out of your way to defend someone"). Now it's a giant fencesit.

That's like saying "I don't understand townreads on Joe Schmo"
And then later going "Actually by the way I'm not declaring a read on Joe Schmo at all."

It doesn't connect logically.

This is a post that somebody who has not properly read what they are talking about makes. The first line is a vast oversimplification, almost definitely maliciously so. Continuing with this kind of interpretation of Imperium's stances at this stage in the discussion is way too far from the realm of believability for a townie, in my opinion. I haven't reread and re-evaluated the whole game since being wrong about Lotus, but at this point I would be extremely confident in shooting SirCakez.

[Duchess]

Imperium did mention having seen Cakez act similarly as town before, so they might be writing it off as stubbornness, but I don't see how you can completely alter the very foundation of an argument and keep pushing it without even a pause or an acknowledgment that a different road is being explored. I understand how you can see that as stubborn town, or a personality trait (bullheaded, simply refusing to admit when wrong), but it reads to me as if losing the argument has much more significance in Cakez' mind than simply letting a scumread loose, if you catch my drift. The fact too that Cakez, if I am recalling correctly, reignited the argument several times, leads me to believe he may see it as an inevitable 1v1.

With Imperium? Could you explain this thought further?

Do you guys know what I realized I've been missing my past few games. It's actually talking to people instead of shading them from afar and pretending they're not listening. I have a scumread on you Duchess and I'd like to sort it out. I'm not sure where I started to think being all haughty with my reads was fun or even engaging for others.

It's possible that part of what's fuelling Cakez' illogical persistence is the belief that if Imperium doesn't go down, he does. Scum who have argued themselves into a corner are I think likely to have a disproportionate amount of paranoia.

You originally said a lot of what pinged you about me was my tone and word choice feeling fabricated. Is that still true?

[Nachomamma8]

I'd like the opportunity to step back from the thread and let everyone else play for a little while. If you have things you need from me I'm not vanished or gone or whatever but gonna try to lurk until Sunday afternoon or so.

Lotus, if you're planning on shooting before then, please try to givr ample warning so I can put a readslist out there at least.

[Imperium]

I'd like the opportunity to step back from the thread and let everyone else play for a little while. If you have things you need from me I'm not vanished or gone or whatever but gonna try to lurk until Sunday afternoon or so.

Lotus, if you're planning on shooting before then, please try to givr ample warning so I can put a readslist out there at least.

[RLotus]

I won’t be shooting for a while

[SirCakez]

Imperium did mention having seen Cakez act similarly as town before, so they might be writing it off as stubbornness, but I don't see how you can completely alter the very foundation of an argument and keep pushing it without even a pause or an acknowledgment that a different road is being explored. I understand how you can see that as stubborn town, or a personality trait (bullheaded, simply refusing to admit when wrong), but it reads to me as if losing the argument has much more significance in Cakez' mind than simply letting a scumread loose, if you catch my drift. The fact too that Cakez, if I am recalling correctly, reignited the argument several times, leads me to believe he may see it as an inevitable 1v1.

I am bringing up additional things I find scummy in new Imperium post
I just don't want to go back to the endless semantics argument we were having about Imp's Norfolk defense

[SirCakez]

I am not interested in having that argument anymore so I don't see the point in responding to 1035

[SirCakez]

I will say I think Duchess drafting up this old argument between Imp and me and developing an "extremely confident" scumread after just having a mega fail on their Lotus read seems very unnatural

[RLotus]

unwnd, can you explain your read on Cakez? I believe you said it was primarily meta that makes you town read him. I read through a couple of his town games and I don't see anything jumping out at me. What specifically in his meta?

[SirCakez]

Like Duchess has been shading me all game but as soon as Lotus flips they pull out this giant wall to move on to another target as soon as they make their return to the game. I would find this movement scummy even if it wasn't on me.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

I like Cakez for scum and even I find Duchess's argument unconvincing. My main concern is a repeated /assertion/ that this or that thing /must be X/ when nothing of the sort is true. Examples include...

It is not possible that Cakez (regardless of alignment) actually read 334 before posting this

Actually it is, because 334 was posted first. Like, on the face of it this argument is false, on every single solitary level. You can say it is /unlikely/ he read 334, or that it /sounds/ like he didn't read 334, but you can't call it /impossible/ because the linear flow of time proves you outright wrong. I presume I am NOT the only one who perceives time having a singular forward flow and not jumping around randomly? Yes? Good. This might sound petty, but it isn't, because it's something that /keeps fucking happening in this wallpost/.

"At this point" does not at all imply "now that you have pointed that out". It implies that it hasn't been about Imperium's Norfolk read itself for some time now

"At this point" literally means "as of right now". To quote Dictionary.com: "Also, at this point in time or at this juncture or at this moment. [...] Even wordier synonyms for “now” than at present, all four phrases imply that what is the case now may not always have been so or may not remain so." This is falsehood again. This is literally you projecting a nonexistent connotation on a set of words. Why would someone do that? Well, the only reason I can see is they have an agenda, but I'm open to explanations.

From SirCakez' point of view at this time, it does not logically add up for him to keep pushing that they have backpedaled (which he is still doing in this post by saying Imperium have been deliberately shifting their posture).

Except that he didn't say that. "Posturey" isn't even a word, but if it were one, the meaning would be easy to decipher. To quote Dictionary.com some more:

-y: "characterized by or inclined to"

posture (v):"to place in a particular posture or attitude.
OR
to position, especially strategically."

=

posturey (adj): characterized by or inclined to posture (v)

Which is the /exact opposite/ of saying that the posture is changing, it says that a very calculated stance is being taken in the first place. This is /yet again/ baldfaced falsehood.

The whole reason Cakez has shifted to his "it's not about the read anymore" stance is because Imperium just showed they never townread him in the first place.

Yet another baseless assertion. Given that it may very well have actually no longer been about the read, as shown, asserting that it's a reaction to not being townread is based in fiction.

While I'm thinking of it, by the way, even if Cakez wants to come and tell me I'm somehow wrong about what his intentions were behind his words when I keep saying (x implies y), it is obvious from the language he is using that he is at least ok with them being widely interpreted that way.

You know what, you probably get the point by now.



This is not to say Duchess made /zero/ good points, but rather to point out that those points were surrounded by assertions as if of facts that were in no way necessarily true. This seriously weakens an argument, and Duchess seems intelligent enough to recognize as town that these assertions are unnecessary and going to get called the hell out in a player list like this one. There's plenty of good points being made around these shit assertions that are perfectly capable of standing on their own, after all.

The feeling I get is that this is an attempt to bury the majority of the playerlist under so much bullshit that they give up on trying to discern the true from the false -- they see the thing that pings them as a good point and presume the surroundings should be good to go since they reach the conclusion after all, so who cares. And then, it's such a long post pointing out so much, well, it must be scum, huh? Given there's off-handed mention from other players that no one is reading my walls, this wouldn't be an unrealistic or forlorn hope sort of tactic by any means, but a calculated strike at a perceived weakness in the player list.

Now my current concern is: is this bussing, or am I reading someone wrong? If I am misreading someone, who is it? And so forth.

Concerns I'll need to answer on Sunday probably, but I hope the other players will do some of this work while I can't.


One thing I want to address before I close this post out is the apparent ability for Duchess to flip my arguments here back on me, since I've been accused of asserting things by STT.

Unfortunately, that isn't how it works.

There's a Discordian concept called Reality Grids, or Reality Tunnels, or Black Iron Prisons (it depends who you talk to). Essentially, none of us really are living in the same world because the ways we perceive the world are so heavily influenced by our personal experience. Getting into this is a whole detailed topic, practically a graduate level course, but it's worth mentioning that it's useful for scumhunting and part of my playstyle.

When you are talking about things that aren't scientific facts or clear epistemological conclusions, Discordians have a tool to show that they are treading in grey areas, that they aren't able to firmly say something is true or false in this domain. It's called e-prime, and it works by getting rid of every version of the word "be" in your sentences. No "am", no "is". You're left having to say things like "I feel hungry" and "It looks like daytime to me". These phrasings prevent people from making assertions that may be true for them but are not necessarily true for everyone.

I don't use e-prime anymore, because it's sort of like linguistic training wheels for interacting with the concept of Reality Grids. But when I say something I take a similar approach, focusing on this being what I see, or being able to see a point of view where this is or isn't true. Go on, go look back through my posts. I make sure that when I talk about someone's motivations or where they're coming from or what their goal is, it's just what /I'm/ coming up with and that it isn't a hard fact.

Contrast Duchess's post here, with statements like "is not possible that" and "it is obvious that" and "it does not". I do, yes, call these falsehoods. I also prove that they are, and I'm careful not to call them intentional. Duchess has no room for being wrong in their post, which is a damn shame given that they are provably wrong on a regular basis in it.


And that's it for today's wallpost.

[petapan]

VOTE: ScrewTheTells
VOTE: Norfolk boy
VOTE: Not_Mafia
VOTE: SirCakez

Probably two scum in there

Looking back on this, does scum make this post?

i don't see why that's a town post at all. it's just a bunch of votes

[petapan]

The problem relies on the fact whether you believe STT thinks it's worthwhile to push someone like MUSH because let me be honest, there's a reason (no offense MUSH) most people do not respond to her walls. Why not pick an easier target instead of engaging yourself with a possible conundrum. This is not the basis of liking STT, rather there's just a lot of headway given.

you should know better than to think scum are always going to pick an easy target

At least Lotus should have some good targets.

what makes you say this

[WhemeStar]

VOTE: ScrewTheTells
VOTE: Norfolk boy
VOTE: Not_Mafia
VOTE: SirCakez

Probably two scum in there

Looking back on this, does scum make this post?

i don't see why that's a town post at all. it's just a bunch of votes

I don't think lurker scum does something like placing 4 naked votes.

[petapan]

Speaking of LAMIST, there's our OG:

Easily, the best shot right now is me. I'm probably the common denominator in most peoples scumreads, so it'll confirm my alignment and then any further discussion about me is over.

I almost thought that this guy was no longer that scummy compared to other people after the first several pages. After all I agree with Imperium's objective point that the Norfolk wagon in the first few pages was based on very circumstantial evidence. But like, every Norfolk post I see just keeps reminding me that this guy probably isn't town? Right? Both our heads think so and it seems like other players do too so we're not crazy here right? Why don't people wanna shoot this guy again?

the guy selfhammered as town in the game i played with him because he didn't feel he'd be able to get suspicion off his slot, play is entirely consistent with someone playing for the first time outside the newbie queue and is probably a bit overwhelmed, not really scummy

i'm still catching up so i don't have a full picture of the game but i get a sense a lot of people were gravitating toward pushing norfolk and my slot, those being the two least active players in the game, and i know this is at least 50% wrong and incredibly lazy, and i can't help but feel these are slots scum would gravitate toward pushing given the gamestate. i'm not saying inactive slots have to be town but in general if people are going to push there i'd expect a solid process of elimnation reasoning based on having a number of townreads elsewhere, and that's NOT the sense i am getting from the people who are active right now. the situation reminds me a bit of the ampharos situation in black flag, she was by far the least active player in an extremely hyperposting game who eventually flaked, my teammates suspected her but on content i didn't think her scummy and my read was that given the gamestate scum would want to try to push an inactive player for an elimination (and i was absolutely right on that count although i slightly misjudged who the scum pushing the slot were)


so when i'm catching up and seeing imperium posting about the number of scumreads on norfolk not feeling natural that's resonating pretty strongly with me, the whole thing reeks of convenience especially as he doesn't seem interested in fighting back, like, at all, and i think there needs to be a pretty hard re-evaluation here