Cynicism

But this brings us to the question of reasonable cynicism versus general cynicism. It's appalling to actually tend to think the worst of everything, but I think there are several fields in which opinions tagged as "cynical" are actually quite accurate and justifiable.

Unquestionably, from where I sit.

But it's a mess, and the definition of "cynicism" is incredibly fuzzy in current use.

I am thawed out now.

they make me have faith in humankind's capacity for verbal altercation.

silver shit, must remember that and tell mama

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

George Bernard Shaw

lol @ u

this some seriously freshman bullshit, doc

Cynical? Or just being honest?

What -ism is the power to copy/paste the thoughts of others?

i hate george bernard shaw

he hate u 2

lol no doubt

if dead Fabian socialist playwrights can hate... HMMMMMMMMMM

Cynical? Or just being honest?

― caek, 16 December 2008 22:34 (Yesterday

i lolled

GBS was just fucking with y'all heads, pulling out that cooler-than-thou shit. It was all just an act to advance his career. Same thing with the beard. Fake as hell!

cynicism dud, skepticism classic

there's a difference between being savvy and asking questions and being a miserable pessimist

I am a skeptic. It's self-deluding liberals who would be true cynics if they had the brains for it.

god shut the fuck up there arent enough suggest bans in the world for you

if they had the brains for it

roffles

tom can i regift every sb ive ever given tuomas, gabbneb, and shakey mo to morbz

"sb" is the new Tourettes meme

bump for james mitchell

rip gabbneb and and what, dr. morbius' long-lost lovers

cynical? or just being honest?

cynicism has nothing to do with honesty

is cynicism just the inverse of faith? faith is assuming that something good will happen, cynicism is assuming something bad will happen. they're equally reliable.

it's such a lonely word. xp

i was quoting a lol, tbh.

but i think cynicism is more of a willingness to test for faults rather than assuming the worst.

cynicism and faith are both ultimately psychological protection methods

but i think cynicism is more of a willingness to test for faults rather than assuming the worst.

― Amateur Darraghmatics (darraghmac), Thursday, September 10, 2009 11:06 AM (38 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

however, the implication of cynicism is a negative attitude, at least in my mind. if you're actually testing for faults, it seems like sometimes you'd discover those faults don't exist.

maybe, and i'm not being funny here, you're being cynical about cynicism?

as in you're attributing more negativity to it than necessarily exists?

Not being cynical for a while is an experiment I recommend to all cynical people. Girl i'm seeing at the moment doesn't like it so I'm being less dismissive of shit and more open to different things or whatever. At best you enjoy more stuff, at worst you improve on your stoicism, which imo is a more noble trait than cynicism.

yeah stoicism is like grown up cynicism

I say this every time a thread about cynicism pops up but imo the truly cynical are those fuckers who never drop their smile (in public).

yeah, i'll watch women's football. Then maybe I'll watch some women's tennis. Thrilling times ahead.

― amarillo fat (jim), Thursday, 10 September 2009 17:06 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

XD

i'm only being less cynical when she's around and she's no here now!

she's all down the pub, watching Our Girls (Germany obv) and weeping into a hankie

In an effort to be less cynical, I try never to ascribe bad motives to any action that can adequately be explained by stupidity. I find this sweetens my outlook on the world considerably.

:-\

i have been a lot more cynical since i stopped seeing that girl. i am the king of cynicism now. ironic distance is my co-pilot and we're driving somewhere that we know is lame, but it's just for something to do, or whatever.

Perhaps the true key to living with cynicism is not allowing it to dissuade you from any action you know is right. Use it only to regulate your expectations of the outcome.

I've really been debating posting a long-running (in my head, anyway) rant about cynicism and the internet, but I'm not sure that a whole new thread would attract much attention. I know it isn't anything new, but I continue to be well, frankly, shocked at the rampant cynicism throughout the internet and it kind of bums me out sometimes. I mean, it doesn't seem like a single thing can be posted on the internet without cries of "fake!" or "Photoshopped!" from every other commenter. Two specific recent examples that struck me were 1) the dude from Paramore who posted a long thing on his personal blog about leaving the band and label pressures: the comments section was rife with commenters who were taking "Hayley's side" on the band's division, but were insistent that, since they didn't like what was said, that it had to be "fake" and 2) the YouTube video of the Metrodome roof collapse: at one point the comments section (my own damn fault for reading these) was full of "obviously faked" comments with people pretending to be knowledgable about how "snow would really fall in the event of a roof collapse".

I realize fake stuff has long been a staple of the internet, from message board trolls posing as other people to fake celeb nude photos to fake Coldplay leaks to Fark's Photoshop Fridays - but have we sunk so low that nothing can be real? Everything has to be "fake"? A healthly level of doubt and cynicism is encouraged, otherwise we'd fall for any old thing, but is it possible to still take some things at face value? It is truly disheartening sometimes, imho.

Fake Tuomas to thread.

In an effort to be less cynical, I try never to ascribe bad motives to any action that can adequately be explained by stupidity. I find this sweetens my outlook on the world considerably. ― Aimless

Tbom material. Paranoid suspicion is not a good look even if you turn out to be right. And stupidity is so much more likely, as an explanation, than some kind of widespread machination directed against you.

Long post above: Couldn't agree more. Around here it's "Troll!" and "Challops!" (sometimes--don't want to tar everybody with the same brush). Cynicism is a part of life when you're a teenager, and into your 20s and maybe even 30s. At a certain point, it just becomes tiresome. Which is not to say that you start accepting everything at face value. Of course you continue to question things. But you do, hopefully, get rid of the "I see right through this, and it's so beneath contempt that I won't even deign to explain myself" tone.

The real problem is that on internet sites the commentary section is often ten to a hundred times longer than the actual article. Comments become unreadable after the first ten or twenty.

I think you are being generous with your "ten to twenty" figure.

I realize fake stuff has long been a staple of the internet, from message board trolls posing as other people to fake celeb nude photos to fake Coldplay leaks to Fark's Photoshop Fridays - but have we sunk so low that nothing can be real? Everything has to be "fake"? A healthly level of doubt and cynicism is encouraged, otherwise we'd fall for any old thing, but is it possible to still take some things at face value? It is truly disheartening sometimes, imho.

i feel that we (i mean the american we, but it doubtless applies outside that) have become cynical about ideas such as truth, fact and objectivity. we don't really believe in such things anymore, but we still want to appeal to these concepts in order to reassure ourselves that our beliefs are more valid than anyone else's. as a result of this discontinuity, many people have come to believe that truth is a product of feeling, that our emotional responses to things are a reliable arbiter of what is factually real. imo, it's not that nothing is real, but that realness itself is no longer real.

ilx seems very cynical right now.

Probably because everyone got old.

what would a non-cynical ilx feel like to you?

strangely reminiscent of 2004 i can imagine

ah well, i wouldn't worry then - right now will feel good in 2026

Soon ILE will be a sprawling virtual sink estate, populated only by the lowest dregs of society.

a great man once said these words.

So D:ream were wrong all along then?

ilx seems very cynical right now.

Names or get tae France.

from Latin cynicus, from Greek kunikos ; probably originally from Kunosarges, the name of a gymnasium where Antisthenes taught, but popularly taken to mean ‘doglike, churlish’, kuōn, kun-, ‘dog’ becoming a nickname for a Cynic.

oh...!

Ha, excellent!

Having a clear idea of what is complete garbage is not cynicism

tbh it's the Positivism that grinds me down

ilx seems very cynical right now.

― hongro strulkington (dog latin), Friday, 12 June 2015 10:34 (3 hours ago) Permalink

The next generation are so full of hope and clueless we must crush their spirits.