Folks, its time to come clean.
For the last few weeks I've been running a sort of experiment on myself. Most of you by now would have probably come to the conlcusion that I'm an arrogant ***** who has no idea about anything and probably was either spawned or spontaneously sprang into being under a rock somewhere.
when I first joined these forums, I was looking for somewhere new to express things after the collapse of a little place called "The Park" some months ago. However, I soon got bored... most of the topics seemed to cover ground we'd rehashed several times on the Park already in the philosophy sections, and I found i was not maintaining interest.
Enter the Politics arena, where I'd only vaguely dabbled before. I thought I'd try something new... I wanted to be bad. So I posted a few things I didnt neccesarily agree with, mostly to see what sort of reaction I'd get. That worked out pretty well, so I upped the tempo a bit, and turned into... well... Barney Trubble.
A short time into doing this, I thought it was kinda interesting to see what effect it was having on me, and I wanted to find out for myself how far I could go... not neccesarily in provoking reactions, but how far I could immerse myself in the persona I'd created. I became interested in finding out if I could see things from an opposite perspective by attempting not only to write like such a person would, but to BE that person for a significant length of time. It is, indeed, very difficult. I was caught on a few occasions when I allowed a couple of my REAL opinions to slip in, once or twice being inconsistent, and a couple of times posting something obviously incorrect when exposed to the cold light of day. I managed to cover up (after a fashion) those little slips by attempting to turn the question around onto whoever got me
What I found is that I was suddenly seeing things from a completely new perspective, and I actually found it quite easy to understand "my" point of view after a while, which resulted in my being able to argue it better as time went on and my post count rose. From that perspective, I rate my adventure something of a success.
But I'm tired now... it does take a lot of effort to be a bastard, for me anyway, and really after a while I found it very difficult to keep on with it. Barney is done, I'm going to at some point get myself a new nic and do things properly. My experiment on myself is over.
The main reason I'm posting this is to apologise to several people who I incidentally may have pissed off or, more importantly, actually hurt (that bit was very very difficult to live with, and nearly caused me to quit much earlier). I didnt intend to do so at the start, but as I said I found it very easy to play the role after a while... too easy. Time to give it away.
Asguard... I never beat you down completely... I tried, but you kept coming back in your own way. I think you're the one who impressed me the most the whole time I was doing this.
Adam... Poor guy, probably wondering what the Yanks are thinking of this fellow Aussie, and turning red at the thought
Captain Canada... I noticed you copied my writing style a little when you replied to a few of my posts recently. Somebody might think that while you disliked my position intensely, you at least loved my style. Oh go on, deny it
Everyone else... I'm sorry if I did anything offensive to you. But please understand, I was only using you to find out something about me. You're all anonymous... it wasn't that bad
Barney out.
For the last few weeks I've been running a sort of experiment on myself. Most of you by now would have probably come to the conlcusion that I'm an arrogant ***** who has no idea about anything and probably was either spawned or spontaneously sprang into being under a rock somewhere.
when I first joined these forums, I was looking for somewhere new to express things after the collapse of a little place called "The Park" some months ago. However, I soon got bored... most of the topics seemed to cover ground we'd rehashed several times on the Park already in the philosophy sections, and I found i was not maintaining interest.
Enter the Politics arena, where I'd only vaguely dabbled before. I thought I'd try something new... I wanted to be bad. So I posted a few things I didnt neccesarily agree with, mostly to see what sort of reaction I'd get. That worked out pretty well, so I upped the tempo a bit, and turned into... well... Barney Trubble.
A short time into doing this, I thought it was kinda interesting to see what effect it was having on me, and I wanted to find out for myself how far I could go... not neccesarily in provoking reactions, but how far I could immerse myself in the persona I'd created. I became interested in finding out if I could see things from an opposite perspective by attempting not only to write like such a person would, but to BE that person for a significant length of time. It is, indeed, very difficult. I was caught on a few occasions when I allowed a couple of my REAL opinions to slip in, once or twice being inconsistent, and a couple of times posting something obviously incorrect when exposed to the cold light of day. I managed to cover up (after a fashion) those little slips by attempting to turn the question around onto whoever got me
What I found is that I was suddenly seeing things from a completely new perspective, and I actually found it quite easy to understand "my" point of view after a while, which resulted in my being able to argue it better as time went on and my post count rose. From that perspective, I rate my adventure something of a success.
But I'm tired now... it does take a lot of effort to be a bastard, for me anyway, and really after a while I found it very difficult to keep on with it. Barney is done, I'm going to at some point get myself a new nic and do things properly. My experiment on myself is over.
The main reason I'm posting this is to apologise to several people who I incidentally may have pissed off or, more importantly, actually hurt (that bit was very very difficult to live with, and nearly caused me to quit much earlier). I didnt intend to do so at the start, but as I said I found it very easy to play the role after a while... too easy. Time to give it away.
Asguard... I never beat you down completely... I tried, but you kept coming back in your own way. I think you're the one who impressed me the most the whole time I was doing this.
Adam... Poor guy, probably wondering what the Yanks are thinking of this fellow Aussie, and turning red at the thought
Captain Canada... I noticed you copied my writing style a little when you replied to a few of my posts recently. Somebody might think that while you disliked my position intensely, you at least loved my style. Oh go on, deny it
Everyone else... I'm sorry if I did anything offensive to you. But please understand, I was only using you to find out something about me. You're all anonymous... it wasn't that bad
Barney out.
