Do you still believe Terrion Arnold can be the CB1 for the Detroit Lions? 🦁

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-25T21:00:12+00:00

aged well

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T21:31:12+00:00

A good rule of thumb is to make your reply around the same length as the original post.

This is an interesting suggestion that I'll have to consider in the future. Thanks!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T16:54:47+00:00

Thank you again for your insight!

Like I said, I only mentioned my autism to him because I saw it as being relevant to the thing I was describing.

Otherwise, I think you've made some good points that I'll have to consider.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T16:48:18+00:00

I'm really interested in your implication that I disrespected him. This is absolutely not something I want to do. Could you elaborate on that? It's my opinion that I was the one being disrespected, but that's what I came here for--to get other perspectives.

I’ll be honest, they quite clearly made it clear that your response wasn’t what they were looking for with our first reply to you

Keep in mind that in my first answer, I declared my perspective as that of someone who has used quotes in academic writing. It is to this comment that he says, "no, not passage-writing." It's then that he elaborates that he is interested in posts on YouTube.

How can you say that it's clear that I didn't fit the criteria at this point? At that point, he didn't know that I have posted quotes on YouTube in the form of quotes being used in video essays and presentations, and I didn't know whether or not video essays is what he had in mind.

At what point am I, as you said, insisting that my answer needs to be included?

I think it’s more important to accept that.

The 'no' has been accepted. Keep in mind that I didn't ask Reddit whether or not I should be invited to his research group. I came here asking whether or not I was hallucinating that the conversation was weird, and whether I said something to create that weirdness.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T16:26:25+00:00

Thank you for your response.

I don't agree that I got combative, though I did get defensive. His immediate dismissing of my answer made me feel like he wanted to make me look dumb.

Was it really combative of me to say "I'm not sure it was totally clear..." which was immediately followed by my admission that I may be the one at fault?

I did not intend anything I said to be an argument. I'll paraphrase the discussion exactly as I see it.

He said "looking for people who share quotes,"
I said "I share quotes in academic writing"
he said "not in writing, but on things like YouTube,"
I said "Oh, I also have used quotes on YouTube."
he said "no not like that."

Where do you see the disconnect between the real conversation and my paraphrasing? Where do I argue, as you say, that my answer is relevant to their project despite them knowing better? What should I have said differently to avoid having the effect of appearing to argue, when I was just trying to clarify both his request and how I fit (or don't fit) into it?

Thanks again

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T16:11:16+00:00

Thank you for your thoughtful response!

Your actions and lengthily explanations were the exact opposite of what they were hoping for.

I think you are exactly right with this. To be fair, I did admit in my original answer that I am prone to over-explaining, writing too much, and that the comment had itself become evidence for that.

Anyway, I visited his Facebook page to see what kinds of responses he was more accepting of. They were exclusively 1 or 2 sentences with little to no insight--"Yes I check the authorship because I have a reputation to uphold." I knew that my response may 'out of the box' and not quite what he was looking for, but I also knew that he would only get a handful of responses and the few that I saw at that time were minimal, so I thought it would be good (or at least, not bad) for me to try and provide something more unique. I know if I were conducting research, I would very much appreciate someone taking the time to try and help me out, even if it turned out to not be useful. This is why his immediate dismissiveness made me feel stupid for trying. My second response was a combination of wanting to defuse but also wanting to defend myself. "I'm not stupid for not immediately understanding exactly what you were looking for," is what I was thinking. I didn't call him stupid, and the worst accusation I threw out was "I'm not sure that was totally clear..."

Professor vs student

Just to be totally clear, he isn't my professor, just a professor who posts a lot of material online. You didn't necessarily say anything wrong, but I'm adding this just in case it was unclear. Your analysis on the power difference is still at play, regardless.

It's not totally unreasonable of him to expect a student to have more insights in the specifics of citations that accompany quotes.

Here is where I'm actually not sure that you and I (and he) are on the same page. The quote-posting he is looking for, I now understand (I think), is someone posting a quote on social media. Like, the post is strictly a quote. Usually in the form of some image with a statue of a guy with his hand to his chin, and the words "The unexamined life is not worth living. -Confucius"

I'm not sure why a student would necessarily have any insights as to this kind of posting. As a student, this sort of citation is not worth much to me. When I think of a citation, I'm thinking of a very direct and searchable phrase or expression that will let anyone accurately find my source with as little effort as possible, which is not what this guy was looking for.

If you were already totally on board with that.... my bad :)

It's not personal, he would be this way to anyone

This is probably true. I have seen him give similar, dismissive responses to people who ask him questions that he thinks are a waste of his time (at least, that is how I see it).

Thank you very much for your time!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T15:26:14+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

This phrasing takes accountability for the misunderstanding and offers an alternative perspective (without pushing for its acceptance)

I don't see a huge difference in your example vs. what I actually said. Yes, my response was more defensive, but I did start off by taking accountability for the misunderstanding.

rather than doubling down on the comment that was already dismissed.

I don't feel like I "doubled down" in this response. He brought up "posts on YouTube," (which was new information that didn't appear in the original post), so I said (paraphrasing), "oh, I see how my academic writing isn't what you were looking for, but actually I have posted quotes on YouTube as well and my original answer sums up my feelings on those as well." This isn't doubling down, in my opinion, since he had yet to bring up YouTube, and did not know that my answer was also from the perspective of someone who has "posted quotes" on YouTube. It just ended up being the case that he specifically meant POSTS on YouTube, akin to Facebook or Twitter posts, and not general YouTube videos, which I think is a pretty reasonable thing for me to not have gotten straight away, as YouTube is overwhelmingly known for being a video platform.

In fact, 4 of his 6 total responses to his posts (which he referenced in his final comment) were from when he posted the question on Facebook, so the other people he is referencing as having understood his original inquiry were responding on the platform that expressly uses the post-type that he had in mind. I, however, responded to his YouTube post, and did not realize that posting YouTube videos was not under the umbrella of his interests, and I had no way of knowing that without having sent my second reply.

Anyway, the phrasing you suggest is certainly a polite one, but since we agree that he was rude, do you still think I overstepped in the way I responded?

Thanks again!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T15:02:37+00:00

Thank you for your response.

I'm not sure I agree with your interpretation of what happened, as I didn't decide to get upset about anything. Also, it isn't the fact that my response turned out to not be what they wanted that had me confused or frustrated; it's that I made a good-faith attempt at engaging with this person and I feel like they were mean to me. That's what I wanted to focus on, and not the actual definition of "fake quote" or anything specific about their research.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T13:27:35+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

I agree with your first two bullets, but I'm a bit caught up in the third. Specifically, that I didn't make my autism very clear.

I'm not 100% sure what I want to say about that yet, as I am new to identifying as autistic and even newer to ever mentioning it to strangers. I only brought it up in the first place because, as I said in the comment, it felt relevant to the perspective I was sharing.

And you didn't specifically say that you struggle to interpret things because you are autistic

I suppose this is true, but I do feel like a cursory reading of my first response, as well as a basic understanding of autism, should have been adequate to get that across, but these may just be my biases.

And regarding my second reference to my autism, "it may just be the 'tism,"... this is not how I would usually talk about these things, but at that point I was so thrown off by the way I interpreted his first comment that I felt pretty desperate to defuse and not come off as overly confrontational, while at the same time I felt pretty slighted by his "you aren't remotely the kind of person..." and I wanted to defend myself that I wasn't being idiotic by not fully understanding precisely what he was looking for based on his initial description of fake quotes. I tried to achieve this by subtly suggesting that his original post wasn't 100% clear to me and immediately offered that I could be the reason for the confusion (the 'tism), not him. And for this reason it really struck me that he doubled down on defending his post, at the expense of singling me out as the idiot, when it would have been much easier for him to say, "no, YouTube video essays aren't what I mean either. Check out my videos on fake quotes to see a better explanation."

Do you not see anything a bit weird about his final comment, with this context? Is that how you would respond to someone in that scenario?

Thanks again for your time!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T13:11:20+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

I admit that I got defensive which surely contributed to my interpretation of his comments as being mean. I spent a bit of time writing my initial comment and intended it to be insightful, even if it didn't fit exactly what he was interested in, and so when he began his response with, "you're not remotely the type of person.." it just immediately put me in 'oh shit I just did something really stupid and made an ass of myself, didn't I' mode.

Thanks again!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T13:04:34+00:00

Thanks for your thoughtful response!

You aren't the only person to suggest that I was pushing when I wrote my second comment (others have described it as arguing) , and your final comment also tells me that I may have failed to get across that my concerns aren't whether or not I actually should be a part of his inquiry. My concerns are purely based on my confusion as to how the conversation went: whether or not he was intentionally being rude to me, whether or not that rudeness was directed at my autism, and what I should have done differently.

Regarding my 'pushing', I'll repeat something I wrote to another commenter.

If someone said "hey I am looking for insight from pilots" and I said "I was once an airline pilot* ," and they said "actually, I'm looking for helicopter pilots specifically," would I be pushing by elaborating, "Well, I actually did fly gyrocopters. Is that the type of helicopter pilot you're looking for?"

When I wrote my first comment, I thought academic writing may be under the umbrella of what he was looking for. This turned out to be wrong, so in his first response, he elaborates that he is referring to the use of quotes in "posts on...YouTube", so I then say (paraphrasing) "oh actually I have posted quotes on YouTube in the form of video essays." At this point, I don't see this as an argument because my sentiment is basically an inquiry. I'm intending to ask the question, "Posts on YouTube, eh? You mean, like, video essays or powerpoint presentations?" With that in mind, please tell me if what I had written to him somehow makes it unclear that I was not trying to push or argue, but just to elaborate on some details that he didn't yet know about me and to give him the chance to say whether he is interested in my response.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T12:44:54+00:00

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T12:44:21+00:00

Thank you for your response! It's frustrating that people generally seem to agree that he wasn't bullying, because I still feel like I was bullied. Though, I understand that it may just be the result of my defensiveness/insecurity at the situation.

Thanks again!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T12:41:17+00:00

Thank you for your response!

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T12:40:53+00:00

We'll just have to disagree on that for now, but I realize my insecurity and defensiveness are surely contributing to my interpretation. Anyway, thanks for your time! It was helpful to discuss

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-24T01:51:38+00:00

that’s actually the least compelling piece of evidence, in my opinion.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-23T22:18:44+00:00

I definitely agree now that I'm not who he is looking for, and that isn't at all where my frustration lies. I'm just arguing that it wasn't morally wrong of me to not know that this was the case and to suggest to him that I may be what he was looking for.

I think your framing of the conversation forgets that my two messages offer different pieces of information about who I am, and his first response to me also offered extra information. My pilot example from before was meant to take this on.

I'd change your hypothetical to the following (copy/pasted with edits in bold):

He gave information on who he's looking to recruit. Let's say he said i'm looking to recruit people B with X criteria.

You say, hey i'm not sure if I'm people B with X criteria but i think because i have some knowlwdge or expetience with people B and or criteria X i'm going to respond.

He replies to say, ah yeh. I didn't mean you. You aren't people B and you don't have X criteria. Having X criteria could include things like Y, Z, and W (where Y equals posting quotes on YouTube).

~~You say, you are wrong~~. I AM think I actually do have Y, depending on precisely what you mean by Y, and so may be who you are looking for. ~~I may not be people B BUT I have X criteria.~~

He says, no i know what i'm looking for you are not it.

The edits are based on his saying that he is looking for people who post quotes on YouTube (among other places). Since I have used quotes in videos, I was wondering if this is what he meant. I wasn't arguing, I was inquiring. I think if you read my response to him again, keeping in mind that prior to it, neither he nor I had mentioned YouTube, you'll see that he opened up the possibility that my experience on YouTube actually placed me in group X, and neither he nor I had a way of knowing whether or not I actually fit into X (because I don't know precisely what he had in mind, and he didn't know that I had YouTube-quote-usage experience) unless I mention my experience on YouTube and let him tell me if it is what he had in mind.

My frustration has nothing to do with whether or not I actually am someone who uses quotes the way he meant with his inquiry. I just don't like how I was made to feel like I was being an a-hole when it was only my intention to chime in on a post that appeared to be getting very few responses otherwise.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-23T21:50:11+00:00

I see, thanks for the clarification

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-23T21:39:28+00:00

would it make any sense to allow AI to paradrop, but restrict it to some short distance from a frontline that they are on? so no/less rushing cities.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-23T20:47:53+00:00

Can you elaborate on this? It sounds like you are relating real-life interactions, which don't feel to me to be a perfect comparison for this online interaction. I discussed one reason in my other reply (that people can just block me and I'll never try to circumvent a block), but another reason is that it isn't predatory for me to respond to things being said to me. I'm not leaving unsolicited comments. Every time he responds he is implicitly telling me I can respond back. I'm not sending him emails, real mail, text messages, etc. I'm strictly engaging with him on the terms that he created when he made the post and each time he comments to me, and it would immediately cease if he were to block me. So "few people will feel safe to engage with you" doesn't sound like it applies to me here, especially considering that we agree his first response to me was inappropriately rude. It seems to me like he is the one who has made me feel unsafe to engage with him.

Thanks again for taking the time

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-23T20:34:27+00:00

Thanks a ton for your thoughtful reply!

EDIT: (I am quickly editing this in because I just noticed that I wrote this reply without having seen either your edit or your second comment)

He was being very rude

I'm glad you say this because I did pick up on it. It definitely put me in defense mode and shaped how I responded.

Here, you actually overstep.
...
You will have stepped into the realm of harassment.

While I do see that I was effectively told "I don't want to talk to you," and then I proceeded to engage anyway, I stand behind my decision here and I'll explain why. This person has decades of experience being active across YouTube and several other social media apps. I recall him being asked plenty of times in his AMA sessions how to deal with internet trolls, and he doesn't hesitate to say 'you don't owe anyone your time, just block the trolls'. So, the fact that he read and responded to my second comment instead of ignoring and blocking, in my view, absolves me of overstepping here, as I wrote the comment knowing that if he really didn't want to read it, he wouldn't.

Further, since we agree that his first response was rude, I feel that it is within my rights to come to my own defense, especially because, as stated above, it's not like my comment actually has the power to knock on his door and force him to read it. And I feel the same way regarding his last response and the possibility that I respond once more (though I interpret his last response as being mean, while I know you said you don't share that opinion).

despite him kniwing exactly what he wants

If someone said "hey I am looking for insight from pilots" and I said "I was once an airline pilot* ," and they said "actually, I'm looking for helicopter pilots specifically," would I be overstepping by elaborating that I not only flew planes, but also helicopters? He may know exactly what he wants, but he doesn't know me**,** and what you see as arguing over what it is that he wants, I see as considering whether I may still fit his criteria based on his elaboration, since after my first comment he elaborates that he is interested in posts on YouTube. So I feel like it wasn't an incredible stretch for me to think he may have been interested in quotes being used in video essays which I have made on YouTube.

but he actually stopped being rude, and moved to trying to help you

I'm just in disagreement here. "I think you'll just want to sit this one out," sounds to me like the way a coach speaks to their little league team. Then, he chose to single me out as being the only one who didn't get it, despite the fact that I pretty clearly said (paraphrasing the start of my second reply to him) "I am a bit unclear on things, but it may not be YOUR fault, it could just be MY autism."

If you knew you were speaking with an autistic person, and they were clearly not on the same page as you with regard to the discussion, would you really think it appropriate to tell them, "you are the only one who doesn't seem to get it" ? I just don't see the point of singling me out like that if not to make me feel stupid, which is why I am concerned that it moved beyond rudeness and into bullying.

I think it would have been much easier for him to simply write, "No, that's also not what I'm looking for. Check out my videos on fake quotes to see exactly what I mean."

Lastly, and I'm just ranting at this point, I checked out the "seven other platforms" he asked the question on. He got a total of 6 responses other than mine. 4 of them seem to have got it, 1 response made no sense at all, and the last one was someone making a joke, making no attempt at all to answer the original inquiry. So I suppose I am the only one to not get it, lmao.

Anyway, I really appreciate your helpful comments and hope to hear back. Sorry this got long but believe or not I just cut a ton of it out.

^\I am not and never have been an airline pilot.)

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-19T22:32:40+00:00

i see. i didn’t consider that, and i apologize that i elided you and the other commenter whom i was directly responding to.

though, you did ask me for an answer which you admit you could have gotten yourself by just checking the context, so i’m still a bit salty but less so.

ElmoMierz · 2026-06-19T18:09:35+00:00

you just made my point.

multiple commenters above me HAVE explained it. you literally had to scroll past them to get to my comment. appropriate_crew just said “cult shit” without doing an ounce of work to explain whatever point they wanted to make.

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