User:Sestet
Sestet's Origin
I registered with YTMND on January 12, 2006, after a few months of idle watching from a distance in late 2005. My first encounter with YTMND was in June of 2005. As an avid reader of Maddox's "The Best Page in the Universe," I was naturally quite curious when I stumbled upon this on his website (properly credited to YTMND and KainXiorcal of course): http://maddoxgame.ytmnd.com/
Sestet on the FPA
I would like to state quickly that, although I'm sure the FPA would like to dismiss me as an ignorant philistine who simply doesn't understand their "brilliant" brand of satire, I do emphasize with their position that YTMND has idiotic, repetetive trends/fads that can be parodied in a humorous sense to discourage unproductive NARVs from wasting away the community. It is an admiral goal to try and show us our own hypocrisy, and in fact, the first time I viewed an FPA site (as a poorly rendered stolen image and intentionally/painfully loud sound file), it was based on (stolen from) a fad site that I had originally seen and said to myself: "... huh. That's really not funny. It doesn't deserve that rating." Hence, I laughed, finding this parody to be quite funny.
However, it has not stopped. In what started as an attempt to preserve the community, it has actually harmed and fiercely divided the community. Thousands of "loud" sites with intentionally poor images have since been made (and I'm making a deliberately conservative estimate by not saying TENS of thousands). If one of the goals of the FPA is to prevent fads (that is, swaths of sites being made that all revolve around what is essentially the same joke), then in this respect they have failed: Their "anti-fad" has since become a fad unto itself by being copied and resubmitted so many times. Simply referring to your site as "satire" or "parody" does not mean that it is funny (and CERTAINLY doesn't mean that it's good satire), and denouncing all those who find it to be otherwise as ignorant is ignorant in itself.
To summarize, I do believe the holier-than-thou FPA could profit from the wisdom that a goodly number of their detractors are not ignorami who "don't get it": Many of us simply have tastes as to what constitutes good or bad satire that differ from your's. Do you not realize that when you flood YTMND with thousands of awful sites, whether they are intended as parody or not, you are in fact becoming what you despise? And believe me, if the FAD is not funny the 10,000th time you see it (and it almost never is), then the ANTI-FAD cannot be funny the 10,000th time you see it either. For example...
Say I were to parody "NEDM" with a "MDEN" fad that features a frowning dog, 8-bit color, and obnoxiously loud sound. It very well may be that this site is funny the first time, as it is a unique instance of opposition and reaction to an established fad out of which hundreds of sites have been made. However, if I made that same dog with the initials "MDEN" with the loud sound over and over, I cease to parody, and I become what I was originally parodying: A fad prostitute. It is impossible to claim that the FPA is, in essence, not doing the exact same thing as the fad proliferators that they despise. I realize that the reason with which FPA sites are made differs from the reasons in which fad sites are made, and it is a respectable reason, but one would simply do well to realize that the 500,000th time you view the same joke (loud sound and bad images, again), it simply CAN'T be funny, no matter what its intentions are. Do not tell me that it can be, because I'm fairly certain any FPA member will use the same argument against fad sites, and it's argumentarily contradictory to apply it in one instance and ignore it in another.
If you would like to argue with me concerning the FPA or LOUDTMND, please leave a comment on my Talk page and I'll engage your comment ASAP, or feel free to mail me on YTMND. That is all.
Sestet on Don't Tase Me, Bro
Now, I'm not normally one to consider YTMND a decent source from which to receive daily news, but I must admit I'm frightened by the large number of you who seem to think that there is nothing wrong in what happened during John Kerry's speech at the University of Florida. I'm not even talking about the tazing, I'm talking about the arrest and removal of the student in general.
The first amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees, among other things, that the freedom of speech of U.S. citizens will not be infringed upon. The Supreme Court has, over the years, come to recognize that this freedom has two essential restraints: One upon speech that is vulgar, and the other upon speech that is directly threatening. You will find that the student who was arrested was neither A) Vulgar, nor B) Threatening.
"How dare you criticize the police for doing their job!", I see oft repeated. But the speakers of this sentiment fail to realize that it is not the job of the police to arrest people who ask unpopular questions in public forums. This is all very Orwellian to me; the idea that it's the job of the police to tell those who express unpopular political viewpoints to shut up, and when they fail to silence themselves, they get arrested. Even if the speaker, meek as John Kerry was, seems to have no problem ANSWERING the questions. "That's an excellent question" and "I'd like to answer his question" seemed to indicate that the senator was not offended by the young man's line of questioning.
If you believe that it is illegal to ask idiotic questions in public, and that the police are merely "doing their job" if they arrest people for this act, then you do not understand democracy. You would be more at home under any number of famous leaders who silenced the opposition's opinion with their police forces ruthlessly and brutally: Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin, and god knows how many others. It is not illegal to be a snide, condescending jerk in public so long as you are not vulgar or threatening, and you may well not agree with the sentiments the student was expressing, but if you are to truly believe in democracy, you must believe in his right to say these things aloud in public.
-Sestet
