Answer a Question / Ask a Question

[Manwë Súlimo]

Probably not. You have a terminal case of yxboomitis.

Can I have your stuff?

[shadowmaster]

No, You are too short.

Why do you want his stuff?

[princesa]

wait, i thought he wanted my stuff? even though i don't know what stuff he refers to.

Why is it so hard to NOT be sarcastic, is it my cynical nature?

[Manwë Súlimo]

No, its a symptom of your yxboomitis.

Can I have :shadowloser's stuff then?

[princesa]

hmmmm, shadowmaster wouldn't mind one iota. just leave his socks and fedora alone.

what's the best part about coming to tweb?

[Vigilante]

The knowledge you are about to loose about 3 hours out of your day.


Finish this sentence:

That's about as useless as.......

[Manwë Súlimo]

...an atheist's out-of-context commentary on the Bible.

Do you realize that you didn't ask a question?

[shadowmaster]

Do you realize that you answered a question that he did not ask?

[docjam]

I didn't answer anything. What do you think of that?

[shadowmaster]

it stinks

Are you always that grouchy?

[princesa]

most especially on Mondays.

Who thought of the 5/2 work divide?

[Vigilante]

Apparently it was Henry Ford who created the 5 day 8 hour/day work week, which some think is also the creation of the middle class in America. Apparently he did it because he was loosing employees or something, so he doubled their wages and gave them 5 days to work, which effectively created the modern "weekend".


How did we get suckered into Obama?

[Manwë Súlimo]

The novelty that he would be the first black president, and he's charismatic.

What's the one nagging question you have that you want answered?

[princesa]

there are so many, but one of them would be......


Besides "because we're human", why do we allow others we've never met to stroke our ego with flattering words and also to put a damper on our feelings when the opposite is done. Why should kind/hurtful words from strangers we've never met have any influence at all on our emotions?

[Vigilante]

There are many ways to discover the answer. You could ask for the spiritual/religious angle, the biological, the philosophical, the anthropological, the emotional/psychological angles and perhaps more.
From an anthropological angle we could probably just say that humans are social creatures and we seek acceptance by others.
On another angle of the same vein, I think we tend to put MORE weight on the opinion of the anonymous stranger than we do on our loved ones. Because people who love us quite naturally will be forgiving of our faults, will stroke our egos, will make us feel good. In other words, we tend not to trust those closest to us for the blunt truth. So when a perfect stranger tells us something good, or something bad about ourselves, we put much more weight on it because we think it is unbiased and therefore must be true.
When your brother calls you a toad face, you laugh and think it's brotherly play or something. When a stranger calls you ugly, it hurts because you think it is the unbiased truth and must really be so.
We seek approval from unbiased sources. So it is not so much an issue of us caring about the individual stranger, but rather about his opinion alone. We could care less for strangers, but we also seek their opinions and approval for our own insecurities because we can't trust our loved ones.
To really bend your mind, this also leads to an interesting phenomenon. We seek the unbiased opinion of strangers because we think they have more true opinions about ourselves, and because of this, we put on our best face and our perfects masks when around them. And around our loved ones and those closest to us, we act ourselves. So the question is, why is it we seek approval from strangers about our fake selves but don't trust the biased opinion of those around us who see our true selves? (only a rhetorical question to ponder)



Would you like another angle?