Subject: The Ice Cream Experiment-A Real World Test of Newsgroup Mentality Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2002 23:54:06 GMT From: "Chuck, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix 01" Newsgroups: alt.startrek.vs.starwars I tell my wife to buy a gallon of vanilla ice cream (those of you who have read stories about her before won't be surprised that she bought a half gallon of chocolate). Anyway, it's evening and I get a small amount and put it in a bowl, and I notice that someone else has already done this.... After much pondering I decided that I would conduct an actual real world discussion using the typical reasoning seen on Usenet. So when my wife comes in I begin the discussion. Me: Did you take some of the I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Vanilla ice cream? Her: Yeah, I gave Luke some. Me: That was for milkshakes I was going to make tomorrow, and we don't have enough as it is. People shouldn't be taking any ice cream. Her: Really. Me: Yes. No more ice cream for anybody. (I take another bite, not letting on that I'm kidding). Her: Then why are you eating ice cream? Me: I'm hungry. Her: You said no one should have ice cream. Me: And they shouldn't. Her: That includes you. Me: Absolutely. Nobody should have any. (bite) Her: Then why are you eating ice cream? Me: I'm hungry. Her: But you're not supposed to be eating ice cream. Me: Why not? Her: You just said no one should be eating any ice cream. Me: That's right, they shouldn't. Her: Okay, you're being an asshole. (leaves) As you can see, the ultimate response is similar, but the number of "post" and "replies" was far "larger" than you "would" normally see "in" a typical thread"." Overall this was quite an intersting experiment. It went far better than my last one, where I kept a large plastic McDonald's cup in the bathroom and used it to measure how large my bladder was. The result was inconclusive, but I did enjoy taking my cup out and dumping it on my neighbor's car whenever his dogs barked in the middle of the night. -- Chuck "Anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung. " - Voltaire