In regards to "us." (Gaming)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Friday, January 24, 2014, 08:15 (3956 days ago) @ SonofMacPhisto

I, personally, decided to stop worrying about it and love the bomb a long time ago. Really, it's up to each individual poster. For what it's worth, having since made the decision to not care about Cody's tone, I feel like I've learned a lot from a valuable perspective. I mean, has anyone not tried Vanquish because they think Cody is dumb? That's a sad thought, right there.

Reasonable thoughts. For me, I view tones as an important part of communication. Words have multiple meanings and varied implications, together they form more complex meanings, and coupled with subtext and other tools like tone and style, those words become your ultimate message. When I write, I rely on all those tools available to me, viewing wording and tone as equal and interconnected parts, and even then I don't usually feel I can convey every nuance and subtlety my thoughts and feelings hold. So if you remove any tone I may have weaved into my post, my message may mean something to you entirely different from what I had originally intended. I hope people don't do that, so I try to return the favor. There will always be multiple readings of course, but I have to take your post for what it is, whatever you include, whatever is there. If I start picking and choosing signals to interpret and others to ignore, I worry I may get it all wrong.

I had tried Vanquish and was not interested before I had ever heard Cody praise it, but yes, having experienced so many discussions with him over the years, I'm now conditioned to ignore most of his recommendations. But by the same token, I often become interested in games he slanders. :) That could always change of course, I'd love to be surprised.

But I will never be able to overlook the tone, whether pleasant or pretentious, from Cody's posts. They are a part of those posts, they mean something, and they imply something about the message and the person. I might be interpreting those signals incorrectly, but I can't pretend they are not there. And after all our back and forths, I have become fairly confident in those interpretations, so I now choose to ignore most of his posts altogether, weighing my frustration against the positives received. That is not to say he is dumb or does not have ideas to offer, but after years of discussing with him, the high blood pressure greatly overwhelms anything we have not already thoroughly beaten to death in past conversations.