Open 804: Popcorn Mafia Redux [Game Over!]

[Dunnstral]

That's not me necessarily saying "shoot nm" just to be clear

Just the way I view things

[Dunnstral]

You and unwnd have the same scumpool, you said THAT yourself too. Why would I not include you if I include unwnd?

These are two seperate thoughts

The first is that I shouldn't be in a pool with him and the other players

The second is that maybe I'm wrong on my read there and I don't get why he's pushing me

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Quick response before I leave, Dunn:

I am not thinking of shooting anyone in particular for any reason in particular. My mind is empty, my soul is open. I am, for this next hour, a pacifist butterfly, wafting on the breeze of public opinion.

When that hour ends, there will be judgement. Even I don't know what waits on the other side. Isn't that exciting?

[Dunnstral]

Who started that trend, also? Who first called for Imperium's head on the basis of "I won't scumread this on this thin of evidence"?

I believe it was Sircakez and Imperium in a 1v1

[SirCakez]

I'd like HUB but I'm not like ABSOLUTELY HIM NOBODY ELSE sure
I'd be happy with NM or Wheme too

[SirCakez]

I think I want to wait on Imo
I think their alignment will become clear with more flips

[SirCakez]

Imp*

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Time's up.

The trumpet has sounded. The rivers run red. The Worm ascends. I have assumed my wrathful aspect. Doom and chaos, you get the point.

If posts were made while I was typing this up and made it in before the deadline, I will assure you: I have read them and taken them into account in a merciful state of mind. (Hint: Thank you for your input, Cakez.)

That state of mind is now gone. If you had more to add, you should have done it sooner. Now there will be a reckoning.

Not_Mafia, Happy Unbirthday Boon and ScrewTheTells

, your time will come. Sit tight. I have figured you out, and yours being the first names I mention is no mistake. Well. One of you no doubt looks like one, but that's the entire point. Stay calm, all will come to make sense in time. Also, I don't want you fucking this up. You know who you are. But keeping the town in there keeps you complacent, and me saying this makes you aware that I'm watching for you to fuck it up so I can blast the scum out with no doubt. Like I said: stay calm.

SirCakez, unwnd, Imperium, petapan.

You are my lucky first contestants. All of you are my absolute favorite posters for hitting red after I pass. It would be a damned shame if I had to gamble outside of this list, because I would be feeling extremely worried if I missed on any other slot. Fortunately, two of you are also scum. Of this I have no doubt. Now it is time to determine which two.

I will address you in turn, starting with Imperium. After all, I promised I would. The petapan case, right? Right.

[WhemeStar]

MUSH YOU FORGOT ME WHERE AM I AT DO I HAVE MY OWN CATEGORY

[Imperium]

Maybe with Duunstral???

[Imperium]

P confident there AREN'T two scum in that group, but whatever. If you are scared of losing the game with a bad shot then just shoot us!

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

Tammmmmmyyyyyyy

[Imperium]

I'm sorry to disappoint, but I'm the other half currently.

Still love you, Krazy. Still glad that you replaced into the game.

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

Oh hi Nacho, I do love you too <3

[MUSHSHAGANA]

So, Imperium. The petapan case. Impressive work, and a lot of effort.

Out of the gate: I'm going to simply discard the BoP part as it will /never/ be compelling to me, and there is nothing you can do to fix that. Simply put, I disagree with the entire premise on a core level (that people are incapable of playing below par for themselves, particularly under stress, which petapan showed evidence of) and this is such an intrinsic part of my belief system about humans that you simply cannot convince me with it. I will never accept it.

In other words, I'm doing you a favor. We will pretend it never happened.

This isn't to say that the arguments /inside of it/ have no merit taken on their own. Far from it, some of them are even quite compelling. And I won't discard those. In fact, I'm really giving you a lot of leeway here, because I'm /actively cherrypicking/ the parts of your first petapan post that I agree with. You aren't getting a benefit of the doubt, you're getting the whole damn doubt and some blind faith besides.



Can I trust that this is sufficient for us to say that I am giving you a fair shake? That I really did give you a chance to present your argument at its best? Yes? Good.

Fair warning, this is going to start really boring, because I'm simply going to skip all of the parts I disagree with.



So: let's start with the meekness of that first push. I agree. Skipping a bunch of spurious argumentation, then we find you mentioning that your approach to Norfolk wasn't likely to be coaching, even from the outside; that the slot looked too doomed to bother saving. I agree. And no punishment for bussing your first goon and (not mentioned) very little for a Godfather? Agreed! So far we're 3 for 3. In fact, I will say confidently that no matter your alignment and HUB's, you were not coaching Norfolk. There is nothing in it for you there, and there's no point. Done.

And then petapan talking about Dunn's nasty dirty no good fingerpointing at people "egging on" a shot that they had no real influence or say in. I want to address this in detail.

I was about to post about Lotus being an interesting shot with some potential, in fact, when the thread was locked. It was one of my walls AND I had real life on my ass, so I didn't even see unwnd say fundamentally the same exact thing. No point in saying it afterwards (until now, when I have the gun, also I want to come back to this whole point later), but... it did nearly happen. This is the entire reason why I was so vehement in pushing back on the concept of people "egging the shot on".

And I have literally no reason to lie about that now: I am in control, I can say or do whatever pleases me and no one can stop me. So I hope Dunn feels suitably shamed in public now. (Note: going through the ritual motions of apology with a middle finger raised in my direction is sufficient, actual shame not required, this is all very purposefully super fucking theatrical, have some fun with it.)

So yes. VERY LOUD agreement that the entire argument about "egging that shot on" is bullshit and garbage. And I will skip the rest of that first post. Because it's BoP and you will never, ever convince me.

But there's a whoooollllle other post to go through!



This one I will not be so kind with. But that's okay! We are 4 of 4 in agreement, nothing can go wrong, right?

Well, it sure looks good to start. I do the /same/ thing quite often. I'll make a push and I'll get loud, aggressive, I'll turn it into a war -- to sort /everyone else/. Because reactions to me pushing on someone else are often so much more instructive than reactions /from/ someone I'm pushing. So yeah, thumbs up here, all good!

Point of order here: unwnd never told /me/ "fuck off". In fact, I don't think he told anyone that. I didn't even get the sentiment aimed at me, unwnd aimed a "Kiss my ass" at Wheme and Cakez IIRC. unwnd seemed pretty resigned to me putting pressure on him. Which ... fair. That was sort of the point. Hmmm... I wonder why unwnd is in this list? Well, I'll address that soon.

Anyway, getting sidetracked. Wheme reaction. Yeah, I agree that doesn't look like pleased scum. I agree Wheme doesn't feel obligated to post as scum if that's a TvT. I don't agree that that says a damn thing about the alignment of you or petapan. Yes, it's a proof by contradiction. You have successfully disproved that this interaction was TvT in a world where Wheme is scum: congratulations. It says nothing about who's the scum, Wheme's alignment, or whether scum are there at all. It is, in short, poo.

And now the crux. The part that is the core of the argument from my perspective, since it isn't necessarily BoP -- you frame it in those terms, but the point still holds if you change the terminology.

And... I agree with this. It's in fact the reason petapan is even here. First, let me say, I gave him that out to see if he would take it. And he did not, which is credit to him, but he also knows my playstyle (granted, at a distance) and once I remembered that little fact, I knew it was pretty pointless trying to bait him like that. So I just let him sit pretty and think he was safe, out of the line of fire. Well... whoopsie.

And well, I would go into the fearing the shot thing, but I think that would be telling. There are layers here. Suffice to say, it is a good point. Do I agree with it? Imagine a big, drawn out shrug with a cartoonishly sheepish facial expression. Don't know!

Well, I do. You don't. That's the point, of course.

Moving along, chances to drop the gambit, bad timing -- hmm, I don't agree with the bad timing pointing to scum. The "big one" you mentioned would tend to make me scumread someone /more/ if they took it. Not going into detail, the reasons should be obvious.

And that last one is another BoP one. So... We'll just ignore it and call this done!



And hey. Listen. You may think I'm being unfair skipping those. It's like this: People fuck up. This is a foundational element of my entire way of parsing the world: no matter how flawless or good someone is, they will do things wrong. They will be as stupid as you can possibly believe and worse. There are no exceptions. You will see people be blatant, unspeakable idiots at the thing they are best at 100% of the time if you watch them closely enough. If you watch for long enough, they will chain idiotic decisions one after a goddamn other, gleefully screwing the pooch and they will apparently not give a single fuck.

Proficiency does have an element of "you fuck up less", yes. But far more important to it to me is "knowing how to recover from a fuck up". And even the masters, if they flub hard enough, will have to call it a lost cause. There is no one so good that they will not stick one foot in their mouth, use the other to kick themselves in the ass, and roll downhill to the landfill. No one. Ever.

Like I said before, I'm doing you a favor.

[WhemeStar]

Ohh mush is saying they townread me then

Darn

[MUSHSHAGANA]

P confident there AREN'T two scum in that group, but whatever. If you are scared of losing the game with a bad shot then just shoot us!

Hmmm.

No.

My apologies. You have to sit through this whole sorry godawful process. So does everyone else.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Ohh mush is saying they townread me then

Darn

I'd give you a gold star, but you already have it. How'd you get that? Who'd you rob? Give it to me. I need it for special gunbearing purposes.

[Imperium]

Acknowledged. Shoot at will.

I'm checking out of this day phase, though. Just waiting for you to shoot.

[MUSHSHAGANA]

Oh, that's a shame.

Fortunately, it won't be too long. It just makes one part of my decision more difficult. And hey, if I have too many doubts, I fall back to shooting you, right? So it's all fine.

[Imperium]

I'm not entertained by the games. I have absolutely no idea what your reads are at this point. You don't seem to understand my arguments on a basic level and you frame it as "doing me a favor"?

If you wanted to do me a favor, you wouldn't have wasted my time.

[Imperium]

And no, I don't want to talk about it. Just do your thing - I just won't be around in the meantime.

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

Weeknd's halftime show was sollllid

Also down to discuss how delicious cake shots are even if no one wants to shoot cakez other than me

Pedit: ya that's kinda why I asked him for cake gifs before I spent an hour doing a cakez meta write-up

I d love u too tho musha, you do you <3

[Happy Unbirthday Boon]

Herrr

Gdi pronouns

[Imperium]

Weeknd's halftime show was ridiculously solid - thought it dragged a little when he just did the medley but the Blinding Lights performance was

excellent

.