Discussion Discussion: Surrounded By Assholes

If you've read our previous Discussion Discussions, or the Comment Of The Fortnight-Ish columns before those, by now you're likely familiar with how they work: we artfully (we hope) and circuitously (uh, yeah) lay out an argument for how best to conduct oneself down there, and hopefully by the end you're nodding and going, "Yeah, that makes sense," or at least, "OK, I'm not totally opposed to that." We've discussed meat as an analogy for joke topics; we've used broadcast television as a way of illustrating the value of originality; we've showcased examples of serious discussion done well—all with the goal of getting you on board to uphold the high standards you guys have established over the years. Unfortunately, there's no artful, circuitous, or respectfully persuasive way to say the following: holy sweet fucking Jesus Christ nobody gives a flying god-damn about your stupid opinion.

Here, with all due respect to ChrissMari, who is likely quite a charming person in regular day-to-day life and surely bakes delicious treats for shut-ins and wraps these baked goods in whimsical handcrafted packages with moons and hearts and shit on them and the shut-ins smile as they open the packages and when they bite into the probably lemon-flavored baked treats are instantly transported to a shady spot on a warm summer day beside a happily burbling waterway, is exactly the type of bullshit we are talking about:

So he replaced the extremely douchey "changing my last name to my uniform number"* with the uber-douchey "beating your wife so hard that she's gonna need stitches" I wish I wasn't as surprised as I am...I really should have seen this or something similar coming, but he tricked me with the "connect with my former self" name change. Dick

* sufficiently assholish on its own regardless of the Spanish bastardization

ETA: Of course he has a smart car!!! Doucheeee

Oh, you really should have seen it coming, Chriss? Darn! Fooled again! That Chad Johnson, he makes me so mad, fooling you like that! Truly, he is a doucheeee!

Look. It's really not all that complicated. Can you imagine a complete and total stranger who has never heard of your rando ass reading your reply to a post, and thinking, "Boy am I glad I scrolled down here to see what people are saying!"? (I mean, in some world where they have the internet and also think in stereotypical 1950s speech patterns, duh.) More to the point: if you finished reading a post on Deadspin, and then scrolled down to the discussion section to see what people were saying about it, and some anonymous nobody was all, "Whatevs I don't even care becuz I don't even watch that sport," would you figure that was the seed of an intelligent discussion that would make a positive contribution to the post? Would you think it was a funny joke? Would you want to engage with that dingbat, or would you want to go find something else to do on the internet?

That's it. That's really all there is to it. Post stuff that other people will enjoy reading. Do you have a reasoned argument about the content of a post? Great! Do you have an insight into the post that might shed some light on the subject matter? Splendid. Do you have a funny joke riffing on the content of the post? Best of all! Are you an NFL punter? That's OK too! Do you have an urge to tell somebody that the post wasn't your favorite thing that you've ever read? Please feed yourself to a hippopotamus. And, if some dimwit takes a huge dump on the floor, for the love of God, don't squat down and add to the pile.

Here are some people who had the good sense, humility, and generosity of spirit to make better contributions than you did:

RMJ=H Steve U Steve U Universal Enveloping Algebra A bunch of you

Here are some people who, if these contributions are reflective of their intellect, are not allowed to handle their own scissors:

twatsicle stevephoenix and pike_speak fsu1dolfan bigmeechy74 hazeleyez204

Let's have some more of your favorite recent stuff below.