Games People Shouldn't Play

[firecat]

I complain about people playing Yabbut on a certain newsgroup.

The OH and I agree: Ed Wright (of soc.singles in the early 90s) is the all-time champion of Yabbut, and it's boring to play with anyone else.

Comments

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

Pray tell... what is "Yabbut"?

[rmjwell.livejournal.com]

I'm not firecat but Yabbut is

A: So in response to your question of "Why foo?" my answer is "bar."

B: Yeah, but what about "baz?"

A: Hmm, well in response to that I'd say "blahblah."

B: Yeah, but what about "skippy-doo?"

[repeat ad nauseum]

Yabbut refers to the standard opening of "Yeah, but..."

A really good player of Yabbut can get you around to the original question of "Why foo?" without ever accepting any of the answers provided.

For some values of "really good."

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your explanation.

Somehow I am imagining that this might have something to do with alt.poly. I just deleted myself from the Polymatchmaker database, as I was starting to feel like hammering spikes into my head. Then, I thought... Oh! Some really witty, bright people on LJ are also on alt.poly, so I checked it out.

Is there some way to automatically separate the wheat from the chaff?

separating wheat from chaff

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

ed wright! egads, that takes me back.

anyway, the short answer is "yes". or maybe it's "no". it depends on how much work you want to put into your kill/select file. alt.poly is one of those groups where the real chaff is very easy to tell, and you can just killfile those twits. but if you only have a limited amount of time available, it becomes very hard to come up with a good algorithm to read only what's interesting, because even people who're in general well worth reading can often not leave well enough alone when engaging in nitpicking (*guilty*), or they get into long fluffy cascades, or Must Hammer Sense into the head of a twit whom i've already killfiled, etc.

i basically (when i read, which alas i am not right now) read everything because of that (aside from the twits whom i killfile very quickly), but sometimes i just whiz through hitting the "next" key while skimming along.

it's always been a very worthwhile group for me though, and if i had any extra time at all, that's where it'd go.

Re: separating wheat from chaff

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

I don't have my own computer (Well, actually I do, but it's shoved in a closet because it is so slow), so I don't download any newsgroup posts. I'm using Google Groups.

[firecat]

What pleonastic said. Also, if I am really short on time, I use a select file for posters and a kill file for certain threads.

[eve-l-incarnata.livejournal.com]

I've been meaning to ask you for ages, what does "OH" stand for?

[firecat]

"Outlaw Husband." We had a marriage ceremony, but didn't tell the government.

[firecat]

I was thinking of the variation that goes

A: "I have problem X. How can I solve it?"
B: "You could do Y."
A: "Yabbut I caaaaan't because Z."
B: "You could do W."
A: "Yabbut I caaaan't because..."

The really good player can induce self-inflicted baldness in most of his or her opponents.

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

Ooooo. I un-killfiled a certain someone and almost piped up about it. But perhaps I'm already losing enough hair to age, and should just stay out of it. (The yabbut tactic of "I really appreciate your answers...you stupid gits!" is quite effective against my teetering wall of patience.)