Sloonei wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 3:08 pm
I continue to not see town SPF. I am continuing to draw out my reasons for suspecting her. I just feel like something isn't right, and I'll try to highlight that is whenever I spot it. Here's one example that stands out as I look back:
staypositivefriend wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:52 pm
c4e5g3d5 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:42 pm
Sloonei wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:37 pm
c4e5g3d5 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:35 pm
staypositivefriend wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:33 pm
c4e5g3d5 wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 8:32 pm
spf the thread is dead an hour and a half in, this isn't the time to play coy.
there's 26 people here - i'm definitely not concerned about the thread being dead. and i feel like being coy right now :P
The fact should make you even more concerned. We have 26 slots to sort, chop chop.
You may be feeling a bit of extra urgency if these phases are shorter than you're used to. This is a relatively slow start, but I'm not concerned about the pace. It's the weekend, we have four active games on this site right now, lots of people just don't seem to be here right now. They'll show up.
I couldn't care less about the people that aren't here. Someone is here and is actively choosing to keep the game slow.
i would argue that my choice to not immediately share my two early townleans is provoking more conversation than it would if i had chosen to share them immediately
i just dont feel a sense of urgency about this game, in all honesty. the majority of people not posting on a sunday does not concern me - there's still a lot of time
On principle I like the "I have x town reads, but I'm not saying who they are" play. I condone and support it. I will never ever suspect spf strictly for doing that.
But I do suspect her for this response when pressured. The point of laying bait like that is to draw out reactions. I do not feel like spf did that adequately. I do not feel like she did it at all, really. As soon as somebody (c4) responded to it, spf's response turned defensive rather than offensive. And this response is primed and ready for an aggressive pushback from a civilian SPF: c4 hurls generic suspicion at her. She can simply ask him why this tactic bothers him. She can ask him to guess the town reads. She can do any number of things to goad this discussion further along a constructive path. Instead she simply defends her choice to introduce her reads the way that she did. There is nothing constructive in that. The play ends there without getting off the ground.
Then in the aftermath she said a few more things related to this episode that did not sit well with me:
staypositivefriend wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 9:03 pm
two primary reasons:
1. cloaking my townreads in ambiguity almost always gets interesting and telling interactions out of people. in this case, i think that foresight's intense amount of stress that only grew larger as i refused to directly answer his question is likely to come from a town indicative place. his irritation felt completely authentic- i honestly don't think that foresight would care that much at all if he was playing from a scum mindset
2. one of my early townleans was on you, but i felt uncomfortable outing that early into the game for a number of reasons. (partially out of the vanity of not wanting to be wrong). the other was on foresight
I take issue with both points in this post.
1. As I said above, it felt like spf cut off the the flow of potential "interesting and telling interactions" almost immediately. I don't buy that spf was satisfied with the reactions she had gotten to that point as the fruits of her grand experiment. More on this later.
2. She felt uncomfortable outing a town read on me early in the game for a number of reasons. But she is perfectly comfortable doing it here. We've already talked a little about this. I just don't really buy this justification. I don't think spf was the least bit worried about outting a town read on me too early.
staypositivefriend wrote: ↑Mon Mar 01, 2021 2:06 am
@Sloonei and @Dom -
i had early townleans on sloonei and foresight in the early game. i know that sloonei is a strong player regardless of his alignment, and i was reluctant to out an early townread on him for a number of reasons (not wanting to be wrong, feeling like outing a tr on a player like sloonei that i could not fully substantiate would draw heat on me). i had an early townlean on foresight as well, but since both of my townleans more or less boiled down to: "tone", it seemed smarter to me to imply that i had townreads without saying the specific names. this almost always get interesting and alignment-indicative reactions, like i've gone over several times in my ISO already
my choice to not out reads got some immediate and strong reactions - sloonei and foresight (ironically, my two townleans at the time) aggressively interrogated me about it, and foresight showed some sincere annoyance/anger at my refusal to name the specific names. both of these reactions strengthened the reads that i already had - i didn't think that foresight would carry a high level of internal frustration about me not outing my reads if he was playing from a scum mindset, and sloonei's questioning toward me was direct and aggressive while still carrying a broader depth of thought that i heavily associate with his towngame
those compounding factors (along w/the fact that foresight seemed genuinely annoyed) made me decide to bite the bullets and name the names. it was not intended to be a game-long reaction test that would get me a read on EVERY player here, but it helped me get a more confident townread on the two townleans i already had
i want this post to be a reference for any lingering questions you have about my early reads - i don't want to get caught up in defending myself against points that i've already expanded on, because my scumhunting will probably suffer as a result
Here's why I struggle to accept that spf was satisfied with the results of her reaction test: the only people who had reacted to it were
the two people she claims to have been town-reading in the first place. If I were town and in spf's shoes here, this wouldn't be even a remotely satisfying result. I'd want more people to chime in before I deem the reaction test a success. I would not want to run a reaction test early in the game just for the purpose of solidifying my two early town reads. If I did, I would not be holding it up as a productive experience. I also would not be saying it has resulted in a lot of valuable or productive dialogue if the dialogue was just blanket suspicion against me. That can become valuable dialogue, but you need to work to do something with it. I do not see spf doing that.
a couple of things:
1. part of the intent behind not outing my reads early on was to draw out reactions - and you specifically draw attention to an interaction i had w/foresight where i act more defensive and don't try to goad him into reacting to me
the reason i didn't goad foresight there is because he was
already goaded - his responses to me were consistently annoyed and filled with an internal level of anger/frustration, he even directly accused me of
"choosing to make the game slow"
so if i do something that is intended to draw out reactions, and i get a very strong reaction, then i'm not going to goad foresight on even more just for the sake of being a j*ckass. i could have asked him to guess my reads or share his own reads, but he was already annoyed with me and already (fmpov) towntelling in reaction to me, so it felt pointless to go out of my way to do something that would annoy him even more
as i mentioned before, his frustration with my test was a huge part of the reason why i dropped it as early as i did. i love drawing reactions out of people, but not at the expense of making other people feel angry/hostile. it didn't seem worth it past a certain point
2. some real-life context might be useful here, actually
around the hour of 8:00 PM (ie: the time when i made the second post that you spoilered), i was preparing to go to a virtual book club discussion, and i knew that i wouldn't have the time or the ability to respond to any posts for a while past that point (hence me dropping out of the thread for roughly 2 hours after i made those posts)
so, from my perspective, i had done a half-reaction test that had gotten one person increasingly annoyed/hostile with me, and it had gotten one of townleans (sloonei) to towntell even more from the way that he was choosing to engage with me
instead of disappearing from the thread for 2 hours with the lingering feeling of "foresight is gonna be mad lol" and with the knowledge that i wouldn't be able to engage with anyone for a while, it felt smarter to end the test right then and there instead of dragging it on.
so, it's true that i "cut off" the potential value of my test early on, but that in part stemmed from feeling like it wasn't worth picking up the exact same test that had gotten someone actively angry at me ~2 hours later when i wasn't able to post at all. it also stemmed from feeling partially like the test itself had run its course - of course i want to fish for reactions, but i had gotten a LOT (fmpov) of towntells from foresight/sloonei in reaction to the test, and two of my townleans strengthening and becoming more confident was a perfectly acceptable outcome for me
in your wallpost, you say the following:
" I would not want to run a reaction test early in the game just for the purpose of solidifying my two early town reads. If I did, I would not be holding it up as a productive experience."
simply put, i disagree! any reaction is a valuable reaction, even if it comes from the two people who i was already townleaning. to be able to go from townleaning you/foresight for "tone" to having specific, concrete reasons to feel good about you was a major step for me, and it's the type of step that i need to make in games like these to create a stronger foundation for my solving. i would have preferred that more people reacted to it, but i can't control how people respond to a baity reaction-testy provocation post. i can only work with the reactions i get and go from there
addendum: you seem to take issue with me not being comfortable outing a townlean on you in the early game but then outing a townlean on you after the "test" - this is because my early townlean on you was mostly "tone/town!sloonei vibes" - the type of vague, uncharacteristic read that contains generic reasoning that any scum on auto-pilot would be able to out. it felt like a better idea to me to wait until i became more sure of your alignment and also to wait until i could articulate my townread on you better before i decided to publicly state it. your reaction to the "test" gave me the confidence to do exactly that
i really hope this helps - i understand your perspective but i also think it stems from a mismatch of mindsets/perspectives
to this post. Big yuck!