Fields Are Optional--You May Leave Them Blank
By getting it out there, and by getting kicked around a thousand times, and by kicking back once or twice or three times (or maybe four times -- Father, forgive me, for I have sinned), I learned.
I don't know if the Goons were learning or not. I think they might have been learning the wrong sorts of things. That's their issue. I was learning how the pieces fit together.
It is important to avoid manipulation.
Here is one method that I see frequently. The manipulator tries to establish himself as the judge of your work. He can keep demanding that you prove your case. But since he has made himself the judge, you will never succeed.
Another method is to ask the same question repeatedly, ignoring previous answers.
Another method is to twist the truth. Manipulators make a false claim and proceed from there. They often pick up some innocent bystanders along the way. False premises lead to confusion.
It is important to know about such people on discussion boards and their tactics. They have succeeded at times through exhaustion. They have failed at times through being ignored.
Have fun.
John Walter Russell
It is important to know about such people on discussion boards and their tactics.
This sort of thing has been going on on Planet Earth since the day on which Adam and Eve were escorted out of the Garden of Paradise.
This sort of thing has been going on on Planet Internet since Al Gore cut the ribbon during the Opening Day ceremonies.
I've spoken out against the Goons. Everyone who cares to know it knows my take on the matter.
We need to take a step beyond worrying about the Goons. The thing we should be trying to understand (given that our goal is to learn what we can about how to invest successfully for the long run) is -- Why do a large number of people tolerate it?
Say that your house faces a mountain and you want the view to be whatever is on the other side of the mountain. Does it help to curse the mountain?
Curse it all you want, the mountain is not going anywhere.
The Goons have nowhere to go. Those who have come to believe that they are not able to build have by their own lack of faith in themselves doomed themselves to spending their life energies tearing down.
Here's John Prine's take:
"All the people who don't fit
Get the only fun they get
From people putting people down."
There will always be Goons among us. What we have needed to do for 54 months now is to take practical action. Instead of cursing the mountain (which doesn't care much whether we curse it or not), we should be taking practical steps.
It's not hard to figure out what practical steps need to be taken to solve the Goon problem. Why have a good number of people who obviously are repulsed by the Goon tactics not gotten off their behinds and taken the steps they need to take to do something about the smellies?
That's the Big Question, in my assessment. I've long believed this.
Answer that one, and you have answered a question that will help many people win financial freedom many years sooner than would otherwise be possible.
No?
Rob
Why have a good number of people who obviously are repulsed by the Goon tactics not gotten off their behinds and taken the steps they need to take to do something about the smellies?
Maybe, they think that they don't have to.
Maybe, they don't think that it is worth the effort to them as individuals. They view the task as overwhelming, having to accomplish everything personally.
Some of them, I am sure, are afraid.
I think that a more sophisticated readership makes discussion boards better. It is not simply a matter of telling people "not to feed the trolls." It is a matter of readers being able to recognize their tactics. It is a matter of having readers catch on faster as to who is telling the straight story.
Have fun.
John Walter Russell
Maybe, they think that they don't have to.
They don't have to. Why don't they want to? In all fields of human endeavor, people have standards that they apply when deciding what sorts of groups they will participate in, what sorts of people they will associate with, what sorts of things they will allow to be said in their presence.
Why do the standards go out the door when the sign says: "Now discussing investing issues"?
Why are Normals willing to associate with Bizerkos on discussion boards where investing topics are discussed?
Why do some who could themselves be fairly characterized as Normals when the discussion does not relate to investing become bizerkos when the topic turns to investing?
I don't think it's a problem of people not seeing through the tactics. People see through the tactics well enough, in my assessment. I have seen cases where people who generally would be classed as Normals not only do not speak up against the tactics being employed by the Bezerkos, they adopt the Bezerko tactics as their own after learning how it is done by watching how the Bezerkos do it!
As people learn better the process by which Bezerkos pollute boards, the problem often gets worse instead of better. There are a significant number of people who as a general rule are repulsed by the Bezerko tactics who see them as fitting when they are employed to block discussions of the realities of long-term investing. Teaching people how it's done just gives more people the idea to try it out!
Think of some of the people who are among the best posters in the history of our community -- Wanderer, Raddr, BenSolar, PeteyPerson, ES, you know the list. The problem with this group is not that they don't see through the Goon tactics, right? These people saw through the Goon tactics a long, long, long, long, long, long time ago.
Did these people try to do something about the Goons? Each made some token effort. Each decided to throw his weight behind the Goons. Each of these people became a Goon in his or her own right. I know that you don't like seeing ES's name included in that list. I don't think it's fair to list the others and not include him. The problem with these people is not that they don't understand the Goon problem. These people understand it all too well. Tbe problem is -- what?
Are we all Goons? Is there something in human nature that draws us to Goonhood?
I think that explanation takes us in the right direction. Greaney is a Goon through and through, He's all Goon, no filler. Wanderer is by nature repulsed by goonishness. That's why Greaney banned him from the Motley Fool board. So why does Wanderer end up spending months of his life energy engaging in abusive posting on Greaney's behalf. It's a puzzle, is it not?
Is Goonishness so appealing that even people who start out hating it just cannot resist its lure?
Lots of questions.
People obviously do not crave goonishness. I'm taking it to a logical extreme to make a point when I suggest that. There's clearly a distinction that needs to be made between someone like Greaney and someone like Wanderer. But there is indeed a similarity too.
It's actually more important to understand what turned Wanderer into a Goon than it is to understand what turned Greaney into a Goon, in my view. Greaney can't be helped. Greaney was always a Goon and always will be a Goon (barring a bolt of lightening from the sky on the road to Damascus). It shocks and astounds and amazes me that Wanderer became a Goon. The Wanderer Story (I don't mean just him, of course, I am just using his case as an illustration of a more general phenomenon) is something we need to understand.
The human need for social acceptance.
That's what I think is at the bottom of this. My strong hunch is that that's been a problem for Greaney for a long, long time. Greaney earned his Goon status the hard way, by becoming a Goon not just on Planet Internet but on Planet Earth too. I obviously can't say for sure. It's a guess. I think it's fair to say that there is evidence suggesting strongly that with Greaney this is not just an internet thing.
With Wanderer (and many others, I am only using him as an example), this appears to be primarily an internet thing. I've enjoyed a lunch with Wanderer in real life. He sure seemed to be able to pass as a Normal to me. It was a long lunch. A true Berzerko would have likely betrayed himself in that amount of time.
What about this issue turns Wanderer into a Bezerko?
He doesn't agree with Greaney's investing views. He's said publicly that he has a lot of sympathy for my investing views. So it's not that he doesn't "understand" the issues.
It comes from a need for social acceptance.
Wanderer indicated many times that he would have liked to have seen Greaney taken down. Lots of people have said that. Those same people put up Goon posts all the time. Why the disconnect?
If Greaney is taken down, honest posting is permitted. The social acceptance problem goes away. People can say what they think. We all become Free To Be You And Me.
This all connects with investing for the long term. Sticking with buy-and-hold requires being able to overcome the natural human craving for social acceptance.
The True Believers suggest that buy-and-hold is as easy as pie. Those words have a magic power. You say the words and it is done.
Not so.
Buy-and-hold is hard. It's simple, but it's hard.
It's hard because you have to walk away from the in crowd.
That's what long-term investing is all about. That's the secret. The numbers stuff fills in the details. It's important as all get-out, but in a secondary sense. The thing of primary importance is developing what it takes inside to be able to walk away from the in crowd. Hard.
The value of the numbers stuff is that it gives you what you need to do this. It backs up your common sense, it confirms what you always knew at some deep level anyway. Knowing that you are not crazy is what gives you the courage to walk away from the in crowd. The nunbers stuff bucks you up.
We're all Goons. A little bit. I don't say that we are all equally screwed-up. I jokingly contrast Humans from Goons, but Goons really are humans way deep down. They are scared humans, humans so scared of their humanity that they rarely let us have a peek at it.
The rest of us are all scared too, to a lesser extent. We all have Goon potential. We become Goons as a response to one of the greatest fears that humans ever face --the fear of being a social outcast.
Are you a bear? Are you a social misfit?
No, sir! Who needs it? I am a Goon, sir, and proud to be known as one too, sir! Goon First Class reporting for duty, sir!
We need to get rid of all of our community's Goonishnesss. We need to flush it down the toilet.
Our Goonishness is not sitting in the toilet bowl, Our Goonishness is sitting in our gut. We are a constipated community that has lost the knack of keeping the goonishness moving through our system on a regular basis.
The problem is not just Greaney. Greaney is someone who took note of our problem and elected to exploit it for his own purposes.
Our real problem is that we don't know what to do about our own shit.
It's a human thing.
Rob
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