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BackSet

BackSet

I need more sleep. From Camelot
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  • BackSet
    • The Morality (Fandom) Wank Law:
      • Any mention of morality or ethics will not only trigger a debate, but will also prompt at least one egotistical claim of moral superiority. This usually is done using Insane Troll Logicand some variation on one or both of the following base arguments:
        • "Agreeing with my position makes one a perfect saint and disagreeing with it makes one a horrible immoral person."
        • The Ad Hominem: "Clearly you're a horrible person, which makes me superior to you, which makes me right."
      • The Perish Song Corollary: If someone in a discussion attempts to support their position using morality or ethics, that conversation is immediately doomed and unsalvageable. If you're in the conversation, your best bet is to simply withdraw from it before the flame war erupts.
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    • Politico's Law:
      • Any mention of politics will trigger a debate.
      • Corollary 1: The longer said debate goes on, the less likely it is to ever be resolved or end.
      • Corollary 2: There will be at least one Single-Issue Wonk who will jump onto any use of a word that could conceivably be related to politics, no matter the context, and attempt to make a flamewar out of it.
      • Corollary 3: As said debate drags on, the ratio of posts containing Insane Troll Logic genuinely believed by the author to be true approaches 1.
    BackSet
    • Last Post Wins Theorem:
      • As a flamewar gets longer and longer, all participants will find it increasingly boring, particularly if the original topic is forgotten, but will not stop until something forces them to in order to avoid giving their enemy the last word.
      • Corollary: If you see a mod put in one last word on the subject of the debate immediately before locking a flamey thread, run far, far away from the forum as fast as you can. Chances are either the forum is about to implode in another flame war over this mod behavior, or the implosion has already begun.
    BackSet
    • Law of Determinator Defense: As a debate thread progresses, for any statement asserted by a member who is still participating, the amount of mounting evidence against the assertion is inversely proportional to the odds that the author of the assertion will admit he/she was mistaken, and directly proportional to the odds that he/she will use Insane Troll Logic trying to defend that assertion. See also Sunk Cost Fallacy.
    BackSet
    • Law of Efficacious Text: The longer the post to a debate thread, the more the poster will feel satisfied that they have addressed and flawlessly countered all of their opponent's points, regardless of whether or not they did or if their post even makes any sense.
    BackSet
    • The Dictionary Effect: As a corollary to the previous rule, once a debate has regressed to its participants quoting dictionary definitions in an attempt to prove their point, the discussion has passed its intellectual event horizon and has become unsalvageable. Called "Layne's Law of Debate" on Wiki Wiki Web.
    BackSet
    • Law of Meta Discussions: In very analytical communities, debates will have a tendency to shift from arguing about the subject, to arguing about the argument itself. ("...and that's how we know the Earth is round." "That's not what you were arguing for five pages ago." "You're citing me out of context." "You've been citing your sources out of context for twenty pages! Here's a hundred examples of you doing that." "Here's a lengthy, bullet-pointed refutation of each of those examples." ...And so on.) When this happens, the debate has run its course and is on the verge of becoming either flamey or horribly boring, and/or getting locked.
    BackSet
    • Law of Systematic Response (The Ping-Pong Discussion):
      • If two or more users are locked in a debate, and their posts consist of chains of very short quotes and responses, it's already dissolved into a hopeless flame war and cannot be salvaged. The quotes will usually be taken horribly out of context and the responses will often involve name-calling.
    BackSet
    🎶Reach for my hand, I’ll soar away 🎶
    🎶into the dawn, oh, I wish I could stay. 🎶
    🎶Here in cherished halls, in peaceful days 🎶
    🎶I fear the edge of dawn knowing time betrays.🎶
    BackSet
    • Skitt's Law:
      • Any post correcting an error in another post will contain at least one error itself.
      • Murphy's Corollary: The frequency and magnitude of an error in a post are directly proportional to the degree of embarassment it will cause the poster.
    BackSet
    Law of Diminishing Attention Spans:
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    • Corollary 3: Your opponent in a debate thread will try to maneuver you into invoking this law, so they can accuse you of using a Chewbacca Defense.
    • Corollary 4: Using a metaphor or analogy will derail the thread into a discussion about the metaphor or analogy itself. The simpler or clearer the metaphor or analogy is, the faster the derail will occur and the longer it will last.
    BackSet
    • The Law of Mastery Jealousy:
      • For any thread pertaining to a video which demonstrates an impressive mastery of a skill and/or game, as the thread grows longer, the probability of a post insulting the performer and instigating that he/she must have no life approaches one. Approximately 97% of the time, the post will also be evidence that the poster should enroll in remedial English classes.
      • Corollary: Ironically, such a post will only prove that the poster has no life, because (a) nobody wants to hang out with an obnoxious jerk, and (b) why else would they have nothing better to do than to post such pointless comments?
    BackSet
    • The Law of Fakery:
      • Anything fake which attracts enough attention will have some people vehemently proclaiming it's real. Anything real which attracts enough attention will have some people vehemently proclaiming it's fake.
      • Corollary: If the creator confesses that it was fake, some people will stillclaim it's real and call the confession a fake.
    BackSet
    • Poe's Law:
      • Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humour, it is impossible to create a parody of anything that someone won't mistake for the real thing.
      • Corollary: Sufficiently advanced trolling is indistinguishable from genuine stupidity.
    BackSet
    • Scopie's Law:
      • In any discussion involving science or medicine, citing Whale.to as a credible source loses you the argument immediately.
      • Corollary: Doing so gets you laughed out of the room.
    BackSet
    • The "Whateva! I do what I want!" Law: As the length of a policy discussion approaches infinity, the probability of someone using "because freedom!" as an argument for setting the loosest rules imaginable, or even no rules at all, approaches 1.
    BackSet
    • Okuu's Law:
      • As the length of a discussion on nuclear power approaches infinity, the probability of Chernobyl and/or a hyperbolic apocalyptic scenario being invoked approaches 1.
      • First Corollary: The probability of Chernobyl being invoked as an apocalyptic scenario also approaches 1 (albeit at a slower rate), despite the fact that life still exists in Ukraine after the Chernobyl disaster.
      • Second Corollary: The probability of a comparison to Hiroshima and/or Nagasaki as an apocalyptic scenario also approaches 1, in spite of the fact that nuclear reactors cannot possibly produce an atomic-bomb-like explosion.
      • Third Corollary: Unless the forum is based on a related topic (e.g. physics, nuclear physics, science in general), the less a user knows about physics, the more likely they are to start such a thread.
    BackSet
    • Godwin's Law:
      • As the length of a thread approaches infinity, the probability of a comparison involving Adolf Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1.
      • Corollary: Outside of a small number of specific topics (for example, discussion of the British National Party), making such a comparison automatically loses the debate.
      • Noob Corollary: The alternative to Hitler and Nazis is to call opponents "noobs". While this doesn't usually cause the user to instantly lose the argument, there's a decent chance they're not going to win anyway (moreso if they invoke this when calling someone a noob makes no sense).
    BackSet
    • "Less is the new Black" Principle: If a user who is notable and active on one forum registers for another related forum with the same username, their profile on the second forum will usually lack numerous entries such as a signature, avatar, or location. The chance of this is inversely proportional to their activity on the related forum.
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