Social Experiment

[Lord_Mountbatten]

As some of you know, sometimes I like to be a git, generally for my own amusement. As such it is often difficult to tell when I am being serious or not. This is one of the times when I show that I'm not being serious at all.

This is a social experiment I conducted a couple of days or so ago, primarily for my own amusement, but also for other reasons. I shall go into detail in the spoilered section below.

Anyways, first, read this thread's OP.

Now, read this one.

Lols are had.

More detail:

Spoiler! :

First of all, yes, I enjoy highlighting the flaws in the Escapist community. Whatever your opinion on MLP or religion in general is, I don't give a shit, there's another thread in the Lounge for MLP stuff, and there's a subforum for religion. Here, I'm going to explain why I did this, and what I've found from it.

The best description of my actions can actually be found in a comment on the thread I made, which is this one.

Now apart from calling me a genius satirist (which I indisputably am), the post explains my intent pretty much spot on.

Basically, I saw the MLP thread, asking for episode suggestions with which to help the OP "convert" his significant other to liking MLP. One thing I will make explicitly clear about MLP is that I hate the fanaticism of its fanbase, especially its attempts to make more people watch and enjoy the show.

My first thought was "imagine if 'MLP Episodes' had been 'Bible Passages'. I bet the response would be much different." Knowing that many on the Escapist are fans of MLP yet also Atheists, even militantly so, I decided to create a thread with this exact title. The responses did not disappoint.

Because I'd seen a thread beforehand that had done something similar (different subjects though) yet was difficult to understand without readers first knowing what it was parodying, I created a false "edit" before I'd even posted the thread, basically linking to the thread I was parodying and claiming it was copying me. Since the timestamps instantly show otherwise, it would be simple enough to realise I had created a big joke thread, if those entering the thread simply took the time to read the entirety of the OP.

However, the Escapist community being what it is, another of my goals was to prove once and for all whether they actually read the OP of a thread or not, or just read the title and plunged straight in with an answer. They did not disappoint me in this regard.

There was also a smaller intention compared to the big two, that being whether Escapist members pay attention to anyone except themselves. Not once have I mentioned on there that I have girlfriend, and I had even previously stated that very same day that I refused to have a public stance on religion. Of course, this is quite unfair to judge a community on, especially due to its size and sheer number of topics, which is why it's a minor intention. However, I generally like to, on interesting threads, look at the OP's details, and since the post just before was the one on the same topic, take a look for consistency's sake.

Needless to say the result was a mass of people either responding with contempt and telling me not to try and convert someone if they didn't want it, including a brony (great success on my part), who to their credit did say that they did not try to make people enjoy the show.

I also proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that most Escapists simply read the title and ignore the OP in the rush to post their own opinion, making themselves look like a fool in the process. The amount of people who actually realise that the thread is a joke is very few, and out of those some misconstrued its purpose, but I was still glad to see people got it.

One final thing I made sure not to do was post anything further after the initial OP creation. One member noted this as the work of a "master troll", and happily there are still arguments occurring even now without ever needing my assistance in prolonging the thread artificially. All in all, a very successful experiment, which has shed light on what had previously just been suspicions of mine.

At any rate, this has been my social experiment, and I hope you've enjoyed its results. I certainly have.

[Darktaint]

Bravo batten some of the responses on your thread are just great

[Aenir_bEPU]

Trololol.

[697134002]

[XDelphi]

This has been both informative, and a waste of everyone's precious time.

[aflycon]

I love you.

Guys, check the post times. This thread was created after the ponies one, it's obviously a joke.
User was suspended for: McDonald's incident. (3 days)

Trolololo.

[andy25100]

Bravo good sir, best 20 minutes spent on the escapist.

[vallorn]

I'm ashamed of you all. I thought you all had better troll sense than that, guys. You've grown weak...I have been lax in my drills.

i like this guy.

[697134002]

I'm ashamed of you all. I thought you all had better troll sense than that, guys. You've grown weak...I have been lax in my drills.

i like this guy.

It looks like that guy...
/me puts on sunglasses
Has a similar name to this guy.

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

This all sounds like something I would do, screwing with people to see how they react. I like your style Mountbatten.

[OptimusHagrid]

I have girlfriend

[SneakyPie]

Though it's certainly more impressive than mine, all I did was post a simple picture with the sole intent of causing a political flame war for my amusement.

Check it out here: https://canv.as/p/euro5

I personally don't really care at all with the whole 1% vs the 99% debacle and "Occupy Random Location". I am far more interested in attempting to point out the ludicrousness of arguing on the internet. I posted that first picture (I can't even remember where I found it) and have not posted in the thread again and so far it has received 350+ replies becoming one of the longest threads on the entire website.

It's so incredibly stupid and it's been going on for almost a week now. Soon I will post something else and basically make fun of everyone and be on my way.

It's all wonderfully amusing.

[random980]

"Shits'n giggles were had on this day."
Escapia, knowledge of the Random; 9:80
Try using that passage to convert her

[vallorn]

Though it's certainly more impressive than mine, all I did was post a simple picture with the sole intent of causing a political flame war for my amusement.

Check it out here: https://canv.as/p/euro5

I personally don't really care at all with the whole 1% vs the 99% debacle and "Occupy Random Location". I am far more interested in attempting to point out the ludicrousness of arguing on the internet. I posted that first picture (I can't even remember where I found it) and have not posted in the thread again and so far it has received 350+ replies becoming one of the longest threads on the entire website.

It's so incredibly stupid and it's been going on for almost a week now. Soon I will post something else and basically make fun of everyone and be on my way.

It's all wonderfully amusing.

i read the entire thing... oh god its hilarious AND makes me disappointed in mankind! GREAT SUCCESS SNEAKY!

[Sti_Jo_Lew]

Wow... yeah, I'm even MORE scared for the human race, and I've read comments on Yahoo.

[697134002]

Wow... yeah, I'm even MORE scared for the human race, and I've read comments on Yahoo.

Those comments are so stupid.