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[Something_Smart]

And, I'm not really looking to start a dialogue with Nero. (I mean if he wants to I won't refuse, but it seems unrealistic.) I mostly just want to bring to the attention of others that the reasons Nero has for scumreading me are mostly nothing.

[Something_Smart]

do you actually think nero is scum or is this more of jsut a general protest ?

I think his scum equity has gone up from his attempt to limit the wagons to me/Mena. I was also in kind of a bad mood from something unrelated. Call it six of one, half a dozen of the other.

[Something_Smart]

can you do me a favor?

I can do my best, what's up?

[Something_Smart]

It's scum looking for that long shot chance

How does that make any sense? Why wouldn't I just push for Mena if I wanted someone to die who isn't me?

[Something_Smart]

I also don't want to cause this to get lost in the thread, because S_S flaked immediately after:

Can't think of any reason why I might have stopped posting at 2:40 am

[Something_Smart]

I want you to theory craft a brand new way you might be able to find scum reads that you haven't tried before and then do it.

This feels like kind of a bizarre request-- you're basically asking me to invent a tell, apply it without any evidence, and expect it to be at all good. I can give it a try... but I can't see the result not being garbage.

[Something_Smart]

SS can you explain why Nero is scum to you cos I really don't see it

He's trying to chain lim me and Mena and prevent people from reevaluating. Of course town-Nero can do that, but it feels pro-scum.

[Something_Smart]

I want you to theory craft a brand new way you might be able to find scum reads that you haven't tried before and then do it.

This feels like kind of a bizarre request-- you're basically asking me to invent a tell, apply it without any evidence, and expect it to be at all good. I can give it a try... but I can't see the result not being garbage.

All, right here goes:

I have enabled seconds on my control panel. I think I've done this maybe once before, and I don't think it was for this purpose, so I can reasonably confidently say that I have never tried this before.

When interacting in real-time, one would expect town to have a somewhat consistent time that it takes them to respond to a post (assuming they saw it, of course). Whereas, scum might take longer to write posts, either because they are choosing the angle they want to take more carefully, or checking the scum PT, or whatever.

So, I'll look at some people's ISOs and find cases where they posted soon after someone else's post, in response to that post, and try to aggregate how much time was between the posts in each case. Higher average time = more scum, and higher variance = more scum.

(This might take a while, and if so, I won't do it for everyone's entire ISO.)

[Something_Smart]

Forgot to mention a caveat about post length. I guess initially I'll try to do it only on short posts (1-2 sentences). I could try, like, dividing the time by the word count, but that will

definitely

take a while.

And I don't expect this tell to work anyway

[Something_Smart]

this is taking forever lol. I'm only going to do the first 100 posts in everyone's ISO; it still produces a reasonable amount of data.

[Something_Smart]

I mean, it does not take a genius to figure out that's what you were doing. I don't think Shea thought it was malicious.

[Something_Smart]

I mean, if one of me/Mena flips town, are you not going to push the other tomorrow?

[Something_Smart]

I did suggest that limming you/mena is better than hero limming redfire and correctly identified that you and mena are the lead wagons but the stuff about me preventing anything else from happening is hogwash

I mean, you actively discouraged Shea when he brought up the possibility. You framed it as just being descriptive of how other people seemed to feel, but it seemed like you didn't want him to even try forming a new wagon, possibly just because you thought the effort would go to waste.

I appreciate the clarification, though.

[Something_Smart]

I may or may not. Depends on how I feel about the rest of his posting/lack of. I don't think I've ever suggested that I'm going to vote one of you today and the other tomorrow. Where is this coming from?

Well, your argument is that everyone wants to kill me/Mena today. It would stand to reason that, if this were the case and one of us flipped town, everyone would be pretty inclined to vote the other. I realize this may not have been your intention or your idea, but if you're scum and me/Mena are both town, it seems like a mighty nice turn of events for you. That's all I'm getting at.

[Something_Smart]

Man this is dumb. I don't want to finish it but if Shea is really thrilled enough that I actually went through with his idea, I'll do it.
Ausuka 54, 39, 55, 35, 124, 238, 120, 49, 58, 76, 59
Nero Cain 51, 66, 29, 24, 84, 123, 28, 37, 94, 137, 401, 428, 259
Dannflor 43, 50, 98, 83, 99, 99, 103
fireisredsir 91, 33, 116, 40, 50, 23, 71, 28, 203
GuiltyLion 91, 101, 90, 124, 96, 143, 240, 72
Off of this method (and I specifically stated my methods ahead of time to avoid bias), Dann and GL look good for having very consistent response times, Ausuka looks kinda good for having mostly low response times, and Nero and fire look bad-ish for having pretty inconsistent times. (Nero's last three might not be fair, but they did seem to be part of an extended back-and-forth and for whatever reason he took 5 minutes to respond three times in a row.)

[Something_Smart]

I wanted you to think of something that you think might actually find scum. I don't think you believe this will.

What do you mean by "find scum"? This method is probably more reliable than chance, if there was anything I thought was

significantly

more reliable I would have used it already, and you restricted me to using theory instead of evidence. So the terms were pretty limiting in what I could actually do.

[Something_Smart]

I also asked for a game where you replaced in as scum that didnt go well for you.

This probably counts.

[Something_Smart]

amazing

s_s voting nero is... interesting, i guess. the "if i wanted to live, why wouldn't i just be pushing menalque" *feels* like it's supposed to be wifom on mena's alignment after s_s flips red. not 100% on that but it feels like a scummy post in my bones. idk if i can explain it but i guess.

i guess i'd like s_s to tell me how sure he really is that nero is scum, and how he thinks scum-nero navigated his two flipped buddies, bc like... i currently think nero looks the best out of all associates-wise.

(this is a reminder not to forget about this once you are done analyzing timestamps)

so you do understand that this was a throwaway vote made because of one thing that rubbed me the wrong way + I wanted to draw attention to his weak-ish arguments + it was the middle of the night + I was in an irritable mood from something else + L + ratio. This was not by any means an elaborate or well-constructed case, it's not a hill I want to die on, but it's the hill I'm on right now.

When doing my funny response time ISO nonsense, I did see some interactions between Nero and flipped scum. I could go back and look at those; were there any particular ones you had in mind as anti-partnery? I do recall from being scum with Nero (a long time ago) that he was pretty good at setting up interactions with his partners that were hard to catch. That was a large game, and he solo endgamed, so people had plenty of opportunity to look through his interactions.

[Something_Smart]

That's...not what I meant by theory crafting. I just meant like...think of something you think is likely to come from scum.

Yeah, I mean I guess it really wasn't much of a restriction anyway. Because if something is based on evidence from past games, then odds are it was something I'd already tried to use as a tell.

Do you legitimately just think that scum are not generally findable then? Have you expressed that opinion before?

I take issue with the term "findable", but I think the answer to what you probably mean is yes. I'm not motivated enough to take notes, I have a short attention span and don't tend to read very carefully, I'm very bad at intuiting tone and motive (both online and offline), and I tend to be overly trusting. I am very bad at identifying scum directly. I would say I'm decent at identifying town, but I'm much better at townreading certain types of people, and there aren't many of those in this game.

Before you ask why the hell I'm playing mafia, I think that most games are solvable, eventually, through teamwork in the town, with a little (or a lot of) help from mechanics. And I try to play in a way that is conducive to helping others solve, by starting discussions, questioning assumptions, and trying to shut down unproductive lines of thought.

I have certainly expressed the opinion that I am very bad at finding scum directly before.

[Something_Smart]

I see we used the same method of quoting the locked thread.

The real reason I become a mod was so I could quote from locked threads without having to hit the PM button

[Something_Smart]

- no. my perception of you is that, when you do vote (and it's not like, 3 seconds to deadline), it is a BIG DEAL. if i am wrong on that, then lol, but that is how i see your votes when basically every game we play you make sure that everyone knows that yes, you do not vote needlessly, fuck your vca. (that's not a dig i hate vca too fuck vca)

I have two kinds of votes-- this kind, and the "I'm fed up with you" kind. The latter tends to come out more when I'm under pressure.

[Something_Smart]

then i think i am still valid in asking you to say how nero's interactions w flipped scum actually make sense as s/s?

Sure, I can go and look. But my point was just, this wasn't something I considered when making the original vote.

[Something_Smart]

howeeeever. i also think that this defense (it was just an annoyed vote) has the capacity to be wolfy too because it's a lot easier to defend a vote emotionally than it is logically and i think that a wolf!s_s probably is smart enough to know he wouldn't have great logic to defend the vote on its own

Sure, I actually agree with all of this. But, I think that if you look at the context, it was really obviously not a logical vote, and I don't think there's ever a world where town-me makes that vote and then, when questioned, goes "ackshually" and pulls out a dissertation on why Nero is the Impostor and should be Ejected.

[Something_Smart]

I also could have just not voted there as scum, if I didn't think I could back it up.

[Something_Smart]

I think Mena being absent is a pretty sizable red flag.

[Something_Smart]

Did you really back it up though?

If I didn't, that just proves my point more. But I mean, an emotional vote is extremely easy to back up, and a logical vote is much harder. It's not like I would make a vote as scum and then go "oops, now I need an explanation for it". I would already have the explanation in mind when making the vote.

[Something_Smart]

and frankly looking backing the vote feels unnatural to me but i admit i don't know how to read you tonally so it could just be me thinking something feels awkward when to you it's like "god im so annoyed" because you project your feelings a lot more subtly than most people imo

It is awkward. It is rare that I get pushed to the point of doing this. I can try to look for examples of doing it as town, if you think that would help.

[Something_Smart]

meh skitter/obscure/mena is getting another replacement isn't it

Maybe we'll get someone whose name starts with E and then the initials of each revolving-door replacement will start to spell out the lyrics to All Star.

[Something_Smart]

Would be funny if mena was team scum and SS was a traitor and SS is trying to goad me into voting him instead of mena

If I were a traitor and Mena were main faction I would absolutely be bussing him

[Something_Smart]

although on the other hand I'm not sure if it would really be a pro-scum move if Mena is wolf? and like at some point wouldn't town!S_S see his flip as at least useful for the gamestate, or does he think being eliminated won't give people more info to find the actual mafia

was any of this something you want me to answer/clarify?

[Something_Smart]

I find that unlikely

I am quite good at leaving confusing interactions after I flip as scum. If I were a traitor, I wouldn't have to worry about my buddies' interactions toward me, and in this spot I would never be looking to endgame, so I would definitely be trying to die and set my partners up in as good a spot as possible. And I'm so uncharismatic that I could appear to put a lot of effort into a Mena push and it wouldn't actually move the needle for anyone.

[Something_Smart]

It's kinda still not clear to me if you actually think Nero is scum or if your vote was a protest vote on town you feel is playing badly. and if Nero and Mena are town in your mind, do you think scum are more likely to be splitting wagons or pushing for one particular wagon over the other?

I think Nero's recent play is +scum, people seem to townread him though so I'm not actually sure where he falls on an absolute scale.

I don't think Mena is necessarily town; in fact, now that I'm thinking about it, I'm not sure scum-Nero so vehemently pushes to kill me when the alternative is his partner who's being a limp noodle, as that looks pretty bad for him after Mena flips. But, I am more worried about having good reads if Mena is town, because if he's scum then town will continue to have some direction if I get mislimmed (whereas, back-to-back S_S/Mena mislims seems like it would put town in a pretty nasty spot, momentum-wise).

If we're both town, wagon splitting seems likely, but probably scum are more likely to fall in those discouraging looking outside of us, rather than having a specific distribution between the two wagons. I'm sure GL is right that other people were looking to take us out back-to-back, though I can't remember off the top of my head who they are.

[Something_Smart]

why?

Antispew/efforting as scum has more of a downside than efforting as town if he thinks his slot is a lost cause. Probably also more likely to see it as a lost cause as scum.

[Something_Smart]

at some point wouldn't town!S_S see his flip as at least useful for the gamestate, or does he think being eliminated won't give people more info to find the actual mafia

if "his flip" refers to my flip, then yeah, I don't expect my flip to provide much information. It rarely does. If Mena's town, I also don't think his flip would really provide much.

[Something_Smart]

SS I'm confused, when you say Nero is good at creating distancing, how does that apply to the really anti-associative argument between Gamma and Nero where Gamma got pissed and replaced out that Dats was talking about?

Not sure if it does. I will go back and reread that. I do know Gamma can get OOG pissed and could plausibly replace out due to a partner distancing in an unpleasant way.

[Something_Smart]

so, do you think that him being absent here is scum!indicative for him? especially when compared to his play in invictus?

it's possibly scum-indicative. iirc he was pretty busy during invictus (and later on we were conftown and unmotivated), and he hasn't said anything about being busy here.

[Something_Smart]

hmmm sometimes I feel we just think about this game so differently S_S haha

knowing for a mod-confirmed fact both you and Mena's alignments would help everyone revisit the game and get closer to a correct solve if need be imo. even just knowing Mena is

for sure

a wolf would be a lot of new info

I mean, I guess it would help people be less stuck on LHF. But I feel like it's not

that

hard to recognize that you're stuck on LHF, people are just usually loath to do it. I agree that a Mena scumflip would be helpful. I do think that, even if I were scum, my flip actually wouldn't be that helpful, because my team would have no doubt been planning out how to position around my wagon for a while (and like I said, I'm very good at not leaving reliable clues in my ISO).

[Something_Smart]

fwiw I don't think wanting to chain SS and mena is like that scummy given we're in a good position and both slots are consensus wolfy

well it's scummier fmpov because I know I'm town

[Something_Smart]

It's pretty common. I may actually be more likely to have scumreads for WIFOM purposes as scum.

[Something_Smart]

hmm.

I went back and looked at the Gamma replace. It feels kinda angleshooty to talk too much about it. If Gamma really replaced out because Nero scumread him, that's... not very good form. I hope there was more than just that, at least? But if that really was the entire reason, then yeah I guess it would make Nero town.

[Something_Smart]

Sorry if I'm angleshooty? I definitely understand the angle that it *shouldn't* be part of the game, and I agree, but it seems even worse to pretend it doesn't have implications when it very much does? Idk.

nah don't be sorry, I didn't really get into the questionable stuff. but if I thought about it too long, I probably would.

[Something_Smart]

I feel like making a player VC is highly correlated with wishing very badly there were an updated VC, which is a pretty normal thing for both alignments to want. If anything, I would expect town to do that more because they might be actually trying to evaluate the wagons and what they mean.

Also, this is just me, but I have a hard time imagining anyone going "I'm going to make a VC, and everyone will be grateful and townread me for being so helpful!"

[Something_Smart]

I tend to dislike the "scum try to seem helpful without contributing" arguments because, like, the fact that you're making that argument means that they're apparently not doing a very good job of concealing the lack of contribution. And because I don't think people tend to townread being helpful? At least, I don't.

[Something_Smart]

Meh, I guess I'm coming around. Nero has also felt more reasonable today so I'm not really salty anymore anyway.

UNVOTE:

[Something_Smart]

This has a chance of making the game very interesting.

VOTE: fireisred

[Something_Smart]

Why?

Nero predicted that the masses would not want to support a wagon on fire (or anyone else other than me/Mena). If that ends up being wrong, then we get to see who ends up leaving which wagon, what the lead wagons end up being, and what kind of stances the three of us take on each other. If two wagons are better than one, I'd say three wagons are generally better than two.

[Something_Smart]

interesting that both todays wagons have now parked on my vanity wagon while refusing to actually talk about each other (or be here) that much.

Not sure what it means but honestly I think it DOES point to maybe S-S

I agree that this often points to S-S. I think it also mildly points to T-T, but I'll have to see what Mena does when he's here. I feel like at least it's reasonable for me to not have much to say about that slot, because he hasn't done much.

[Something_Smart]

on one hand, i am liking what s_s is doing. on the other, i know that earlier today, while i was taking a walk, i was thinking how scum!s_s doesn't necessarily make *sense* because scum!s_s would have an idea on what he has to do to get townread, and he was obviously not doing that (e.g. being unhelpful when you asked him for a new solving strategy or wtv), and that didn't quite make sense. however, now that he's gone into doing traditionally townier stuff...

I think the missing link in this reasoning is-- I'm town and under pressure. Of course I'm going to try to transition to things that are more likely to get me townread! I'm still taking things on my terms, but I'm trying to meet people in the middle.

And, if I were scum, I would have long since gone into antispew/WIFOM mode. Not that what I'm doing now couldn't be that, but I wouldn't necessarily be trying harder to live because I would have already given up on living in the long term.

[Something_Smart]

There were two people in that slot before him.

You don't remember me saying that I was excited to have someone in that slot I could actually read?

I did a whole analysis of why I can't read obscure, and scum-skitter simply cannot be detected in the amount of time she spent here.

[Something_Smart]

I guess my thought is just...you don't usually do this as town, do you? I seem to remember you being pretty resistant to changing how you're playing in order to get townread before. In fact, I remember you say this game that it leads to you getting miselimmed.

I get more and more desperate the more pressure I'm under. It can get me mislimmed, but if I'm already getting mislimmed, I've got nothing to lose.

[Something_Smart]

Not a good joke to be making.

[Something_Smart]

I mean I don't disagree that FB claiming scum has traitor equity but also I think SS is just scummy anyway so shrug

Fwiw, FB jokeclaims scum so frequently that it would be a terrible traitor crumb.

[Something_Smart]

That is kinda funny that the most plausible traitor crumb in all that is toward Frogster

[Something_Smart]

I feel like Something_Smart as town would actually be more survivalist here? Voting Nero seems to me like an attempt at looking town.

I mean, pure survivalism doesn't help me unless I can also look town, like I said I'm very afraid of chaining town-S_S and town-Mena in either order. Voting Mena would be a blunder, because it would hasten that, and even if he flipped scum it wouldn't make me look better. (It would, in fact, make me look worse.)

[Something_Smart]

VOTE: S_S

Flip here first imo i could see enalque or dease being tpr actually

Mena claimed VT

[Something_Smart]

well at least I am posting.

[Something_Smart]

I'm about ready to switch to Mena, I think.

[Something_Smart]

idk I feel like nothing has happened in the past day because everyone's just waiting for him.

[Something_Smart]

What, so I have to find someone scummy to vote them now?

[Something_Smart]

i really didn't like the way SS handled the invictus comparison bc i think this feels a lot like invictus mena where he was super disengaged and only popped in every once in a while and just seemed kinda... unaware of what was going on and was putting very little stake in the game. saying that his lack of presence here was possibly scum-indicative felt really wrong to me

I mean he was very vocal to me that he was super busy and had stuff going on irl. When I made that comparison he hadn't said anything about that this game. He did later say something about being sick, but then he said he felt better and he still hasn't done anything.

[Something_Smart]

How would a justification ever change your mind there?

[Something_Smart]

I mean you've had 261 chances to do that. I don't think the 262nd one is gonna be the one that does it.

[Something_Smart]

I mean, I'm not unwilling to have a convo, but I feel like my thoughts on Mena have been pretty clear. I had real trouble reading his predecessor, I liked his response to the reaction test, but I don't like that he hasn't done anything. I'm wary of the two of us being chain limmed, but I don't really have an interest in shielding him if he's not going to do anything (which could very well be antispew).

[Something_Smart]

fun

[Something_Smart]

idgi, wouldn't it be better to play around the possibility that the game's not as easy as you hope it is?

[Something_Smart]

I mean yeah and that's what I think we're doing now by waiting for Mena?

sure. but my point is just, "maybe it's just S_S/mena" is a pretty unproductive line of thought, even if fypov it has a decent chance to be right.

[Something_Smart]

I have just been staring at the thread in consternation. I feel like I ought to do something but I don't know what. I guess people just aren't appreciating the myriad of ways in which I could have attempted to dissuade the wagon on me?

[Something_Smart]

wait did I miss something on why we switched from Mena to S_S

I'm fine with either I just don't understand the momentum shift on the last page

hmm THIS feels like the scum post I was looking for.

but it's from GL which means it's probably town

[Something_Smart]

oh are we posting songs? here's a topical one

[Something_Smart]

any last words Smart?

what kind of a post is this btw

if people didn't listen to me while I was alive why the hell would they listen after I'm dead

[Something_Smart]

I don't really want to do it either!

[Something_Smart]

Legitimately exasperated by this dude. Listen to you on what? That you were town? Why do you expect people to just listen to that when you're completely unwilling to do anything that remotely helps the town solve the game. If you're town this was a ridiculous performance from you and genuinely upsetting that you seem to think you've done nothing wrong?

I mean like

I guess I don't have a serious rebuttal to the claim that some people are just too bad at mafia to be allowed to play

but it's still kinda rude to tell that to someone to their face, even if I don't necessarily disagree.

[Something_Smart]

there are going to be people who don't play the same way as you, they are still capable of rolling green. it's still on you if you believe in a read just because you want it to be right.

[Something_Smart]

The irony is that i was the one who spent the whole day saying i thought you were green and no one was willing to listen to me because you gave them nothing

I mean, yes, I appreciate it. But I did try, and I gave near the maximum to what I could give. So if it wasn't enough, it wasn't because I didn't care, it's because I'm not good enough at the game.

[Something_Smart]

s_s if ur town ur not playing bad or w/e it just mean game is in fact not that easy unfortunately but you have to recognize that like you flipping does mean your opinions retroactively become more valuable because we know for sure we can trust them vs now so like

if u wanna bullet point the most important ideas on ur mind it'd be nice

if not though i get it Too

I mean

I think the ending of this day has two very different interpretations depending on Mena's alignment, but I feel like they all lead to the last-minute push on me being mostly town-minded? which I guess makes sense, because it was supported by scamper and you (who, I can only assume, are going to become conftown before too long).

Problem is, I can't draw any conclusions from it.

[Something_Smart]

idk, once I flip, everyone else will have the same info I had. so they should just use it and come up with a better conclusion than I could.

[Something_Smart]

yes I mean at this point Mena probably should die just like

don't blame me if he flips town and then everyone is fractured and demotivated.