Webcomic Wars Mafia: D7- Be Thankful I'm Not The Author

[the silent speaker]

/confirm

[the silent speaker]

I do not like the look of the vino bandwagon, and I do not like the feel of the Lamont bandwagon; there is foul scum down there, or I am no guide. I will therefore take a path in the middle.

Some things about Lamont are worrying me, but I think they may possible be put down to over-enthusiasm. However, Lamont is right about Emp lurking. He confirmed at a time when that was

visibly not

game-appropriate, and that is worth noting. Slicey, even granting your arguments, how do you discriminate this early between (b) and (c)? All you're doing is the same thing as Lamont with better cover.

I'm going to

vote: roflcopter

because I suspect the vino wagon is designed to set Fishy up for a 1-2 mislynch.

[the silent speaker]

Wishy-washy, appeals to emotion (see: phrasing in first part), and where the hell did that crappy last conclusion come from?

The phrasing in the first part was a LOTR reference (Gandalf in Moria). The bottom line is I'm not crazy about either of the bandwagons, and I think they are scum-driven or at least scum-ridden.

The last part was not intended as a conclusion; all three paragraphs are supposed to stand more-or-less independent of each other.

You got that conclusion from 'makes a solid case'?

Partly. Timing, OMGUS and some other factors also led me to choose roflcopter out of the other bandwagoners.

Yeah a random bandwagon is designed for something. So exactly explain to me how this works? A town starts a wagon on another town and then a bunch of other town join it and somehow it's a setup for something?

So certain, are we? We know this wagon was started by town and jumped on by town, do we?

FOS: Korlash

And I'm assuming you are calling both Fishy and Vino town here, because, logically, only town start bandwagons in the RVS and only on other towns.

I lean toward Fishy and Vino both being town, yes. That is implied in "1-2 mislynch": if I'm right and this is a scum setup, the people being set up are not scum. I have no idea what you're trying to say here in the "logically" clause; it appears to be sarcasm, but of nothing remotely resembling anything I wrote.

SensFan's entire post is a lie.

FOS: SensFan

Lamont:

Surely you know that very early in the game there is less to go on than we would have once the game progresses right? Why is the famous Tar wasting time with bad arguments like this?

No, Tar is right. Evidence to lynch is thinner earlier on in the game, although there's plenty in this one now, but the criteria to lynch are the same: is the player scum, or is he not? You can argue that there is less evidence for Vino than for others and therefore those others should be lynched preferential to Vino, but it is silly to call him "not a proper lynch candidate" for any reason other than "I think he's town."

[the silent speaker]

What exactly do you think is a 'lie'? Not just inaccurate, but somehow a scum attempt to manipulate the playerbase?

I think it was a scum attempt to manipulate the playerbase because it did manipulate the playerbase. Look what happened right after: a big spike in Lamont voting.

As far as I can tell, there is no case on Vino. Fishy came out with a vote on him for no reason given, which by itself is perfectly fine, and a whole bunch of people jumped right in line with "yep, uh-huh, Fishy is wise." For Sens to say even now that Vino is so terribly scummy that the only thing worse is Lamont's defense is just not true.

I'll try to remember about the quoting thing.

I'm not certain of anything, YOU are.

Suspicion=/=certainty.

And the mere fact it's up to 8+ people kinda helps suggest some town jumped on it at some point.

I never said everyone on the bandwagon was scum, only that they looked like bandwagons with scum a part of them. (This is true of the Lamont wagon and the Vino wagon both.)

You

said that everyone on the bandwagon was town.

[the silent speaker]

I never said "everyone" on the bandwagon was town. And I never claimed you claimed everyone was scum.

Bollocks. You said:

A

town

starts a wagon on another

town

and then

a bunch of other town

join it and somehow it's a setup for something?

Clearly assuming that everyone who joined was town. If you concede that some of the people who joined could have been scum, then why

shouldn't

it be a setup of something on their part?

@Everyone else: ask yourselves this -- if I'm completely off the mark, why did Korlash react with such vehemence to a post not even directed at him? If Korlash is town, why fly off the handle the way he did?

[the silent speaker]

Remember I had my wagons confused and thought the vino wagon was up to 8, thusly "a bunch of town" had to already be on it.

Tripe. You were replying to a post I had made before any bandwagons got up to 8.

And if the wagon was started by a town it can't have been a setup by the mafia.

Quoted for fail.

[qutoe="Percy"]Whilst I can concede that Sens didn't have much to go on in declaring Vino scummy, you have a long way to go if you want to prove that his actions were deliberately designed to get people to vote Lamont. I just don't buy it. [/quote]
Do not underestimate the power of

the dark side of the Force

a single vote to shift momentum for or against a player. People are social animals and (especially when a wagon gets to the point that people are jumping on just to be on the bandwagon, se also: mufasa) a few recent votes can make a bandwagon seem to have a much wider lead on the competition than it actully does -- especially when those few votes are thedifference between a tie and a lead of a couple. SensFan's vote

did in fact

lead into a spike in Lamont votes, whether it was intended to or not, and in my mind that lends itself to an inference that it was accomplishing its intent. This doesn't prove the case, no, but it lends itself to an inference.
And that inference is bolstered by his will-o'-the-wisp reasoning, which intimates that something about his vote is not on the level. "Didn't have much to go on" -- that's one way of putting it. He voted Lamont for defending Vino, who he said was otherwise the scummiest person in the game, and (since he didn't state anyhting particular that Vino had said that was scummy) he implied that this was obvious. SensFan posted this on July 3, 9:03 AM. Vino had posted hardly a thing yet -- check the timestamps on Vino's and SensFan's posts if you don't believe me. What's more, he poste this when the Vino wagon was

dying down

-- it had gotten all the votes it would and people were talking about Lamont instead. You had igmeoyed Vino -- I agree with that, btw, though not so much for the belittling of his wagon as for the nonchalant attitude toward finding other scum -- but nobody else had so much as mentioned anything wrong with him. Yet that non-mention was used by SensFan as grounding for a vote on someone else for "defense". This is

not

an up-and-up vote.

Regarding the 1-2 mislynch: of course it wouldn't be as easy as that, but I still saw groundwork being laid. It's not as if they were committed to mislynch-or-bust by setting up a situation that they would be able to mislynch in; all they would have to do if the day developed such that it wouln't be workable would be to let the subject drop, and who would be the wiser?

But here's what I saw.
1. The first mini-bandwagon (two votes on the same person) occurred when

Vino

and

Lamont

voted rofl.
2. Immediately, another miniwagon built up on

Lamont

, and Fishy cast a vote on

Vino

"because he is scum".
3. The roflwagon never went anywhere beyond that.
4. Korlash and

rofl

declared the

Vino

bandwagon "solid".
5. Tajo endorsed both the

Lamont

and the

Vino

bandwagons. At this time Lamont had two votes, the same number as rofl.
6. You, Clergyman and Slicey voted Lamont for admittedly slightly stronger reasons, though I still think Lamont smacks of overenthusiastic townie rather than wishy-washy scum.
7. A shade later, with neither wagon having advanced much, SensFan posted and spurred the Lamont wagon strongly on.

Here's what I saw going on. Early miniwagons can easily snowball into bigger wagons that dominate day 1 -- heck, look at Lamont -- and th scum didn't want rofl to be today's sacrificial lamb. Before things had achance to get out of hand, they started a counterwagon on the person who turned rofl into a bandwagon, and when Fishy posted a vote on the

other

roflvoter, they seized on it like a godsend. That took eyes away from rofl in the short term with Lamont and in the medium term with Vino. What is more, the extremely fishy way -- double pun intended -- Korlash and rofl latched onto that Vino vote suggests they hoped to be able to get Vino lynched and then turn on Fishy for proposing it. If they could get away with that, they could pull off a twofer.

Once the Vino wagon stalled and I posted suspicion of it, a twofer wouldn't be able to take off -- even if Vino got lynched, people would notice if they tried to foist the blame onto Fishy now. Probably any danger to rofl had been well and truly derailed, but SensFan posted to revive the earlier Lamont bandagon to spark a regulat mislynch and keep the game on a simple wrong track.

Tar, one of the early Lamont voters, posted this:

2) Lurker hunting is a popular enough scum pastime that it's a weak scumtell (

especially if the scum are active

).

Emphasis mine. That sounds like Tar knows that the scum are active.

[the silent speaker]

You have to know me I guess but I do often times use the word "town" To simply describe alive players in the game. We refer to ourselves as a town, we do not refer to ourselves as a town with a few scum mixed in.

This would be fine but I don't think it saves the sttement. Here's what you sad, edited to reflect your stated intent:
[quote=""Korlash""]Yeah a random bandwagon is designed for something. So exactly explain to me how this works? A

player

starts a wagon on another

player

and then a bunch of other

players

join it and somehow it's a setup for something?[/quote]
Um, yes? That is sort of by definition how any scum ploy ever works?

And the whole point of the first line is negated by the fact that my whole theory is based on the suspicion that this was

not

a random bandwagon, but only a bandwagon that

looked

random.

The scum don't need to communicate. All they need is to have a common agenda: see that the lynch is not one of their own. If it is one of their own, they know it, and they know from reading their allies' posts what their allies are doing to further that agenda. They can push in parallel directions, armed with the knowledge of what is done in furtherance of the same agenda that they have and what is not.

He has still not explained at this stage why HE HIMSELF believes both the initiator of the wagon and the target of the wagon is town,

Because I believe the scum were steering the wagon to get the target lynched and hoping to be able to use the fact of mislynch to get the initiator lynched. If they wanted to do that, neither of the two is in their group. Nothing could be simpler.

Fishy could be scum of another faction, that is true. I merely think that of the scummy people on the bandwagon, Fishy's vote does not make him one of them.

I have not fully explained why I think this was a setup for a 1-2: because those "sound reason for a bandwagon" posts looked to me like they might be cop fishing. Maybe they thought that "I thought he was a cop and had a guilty! Now that he's not, I'm suspicious of him!" or something similar would help get them votes on day 2, or maybe they honestly thought he might be one. (The rofl group knows that Lamont is not one of theirs, but that in no way ruled out a rival scum group.) Now that Lamont has claimed cop, I can safely say that without worrying about putting ideas into people's heads.

Never mind Korlash was pointing out what TSS had to himself believe to make his theory true - it's still Korlash who is apparantly scummy.

No, Korlash appeared to be saying the opposite of what I have to conjecture for the theory to be true. He seemed to be implying that the people who joined the wagon after Fishy were specifically town, whereas I think the people who joined the wagon after Fishy are (in whole or in part) scum.

He arbitrarily decides that one of the wagons in the RVS is on a townie and is started by a townie, but the 3 or so people who joined that wagon are scum.

Not arbitrary at all. That bandwagon and one other had the same set of vocal supporters, and those two bandwagon subjects had previously been

on

a bandwagon for one of those vocal supporters.

Hypocrasy, thy name is TSS.

Willowisp reasoning as I used the term is a comment that refers to something that refers to something that doesn't actually have anything at the end of the chain. SensFan was guilty of this, because his stated reasoning was that Lamont was scummy for defending Vino, who himself was scummy; and Vino's scumminess, which Sens presented as self-evident, was based on ... nothing. That's a will-o'-the-wisp; it leads you into the mists, but if you try to follow it, it doesn't lead you back.
What willowisp was there in my argument, to make a hypocrite of me?

Again, no mention of any reasoning of his own.

My reasoning is that Sens's reasoning is bad and scummy! What do you want me to do, snoop around his house?

He's attacked Tar, Korlash and Sens all on either hypocritical, manipulative or just plain poor reasoning.

I

attacked

Tar? I noted a scummy-looking thing he posted, and that there is a slot in my theory that he would neatly fit into. I don' think I so much as FOSed him.

I wish I could point out more, but that's about all his contribution to the game has been.

I have two major suspects, rofl and SensFan; one minor suspect, Korlash (he's been going down since he has been trying to explain his post); a handful of IGMEOYs, chiefly Tar, Tajo and perhaps Slicey. That's quite enough suspicion for this early in the game, I should say.

I will try to respond PBP to rofl a little later, but suffice it to say that I found it to be a huge pile of scummy, self-serving chainsaw self-defense. It amuses me that people are now citing it as evidence that

I

am "attacking my attackers".

[the silent speaker]

At this point no night actions have been made, and unless it's some kinda crazy cop flavor, no cops have results yet.
Oh, that's right. Well, that makes cop fishing rather less likely.

You're explaining that you think scum are leading the wagon to the mislynch of a townie.

I see a group of people who are bandwagoning along what looks like coordinated agendas. An agenda of "deflection from rofl to Lamont or Vino, and ideally 1-2 mislynch of Lamont and Fishy" looks like it fits the facts. My inference from that is that the people doing the bandwagoning are scum, and my secondary inference is that the people being mislynched are town.

why are you suddenly convinced there are multiple scum groups?

Stop twisting my words. I said "could". This is a large game and multiple scum groups are not at all uncommon.

[the silent speaker]

EBWOP for messed-up tags:

At this point no night actions have been made, and unless it's some kinda crazy cop flavor, no cops have results yet.

Oh, that's right. Well, that makes cop fishing rather less likely.

You're explaining that you think scum are leading the wagon to the mislynch of a townie.

I see a group of people who are bandwagoning along what looks like coordinated agendas, etc.

[the silent speaker]

a) Why do you think there are two scum factions?
b) Your cop-fishing theory makes no sense because there hasn't been a night action yet, and that's already been established in thread.
c) Your circular reasoning for believing the wagon was started by a townie and targetting a townie. (scum are on the wagon because the wagon has been started by and on a townie. It was started on and by a townie because scum are on the wagon and are driving it.)
d) Apart from the cop-fishing point above, which already has a huge hole in it, what other reason do you have to be so confident about who is town and who is scum based on those early posts?

a) As I said, I think there

could

be two scum factions. Game size makes it plausible, and nothing rules it out. Nothing rules it in, either, but what of it?
b) I have already renounced the cop-fishing idea. It was a notion based on their apparent willingness to follow a definite statement that was nonetheless not backed up by reasoning in a way thatseemed reminiscent of people following someone they thought was a cop; that notion is wrong, but that's what it was (half-)baked out of. As to why the scum would follow a presumed cop's verdict (if this had been night start) when that verdict would have presumably been innocent and thus not mentioned in-thread, well, maybe

they

thought there might be two scum groups. Or maybe they didn't think it was a cop verdict at all but hoped to convince people that it had been presented as a hinted one? Idunno. I frankly didn't get much farther down the cop-fishing line of thought than "Hey, that looks like they're fishing!!!1!" and the notion of cop-fishing fit my theory so well that I ra with it without thinking through why scum would cop-fish with no results or with a presumed innocent (or at least not-theirs). The cop fish notion was, I repeat, a mistake on my part.
c) I don't think I was arguing "scum are on the wagon because the wagon has been started by and on a townie". I thought I was arguing scum on the wagons because of an apparenly collusive set of interests -- the same people boosting each other to the same people's gain and the detriment of the set adverse to the same people.
That's a mouthful and I hope it makes grammatical sense -- I think it does -- but what I'm driving at is: a rofl wagon derailed;

and

the derailment was coincident with the rofl wagoners both being themselves wagoned;

and

the same people supported both wagons;

and

the reasoning on one of them especially was bad reasoning presented as good reasoning;

and

rofl himself was one of the people on the two bandwagons. I might add that SensFan used thee two bndwagons to bolster each other.
d) The cop fishing point is deceased as far as I'm concerned. My reason for suspecting the people I named is collusive effect with regard primarily to rofl's benefit (and Lamont's detriment, but I don't think they have anything against Lamont specially). In Tar's case there is a side quote suggesting guilty knowledge.

There is nothing in his posts that explains why he distinguishes this bandwagon from any other early d1 wagon with a few votes on it.

Nothing? How many times have I said that it is the convergence of one bandwagon getting all its wagoners themselves bandwagoned immediately thereafter by the same few people, including the bandwagonee of the original bandwagon? It's the way both of them tie back to the old roflwagon that distinguishes it.

dude, does the fact that this thing happened in page 2-3 mean anything to you?
this is the first time you see a random stage bandwagon?

It tells me that scum actions will be harder to pick out than they might be later on, both because we don't know who they are and because scum can act genuinely near-randomly. But they remain actions taken by scum, and the scum agenda will be reflected in them however faintly. All we need is a glass not distorted by misperceptions.* Besides, ask Lamont how meaningless a couple of votes on page 2-3 can be.
What pings me is that three "random-stage bandwagons" mesh together so nicely. How often do you see that?

*- For the record, no, I cannot guarantee that my glass is not distorted. I think I am on a good lead, but I could be wildly off base; it's happened. But at the end of the game, when we can look back with a mod's-eye view, you'll see for yourself that you will be able to see how the scum was working, in the early stages as well as the late.

[the silent speaker]

Well, the counterclaim does change the landscape of the game. If Lamont

is

scum my theory is mostly dead. Given the choice of who to believe, I prefer believing Quintz. Seems the hammer dropped already, though.

Just to answer one thing from Tar:

- TSS brought up multiscum D1 in a daystart game, which is something town should NEVER do (scum KNOW whether or not the game is multiscum - they can figure that out just by looking at the strength of their scumgroup - so it's in town's best interests to clam up about possible multiscum D1 and see if any scumbag slips up and mentions the possibility). In addition, he's insisting that there's some kind of scum plan involving Fishy and Vino (exceedingly unlikely, the only game's I've ever seen even semi-coordinated scum plans are in games with daytalk or *maybe* a good scum coordinator) and as noted by other players is using circular logic to argue for this to boot.

I see multiscum as a possibility in any game this size, daystart or night, so I disagree that town should avoid mentioning it to see what scum 'slip up first'. Figure 1/4-1/3 of the town is generally scum -- that's seven or eight people, much too unwieldy for a single group, and everybody in town should know it. Usually it shouldn't be brought up anyway, but that's because usually it's pointless to speculate on; here, though, I mentioned it in a specific context (Vino being scum but also not allied with a group of other people allied together was relevant for the cop-fishing part). It wasn't so much the kind of "hey guys what if there's competing scum groups?" type of speculation that looks like content but isn't.

I have already gone over in multiple posts why my theory wasn't circular reasoning at all. Wrong, perhaps, especially with Lamont counterclaimed and now justly run up, but not circular.

[the silent speaker]

Good job scum.

I'm a little amused that my conspiracy theory day 1 nailed three scum... of three different factions. I told you all you should listen to me.