Wednesday, November 18, 2009

inspired by a true story

I recently went into serious someone-is-wrong-on-the-internet mode; what follows is a loosely-inspired dramatization:

Provocative Poster [PP]: You and people like you are oversensitive to the point of being childish.
mikaydee: No, actually I am not oversensitive. What you are perceiving as oversensitivity may actually be well within the normal range of adult sensitivity. Here is some evidence and an argument in support of why that might be so.
PP: Only childishly oversensitive people present evidence and an argument in support of the premise that they are not oversensitive.
mikaydee: Couldn't it just be the case that you were incorrect and that I and people like me are not actually oversensitive?
PP: No, the fact that you would even attempt to contradict my assertion is proof of its truth. LALALALALA.
mikaydee: So, you could conceivably call anyone oversensitive, and if they tried to contradict you, you could use that as evidence that they were oversensitive?
PP: Yes, naturally.
mikaydee: Well, what would stop you from calling everyone in the world oversensitive? No one could ever prove you wrong.
PP: Exactly! I would be master of the universe!
mikaydee: But how can everyone in the world be irrefutably oversensitive? Doesn't 'oversensitive' imply a baseline, regular level of sensitivity that one must deviate from in order to be considered oversensitive?
PP
: No! Words mean what I decide they mean, and have no empirical correllary!
mikaydee: Then how do you communicate your ideas to other people, if you're sitting there arbitrarily assigning meaning to words and phrases with no objective reference to share with the rest of us?
PP: I don't! I just put random sounds and noises together and demand that others comprehend me. That way I can never be wrong or contradicted!
mikaydee: You mean, like an infant?
PP: Tortiseshell!
mikaydee: Huh?
PP: Manganese peroxide!
mikaydee: Okay well, that could be a thing, but I'm not sure.
PP: Dornfleiebernektsung.
mikaydee: Okay, I'm pretty sure that just sounds German.


(no trolls were harmed in the making of this mockery)