Symphony, I can say from experience, having blown my top many times on these forums, that it takes much less effort to be kind than not.
In real life, I would agree, or at least that it takes little effort to give the customary faux-niceties society expects. However, I know something of myself, and for me, when I am around friends and acquaintances, I am sarcastic, I engage in biting humor, I can be vaguely condescending. They tend to reciprocate in good humor. The better I know a person, the less polite I am with them, because they become used to who I am, and they either get used to it, or they never get to know me.
After over two years of knowing most of you, you have reached that point, and I generally figure you'd be used to it by now after having seen previous tirades and the comments I leave in threads I have no real justification for being in.
Now, I could dress my opinions in a thin veil of pleasantry. As Birdjaguar suggests, a smile will take you far. As Al Capone added, a smile and a gun will take you farther, but that's tangential. I figure we'll all grown up enough here to do some basic intuitive manipulation. If I was genuinely condescending--that is, if I didn't care what any of you thought--I wouldn't be continually asking for challengers or critical thinking, because whatever you came up with wouldn't matter to me anyway. If I genuinely hated you, I simply wouldn't be here. What you are left with is that there must be some emotion, but it's probably more along the lines of tinges of remorse for lost possibilities, regret at seeing a lack of performance to capabilities, resentment of both, and other things along those lines.
Believe it or not, I do care what you all think. I think you've seen me speak enough times to discern that if I genuinely, truly dislike you, I won't be asking you questions, I just won't have anything to do with you period. And I am going to draw--or do my damnedest to--responses out of you. Despite its lack of effect upon you lot, challenging people to give answers in a sort of Socratic method is pretty effective elsewhere in the world, and it's just what I happen to use from experience. So, to my mind, it's not worth it to dress things up in pretty little packages when I know that doesn't get results here, and I know the method I use does elsewhere. It's good practice if nothing else, and I think you can take it without breaking down. If it should alienate some people and they might not like me as a result (the only real unforeseen effect; unless you believe those commercials where a woman keeping a pizza guy from walking out into the street somehow
does inspire people to do good in a big, long, time-violating linear chain)... well, I suppose they wouldn't anyway, so it's no real big loss for me.
The ideas remain the ideas. Statistics may show that 97% of reaction is how something is said rather than what's said, but I don't think it's possible to call people lazy and unmotivated in a nice way, personally, so I'm not seeing the dichotomy here.
) but down here and up in Boston too, it seems that vulgarity has become the rule almost when having casual discourse, and thoughts on Sex are put more in that "keep it in your head and no where else" category.
