Open 842: Diffusion of Power [Postgame]

[catboi]

Vote Count 2.04

Tejate Raichu (3):

fua, Cephrir, Shirou

implosion (1):

Tejate Raichu

GuiltyLion (1):

implosion

Shirou (1):

MegAzumarill

MegAzumarill (1):

numberQ

Not Voting (5):

Amazonian Legends, morph the cat, redtea, Ydrasse, GuiltyLion

With 12 alive, it's 7 to eliminate.

Deadline for Day 2 is January 31 at 6:00 PM EST.

Deadline Timer:

(expired on 2022-01-31 19:00:00)

[GuiltyLion]

I have some thoughts I want to eventually put down about implo/Shirou's posts but yeah Tejate's latest posts have me townreading him again and I like that morph is feeling that as well

busy rn but will play in a bit

[GuiltyLion]

also one last thing

it's an unfair take I know but even if I'll give scum points for GL if redtea flips town, I don't think I'll give that many town points if they flip scum...

it's like I said before, the confidence that redtea is scum seems a bit overdone to me...I would still suspect that GL may or not have thrown his most fragile teammate under the bus to gain town cred.

I will say in response to this

just cop me if I'm going to get this level of paranoia about me all game, where even BOP won't suffice apparently

please cop me, I'm directly asking for it

[Shirou]

also one last thing

it's an unfair take I know but even if I'll give scum points for GL if redtea flips town, I don't think I'll give that many town points if they flip scum...

it's like I said before, the confidence that redtea is scum seems a bit overdone to me...I would still suspect that GL may or not have thrown his most fragile teammate under the bus to gain town cred.

I will say in response to this

just cop me if I'm going to get this level of paranoia about me all game, where even BOP won't suffice apparently

please cop me, I'm directly asking for it

:thonking:

[Shirou]

I already said I agree with that stance yeah, I dunno what you guys want from me in regards to redtea though. I had him in the same pool as GL/Morph. Did I ever try anything on GL/Morph today?

They were always slots that I would compromise on but not really pursue from the start. If you guys want to eliminate redtea go ahead, wagon them and make me compromise when there's not enough votes for Tejate/Meg.

But you want me to switch from my preferred wagons to redtea right now? Not happening just like I wouldn't switch so easily from here to GL/Morph I think, unless something changes about my opinion on their slots.

/shrug

this game is kinda tiresome.

[Shirou]

me not trying to pressure redtea as tejate said in their last few posts is just

false

as well:

Redtea can you like do something useful by the way?

I know I said it was a +town thing for you in D1 but like...this is D2 already and your ISO is as empty as a blank sheet paper?

It doesn't even feel like you're trying to play the game if I'm allowed to perhaps be a bit mean.

I genuinely feel like it wouldn't be a terrible idea to vote you if this keeps being the case not because I'm confident you flip scum or anything, but because I would refuse to lose to that ISO if you're ever scum here (even if the probability was/is very low due to meta)?

I kinda feel like redtea may be intentionally doubling down on the "I'm not putting effort into reads here" thingy here after I said it was a ~towny~ thing for them, and I do think *that* could be argued as something scummy even when considering their meta. I expected them to do something, at some point, but it doesn't seem to be coming out.

redtea still didn't reply/react to that so I'm not sure saying anything more would be useful

[Tejate Raichu]

I feel as though you are a player who seems to feel that their calls are best when you're making them off of interactions between themselves and you. Correct? Is that your issue with finalizing your read on redtea?

[Shirou]

I feel as though you are a player who seems to feel that their calls are best when you're making them off of interactions between themselves and you. Correct? Is that your issue with finalizing your read on redtea?

huh? no actually I think I'm at my best when I just leave people alone and analyze how they decide to act on their own, without me pressuring them. However, I'm not always patient enough to play like that especially in early game, but also there's certain stuff like the whole thing I engaged you on in D1, where no matter how much I wait, you would never talk about that without me engaging you on that directly.

Basically I try to only engage people when I feel it's necessary or when I get too impatient/riled up. There's in fact a slot other than redtea right now that I'm secretly thinking about but not mentioning or pressuring.

[Tejate Raichu]

That's why I wanted to clarify. Out of curiosity, what do you think of redtea's posts today? I'm sure I don't need to explain my opinion on them.

[Shirou]

That's why I wanted to clarify. Out of curiosity, what do you think of redtea's posts today? I'm sure I don't need to explain my opinion on them.

I think I wish they didn't exist so the slot could be replaced for someone that would be readable...

about what I think of they alignment-wise...meh. still as disengaged and contentless as ever and no I don't think that's necessarily scummy, it can really be someone from either alignment drowning in apathy.

[implosion]

Spoiler: Response to parts of Tejate's wall

And yet you somewhat townread me when I was actually entertaining the idea of voting and pressuring fua there for almost the exact same reason? Maybe I didn't outright state it, sure, but fua's vote looked pretty terrible in my eyes and I was quick to express this. And as I stated before, there is something that really bothers me about this being called a vanity vote when it is not really possible to say at that particular point whether or not a fua wagon has potential. Hell, if a wagon had started at this point, I would have probably been on it. Why do you think it took me so long to come around to the idea of fua being locktown? This very play along with many other factors sowed more doubts about fua for me than anything GL could have said.

First off I haven't read you nearly as closely as GL; it's entirely possible I'd think that vote is bad on closer inspection. I was calling it a vanity vote specifically in comparison to a Ceph vote which would have been a third vote on a wagon.

As Amazonian once said to Ceph earlier in the game, is it like looking in a mirror? You make essentially the exact same gesture towards Shirou here, worded slightly differently. I don't really feel the need to say much more about this, it kinda speaks for itself.

I mean yeah I'm maybe being hypocritical. It happens. There's an old maxim that hypocrisy isn't scummy. To some degree my point was based on specific phrasing. Would I have scumread the phrasing that I used in describing my Shirou read? Idk, I'm not good at objectively evaluating my own posting like that.

Once again, is it like looking in a mirror? Not to mention that this sort of response to posts is not only not really AI, but extremely common. I also though that this post, while funny, was a pretty terrible post. There is no real rebuttal against GL's argument here, there's nothing much for him to really dive into. Why shouldn't he see this post as scummy exactly? GL even responds to the content related parts of the post, so I don't think you can even get him on that. It's not as if he's using fua's sarcasm an excuse.

This (and really most of this post) sounds like you're saying "I disagree with your reasoning, implosion" rather than "I find this scummy, implosion". And I'm not sure how you're getting from A to B.

But he explicitly stated multiple times, including during this argument, that fua's jump-in was more blatantly scummy than Ceph's barely audible push. Doesn't this align more closely with the idea of "voting the person he just called scum" than voting Ceph? I really, really want to like your arguments for this post because I think it's a novel idea. But if this is the best you can come up with for a case against GL you may as well have him be locktown.

You seem to be (so far) also quite focused on the ceph stuff which, like I've said, I want to de-emphasize relative to most of my other points both because I think GL rebutted it well enough and because I think the other points are more important/stronger anyway. So, sure, this point is weak. Again, not sure how this wall is an argument that I'm scum.

[implosion]

I want to point out that Tejate's eagerness to claim is also something that I feel like is drastically more typical of newbie town than of newbie scum. There are exceptions of course but as a rule, I feel like newbie town is more likely to earnestly feel like a claim will make a difference than newbie scum who would rather hold their cards to their chest.

It's honestly at the point where even if redtea is town, the reactions from implo and Shirou are outright bizzare. Shirou has listed them in their "options for who to vote today" list along with myself and Meg, yet has not so much as even hinted at voting or even pressuring the slot.

If anything, implosion has handled it

less

strangely than Shirou has, since implo seems to have some degree of intent to actually properly case redtea.

I smell blood in the water. I'm not that good at getting all of my thoughts out in large blocks, so hopefully this smaller post helps you guys understand better why exactly I want Shirou copped beyond him simply being the obvious wagon leader.

Do you vaguely think that me and/or Shirou are like, trying to keep the limbait around for later or something like that?

[implosion]

(in the event that redtea is town that is)

[Tejate Raichu]

Do you vaguely think that me and/or Shirou are like, trying to keep the limbait around for later or something like that?

I'm gonna be real with you, I feel like I've spent too much time this game defending myself. Poorly, at that. It's made it difficult to really sort out my thoughts, so if anything today has been a blessing for breaking me out of that.

My point is, I'm not exactly sure yet. Limbait doesn't call very strongly to me as the answer here in the case of scum!you or scum!Shirou. If limbait was your goal, then there is only one real reason to push imaginality over just letting redtea happen. As I'm sure you've noticed by this point, a town!redtea wagon would be extremely effortless to push to the forefront. The case where this works is when scum intend to actively push bad wagons until LiLo, then pushing redtea at LiLo. That's one possibility.

Another is that defending redtea is seen as going against the grain. As fua has pointed out to me many, many times for my "bad" read on redtea, yes they are low hanging fruit. Going against the grain just for the sake of going against the grain is not an unheard of behavior from scum, and while town certainly can go against the grain as well, I feel like the argument for town!redtea is just simply paper thin. I understand both of you are retracing your steps a little bit, but that doesn't erase the initial read, just like my recent posts don't necessarily erase every other action I've made this game. And as I've stated, I have a big problem with the initial read.

The other possibility I can think of is that it could be a sort of psuedo-pocket sort of thing. I'm certain there's a better word for this but I can't think of it off the top of my head so bear with me here. Not necessarily that you are pocketing redtea, I think that venue is... not to be mean, but not very valuable at all? But, by taking an initial stance against the majority and having mutually stated reasons for believing redtea to be town, you can strengthen your credibility somewhat if they do flip or get checked by a (real) cop. Townread blatantly scummy player ---> scummy player gets flipped later on, was town ---> "I knew they were town all along guys! My reads are sick!" This one strikes me as particularly unlikely, as I'm sure most of you have seen this sort of song and dance from scum before. But hey, it is technically a possibility.

Of course, all of these possibilities are with the premise of town!redtea. There are other possibilities, too.

[implosion]

So let's talk about why I'm actually increasingly feeling like redtea is town <_<

Point one is motivation, or well, rehashing what's been said so far. What's redtea's motivation for the way they're playing if they're town vs if they're scum. Well clearly they have low motivation/time either way. If a player is town and has low motivation/time to put into a thread, I could imagine this general player doing all sorts of different things. I could imagine them focusing on one or two slots, or generally finding a few people they trust and following them, or trying to play in the moment when they are available, or etc. If a player is scum and knows they have low motivation I still feel like they will feel the need to try to blend in; this is just the basic motivating factor for posting as scum, is that you need to blend in. Not a single one of redtea's posts looks like it's crafted to get people to townread them. I've mentioned the original reads wall in 1209 as something that I think is town-indicative for exactly the reasons GL called it scum-indicative (or parts of it just weird): that it's a disjointed mess. I have

definitely

had games as scum before where I'm lurking and kind of feel like shit about my play in the game and I know I have to post a reads wall, and when I do post that reads wall my mindset is something like "I need to make up for lost time". Like it's gotta look good, it's not good enough to just throw some stuff together, I need to show that I have some kind of narrative arc. This is exactly what 1209 does not do. Apart from fua it's got 3 reads in what is basically the tentative townreads category and all 3 of them are reads that they say they expect to maybe change after reading more. It's a post that gets on nobody's good side. It's a post that makes it look like they really have no clue what's going on. And I think that is because they are town, who does not have any clue what's going on, who felt like they needed to put reads out there and this is the most confident set of reads they could come up with. I think if redtea is scum, this list should look more solid, more like what a reads list is "supposed" to look like because if redtea is scum then the whole reason they made that post was to get towncred for it. I don't really buy that they're faking being apathetic town - I still think the sort of primal need to look town at that point in the game should cause redtea to put more sort of "hard effort" into that post to make it look like, as "presentable" as possible, if they are scum, whereas if they are town they probably don't have "I need this to look townish" as their primary motivation as they're writing that reads wall.

Further points (all of these are probably significantly weaker than the above, and I don't really expect anyone to be persuaded at all by them if they don't jive with what's written above at all):

1348 feels like something I personally would have a pretty time writing either as scum with Shirou as town, or as scum with Shirou as scum.

Their response to GL in 1512 feels like the mix of realizing they've been a problem and not really caring that I think is consistent more with redtea being town than scum; some of the responses I think in particular are somewhat town indicative:

I did.
Because I was trying to keep ontop of the game while simultaneously catching up, and wanted to comment that.

Furthermore, I think my thoughts WERE useful- maybe only to me, but they are. I'm making an extra effort this game to understand the personalities and styles of the players to reduce my biases. That way I can "cut away the fat" so to speak. Of course those things are influenced by alignment, but I'm trying to find the sweet spot of what is probably just how they are regardless of alignment. Or at least regardless of alignment as far as I know, because I'm barely keeping up with this game god forbid I get into meta reading.

The very specific description of how they're approaching the game is something I think they're less likely to come up with as apathetic scum (minorly though). The "useful, maybe only to me" bit is I think also the kind of detail I as low-effort scum would have a hard time coming up with.

I can't deny this. It's been a while since I played with a significant amount of wall-posters; with that kind of density i'm kind of in a weird loop of starting replies/not finalizing them because im not done reading/running out of time, trying to figure out something out of all that that I don't feel awkward putting out there, and then otherwise trying to make up for it by following along live-ish when I can. I realize I'm kind of a hot mess rn. Im still figuring it out.

Specifically the last two sentences, combined with the tone of the whole post (in particular the last response saying "I can categorize my tiers however I want, thanks"), feels kind of disjointed; I think a disjointed tone is, again, the kind of thing that scum would have a tricky time replicating in this situation. I think redtea-scum would approach responding to this GL post with a mindset of something like defensiveness, or counteragression, or deflection or something. But this feels more like genuine responses to individual points that are based on actually just not really being able to get into a good groove and being maybe a little annoyed but understanding that others are also annoyed.

1676 is interesting in conjunction with redtea's entrance today (as in RL today) in 2184; I just feel like scum-redtea has little reason not to just vote tejate by now given that they've already indicated suspicion and that people are yelling at them for never using their vote. Whereas again, town has less imperative to be survivalistic.

[fua]

VOTE: Implosion

Less words, more condension.

[implosion]

The condensed version has already been said, hence wanting to elaborate.

redtea is town because their approach to the game lacks any coherent scum motivation, whereas town struggling to keep up could reasonably play in this way.

[fua]

Scum motivation would be to be townread for their apathy.

[Tejate Raichu]

FYI, I'm gonna be out of commission for a couple days so I'll try to respond to implo's response to my text wall tonight.

[Cephrir]

what is the distinction between redtea's particular brand of apathy and 2020 Scumteam Apathy

at this point in site meta, "not trying = town" feels like a surface-of-the-sun take

[GuiltyLion]

GL, you seem to have an issue the ~confidence~ that implosion has about redtea being town, but conversely I kinda am still a bit puzzled about how ~confident~ you're about their slot being scum.

I'm saying confidence weirdly like that because I know both of you already said it's not exactly confidence, but the thing is implosion is almost always assuming redtea is town or at least not a very good vote right now (kinda?), and it feels you're mostly always assuming they're scum/a very good vote, since D1.

It feels like you're in fact both doing a similar thing, but each on a different side of the coin more or less? But I suppose since I agree with implosion points/logic/pov more than yours (and I town lean him), to me personally it means your posts bug me more than implo's.

on this

my general mindset is, at the start of the game, everyone is base 60-70% town a priori, and both scum and town are going to try to keep up appearances of looking town

therefore any time someone makes a post that I really have a hard time imagining making sense from a town POV, it's a point against them, especially as other players are posting things that I find generally likely to come from town

as D1 progresses, the more someone posts things that look town to me, the less likely I am to want to vote them that day. There's always going to be a capable scum who fools me early game, that much I just take as a given, my hope is to find them later when I have a ton of associatives, vote counts, and flipped alignments to work with. Instead my goal is to find the scum that aren't trying or are completely failing to keep up with the majority of town players. The more someone chronically lurks, doesn't post, doesn't give me town vibes, the more I want to lim them, especially early game as we have mislims to spare and I think the general odds of this being a town-player-failing-to-look-town shrink.

end of the day, I usually have at least a few reasons to townread almost everybody - posts I liked or felt were useful, thought processes that seemed genuine, votes I thought demonstrated intent to find scum or sort players. Every now and then I have pings or scum tells that fire hard on my scumdar and push me towards tunneling somebody, but that hasn't really happened this game.

Instead I have a ton of players I townread to varying degrees, and then a pool of low content low engagement slots that don't give me any reason to townread them. Of those nulls, redtea has given me the

least

reason to townread them.

pt 2 coming in a sec, did Ceph a favor by trying to Break Up The Wall

[redtea]

How could you possibly be that confident that fua would be an impossible wagon? The argument you're referencing started on page 12.

is this irt implosion's comments on GL's 439 & 441 made in #1884

[GuiltyLion]

pt 2

I don't like spending early game hounding the prolifically hard to read players or the players who are Doing The Most. In my book it's very likely you will find bogus/false reasons to scumread these players if you try to suspect them hard enough, cause they're the ones putting the most noise/content into the thread to interact with. I find it's a much better process to sort these players when you have the fullest arsenal of information at your disposal late game, that is when you have the best chance to read them correctly.

Someone like redtea isn't inspiring any confidence that I'll have more/better information with which to read them later, compared to someone like a morph or an implosion. It's best to lim the low content slots and bite the bullet early even if they're town limbait. And I find these types of "barely playing, not trying to appear town in any capacity" players are still >rand scum most of the time! because just as much as y'all act like town has no reason to play that way, scum has no reason to play that way either! This:

Not a single one of redtea's posts looks like it's crafted to get people to townread them

is

never

a good reason to townread someone if it's by itself. Combined with other points, sure. But assuming that every scum player is going to try to get townread and going to play the way that

you

think scum should be played is a complete fool's errand, and gong to wreck you every time you meet the meme/apathetic scum players who just don't give a damn about tryharding (often as either alignment, but especially as scum)

That's why I can't grok the strength in implosion's redtea townread relative to the strength in his scumread on me. I can sorta vibe with like, thinking they

might

be town, and suspecting me for pushing LHF. Maybe? I don't think I especially pushed low hanging fruit in my last scum game with implosion. But sure, lots of scum like pushing LHF.

But what I really

can't

vibe with is why he doesn't seem concerned at all that he maybe just can't read me that well, and that maybe the odds of him finding false alarms or erroneous signals in my some ~160 posts are quite high, compared to the much lower odds that redtea's ~50 posts are enough for him to confidently feel scum never produces that ISO.

[Tejate Raichu]

How could you possibly be that confident that fua would be an impossible wagon? The argument you're referencing started on page 12.

is this irt implosion's comments on GL's 439 & 441 made in #1884

Paraphrased, but yes.

[redtea]

yeah implosion's kinda falling behind in the current meta of 'project town vibes onto apathy d1' -> 'project null-scum vibes onto apathy d2' -> 'quick lim d3' timeline