LogFAQs > #886023340

shadowsword87 posted...

ParanoidObsessive posted...

one of the top five educational systems

I mean, do you honestly care or are you just spouting it off to be cool?

Most of my friends have kids, and it's a large selling point for the specific town I live in (and the reason a lot of people live here). It was also something I noticed very strongly once I went to college, where it felt like literally everyone around me was kind of an idiot. Educational standards DO tend to effect what the adult population is going to be like (a large part of why poor education and poverty tend to become endemic and inherited over time).

Though I mostly throw it out there because, again, way too many people seem to have the belief that everyone in the state is basically a Jersey Shore reject or an extra from the Sopranos, when I can honestly say that, in the span of 40 years worth of living in the state, I could probably count on one hand the number of people I've known that act like either. There's a lot of extremely well-educated people here. And you're probably way more likely to find people of Irish or German (or Irish-German) descent in most places here than you are blatant Italian stereotypes.

Which is not to say that those sorts of people don't exist (they do, though The Jersey Shore is more of an indictment of Long Islanders while you'd probably find more Sopranos wannabes in Staten Island), but there are a LOT of places in the state that don't really conform to any of the popular stereotypes at all.

We've got backwoods hillbillies and inner-city trash, rich businessmen and celebrities, and most things in-between. There's a ton of diversity in the state, yet most people are either judging on tiny parts of the state that don't really reflect the whole, or are just repeating jokes people came up with 50+ years ago that haven't been true for decades.

So normally I just dismiss most criticism out of hand as, again, either jealousy or ignorance, mainly because most of the people who spout it (especially online) have never actually been to or spent any real time in the state at all (and would probably be deeply offended if I did the same sort of knee-jerk dismissal of whatever state they came from). And if I had to start arguments with every dingus who brings it up I'd spend most of my time doing it - so I usually only bother defending it when I'm talking to people who are intelligent or aware enough that they should probably know better. Most of the rest of the time I just make a mental note to write off the speaker as an idiot with worthless opinions in future conversations.

Which has always been my MO on PotD, honestly. Generally speaking, if I'm arguing with you, it's because on at least some level, I feel like you've got at least SOME capacity to understand simple concepts and are at least somewhat redeemable. When I'm dealing with the straight-up idiots and worthless trash I usually either just stop paying attention to them entirely, give them the pithy snark, or these days, just click Ignore on their account safe in the knowledge that I will never miss a post worth reading.

Kungfu Kenobi is actually a pretty good example of an older poster I used to argue somewhat acerbically with on a regular basis because it seemed like we disagreed on pretty much everything, but I actually wound up respecting him as a poster because he was at least able to articulate his position and demonstrate that he'd actually put thought into most of his arguments. Whereas with some people on this board, you usually just end up wanting to repeatedly smash their head into a wall.


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