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I really enjoyed your theatrics, moist was a nice touch. Do you ever feel like an article can be written for its intentional expected negative backlash? What

• nonrandomstring 4y ago
  > Do you ever feel like an article can be written for its intentional expected negative backlash? What better way to do that then honestly present the frothy maw right up front for all to be disgusted? Interesting point Peter. Yes. Indeed, maybe I misjudge the author's sophistication (or how The Economist is playing it). But that tactic opens up great risk of being misinterpreted. At some point one needs to state an intent/position quite clearly. Someone in an earlier comment mentions sarcasm. I think to do what you're suggesting, at least for an Anglophone reader, would require that you coded your prose as sarcasm. I don't find that easy. While slipping occasionally, I honestly try to refrain from it, not just because it's "the lowest form of wit", or because it risks misunderstanding, but because it carries a "defensive" tone, and I very much prefer to go on the attack in my prose in accordance with Nietzsche's "If it's shaky, push it." Dostoyevsky said it best, that it's a "cry of pain". Sarcasm, he thought, is "usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded." First, how very apt in this context. Second, as with dealing with all bullies, better to walk right up and punch them on the nose. Lastly, despite my sometimes acrid tone, I'm really an optimist about fellow humans. Best to give people the benefit of the doubt to see things as they are. Respects.