Just in case anyone was keeping track, the whole my-credit-not-showing thing got resolved very, very quickly. Cracked is actually very good at fixing this kind of problem quickly, in case this didn't come across in the last post. they actually are really good people to do work for in general, in case you were thinking of trying that.

I know what you are thinking. It has to be something like "Who is Elijah torp? Is he some kind of varient on Jacopo? Why is his blog listed on one of Jacopo's articles? Why is there so little content on his blog?"

I understand all of your questions, so here are the answers:

Elijah torp is a man that some, mostly himself, feel might be the finest human being ever built.

I am not Jacopo and am not likely to be. I do, of course, envy his article count, because shit he has a ton of articles.

I and a few other people cowrote that article. Besides me, C.K. Bond and Benjamin FA also worked on the article. And, of course, Jacopo.

there isn't a lot of content on the blog because I forget, sometimes, to blog. By sometimes I mean all the time. Even when I have good things to blog about, like yesterday when my son shot me in my bare, open eyeball with a nerf disk and nearly killed me. If you wish to come back, I'm going to do a new blog post every day for three days running after this to sortof make it up to you.

I love you, Cracked readers. Have a good sunday.

The 90's, generic style

I've decided it's funny to create generic lines that could be, but aren't, from 90's Disney made-for-tv movies aimed at people in their young teens. Here are some.

1. "You really built a robot?" "No, but they don't have to know that".

2. "That's Brent Hartigan. Nobody in town can beat him on rollerblades. Nobody."

3. "What's he doing?" "Don't worry. That would beat the school record. There's no way he can jump that high."

4. "Who's that?" "Alyson Michelin, but don't even think about it." "Why? Is she out of my league?" "Alyson Michelin is out of everybody's league.

Make me more of these in comments. They are as mind-heroin to me.

    Recently, I've more and more often found myself picking verbal fights on various politically based website's comment sections. There isn't any sane reason why anyone would do this, and I suspect a large part of why I do is to either practice writing or to vent some of my all-natural manly aggression. Since the only other way I know to do the latter is to convince my friends to box with me, and since they usually don't want to box and I'm no good at it, Its probably better for me - and them - that I do this.

     That being said, I've had the opportunity to codify some of how I generally handle  the arguments, and I've made a cheater's guide to winning them, at least most of the time. You should note that these don't work in a well-moderated environment or in one where you can't really expect any sympathy from 99% of the room, like Cracked's Hitler's Brain forum or very clearly partisan sites where you take the opposite view, respectively.

      Clever or smart-ass readers will notice that I include a few argumentative fallacies as tools here; I think they are useful in this context, but I wouldn't try them with anybody who knows a whole lot more than you. In no particular order, here are the tips I can think of right now.

1. Don't focus on convincing your opponent

      In most arguments about politics or religion, nobody wins the argument in the traditional sense(I.E. you convince the other guy and he starts thinking like you). On the internet it becomes more even difficult to win in that sense, partially because people play dirtier when they can't see you face to face. It's also more difficult because when people have conversations in person, empathy kicks in and you don't start out throwing sand in each other's eyes right away.

      The solution is to not focus on convincing your target of your points, but to make your points while systematically destroying his from the viewpoint of an impartial observer. You have to play to the invisible crowd a little bit, and form your arguments with the idea of them listening in. To do that, you need to:

2. Go crazy with the sourcing

     You know what separates you from any random jackass on the internet? Nothing, that's what. Chances are, you aren't famous. You aren't special, and the people listening in are just passing by. That's where sourcing comes in: if you pick any relatively non-kooky website to get sources that support what you were going to say anyway, It's like adding another more respected person to your debate team; enough good sources, and you can mob your opponent until he or she crumbles.

     A good source weights your argument to a point where only another source that is just as good or better will keep the other guy in the game, and a surprising amount of the time people will forfeit arguments they would have died to win just to save the trouble of using google for five seconds. Of course, occasionally you get someone who is so oblivious to the concept of citation that nothing dents their resolve to be right, so you then have to:

3. Be 25% nicer than you actually are.

     Remember the people from 1., the ones you were trying to convince? They generally aren't reading two random dudes going back and forth in a comments section so they can learn the finer points of why you hate or love Ron Paul or Paul Ryan; they want action. They are much closer to being Romans watching gladiators chop each other up, and they want blood. That's where being too nice comes in.

     Being too nice or too mean both have specific uses in an internet argument, and if you use them at the wrong time, you can either come off as a weakling or a lunatic who flies off the handle at a moment's notice. You have to pick your timing carefully; If your opponent goes mean too early, or from the very beginning, sometimes you can calm him to death by disagreeing with his point while being slightly(but only slightly) condescending the whole time. The idea is to get them going to the point where they say and do unreasonable things, while all the time you sit calmly off the the side, letting them look crazy and dig their own hole. You look rational because they can't, which makes them more irration, which makes you look even better. Its a vicious cycle that mainly just benefits you for once.



     There are, of course, a few more ways to go about this; I'll get into some tomorrow, plus the only real benefit to this that doesn't involve hitting people less. As for now, I've got to go nurse a viscous headache. with some reasonable amount of sleep before I have to get up and do some more brutal, unforgiving things to make money.

-Ben

P.S. Did you see that I have ads on the site? You wouldn't think that if you clicked a relevant one that you could make me some cash, but you totally can, because this is America.

Got a blurb from John Cheese today for helping with one of his columns. This is yet another triumph of random general knowledge.

-Elijah

New Cracked article up today! You already knew that, though, since that is almost for sure how you got here.

This one was a lot of fun to write, and its neat being able to go through something you did after the editors get to it and find out they changed surprisingly little. What they did change made it much, much better, though.

Now I get to sit around today and watch that hit counter go up. It's like virtual numeric heroin, and help me I can't stop.

Apparently the adverts for this blog have taken a look at my limited list of posts and decided that this is a blog about pawn shops. I in turn now wish that I had thought of that first.