May a goat o cabra ciudadano de muchos culpa ... (May 2017 nominations)

@f00l whore.

@mfladd

I still need help with the hot glue gun. She’s pretty much asking for trouble.

@PlacidPenguin I’m in.

@mfladd
If you go to help @PlacidPenguin, you’ll be in the Hudson. Literally. I have a firm commitment on that.

@mfladd said:

@f00l
whore.

Technically, there are far better descriptors than that one.

Are you in need some vocabulary assistance?

@f00l

Unless he melts, @mfladd would just float.

@PlacidPenguin

Floating/melting of the @mfladd-object fine by me. When you do this, pix wanted.

Calling @DrunkCat

@f00l Thanks for reminding me to nominate myself rather than vote for you.

@DrunkCat
I’ve already been Goat. I’m not volunteering for a second round, so the path is clear for you to sweep.

And let the record show: I know she won’t get punished with goathood due to the fact that she’ll get less votes than @JasonToon and @Kidsandliz combined.

@PlacidPenguin OTOH, she is the #1 contender right now …

@narfcake
/giphy contender

/image drunkcat

/image drunk cat

/image drunk cat shirt

@DrunkCat has my vote.

@DrunkCat needs to buy better tequila.

@2many2no This is the best tequila.

@DrunkCat
You’re supposed to bribe me to vote for you now. Some of that tequila pictured will do the trick.

@DrunkCat
Muy Mucho Tequila Cucaracha Enchilada.

/giphy mucho

@narfcake likely this:
enter link description here

I still have no clue how to get specific gif’s to load to this site… from where it came from
https://giphy.com/gifs/away-Ytgpg0aCNJNMQ
I tried all three options to embed and nothing makes it come up right. What am I doing wrong?

@Kidsandliz

1. 

2. You need the link to end in .gif/.jpg/ etc.

3. https:// media. giphy. com/media/Ytgpg0aCNJNMQ/giphy.gif

4. @woodhouse could teach you.

@PlacidPenguin thank you

@Kidsandliz

1. You’re welcome.

2. 

@f00l To vote your special rules are that you need:

1. Seven picture ID’s stamped, processed, and spit on by god.
2. Transportation to mars because your voting booth is in the cloud - the red cloud.
3. A unicorn to use their horn to poke a hole (no hanging chads allowed) in the ballot
4. You will need to put 1,000,005% of the bribe into your voting machine to activate it.
   Unlikely you will be able to satisfy these conditions to vote thus accepting a bribe would be unethical.

@Kidsandliz
Did some Apple-Zombie attempt speech?

It’s so hard to be sure whether some Apple-Zombie tried human speech, or whether a bunch of rocks just fell onto a Mac and made more pointless professorial academic busywork even further behind deadline than it already was.

PS
Did I hear an attempt by an Apple-Zombie to refer to ethics? If so, those Cupertino Fan-Zombies might be getting close to intelligible speech in a few thousand more years. Or else it was just a bigger and louder bunch of falling rocks than I initially realized.

JIC: The entire point of this bribery solicitation operation is to be unethical.
The operation is a success.
The only other rule for this operation is that it be absurd and disorderly.
This operation satisfies all the parameters of absurd disorderly unethical bribery solicitation.

/giphy "curtain call"

@thismyusername That is what my parents always said. What I find humorous is that in her old age my mother has changed her toon and is voting like dad would have.

@Kidsandliz tune not toon… too tired.

@PlacidPenguin
Might be futile.

@f00l

How so?

@PlacidPenguin
Are these potential voters likely to be open to persuasion, or are the votes likely to be something that can be purchased?

If the later, then can both sides likely agree on pricing and terms?

Seems a bit fat-fetched.

@f00l

If anything, their vote here in exchange for my voting for their t-shirts seems a bit lopsided in THEIR favor. I’m being generous.

@PlacidPenguin I don’t understand what’s going on in here, but I can be bought.

@PlacidPenguin Sorry I’m late to this and have no idea what is going on… haha. I like the goat pictures though!

PS. While we’re talking about voting, feel free to vote the design I entered last night too hehe…
And if you can explain what I’m voting for, I’ll do it

@fishbiscuit @jasneko: Near the end of every month, the community here nominates/elects a scapegoat-of-the-month on a fellow mehmber – to be praised blamed for anything that happens the following month. The reasons for nominations do not have to make sense – for instance, I can nominate @ACraigL next month for “not submitting enough catshirts to catshirtswoot.” With some help from other artists, @ignorant was goated for being “helpful” … so he spent his month on pause paws.

What @PlacidPenguin was attempting to do was to get you to sway the election throw in some votes. I mean, you looooooooooooooove catshirts, right, @PlacidPenguin?

@narfcake

Have you SEEN my collection?

(If @f00l thought I gave a thing for ducks, ducts, air ducts, and duct tape…)

@PlacidPenguin All zero of it?

@narfcake

I should probably start sharing pictures of stuff…

@PlacidPenguin

/giphy quack

@Kidsandliz

It’s getting more and more obvious each month.

But… If I don’t have anyone to blame for stuff, then what am I supposed to do on Meh?
(And don’t suggest that I actually buy stuff because that’s not a particularly funny joke.)

@PlacidPenguin Have a life outside of meh?

@Kidsandliz

Sounds dangerous on a psychological level.

@Kidsandliz I think it would help if @shawn would make this a Broadcast for all to see. It isn’t visible on the main page, so it drops down in the forum until some one bumps it.

@2many2no you are probably right about that

@Kidsandliz

Coincidentally you say that before you’ve had a chance to be goated.

@Kidsandliz
Participation dropped not only here, but on many sites, during/after the election. And for other factors - some folks are mostly active on Discord chat I suspect.

Re: Goating

I think it’s a bit early to call it dead or dying.

@f00l What is discord chat? So the toe tag hanging there is in error? It is instead this?

@PlacidPenguin Coincidentally? Who am I to curse coincidentally beneficial coincidence? Only @f00l a fool would do that…

@f00l Took a look at Discord. I don’t have time for that stuff. The dog-whistle groups alone repulse me.

@OldCatLady @f00l

I feel like I don’t wanna know what goes on in the Discord chat.

@PlacidPenguin ‘…especially the Discord chat spun out of 4chan’s far-right stomping ground /pol/, use their room to coordinate “raids” on other servers with ease and impunity. Trolls acquire invite links to other servers and post them in a room called “Raids” (formerly “Raids Defense”), encouraging the chat’s 1000+ members to descend en masse on vulnerable or unsuspecting communities, bringing with them a tidal wave of abuse…’

@OldCatLady
@PlacidPenguin

Discord is just a chat platform and apps and software. Well done, too.

Anyone can create channels. Many users there are gamers, but no more need to interact with people you don’t want to deal with there than anywhere else (i.e. than on FB or similar)

@jbartus runs a nice Meh discord channel along with @thumperchick. Political talk is segregated into a sub channel to make it easy to avoid.

Several forum regulars hang out there a lot. It’s quite welcoming.

The times I’ve been there, no one has been even slightly an asshole. Fun, actually.

And since you can page thru the entire chat history, I couldn’t find even slight asshole behavior there in the past either.

Lots of talk about people playing with their new Switch toys recently.

You can run it in a browser on a pc or for smartphones, the apps are very nice.

Here is a link to the Meh channel.

https://discord.gg/mp2pWvF

4chan type behavior does not go on at the Meh channel. Everyone is quite nice and quite welcoming.

@OldCatLady said:

I tracked down the article source for you quote:

‘…especially the Discord chat spun out of 4chan’s far-right stomping ground /pol/, use their room to coordinate “raids” on other servers with ease and impunity. Trolls acquire invite links to other servers and post them in a room called “Raids” (formerly “Raids Defense”), encouraging the chat’s 1000+ members to descend en masse on vulnerable or unsuspecting communities, bringing with them a tidal wave of abuse…’

I believe the entire article can be seen here:

https://www.google.com/amp/gizmodo.com/how-a-video-game-chat-client-became-the-web-s-new-cessp-1792039566/amp

Discord was, afaik, created as a fairly elegant chat server/client primarily for gamers. And that’s what Discord still is. However, anyone can creare a channel.

Without knowing any stats, I’m betting that the overwhelming % of Discord users are legit groups of friends, gamers, and people with common interests.

The hostile nutcase brigades and assholes from parts of 4chan and various subreddits have apparently been being jerks and vile spam-artists on Discord as well, recently. That’s hardly a shock.

They particularly target groups with a political focus. (Surprise!)

Channel owners and mods have common tools for self-defense. Large channels with obvious political or cultural focus are usually the targets, and larger, more open channels are more difficult to protect.

For a small channel such as the Meh one, the self-defense tools Discord bakes in seem sufficient for the most part.

Perhaps the channel has been attacked. I don’t know. I do know that the Meh channel is not a source of bad behavior, of which I have seen none.

Undoubtedly Discord’s parent co needs to get a better handle and better tools and better CS regarding attacks, particularly for large and culturally focused channels.

In the meantime, the Meh channel is fine. I bet most of the channels are fine.

Additional info:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discord_(software)

https://www.google.com/amp/lifehacker.com/discord-is-the-voice-chat-app-i-ve-always-wanted-1785403197/amp

I have no special info on all this.
One reader responded that the original article quoted this way:

“This is way to many words written about a non-problem. Anyone can create a server and it’s up to them to moderate it. Just like teamspeak and vent and the rest. If they choose not to moderate it, then it’s up to the people hanging out there to decide if they want to be thee or not. No one is forced to remain in shitty channels or servers.
What a weird outrage article. And blaming Discord for not actively moderating everyone’s own servers is missing the mark.”

@f00l I prefer to think of it as allowing the Discord to run itself. Other than politely asking people to take political discussion to the politics channel it has been self moderating.

@f00l On the topic of Discord in the context of groups like 4Chan et al, it’s no different than any other social platform/service. Skype is just as prone to misuse, as were MSN/Live Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, AOL Instant Messenger, etc. before it. Likewise Facebook, Twitter, etc. can be used for such activity.

I’m not sure how Discord or their parent company is in any way responsible or in any way deficient in providing the tools to manage such incursions. The default behavior for invitations to a Discord channel is inherently secured because they’re time-limited, you specifically have to go our of your way to create a non-expiring link to join the server. Even once a link has been created it can be revoked. There is also a highly capable permissions system in place that can be used to restrict actions on any level from requiring specific user group membership to talk or read to creating hidden channels which can only be seen and used by users with permission. Overall, there is a lot of security capability within Discord, in the case of large public groups whose purpose is to provide open forum to those of similar interests I’m not sure that there’s a practical way to secure against malicious groups without cramping the free access and unrestricted flow of ideas for which those channels are being created in the first place.

@f00l Got it, and thanks.