Neil wrote:
But there's another sort of thread hijacking which neither of you
mentioned,
which is when somebody comes on the serious thread and makes a point,
but
does it in a silly way, say calling Blake "my sweet baboo" or calling Servalan "She who must be obeyed." Which IMO trivialises the the
character,
the argument and the poster's point, all at the same time.
Actually I have no problem with this per se, since a valid point is a
valid
point regardless of the terms in which it's couched. However, such posts are likely to be character-oriented, and as such pull a non-character oriented thread off-track.
No matter how sensible the point, when it's prefaced with "Fearless Leader" (originally a sarcastic remark from Avon about Blake) it makes it pretty difficult to take seriously. Everything that follows the epithet then sounds like it is meant to be sarcastic-- and to make matters worse, you can't post in to say "Erm, did you *mean* that to sound as sarcastic as all that?" or "Would you mind not saying Fearless Leader, it's altering the tone of the argument" without insulting the original poster mortally.
Shane
"Here's hoping they all have nice legs."-- Vila