Post by Mr. Jon Donnis on Dec 24, 2010 13:23:23 GMT
After UKS forum closed down, there was a migration of its members to www.rationalskepticism.org
I joined, and I decided to try something, I wanted to see if my theories about high brow academic type skeptical sites were right.
My theory basically being that such communities breed condescending people who are so detirmined to pat each other on the back and prove who is smarter that they are incapable of understanding someone like a believer who comes along.
Now because of who I am I knew i could never convince them I was a believer, so I tried somethying different.
A poster on there was talking badly about the Greeks and basically posting a lot of pro-Turkish propoganda.
Perfect for me.
So I basically acted as a believer does in such a situation, making irrational arguments, ad hom attacks and so on.
And as expected instead of anyone trying to understand why i was saying what i did, or why i felt the way i did, instead i was continually reminded of the rules of the site, had my typos and grammar corrected, and was spoken down to by a multitude of condescending and belittling people.
This is why such high brow forums and websites will never appeal to believers in the paranormal, why they will run a mile from such sites, and why such sites will never have an impact or ever actually succeed in educating people.
This is one of the reasons for the decline of the UKS forum and also the RDF and JREF forums.
As skeptics you must learn to understand people, understand the reasons they believe what they do, understand why they act and say the things they do.
You dont need a Phd to be a skeptic, you dont need to quote Latin phrases to be a good critical thinker.
You just need to listen, understand and then try and help.
For that is the greatest skepticism of all.
I joined, and I decided to try something, I wanted to see if my theories about high brow academic type skeptical sites were right.
My theory basically being that such communities breed condescending people who are so detirmined to pat each other on the back and prove who is smarter that they are incapable of understanding someone like a believer who comes along.
Now because of who I am I knew i could never convince them I was a believer, so I tried somethying different.
A poster on there was talking badly about the Greeks and basically posting a lot of pro-Turkish propoganda.
Perfect for me.
So I basically acted as a believer does in such a situation, making irrational arguments, ad hom attacks and so on.
And as expected instead of anyone trying to understand why i was saying what i did, or why i felt the way i did, instead i was continually reminded of the rules of the site, had my typos and grammar corrected, and was spoken down to by a multitude of condescending and belittling people.
This is why such high brow forums and websites will never appeal to believers in the paranormal, why they will run a mile from such sites, and why such sites will never have an impact or ever actually succeed in educating people.
This is one of the reasons for the decline of the UKS forum and also the RDF and JREF forums.
As skeptics you must learn to understand people, understand the reasons they believe what they do, understand why they act and say the things they do.
You dont need a Phd to be a skeptic, you dont need to quote Latin phrases to be a good critical thinker.
You just need to listen, understand and then try and help.
For that is the greatest skepticism of all.
