Open 575: Friends & Enemies-Together At Last (OVER)

[TellTaleHeart]

Alright, I have high hopes for this game!
VOTE: TellTaleHeart for referencing Poe. He wrote about death! Is obvious mafia!

Spoiler:

Also:
VOTE: Wisdom

[TellTaleHeart]

TTH, why Wisdom, or was that a random vote?

It was not a random vote and I will explain later.

[TellTaleHeart]

TTH, why Wisdom, or was that a random vote?

It was not a random vote and I will explain later.

MathDino

: I very much disagree with your conclusions that Not_Mafia and Wisdom are town. I think they're scum.

Victor has caught a lot of heat for various reasons so far from several main players for various reasons (namely: you, acryon, and Wisdom). But there's a clear difference in approach to the overall conversation and it's reflected in the current vote count and this early posting. You, acryon, and Silver Wolf have all articulated clear problems with Victor's posting. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the reasoning, you've all backed up your convictions with clear language and a vote. In contrast, Not_Mafia and Wisdom have both telegraphed scumreads on Victor, but they seem a lot more guarded about it. Not_Mafia's tone especially come across as very flat and awkward. It leads me to the conclusion that they don't want to come across as too aggressive too early in the game and that they're worried about their public image. That seems more characteristic of scum than town.

[TellTaleHeart]

Why?

I also don't like this post because it comes off as a RVS vote or if it's not a RVS there's no reasoning attached to it. There's content, RVS is over yet nothing was commented besides the vote on him followed by the attachment of the Wisdom vote.

I explicitly told MathDino it wasn't a random vote.

[TellTaleHeart]

Yeah, I also feel Victor's question was kind of useless and maybe even a little loaded. There are not many reasons one wants to get meta.

Like this post.^

What in particular do you like about it? I feel like it's very unremarkable.

[TellTaleHeart]

Tbf I didn't see that post and I'm not entirely sure on how I missed it, but I did.

Also your last post still doesn't explain to me why you voted Wisdom over N_M. In fact your last post reads to me more that you believe N_M is scummier than Wisdom which questions why you are voting Wisdom over N_M.

Gut feeling. I want to see where it takes me.

Because it's 100% true. Like there's no reason for VDA to question Dino on the use of meta early game. Like zero because the reasoning behind wanting meta is very obvious to anyone who uses meta and coming from experience in playing with VDA he does to an extent use meta. So VDA questioning it makes very little sense and useless.

You can agree with it. It could be 100% true. I really don't know if it is or not, but I don't think it matters.

Wisdom could also say that about three quarters Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen. That's an entirely true statement, but isn't very revealing of alignment.

[TellTaleHeart]

@TTH: My Wisdom townread comes from his early game, with the explicit willingness to wagon and get out of RVS. And I said that NM was ACTING town, not that I got a townread off him. Essentially, he gets points for helping with discussion but that's just "we should keep him around" points, not "he's town" points.
Honestly, I think you're fitting the evidence to the conclusion. Everything you said is more indicative of playstyle than scumminess, and IMO the both of them are acting in pro-town interests.
That strikes me as a little odd tbh, makes me think you're coming up with reasons to suspect them, but I won't FoS you for what I consider faulty reasoning right now.

What, you think you're going to hurt my feelings if you FoS me? You're not.

All the reasons you just said are easily faked by scum players worth their weight in salt, especially with join dates like Wisdom's and NM's. I guessing that by now, Wisdom and NM aren't complete scrubs as scum. I haven't been around long myself, but I've played a newbie game and the SE's were both scum and dropped plenty of fake "towntells." I'm not as impressed as you are.

As for philosophy, I approach the game differently than most people here do. I use much the same strategy in forum mafia as I do in RL mafia: I observe how the individual fits in (or doesn't fit in) with group dynamics and build reads on that. In RL mafia, I find that scum tend to play conservatively especially at the beginning of the day before they know what kind of town dynamics they should conform to. I certainly do as scum; it's the optimal play and they win most of the time by doing so. I'm not very good at the whole "question and answer" thing that seems to be popular on this site because 1) I don't think I ask the right questions and 2) I'm not competent enough to do anything with the answers I get. So, I watch other people's modes of logic and try to fill in blanks.

@TTH
I don't appreciate how you talk about me and N_M in the third person instead of trying to engage either of us. Do you care about hearing a defense to your accusations, or would you just like to get others to vote with you?

Then I don't think we're going to get along.
I don't care for either of the things you just mentioned. I could blandly ask you if or why you suspect Victor, but you'll either 1) give me your reasoning if you're town or 2) make something up if you're scum. I'm not good enough at this game to be able to tell the difference and my read on you is likely to evolve based on stuff that happens down the road anyway. I guess I just like to see natural reactions and exchanges instead of having to force them.
Also, if others voted with me at this stage, I would be kind of suspicious since all the stuff I explained makes sense in my head, but I don't necessarily expect it to make sense to other people. Because it probably doesn't.

[TellTaleHeart]

@TTH are you really implying in 130 it's a waste time asking for reasoning because if a player is scum they will simply lie or have I misread that?

You misread it only slightly. I'm saying that

for me

it would be a waste of time because it's not going to give me any information of value. If other people think they do best in the "interrogator" role in a conversation, more power to them. I fully acknowledge my weaknesses as a player and that's one of them.

I'm currently working from townreads on Victor, Newbie, mathdino, Silver Wolf, wgeurts, and Malakittens for varying reasons. Everyone else, I'm still in the process of sorting.

[TellTaleHeart]

But since I'm not totally sure on you, might as well ask: Whatcha think of Victor? Whatcha think of wgeurts?

I'm townreading Victor for a couple reasons. The most important one is that I think he received a considerable amount of criticism for somewhat superficial reasons from some questionable corners to begin the day, which wouldn't seem to be indicative of someone who has allies (i.e. scum). Others are just gut feelings I get from the tone of his posts and I can't explain well.

I'm also townreading wgeurts, mostly because of the way he's pushing Newbie, which is probably best summarized in post 127. The "

Gotcha'

" tone of that post and other subsequent posts seem indicative of someone who sincerely think he's caught scum.

[TellTaleHeart]

wgeurts, please stop self-voting. It's silly and anti-town.

[TellTaleHeart]

Also, I'm guessing you have no thoughts on the rest of wgeurts's posts? (shamelessly asking for your thoughts on my analysis turned case)

None that I'll talk about tonight.

TTH: eh already asked you question. If you get around to this, by PoE (heh, Tell Tale Heart using PoE), the scum are in {Wisdom, DukeC, Undertaker, Not_Mafia, blindmewithscience, acryon}. That seem accurate? You mentioned that acryon had articulated good reasoning, but never mentioned a read on him.

That is very accurate.
Regarding acryon, I said earlier that he articulated clear problems with Victor's posting, not that it was "good." I'm getting mixed signals from acryon himself. If I said anything else about acryon, it would be made-up since my read on him is still in its formative stages. So, I'll be happy to just leave it at that.

Posts #1 and #2 by Wisdom are weird because they came after wgeurts' voting/unvoting of him as well as the

obvious

suspicious behavior that wgeurts was getting hounded for. I find it hard to believe that Wisdom didn't see why wgeurts' behavior was extremely scummy, especially with that odd unvote. Therefore, Wisdom's questions come off as fluff and as an act of trying to look town by asking questions.

There also hasn't been any real scum hunting from Wisdom, just a few comments here and there about certain players and questions towards certain players. It almost seems like Wisdom is skirting through this phase, asking just the right amount of questions in order to not set off any alarms.

Well, this sounds familiar. I wonder where I heard it before...
Just in case anyone's interested, this general trend of posting continues

right

up to the last few Wisdom posts, especially the one categorizing wgeurt's self-vote as some kind of grey-area "overreaction." There's a lot of wishy-washy-ness (I know that's not a word, but it's too late at night for me to care) on wgeurts when he's the clear favorite wagon today. I think he's not wanting to close off the possibility of joining the wagon but at the same time he doesn't want to look overeager.

OK,

now

I'm to the stage where I want to convince other people to vote Wisdom. I think a competing Wisdom wagon would be good because I'm pretty dissatisfied with this wgeurts one.

Still no word from Not_Mafia. I feel stood up.

[TellTaleHeart]

UNVOTE:
VOTE: wquerts

Yeah, I don't like this quick recovery. A moment earlier you were on the brink of suicide and now, after getting people to think you're a newbtown flailing and beg you to unvote yourself, you act like nothing happened. Conviniently, this all happens just as there's momentum on me building.

Furthermore

, I don't like this vote because it foists a Catch 22 onto wgeurts. If he doesn't unvote, he continues to be anti-town and unproductive, but if he does unvote, that's considered condemning evidence.

[TellTaleHeart]

You're saying that

the

town reaction would've been to keep self voting?

[TellTaleHeart]

That seems oversimplified and it doesn't sound right.

[TellTaleHeart]

Sorry for double post, but I don't think this is Catch 22. It's the pitfall of using AtE in games with (I presume) more logical players. wgeurts lost credibility the moment he self-voted, as does anyone outside of RVS (and some would say inside), so in this case I'm gonna have to defer to Wisdom's reasoning here: frustrated town is usually too frustrated to just go ahead and listen to everyone.

To me, this seems to be based on an oversimplification of how emotions work in general. They can be fleeting or long lasting (life has taught me this). To flippantly say "the only emotions are the ones that don't fade" doesn't even sound remotely right. There's such a thing as doing rash things in the heat of the moment and, no offense to wgeurts, but he comes off as the kind of guy that would do something like that.

[TellTaleHeart]

You all seem to have been busy since I was last here.

I see this read is going to take a while as there are quite a few long posts. I'll read and think about the new developments.

[TellTaleHeart]

I just read post 310 and 311 by blindmewithscience (which I will abbreviate to "blind" unless he has any objections). He's not leaving me with a positive impression like he is with Mathdino, apparently. What I extract from the post is that he has a scumread on Wisdom, wgeurts, and Silver Wolf because he points out plenty of things he doesn't like about all of them, but his vote remains on wgeurts. It's easy to point out disjointed things you don't like about someone else's posting, but what's the conclusion at the end of it and do they fit together somehow to make a cohesive picture? I don't see one yet, so I question how genuine these thoughts are.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm back. Before I go on, I want to say that the whole "mason hunting" argument is specious at best. If wgeurts really wanted to out the masons, there are a lot more obviously effective methods to do so, one of which to claim mason himself in order to elicit a counterclaim from a real mason.

[TellTaleHeart]

I went backwards and read post 297. On a fundamental level, I agree with the assertion that there's plenty of motivation to stay out of the spotlight by talking a lot while not

actually

contributing to the discussion. All of Mathdino's points are technically true in that SilverWolf tended to frequently take on the "follower" role.

However

, I'm not sure that this is necessarily intentional in SilverWolf's case. It may be that she was just slower to arrive at these conclusions than everyone else or it might be that she likes repeating other people's points in order to feel like part of the group.

If SilverWolf really is scum, I'm very troubled, because that means I went horribly wrong somewhere in my methods earlier in the game. One of my townreads is wrong, and therefore,

all

of them need to be called into question. Also, since SilverWolf and Wisdom being scum together is a pretty implausible and untenable theory, it would disrupt my fairly comfortable view of this game so far. I don't really

want

to believe SilverWolf is scum, but that might be out of personal convenience or pride on my part.

[TellTaleHeart]

He is not obviously newbtown at all imo. He is faking it and it's working. There is a fine difference between actual newbtowns and scum faking them that you see with experience.

What exactly is your argument here, Wisdom? I see that wgeurt's join date is September 16th of this year, which is very recent. How can that be faked? More specifically how can you argue that he would go so far as to replicate newbie meta when he wasn't a newbie? To me, this deception would seem to run to ridiculous and profound levels.

[TellTaleHeart]

I just read post 323 (by SilverWolf) and it came of as very genuine to me. I'm still reading her as town.

Okay, so I was going to say I didn't like BMWS, but his last set of posts I actually like.

I would be

very

interested in what you liked about them. It would be expedient to eliminate someone from my Process of Elimination pool.

I would also like to know where I might be going wrong with Victor because I'm reading him as town, Malakittens.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm just now to page 15. I'm so slow.

For a reason I'm not

entirely

sure of, I don't really feel good about post 354 from acryon. I'm in lock-step with him on the wgeurts read, but I can't really follow the attack on SilverWolf, which troubles me. Are appeals to emotion really characteristic of scum? I've used it myself as town (unintentionally, of course) before.

The only issue that I think may be worth pointing out is that wgeurts sort of kept doing his own thing until mala stepped in and posted this. This psot from her seemed to cause his turn-around, so it reads to me like it could possibly be coaching. Although I think there is a

very

small chance that this is actually the case, I think it is worth noting.

I could see this. Mala has been distant and has avoided interacting with me, which might well be a scumtell for her since she knows I can read her. Wouldn't surprise me if she's scum with wgeurts.

You two have a history (which allows you to read each other well)?
Malakittens, is this true?

I'm reading post 360 by acryon and I'm very confused. For one, the last post he links (247) is not to a Silver Wolf post at all, it's to a Newbie post. Overall, this seems to be an echo of Mathdino's case, which is that Silver Wolf is a sheep (ironic, a Wolf in a sheep's clothes, I know).

Post 365 by Victor, I don't really care for, which is troubling to me since I had him as a townread.
Those questions seem pretty pointless to me.

And the trend continues with post 370. I don't care for this because I really don't know what he's talking about. What counter-attack to acryon does he speak of and what is this theory game? I don't follow.

I'm now to page 16.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm to post 375 and I'm

really

questioning my townread on Victor and that's

really

annoying me. Do these questions lead anywhere or are they just filler to make yourself look town? Why does it matter what Silver's opinion of acryon is? If I had to guess, she'll probably say he's misguided town and be done with it. Is there some kind of inconsistency you're trying to catch her out on or what? I'm completely missing it if so.

Liking blindme for town for reasons already pointed out. Thought process seems fairly natural.

Well, sir, I will have to heartily disagree with you because the preceding post does absolutely nothing for me. The "assumption that wgeurts is a frustrated townie" is "correct," but from that, a scumread on wgeurts somehow emerges. That seems absolutely bananas to me. I cannot follow.

Also I do like Acyron's latest posts so .... yeah...

I agree with this. I'm actually comfortable enough to take him out of my PoE pool.

I'm to page 17 now:

Mathdino, I could see SilverWolf being town actually. There is a passion in her defenses that makes me think they might be genuine. I also think that as scum she would more try to appease you than antagonise you.

I feel wgeurts is the much better choice for today.

I agree with this regarding Silver Wolf, and I'm actually having a few doubts about my Wisdom vote because that would have been the perfect opportunistic avenue for him to take if he were scum and SilverWolf is town.

[TellTaleHeart]

Wow, a major typo. I meant to say that I believe that the assumption made by the pro-wgeurts side is INCORRECT, as I've stated before-I don't think that wgeurts is a frustrated townie. But I want more info directly from wgeurts. My bad. I'm blaming technology
In summary of this whole thing: Because the argument against Wisdom is based on wgeurts being town (which I believe to be incorrect), it follows that Wisdom is town.

OK. I'm still left with a few questions, the main one being "why is the assumption incorrect?" You can't just flippantly categorize it as that, there has to be

something

behind it.

I continue to not be impressed by blind's posting, mostly because there's a distinct lack of deconstruction or evaluation of arguments on his own part. On a fundamental level, it avoids accountability, which I see a lot of scum motivation for and not much town motivation for.

[TellTaleHeart]

And for your conclusion statement, I think that my 387 and 406 show those (as I don't think you've gotten to that point yet in your reading )

Well I must be really tired right now or something because I still don't understand what the end point for you is.

While other masonfishing methods may be more effective, it still doesn't explain why he was doing this at all. A terrible attempt at masonfishing is still an attempt, and so I suspect him for that.

My point is that it's more indicative of someone who (falsely) believes that the masons claiming would somehow be a good thing (even though, strategically, it obviously isn't).

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm finally caught up on the thread (apologies for the multiple posts, but I thought it would be better than a large wall; plus I didn't want to lose my work to an accidental window closing out or browser crash). Apologies for the sub par writing too, but it's 10 pm at night and I really don't have the energy to reread and edit my own posts right now.

I'd really

like

to make myself happy with a FinnLaw townread because I like him / what he has to say, but there's not really a rational reason for it. I don't really know what his problem is with Silver Wolf and I'll have to figure that out in time.

Summary:
I'm mainly scumreading Wisdom and blind right now though I have major questions about Victor. I'm townreading Silver Wolf and acryon in addition to all the townreads I previously stated (minus Victor).
I'm also having doubts about my Wisdom scumread mostly due to his treatment of Silver Wolf, but I'll have to mull it over some more.

[TellTaleHeart]

Wge would have to be really ballsy scum and be confident that his partners are good at playing scum to intentionally mason fish in thread.

Wisdom and wge will not be scum together. I could see Silver scum.

Is it really bad that I keep confusing TTH & BWMS' posts as one player.

Anyways townreads in no order {Mathdino, Finnlaw, TTH, BWMS} leaning town {N_M & Wge}

Wisdom explain why I should be townreading you?

I don't care for a few things this post. The mason fishing argument is bunk and Malakittens has wgeurts as a townread anyway so I'm not sure where these hypothetical associative tells come into play or why it's worth mentioning. Also, I've notice that multiple people (not just Malakittens) say the phrase "I could see X as scum." This is a completely meaningless buzz-phrase, in my opinion. If I thought long enough I could imagine

anyone

being scum but that doesn't make the line of thought any more valid or worth pursuing. Why

exactly

is Silver scum; is there any reason?

I'm also a little lost on how Finnlaw, blind, and Not_Mafia earned their places in the townreads section.

(As an aside, you're probably confusing me and blind because we both have black and white avatars. I'll try to find a color one when I have time.)

You two have a history (which allows you to read each other well)?

Yes, and notably she's one of the players I'm most accurate at reading.

Rapports between players is something I try to pick up on and I didn't see one between you and Malakittens at all. I'm not sure if I just wasn't paying enough attention or what but I'll have to review Malakitten's earlier activity with that in mind.

This is now the second previous townread I'm calling into question so I'm actually inclined to think I should burn my townlist entirely and begin again from scratch. I'm not sure.

[TellTaleHeart]

(As an aside, you're probably confusing me and blind because we both have black and white avatars. I'll try to find a color one when I have time.)

Done.

That is the most amazing piece of art I've ever seen.

[TellTaleHeart]

You made it too high, acryon. It doesn't fit.

[TellTaleHeart]

Marvelous

[TellTaleHeart]

Considering no children have CC'd Wguert's, we should treat him as confirmed town. I haven't made it past the tenth page of the holy advent yet, so bear with me.

I see you haven't gotten to page 12 yet...

I'm a little curious about how where you think you saw a mason claim.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm currently working from townreads on Victor, Newbie, mathdino, Silver Wolf, wgeurts, and Malakittens for varying reasons. Everyone else, I'm still in the process of sorting.

After reviewing the game, I'm still confident enough in my Victor, Newbie, Mathdino, Silver Wolf, and wgeurts town reads. I will add acryon to the list. I had some questions about Victor going into the review, but I saw things I liked that gave me confidence in my first impression town read.

The remaining playerlist stands at: Wisdom, FinnLaw, Constantine, Not_Mafia, blindmewithscience, Malakittens

I'm left with the problem of Malakittens and this read is my top priority right now because of its importance. I'd like to be able to just trust my first impression, but if I'm wrong about Mala being town, that pollutes my reads of those left in my "could be scum" pool. Mala being scum would be pretty exculpatory evidence for Wisdom and Wisdom is effecting my reads of a few others in the remaining suspects (most importantly blindmewithscience). These are all associative tells that aren't really worth talking about because I'd be getting too far ahead of myself, but the domino effect is still there and Wisdom is a key player for me since I'm voting him right now and he's the current leading wagon.

I have a few minor things from Mala's ISO that aren't really worth going over and will reduce the discussion to quibbles about theory, so I'll just leave them alone because there's something else that has priority. What has me

most

concerned is the dynamic with Wisdom. I see that Malakittens voted Wisdom in her first post with a friendly "herro," but other than maybe, I wouldn't know they knew each other at all. The trouble is that when I review both their activities (I figured out that you can do more than one person's ISO side-by-side today) it looks like neither of them are engaged with the other for the majority of the game, so I don't think Mala can necessarily be faulted for it.
(^I'm not really sure what the point of that paragraph was. I guess just me ranting.)

One thing that's kind of bizarre to me is how people are trying to tie together wgeurts and Mala. I think acryon and Wisdom mentioned this and someone else repeated it, if I'm recalling correctly. I think the accusations of "coaching" are just out-and-out wrong considering that Mala's characterization of wgeurt's "townflail" came

after

wgeurt's meltdown. It comes off to me as an angle to keep shoving the wgeurt's lynch and putting Mala on the defensive.

[TellTaleHeart]

Well that last post probably added more to the confusion than it helped and it wasn't very well written.

I guess what I want from Malakittens

:
Wisdom is saying that you've been avoiding him this game. What's

your

side of the story? I don't know your history, so is it that you two commonly look for certain tells from one another or what is it?

(By the way, would you be alright with me abbreviating your name to "Mala" or is that overfamiliar?)

[TellTaleHeart]

That's not entirely true and we both know this. You have to tunnel me and see how I react to figure out whether or not I'm scum or town.

So the usual dynamic is that he hyper-focuses on you as town in order to sort you?

[TellTaleHeart]

The yellow top hat was very lovely, acryon.

My new avatar should further distinguish me from blindmewithscience, though.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm looking at Victor's ISO trying to make myself happy with a townread, but posts like 296, 356, 365, and 370 make me think I went wrong somewhere and he's actually scum.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm looking at Victor's ISO trying to make myself happy with a townread, but posts like 296, 356, 365, and 370 make me think I went wrong somewhere and he's actually scum.

There are pieces of 296 that I don't love, but the others seem pretty neutral to me. Anything specific that's pinging you?

Yes. Quite a bit, actually.

In post 296, I dislike how closed-minded this wgeurts push is. Post 356 is entirely devoted to talking about how blind could be scum with wgeurts based on associations but wgeurts somehow committed some cardinal sin by "banding people together." The questions in 365 seem kind of pointless and serves only as filler. Post 370 is a strained angle on Silver Wolf, who I'm reading as town.

But what's more important isn't all the little detailed stuff in the previous paragraph. It's mostly the fact that he's completely tabling the Wisdom read even though that wagon is at L-3. I would think it would have higher priority than that, but I feel like it's repeatedly getting swept under the rug.

[TellTaleHeart]

@TTH
Are you still happy with your Wisdom vote?

I am.

For someone who absolutely demands explanations from everyone else, getting Wisdom's opinions on the game as a whole is like getting blood from a stone. I understand that he's townreading MathDino, which is a very popular opinion anyway, and scumreading wgeurts but everyone else in the game remains at a blank. The recent interactions with Mala seem halfhearted at best. Even the push on wgeurts feels oddly lethargic.

What do you find redeeming in Wisdom's activity? I'd really like to know.

[TellTaleHeart]

Do you think Victor is scum protecting his buddy Wisdom?

Possible, but that kind of thinking is somewhat damaging because of how wildly speculative it is.
Independent of what Wisdom is, though, I think it's odd for someone to completely ignore the elephant in the room that is the Wisdom wagon.

[TellTaleHeart]

I wouldn't say I find parts of his activity redeeming; I just don't find the other pieces damning. The main reasons I see for the wagon on him are due to the way he was pushing the wgeurts lynch. Maybe it's just me, but I certainly don't see scum being at the head of a wagon like wgeurts'. To anyone that feels wgeurts is town, I would be far more suspicious of both Victor and Blindmewithscience. It is almost always the subtle pushing that is by scum, not the hard pushing that Wisdom is doing.

There's a disconnect here for me to where I don't understand why your reads are the way they are.

The assertion that scum will

never

lead a wagon seems bananas to me. It's an absolute and it doesn't sound right, especially considering the wgeurts push itself. It's the same tired, belabored points about the self-vote and "masonfishing," whatever that's come to mean. I don't think either of those points made a good case because they're superficial and don't stand up to scrutiny. That doesn't seem to matter to Wisdom, though, and they never receive any kind of critical examination or explanation from him.

Take a quick look through Wisdom's ISO and tell me what kind of town goal he's working towards here. He's hammering on the same points on wgeurts and demanding explanations from everyone else all the while not actually engaging with anyone in any productive way.

Let me remind you that this is the same person who got mad at me after my first post for not "engaging" him.

If this "engage people" thing is

really

his philosophy, I would expect to see a lot more of it and more importantly, I would expect to see products of this process in the form of more refined reads. Instead I see some mealy-mouth rhetoric with Malakittens and softballing of blindmewithscience. There's no commentary on how he thinks the game is going as a whole and the questions he

does

ask lack impact. There's plenty of scum motivation for talking a lot without actually contributing to town progress, which is what I think Wisdom has been doing all game.

Constantine and acryon, can you sincerely defend your Wisdom townread?

[TellTaleHeart]

What's there to do after all that stargazing? Yep. Bowling.

Funny

Yes, the lord suspects an unusual early connection and rvs ploy in the works.

Another one talking about connections in a mason setup. Seriously stop it.

Damn, I didn't notice this, good catch. He even said that we should stop talking about masons when the thing that started that discussion was wgeurts's associative tells.

Are you even thinking about what you're parroting before you do so?

It's not a good point at all.

Here's the original context of what Constantine said:

The lord gives me the authority to cooperate. Mathdino, patron saint of foolishness, it is you who is arrogant. Arrogant to the passion of christ.
You should be stigmatized for you ignorance. Don't you realize you're the main reason why god wants VictorDeAngelo Dead?
Yes, the lord suspects an unusual early connection and rvs ploy in the works.

If you go back to the first few pages, you'll see that Mathdino and Victor vote each other very early on. Constantine's argument isn't that they're masons, it's that they're scum who are distancing from each other by voting each other.

MathDino being Wisdom's yes-man is really starting to get on my nerves.

[TellTaleHeart]

Here is the problem though: he is all over the place.

I'm not arguing in favor of Constantine's point. I'm saying that Wisdom's insipid remark was out-of-context and not really applicable to what he was quoting.

[TellTaleHeart]

Here is the problem though: he is all over the place.

I'm not arguing in favor of Constantine's point. I'm saying that Wisdom's insipid remark was out-of-context and not really applicable to what he was quoting.

How so? He was pointing out a connection between Mathdino and Victor, no?

The

whole

train of thought needs to be here.
You quoted his post and then complained about "making connections." The clear implication from this is that he shouldn't have made the connection because masons could give a false positive on this. That's not applicable because the specific "connections" Constantine was talking about was two scum voting each other to distance, something I'm assuming two masons wouldn't do.

not actually engaging with anyone

Is there a reason for this quite obvious misrep?

I am so over this.

There's a difference between prodding people for reactions and just being glib and snippy. Wisdom falls squarely in the latter category and I'm shocked that people are telling me otherwise. Here's a question for the Wisdom defenders: What are Wisdom's opinions and where's the tangible productivity from his supposed efforts? From looking at his activity, I certainly can't tell. I see the recent change in heart on the wgeurts read for this apparent "discovery" that wgeurts is actually a newbie and not just playing the newbie card. I thought that whole argument was patently absurd from the beginning anyway and certainly shouldn't have been some earth-shattering revelation to anyone. I see that he's calling Mala scum, and I think it's just in an attempt to subvert what I said to acryon because it happens to come

after

I called his end of that interaction "mealy-mouthed." He doles out a townread read to his fanboy MathDino who's being townread by almost the entire game anyway. I'm apparently a vague afterthought townread, but I'm sure that's going to conveniently dry up really quickly. blindmewithscience, acryon, and FinnLaw are completely absent and Victor and Newbie haven't been visited in a while.

How can anyone extract any kind of curiosity or inquisitiveness from his posting? The quote above the preceding paragraph is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

Even the wording of the sentence is passive-aggressive.

There's no attempt to prove me wrong, reference to past posts, or accompanying explanation. It's just this short, smart ass comeback that's very similar to the one given to Malakittens a while ago.

If anyone wants to show me where Wisdom works to produce better reads or advance the town, I'll be happy to look at it. I'm not finding it on my own, though.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm apparently a vague afterthought townread, but I'm sure that's going to conveniently dry up really quickly.

You're right, it is drying up. The way you post and avoid interacting with me while tunneling on me is getting annoying and I am starting to consider that it's a scum tactic.

This is the same rehashed, defensive stuff from the beginning of the game and I'm not tunneling. You're confronting a threat, not actually evaluating. If you were, you would give reads on the nearly half the playerlist you have yet to even touch instead of being worried about sounding authoritative.

[TellTaleHeart]

The rest of this is a lot better than the first part you said. Looking through Wisdom's ISO, I tried to look at it as if he was scum. If he is scum, I think that definitely at least one of Mala and wgeurts is scum.

If you think he is scum, I think he has to be bussing one of those two.

Thoughts?

I'm sorry, what's the basis for this? I don't follow.

[TellTaleHeart]

UNVOTE:
Well now I'm just confused.

[TellTaleHeart]

@TTH - Thanks for dropping your vote. Please tell me your inquiries on VictorDeAngelo.

I'm not sure yet, I have to start over again from scratch because my initial methods were flawed and now all my reads are questionable.

[TellTaleHeart]

Discarding all my reads from before and reviewing the game with a new lens from the beginning, I'm gathering townreads on wgeurts, SilverWolf (now Riddleton), acryon, Wisdom, Mathdino, and Constantine. While I don't really have a townread on Not_Mafia

per se

, I'm also going to take him out of the pool for now. I'm also going to take blindmewithscience out for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of myself.

After that, I'm left with: FinnLaw, Malakittens, VictorDeAngelo, and Newbie.

FinnLaw's the tricky one because even in my old set of reads, I never got happy with a townread on him and I think I now know why. I notice in general that he's very laid back and go-with-the-flow. Probably the most striking feature of FinnLaw's ISO is actually that he never votes. That bothers me because it's not like he hasn't expressed opinions; it seems he can do that perfectly fine. It might be explained by his personality, but I'm not at all sure.

I kept having paranoia about Victor before this reset for a few reasons (post 440 and post 535). Looking at his ISO through the lens of having Silver Wolf and blindmewithscience as townreads, I think it's a lot more likely for Victor to be scum.

I'm happy with this wagon.
VOTE: VictorDeAngelo

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm gathering townreads on wgeurts, SilverWolf (now Riddleton), acryon, Wisdom, Mathdino, and Constantine.

wat
Explain the townread on me.

I will do no such thing.

[TellTaleHeart]

Question - Why would someone with a "personality" like mine play a game as scum and act like myself? That's pretty much the same as nailing up a sign saying "lynch me".

I hate this post. As if it's not clear you're self-conscious about everything you're doing.

I now have a feeling I did all that for nothing.

[TellTaleHeart]

You 180 on a read you've been tunneling all game and you refuse to explain why?

Yes, because to do so would be anti-town.

[TellTaleHeart]

OK, now I feel foolish.

[TellTaleHeart]

Wisdom, do you really not get it?

[TellTaleHeart]

...what the hell just happened...

I have absolutely no idea, and now that I reread Malakitten's latest series of posts, I am more confused than ever. I'm having a reference frame crisis.

I have to sleep on this.
UNVOTE:

[TellTaleHeart]

Even after 48 hours, I unfortunately don't feel any better about this unholy mess of a tangled game.

I'm going to go eat lunch, now but I'll be back in a bit.

[TellTaleHeart]

Creating lists of townreads and trying to use process of elimination hasn't been working so far. I feel like I'm trying to reinvent the wheel every time I sit down to posts, so right now my priority is to get some stability. A different method is needed.

To move forward I have to get to the heart of the quagmire in my reads. I don't mean to interrupt the conversation, but I need to say a few things.

Malakittens:

I suspect you're not reading my posts given 1) you apparently think I'm a "he" and 2) your recent exchange with Wisdom regarding what I said about Constantine's post. That's alright, though. I'm not here to judge you for that.

Your answers to Wisdom's recent questioning, especially post 692 and post 697, leave a lot to be desired. First, there's the issue of your read on Wisdom. When you strip away all the out-of-game references that I cannot evaluate and get to the core of the case, I'm left with the "premature push" reason, which I completely don't understand. When should he have pushed you? How should he have pushed you? Should he have waited for later? Why and if so, when would that have been? I have no idea.

Referring back to post 697, why do you think Victor is scummy? Also, if you have a tell you want to use on him, why are you saying so? Isn't it counterproductive to show your hand this early? I don't know if you're just trying to weigh things or if you really don't have a tell on Victor and you're just procrastinating on taking a side.

Wisdom:

Hello Wisdom. I sense from your posts that you think I'm annoying and I strongly suspect that you don't like me. I'm not here to argue with you about that because I know I can be a difficult person and I apologize if I offend you on any personal level. I still have to read you though. I'm hitting a huge snag when I go to do that and it's mainly due to the fact that I have no idea what you're thinking. Your recent conversation with Malakittens is a perfect example. I just described all the things I disliked about Mala's answers, which to me are glaringly obvious. What absolutely kills me is that it doesn't seem to bother you at all. It would be one thing if you were quizzing her on every little detail, but you're not and there's no feedback mechanism that tells me what kind of meaning you're attaching to these answers.

And it's not just Malakittens this happens with. I noticed you addressed blindmewithscience a few times this game, but no read or thought came of it. I initially thought you were scummy for this opacity, but now it just confuses me.

I don't really know if I'm going to get anything out of all this or if you're even going to answer me, but it's worth a shot I suppose.

[TellTaleHeart]

In the meanwhile, the only way to go is forward.

VOTE: VictorDeAngelo

My read on Wisdom plays into the Victor read slightly, but my townreads on Riddleton/SilverWolf and blindmewithscience still make me think Victor is scum pushing bad angles.

[TellTaleHeart]

@TTH I think she's town, I'm satisfied with her responses and other recent posts. I also feel better about you.

You feel better about me now that I've backed off?

It seems like your read on me is dependent on my read on you. I don't care for that.

[TellTaleHeart]

TTH townreads both Constantine and Riddleton.

That is correct, and after reading the recent activity I still am.

In the last few pages, it looks like Wisdom's been making a mad dash to make sure the lynch is on anyone but Victor.

Victor feels like lynchbait right now, so I'm not voting him until I've heard from him.

Any particular reason he's deserving of this label "lynchbait"? What does that even mean and how did you arrive at this? And don't tell me it's because he's V/LA. It's not.

Please read this for more information. Victor made a baseless vote against Wgeurts, he invented new reasoning to support his fallacious claim as he goes along, as he doesn't want to believe the wagon he's trying to push is incorrect.

Translation: Victor is scum for tunneling.

Because town never tunnel, huh?

Your case sucks.

No, that's a strawman argument.

The "case" on wgeurts is and was always weak. It's

your opinion

that he was always scummy. Your efforts to present it as some kind of objective, indisputable fact notwithstanding, it's an opinion. I disagree, and apparently Riddleton does too. There's a clear reason why scum would want to ramrod a weak case on (what did you call it?) "lynchbait." The "mason fishing" was always bogus. So was the hoopla surrounding his self-vote and how somehow the timing wasn't right or some such nonsense.

Now that I think of it, I think the Silver Wolf push was bad and opportunistic, too. There was this overall sentiment that Silver Wolf was somehow defending herself "badly." I'm not going to go and pull quotes right now, but I do remember Newbie and acryon saying something to that effect. Why is that? She got emotional and blew up at her accuser, but how that's somehow "bad" was never explained in any satisfactory way. Victor was right there to heap suspicion on her when she wasn't very popular. blindmewithscience is another person who Victor was lumping suspicion on for tenuous reasons. Post 356, he linked us to some blindmewithscience post and inexplicably, a scumread comes out of the black box. Why? We don't know, it's apparently left up to the imagination.

This unwarranted imo defense of Constantine by Riddleton troubles me. If Constantine is actually town, Riddle might be scum going for the cred. And gain further momentum to push Victor on D2.

This is nothing more than mud slinging, in my opinion. The defense of Constantine wasn't unwarranted at all, and I was agreeing with Riddleton right up to the point where he faltered. On the surface, it may look like Constantine contradicted himself, but I think it's because he's a person who likes to hear himself talk and doesn't necessarily think about what he says. Just seeing what kind of persona Constantine is adopting here, I'm willing to bet that the need to come off as an authoritative and competent player had more of a role in his list of "scumtells" than anything else.

Riddleton, if you can find all these reasons for Constantine to be town, how come you don't consider Victor-town at all and you're so adamant about him being scum?

This statement is absolutely absurd!
Somehow, having a townread on one person and a scumread on someone else is a scumtell? That doesn't even sound right.
What does Riddleton's analysis of Constantine and Victor have to do with each other? What's the relationship? He has to explicitly weigh out everything? Or was there something else you expected out of Riddleton's Victor case that was absent?

I am not OK with a PL. I have had plenty of off-games, and at the moment, it seems pretty clear to me that this is one of those for you (at least in that instance). I would hope we can do better than choosing to lynch someone based on a simple mistake.

This feels a little off considering you've been scumreading his slot for the whole game. What was the point you stopped scumreading SW?

This is more mudslinging and strawmanning. acryon was arguing against the policy lynch (that's what "PL" stands for, correct?), which is a perfectly reasonable position to take. And how would a changing read necessarily make him scum, anyway?

At this point, I hope it's becoming clear that Wisdom's goal here is to throw suspicion onto as many people as possible before the day ends. I think there's an excellent chance both Constantine and Riddleton are town. Wisdom is rushing for the exit of the Constantine wagon likely because he wants someone else to be holding the bag at the end of the day.

Wisdom sowing the seeds of discord; this whole suggestion to lynch Riddleton is a ridiculous ruse to cause confusion and force the town into making a hasty, bad decision.

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm good with my Victor vote.

[TellTaleHeart]

After some thought, I'm reversing my opinion on Wisdom again. I'll talk more about it and other things in a couple hours when I have the chance.

[TellTaleHeart]

acryon, could you please restate or summarize why you want a Constantine lynch?

[TellTaleHeart]

Edit: Goddammit TTH. Okay.

There are a few things I didn't account for when doing this read.
I'll spare you the details, but looking at Wisdom's ISO through the lens of someone who is very rigid in their ways (and likely perfectionistic), his actions make sense. There are a lot of things that support this: the extreme view of wgeurts and lack of empathy for people townreading him, how the interactions with Malakittens went, and the flustered behavior when a time crunch is pending.

I'm running short on time myself right now, but I'll revisit the Riddleton slot and Constantine.

[TellTaleHeart]

I know I'll be able to be on tomorrow morning, so I would be available to switch if necessary.

In the meanwhile, I'd kind of like you and Wisdom to walk me through your Constantine read, please. I see acryon has already done it (I'll read that in a bit) and I know you've talked about it in your recent activity, but I find having things explained from multiple people multiple times is helpful just in general.

[TellTaleHeart]

Discarding all my reads from before and reviewing the game with a new lens from the beginning, I'm gathering townreads on wgeurts, SilverWolf (now Riddleton), acryon, Wisdom, Mathdino, and Constantine. While I don't really have a townread on Not_Mafia

per se

, I'm also going to take him out of the pool for now. I'm also going to take blindmewithscience out for reasons that I'm not entirely sure of myself.

After that, I'm left with: FinnLaw, Malakittens, VictorDeAngelo, and Newbie.

FinnLaw's the tricky one because even in my old set of reads, I never got happy with a townread on him and I think I now know why. I notice in general that he's very laid back and go-with-the-flow. Probably the most striking feature of FinnLaw's ISO is actually that he never votes. That bothers me because it's not like he hasn't expressed opinions; it seems he can do that perfectly fine. It might be explained by his personality, but I'm not at all sure.

I kept having paranoia about Victor before this reset for a few reasons (post 440 and post 535). Looking at his ISO through the lens of having Silver Wolf and blindmewithscience as townreads, I think it's a lot more likely for Victor to be scum.

I'm happy with this wagon.
VOTE: VictorDeAngelo

At the moment, I'm kind of back to where I was in this post in terms of overall view of the game except for Not_Mafia, who's in the grey area. I don't recall anything changing, but I also can't recall why I thought he was town at the time.

If you adopt the mentality of a medieval monk, the persona Constantine is taking, the resulting behavior isn't surprising. To me, he comes off as someone who wants to be viewed as an authority. As a result, he's not hesitant to assert himself, regardless of how accurate (or inaccurate) said assertions may be.

The trouble I'm seeing right now is that 2 people in my question marks are on the Victor wagon, 2 of them aren't voting at all, and 1 of them is voting wgeurts (i.e. might as well not be voting at all). I'm townreading everyone on the Constantine wagon, but I don't know if that speaks to the accuracy of the wagon or not.

[TellTaleHeart]

In the meanwhile, I'd kind of like you and Wisdom to walk me through your Constantine read, please.

The "you" in this post is MathDino. I quoted something of MathDino's, deleted the quote, and forgot to change the pronoun. Apologies.

[TellTaleHeart]

Very basically, 1) He has, on multiple occasions, tried to explain what is and isn't scummy. This tends to be done by scum, in my experience, to draw a line that they can then walk opposite of. 2) He has, multiple times, downplayed the importance and future impact of living masons to us in this game, and actively endangered them with stupid discussion about them. 3) Rather than contributing, he is asking everyone else to tell him what has happened in the game. This part isn't as much scummy as it is crappy town, but when dealing with scum, crappy town behavior is probably scummy

1) I think this fits with his persona. I think he's very adamant in his system of beliefs about how to play the game (it somewhat reminds me of the IC in my newbie game), and it's shown by the tone he takes. Specifically, I'm talking about how derisive he is towards people he disagrees with: accusing several people of "pride" and this recent post.

2) I think this is similar to the wgeurt's "mason hunting" point, and I just think it goes to show that he hasn't thought about strategy that much. This kind of feeds into the point I made in number 1.

3) Crappy town isn't the same thing as scum.

[TellTaleHeart]

I'm disappointed it turned out like this.

Good game, everyone.

[TellTaleHeart]

You played extremely well

Thanks, but it's a team game and the loss is just as much mine as anyone else's.

[TellTaleHeart]

Thanks for the game, reinoe. As much as I'm whining right now, I would play more games with anyone from this player list.

I lol'd so hard at this.

HEY GUYS
I TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE NEWBIE/BMWS TOWNSLIPS
WOULDN'T HAVE HAPPENED IF I DIDN'T TOWNTUNNEL WISDOM

It's my opinion that you did more harm than good with your Wisdom defense. If we ever play another game, please don't do what you did here.

I was trying to keep tabs on who the masons were as part of my strategy mostly because I was really afraid I would accidentally out the mason team by pushing a wagon on one of them. Now I just feel stupid that I thought you were a mason and, as a result, I put two scum on the mason team in my parting reads. I don't particularly like feeling stupid.

I also feel really bad that borkjerfkin used my blindmewithscience "scumread" from earlier in making his decision. My blindmewithscience read actually didn't change because of what I thought about the mason team at all and I really should have elaborated more on that.