LogFAQs > #892285130

Jakyl25 posted...

XIII_rocks posted...

But I do believe that legitimately responding to and thus enabling Vlado is inherently wrong

Interesting. Why?

There's a few reasons. First, it's perpetuating a toxic falsehood, and I find that people being honest is generally preferable to lies. We're all in our 20s-40s now - we don't really need gimmicks or eating copies of FFX or whatever to keep us entertained. In that regard, Vlado, one of the few gimmick accounts left on b8, is terribly outdated, something that as a board we should have grown out of and moved on from. Second reason would be that when you enable Vlado you allow him to continue what is essentially "false discussion". It means users who are otherwise not stupid people could be having a more interesting discussion elsewhere with someone who actually believes what they are saying, and will not pull all the shit Vlado pulls when you try and debate him. That leads to an objectively better board to read since actual discussion is better than this sort of false discussion.

That's all very high-minded stuff though. The other half of it is reason 3, that I don't see the entertainment in poking him with a stick to get him to say stupid things. And then there's reason 4 - to be honest, I believe that the people who claim that they're still entertained after years of provoking him into saying stupid shit are lying, either to me or to themselves. If you know he's mostly a manufactured gimmick, you're essentially just pressing the belly of a toy to make it say stuff. How is that still entertaining after all this time? I don't believe people here still get kicks out of that, if they ever did at all. Which leads me to the possible conclusion - that people think Vlado really believes all the stuff he posts, and once people really buy into the idea that he doesn't, they might stop enabling him. That's why I made my first post here.

I guess there are three options regarding that:
1) People know Vlado isn't real, but are entertained by making this pretend person say silly things, and have been for ages. I think this is kind of dumb, and I honestly think a lot of the people who claim this are not being truthful, but some are.
2) People on some level believe Vlado really thinks this stuff, and legitimately are arguing against it, even if some of the shit he posts is absolutely stupid - again, hence my first post here.
3) People know Vlado isn't real, but just can't help themselves if they see someone post something they disagree with and just have to argue against it because they have no self-control. They then use option 1 as a justification for doing something they know isn't smart.

I prefer option 2 I guess, but option 3 is probably the case for a lot of people.
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TLO has my dog for a month.