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meh, since I can't delete my post, let's make it an actual response instead...
On August 18 2009 05:33 Kelly Alerenson wrote:
To the people who posited that it was an 'epic troll',
You're somewhat right, and somewhat wrong.
The point was to be over-the-top,
To claim too much for the sake of provoking discussion...
But hey, it made a discussion happen that wouldn't have happened otherwise.
Thanks for the fun,
~Hugs~
~~~Kelly.
Not worth responding to the initial article, as it was written 7 years ago, and the premise was pretty ridiculous. But this is a more interesting question: is "claiming too much" a valid way to make a serious point? It seems pretty dubious to me; you run the strong risk of tarring any valid points you make simply by association. Sure, it provokes a discussion of sorts, but not all discussions are worth having.
~Hugs~
~~~qrs.
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Thanks for coming into hostile territory to give an honest response.
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this thread has officially become epic.
~Hugs~
~~~Etherone.
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Are you really Kelly Alerenson?
~Hugs~
~~~qaswedfr25.
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Thanks much for the hugs everybody!
And for the warm welcome,
I hope my appearance made everyone else's day as much as reading and laughing about all of this has made mine.
As for the question "am I the real Kelly Alerenson?", that's a fair one,
I was surprised that on this (or the other ten or so sites that linked to that old post), no one had created a fake-me account to post some dumb-shit 'for epic lawls'.
But yeah,
I'm her.
I mean... it's not my ""Real Name"", if that's what you mean,
But Kelly Alerenson really is the name that I used to publish under.
You'll see some of my other stuff in VP if you go back to the page that the article was in, or if you look up the Harbinger.
I think I might have some stuff under that name somewhere else too, but I forget.
... ANYWAY,
Yeah, it's me.
The question of "is taking things too far to get people to move a little in that direction an acceptable policy?" is an interesting one... to be honest, I don't know any more.
At the time it seemed like a great idea, and it was a good stance to hold while I was in college and got to engage in super-long heated debates regularly.
In the world outside of academia, however, you have an interesting point that often if you go TOO far with a claim, people will be so turned off immediately that you might in fact cause a reaction pushing people away from your original point.
Either way, it's an interesting question qrs.
~Kelly
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While I can understand the "parts" of the argument, I don't know if I neccessarily agree with the whole.
However one thing I can say about the article is that I feel it does a great job of summing up starcraft and introducting each race. The first part of the article is very well written (not that the rest isn't, but the first part I agree with and feel is done well).
(On a side note... if that really is the author of the article posting, why is ur icon Terran? :O)
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Ohey,
Thanks for the heads up,
Changed it to Zerg.
(Mostly cause I just like playing Zerg, not really because of that article.)
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I'm very surprised that you posted here. We rarely get a comment from the author of the linked article in a thread like this one. I hope you got a good grade for this work. I'm curious to know if you still play Starcraft from time to time and if you'll buy Starcraft 2 when it will come out.
~Hugs~
~~~Thratur.
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On August 18 2009 07:27 Thratur wrote:
I'm very surprised that you posted here. We rarely get a comment from the author of the linked article in a thread like this one. I hope you got a good grade for this work. I'm curious to know if you still play Starcraft from time to time and if you'll buy Starcraft 2 when it will come out.
~Hugs~
~~~Thratur.
After I wrote that article, I kind of lived on starcraft for a few years.
After college ended, I slowed down on playing,
I played a lot of WCIII, but really got into modding, especially Mauls (Duke Wintermaul's Tower Defense Map, and its successors),
I've shown up at the occasional LAN party where people advertised starcraft tourneys, and generally just owned them in a way that was totally unfun.
The lack of ability to find people who could give me an actual challenge kind of made me stop playing,
To be honest I kind of got out of computer gaming entirely, (Went my rounds with various MMOs, staying with City of Heroes the longest) and let my box fall into disrepair. But, then when it started getting closer to SCII (and DIII) actually being a reality, I thought I'd buy a new computer to get ready for it... and then the release that it's not till next year made me cry a little bit in side.
In short, heck yeah, i've been waiting for SCII longer than anyone I know in person.
I bought SC and BW within their first week on the shelf (respectively)
I beta-ed for WCIII and Frozen Throne, and loved them both.
And am likely to sign up for the Beta on SCII now that it's being talked about.
As for the unlikelyhood of my commenting on here.... well... most people are afraid of criticism of their work,
But hey, ask Foucault: the author is dead.
It's an interesting article, and sure, I'm the one who wrote it,
But that doesn't make it me.
It came out of me, but it's not me.
If people hate it, they hate it.
If people come to good discussions from it, I'm glad that something I created changed the world a little, but it's still not me.
Will there probably be things in SCII that bother my inner feminist? Yeah, I'm sure.
Kerrigan with spike heels for instance.
What the hell?!
But that doesn't mean that I won't support the franchise,
That doesn't mean that I don't think it's the best RTS that's ever been made,
And that doesn't mean that I dislike Blizzard.
:-D
And besides,
Hell... it's about time.
~Kelly
(~~~More hugs for anyone who hasn't gotten one yet~~~)
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LOL this was a good laugh
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On August 18 2009 07:03 Kelly Alerenson wrote:
The question of "is taking things too far to get people to move a little in that direction an acceptable policy?" is an interesting one... to be honest, I don't know any more.
At the time it seemed like a great idea, and it was a good stance to hold while I was in college and got to engage in super-long heated debates regularly.
In the world outside of academia, however, you have an interesting point that often if you go TOO far with a claim, people will be so turned off immediately that you might in fact cause a reaction pushing people away from your original point.
Either way, it's an interesting question qrs.
~Kelly
It sounds like you're assuming that "taking things too far" can have the effect of "getting people to move a little in that direction", at least in the world of academia. I'm not sure what "acceptable policy" means in that context; if it works, it's acceptable as far as I'm concerned. I wasn't objecting on ethical grounds or anything.
The part I question is whether taking things too far ever results in getting people to move a little in that direction. It gets their attention, sure--this thread illustrates that--but it's negative attention: by definition something "provocative" is meant to provoke a reaction against it. "That's outrageous!" or something like that.
It's one thing if you can back it up, of course, but if even you admit that your statement is over-the-top, and not defensible, how do you plan to make people stick around for your real point? Even in the brick-and-mortar commercial world, bait-and-switch tactics are double-edged, but when the venue is the internet, and all you're selling is a repackaged version of an argument that people have heard many times before, and may have no particular interest in, I really doubt that the initial "false advertising", as it were, will garner any more customers for your viewpoint. The ones you do get will be the ones who would have come anyway.
You do get the advantage of notoriety ("any publicity is good publicity") getting people to hear about your article who would never have heard about it at all. Set against that is the disadvantage of possibly "turning people off", as you say, who would have been receptive to your point. (I find it hard to believe that this wouldn't be a risk in the world of academia either, but I don't live there, so I wouldn't know.)
In any case, "engaging in super-long heated debates" is another thing entirely. The more outrageous your position, the more fun it can be to debate it, if you're arguing for argument's sake. "Troll" has become too pejorative a term, don't you think? Maybe the time has come to reclaim it.
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Hahaha,
Reclaiming the name of Troll for all of the good that Trolling has done!
I like it, could be fun.
But I'm not sure if that's a fight that I'm up for myself at the moment.
In response to your actual point though,
First I need to point out that seven years ago when I wrote that, the target wasn't the internet.
I wrote that article for Vanguard Party,
A small independent magazine, printed on paper and distributed to college kids.
Most of our readers were activists and punk rockers, and the way that they interacted was by arguing over the top points in order to get someone to make a small move in position.
I remember one argument between an English major and a gutter punk, the former was arguing that the only effective government is a dictatorship while the other was arguing that any government is by definition ineffective. Their argument didn't change how the other saw government, but what it did do was provoke those listening to start discussing flaws and solutions within our American government.
Both arguments, I believe, were well over-the-top untenable positions, but they created a forum for discussion where people could make small changes in their actual views (in our ever-interesting bi-partisan system).
Do I think now that it is the most effective model? Probably not,
But at the time it was my market, and so I wrote to it.
As for it being put online, that must have been either Kira, Bog King, or Rich... I didn't really know that it had found a home on the internet, and looking at it, I see that very little of VP is there at all. (A shame really, there are some way more inflaming articles than the one I wrote. :-D)
~Kelly
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if you're a real girl then I hope I can find a girlfriend like you someday
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On August 18 2009 08:13 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
if you're a real girl then I hope I can find a girlfriend like you someday
HAHAHAHA
Well thanks i guess!
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On August 18 2009 07:53 Kelly Alerenson wrote:
In response to your actual point though,
First I need to point out that seven years ago when I wrote that, the target wasn't the internet.
I wrote that article for Vanguard Party,
A small independent magazine, printed on paper and distributed to college kids. OK, sorry for making assumptions.
Most of our readers were activists and punk rockers, and the way that they interacted was by arguing over the top points in order to get someone to make a small move in position.
I remember one argument between an English major and a gutter punk, the former was arguing that the only effective government is a dictatorship while the other was arguing that any government is by definition ineffective. Their argument didn't change how the other saw government, but what it did do was provoke those listening to start discussing flaws and solutions within our American government.
Both arguments, I believe, were well over-the-top untenable positions, but they created a forum for discussion where people could make small changes in their actual views (in our ever-interesting bi-partisan system).
Hmm, I can see that. I guess I need to revise my position, then: taking positions to their logical extreme can stimulate fruitful discussion where people may make small changes in their actual views. Still not sure that this applies where the provocative issue is Nydus canals and the discussion is about misogyny, but your point is taken nonetheless. Thanks.
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Sounds like a research essay that hasn't been proofread much. There are so many spelling and grammatical errors that the arguments seem less serious and more comical.
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On May 17 2009 04:54 FieryBalrog wrote:Show nested quote +On May 17 2009 04:53 Rekrul wrote:
uh no, but starcraft IS racist
take a look at the scvs Its true, Russians are the highest race
ROFLCOPTER
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No problem qrs, and thanks for the discussion.
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everyone who says the valkyrie is russian should know it's german
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Wat's goin on here?
Zia's back?!
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EPT
