Saturday, December 08, 2007

Another 'streak' of arrogance

Three years ago, I commented on a certain message board poster. She was arrogant and intolerant beyond belief of differing opinions. She also attempted to shut down anybody who disagreed with her, and she appeared to be immune to civil discourse. Yeah, she was a real piece of work.

For a while, she appeared to have simmered down. In recent months though, I've seen her old persona slip through again. I wonder if she ever truly changed at all.

It looks like she's really hit the fan again. In a current discussion, she's been hurling considerable vitriol at anybody who deigned to voice criticism -- even polite, civil criticism -- of a certain amateur TV script. People tried to explain that dissecting a writer's work is simply part of the normal editorial review process. Frankly though, such explanations should not have been necessary; after all, this is common knowledge.

I really liked what one of the more civil participants in this discussion said. Here is a sampling:

"Ruby, before I do the point by point thing, a serious question: has it
ever occurred to you that anyone, ever, might know more about literally anything
that you do? Because the breadth of subjects on which you claim expertise is
astounding."

"It is not the fact that you disagree with me that brands you an inadequate
judge. It is the fact that you can brook no disagreement with your opinion, and
have no ability to incorporate the knowledge of those with experience in the
field in question. An adequate judge would consider experienced and trained
opinions, give them weight, use them to add nuance and color to the opinions
they already have. You read a line of Dio's dialogue and say, "I think that's
great," and someone else - someone who evaluates scripts for a living (once
again, I'm referring to others in this thread) - comes in and says that X, Y,
and Z are problematic, and your response is to stick your fingers in your ears
and attack him for daring to speak. Thus does your arrogance make you an
inadequate critic, because a decent critic is capable of learning from others;
you're too certain that you know more about everyf***ingthing than everyone else
in the world to be in any danger of learning from anyone."

"And what you're refusing to address is that the people who've posted
opinions closer to mine than to yours - ie, relatively critical opinions - have
been reasonably nice about it, within the limits of how nice it's possible to be
when submitting criticism. You, on the other hand, blasted the living fuck out
of Pochacco for having the temerity to do something other than tell Diogenes how
wonderful his script is."



I get the feeling that Rubystreak can be a pretty decent person in some respects. She needs to learn how to tolerate differences in viewpoint though, and to avoid shouting down the people who disagree with her. I voiced the same observation in a previous blog posting, and so I don't think this is an unfair evaluation.