Here's the fight, and a post-by-post analysis of why it looks strange:
@dorf Just your friendly neighborhood..well whatever I am.
Leafsnail
How is your question supposed to find scum?
This is a reasonable lead-in. It looks like a response-checking pressurevote.
Simple. Mafia members are always UPTIGHT and UNABLE TO TAKE A JOKE. Therefore the MAFIA will be TRAPPED by my CUNNING SCHEME.
The problem here is the response, which is an anaphoric wisecrack. It's not how Leafsnail typically answers these questions--i.e., some variant of "[INSERT NAME HERE], random RVS is random >_>." No, Leafsnail saves it for his Big Attack.
I don't buy it, Leaf. It has the scent of trying TOO hard to look frivolous in order to follow the crowd rather than actually trying to find out who the scum are.
What looks like reasonable increased pressure, effectively meaningless. This entire sequence means about as much as Webadict's "YOU ARE SCUM BECAUSE YOU ARE SCUM" statements.
This, right here, is where it turns into staged fight territory:
Unvote.
People, dakarian is scum. I have played enough games with him to build a decent-ish read against him, and everything he's doing is ringing serious alarm bells.
@dorf Just your friendly neighborhood..well whatever I am.
Leafsnail
How is your question supposed to find scum?
Instead of random voting, he decides to hit me over something very small. Even if noone else was doing anything to find scum either.
I don't buy it, Leaf. It has the scent of trying TOO hard to look frivolous in order to follow the crowd rather than actually trying to find out who the scum are.
Attacks me over another ridiculously small thing...
Mm hmm. I also know how easy it is for the scum to play along in it until it gets serious. Scum especially like it because it's easy for them to hold back the 'scumtells' that people use and to accuse others of it.
But you would rather I stick to asking questions about avatars and what's on TV rather than actually scumhunting, right?
Passive attack on Pandarsenic.
I would rather you actually do what's for the good of the town. But you don't know what team you're on, do you?
Then state exactly what I should be doing that would be considered 'good for the town' and why what I'm doing now is isn't good, inteuniso.
Passive attack on inteuniso...
That's half of my questions answered.
Now the other half: How is what I'm doing NOT scumhunting?
Again, a passive attack. It looks aggressive, but he hasn't changed his vote, and clearly has no intention of doing so.
Dakarian finishes putting the homeless guy back in his place. He then returns wiping the dirt from his hands.
"Well, that was random. Now to the matter at hand"
Leafsnail might need a prod. (already!?)
Setting me up for an accusation of lurking... I mean, why would I need a prod after about 24 hours while, say, dorf wouldn't?
So, all in all dakarian, this is you trying to prime me for a mislynch. You can't have possibly established my alignment yet, and yet you still lay into me with weak reasons and uncharacteristic tunnel vision. You then casually attack Pandarsenic and intueniso, and haven't followed up in any way since. Dakarian, you die today.
The problem here is that Leafsnail doesn't scumhunt this well. The "set response" (i.e., the one I have catalogued as what a typical player would do, adjusted slightly for Leafsnail) is to FoS dakarian for being pushy, provide a brief explanation, and move on.
You only get this sort of WoT when you know someone is scum. When do you know someone is scum? Not from these minor tells. In Leafsnail-land, this is only worth an FoS (as seen from his early attacks on me in this game). But instead we have an outlandish "HANG, DAKARIAN!" statement... from someone who is typically one of the most passive people around. Say "people can change" as much as you want. It's impossible to swap your meta that fast. This is false aggression, since aggressive Leafsnail tends to be rather more outlandish (increased use of caps, etc., etc.).
Speaking as someone who has been on the receiving end of a staged grilling before, your scum partner is the only person who will be able to find your every scumtell and slip. The town will catch some things, but they cannot catch the entire emergent trend from a couple of non-obvious statements. Everyone else seems to think Dakarian is playing a perfect townie, but for some reason Leafsnail sees something no one else does,
enumerates it, and...
I'm not panicking, Dakarian. I don't care if you've decided I'm the best candidate for a mislynch. There's something very interesting about your post - lots of accusations and no questions. Why? Simple - you're trying to get me lynched, not find out my alignment.
2. Calm down and smell blood. Oh yes.. a mess up, an easy lynch to jump on. I just need something to pin on them.
If you're accusing me of this, and yet you say your strategy is fine, what mess up am I jumping on? Do you really regard yourself as an "Easy lynch"?
Thus instead, the scum will ignore the accusation, which is easy to dispell, and aim for the kill, hoping the attack will ignore the fact that they paniced.
You and I both know this isn't true. Scum tends to just brush off any RVS accusations and try to avoid attention.
Sidenote: About my 'passive attacks without a vote', my vote stays on my target but I'm not going to ignore others. Half of what you learn in an attack is what your target does while the other half is what everyone ELSE does. Or did you hope that I would do the mistake Janus did in Paranormal when he noticed a RVS scumtell of mine but then walked away to someone else before I replied? If you no longer become my target and they remain an issue the vote will move to them. You, however, need to first stop being a target,
It's not so much the lack of vote as the lack of followup. The way you said "Oh Pandar that's scummy but nevermind, I won't try to get an answer to my question". Similarly, you attack inteuniso until he backs down ("Oh yeah you were scumhunting, sry"), then stop. No followup, once again.
Keeps on going for a while. The amazing part is that everything he says is correct. Dakarian presses without strong followup, allows excuses, is passive, and isn't asking questions.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Leafsnail is scum from his recent statements and behavior. Since scum has to be totally moronic to allow this kind of all-out attack on Dakarian (or extremely self-confident to the point of arrogance, which Leafsnail generally isn't. I'm thinking Webadict, here) without some sort of purpose, it implicates Dakarian as his partner.
Step 2: When someone feels 'off' to you: perhaps you disliked their answer, or maybe they scare you, or confuse you with their text. Perhaps they look fine but your feelings or your gut says something is wrong. Perhaps you see them do one scumtell. Don't ignore it: make them your target. Attack them. Tell them what bothers you about them. Push them, harass them. Tell them how scummy they are. Ask them every question in the book.. and I mean EVERYTHING:
...
Note, this is Step 2: Litia doesn't feel like she knows Dakarian is scum.. just had a 'feeling'. She has no hard evidence, nothing real. The questions are to add pressure.. make Dakarian crack and panic. If you did it right, they WILL town or scum. WHEN they do, you will be able to see more of their true self. From there, decide if you can find them as scum for truth. If you don't: pull out and go to your next suspect: if no one else is there, go back to Step 1.
Instead of random voting, he decides to hit me over something very small. Even if noone else was doing anything to find scum either.
...
Attacks me over another ridiculously small thing...
...
So, all in all dakarian, this is you trying to prime me for a mislynch. You can't have possibly established my alignment yet, and yet you still lay into me with weak reasons and uncharacteristic tunnel vision.
And that, my dear Leafsnail, is HOW you use a RVS. You don't play games or pass along jokes. You make people PANIC. You put them off center. You make them slip.
Like, for example, you fling a horribly weak accusation and make it sound like a denouncement of death. You make sure it's strong in bite and little in substance, which is easy since this IS (was) RVS. You then wait to see the response. If they crack more townish, they'll focus on dispelling the weak argument and get to trying to figure people out and reading them.
Scum will do two things in sequence:
1. Panic. OMG that's not a Random Vote! He's trying to KILL ME! I don't want to die! What do I do?
2. Calm down and smell blood. Oh yes.. a mess up, an easy lynch to jump on. I just need something to pin on them.
Thus instead, the scum will ignore the accusation, which is easy to dispell, and aim for the kill, hoping the attack will ignore the fact that they paniced.
In other words, you just got caught doing something VERY scummy, Leafsnail. What do you do now?
Sidenote: About my 'passive attacks without a vote', my vote stays on my target but I'm not going to ignore others. Half of what you learn in an attack is what your target does while the other half is what everyone ELSE does. Or did you hope that I would do the mistake Janus did in Paranormal when he noticed a RVS scumtell of mine but then walked away to someone else before I replied? If you no longer become my target and they remain an issue the vote will move to them. You, however, need to first stop being a target,
and trying to get my lynched because I decided I actually WANT an answer from you rather than forget you exist doesn't help in removing your target status.
Btw, Tunneling? It's the first accusation on you on the first 24 hours of the game. You didn't even write any post in defense and you're accusing me of "Staying on a target LONG after all accusations have been answered to and no logical reasons to stay on them exist"?
I'm not panicking, Dakarian. I don't care if you've decided I'm the best candidate for a mislynch. There's something very interesting about your post - lots of accusations and no questions. Why? Simple - you're trying to get me lynched, not find out my alignment.
When I want you lynched, I'll make it much more clearer than a simple vote and accusation. I thought you knew my meta? I make sure to do at least that no matter WHAT I am.
Or is the 'I know your meta' argument just a means of trying to add credibility to your attack. For someone who's fussing so much about being so quick to kill, you seem to have phrased your first attack on me as a sure fire "lynch him now". Were's YOUR questions? Where's YOUR push to figure out my alignment? Why are you playing the 'Aggression=scum' card?
If you're accusing me of this, and yet you say your strategy is fine, what mess up am I jumping on? Do you really regard yourself as an "Easy lynch"?
I threw a weak attack on you and pushed hard on it. You attacked me based on the idea that I threw a weak attack on you and pushed hard on it. That's the 'mess up' I'm claiming you jumped on.
You and I both know this isn't true. Scum tends to just brush off any RVS accusations and try to avoid attention.
Both can be, in truth. Some will look for anything that can 'bite' and aim for a quicklynch. Others will try to hide and stay back. It depends on the individual.
It's not so much the lack of vote as the lack of followup. The way you said "Oh Pandar that's scummy but nevermind, I won't try to get an answer to my question". Similarly, you attack inteuniso until he backs down ("Oh yeah you were scumhunting, sry"), then stop. No followup, once again.
You mean the question I threw at Pandar? That was rhetorical. It was more of a "why are you fussing about my scumhunting, foo?" than something to be answered.
Pandar, though, already showed an interesting side of him: buddying and confusion. I'll be addressing that one shortly, though I was hoping to do a very quick widescan after this.
Inteuniso, I'm not sure what to make of him at the moment.. he's Nully on me (well, passive, but I'm hesitant to deem it a full scumtell JUST yet).
The rest, we'll see once I get a little time.
Or is the 'I know your meta' argument just a means of trying to add credibility to your attack. For someone who's fussing so much about being so quick to kill, you seem to have phrased your first attack on me as a sure fire "lynch him now". Were's YOUR questions? Where's YOUR push to figure out my alignment? Why are you playing the 'Aggression=scum' card?
Deflecting argument is deflecting. Aggression does not mean scum, but a constant attack on the same person over small things is certainly a tell. I attacked you somewhat harder over it because... well, I wanted to see your reaction. I'd seen a tell, and scum tends to back down if struck too hard.
Both can be, in truth. Some will look for anything that can 'bite' and aim for a quicklynch. Others will try to hide and stay back. It depends on the individual.
I'd say scum picking Dakarian as a mislynch target would be suicidal.
If I'm honest though, there's something that's worrying me about this fight. Noone other than ToonyMan has said anything about it (and he just agreed with me vaguely) and it makes me feel the scum are just sitting back and sniggering at a townie fight. That and dakarian's rectified most of the things I've said about him... eh. I'll try not to get pulled into tunnelvision.
With that in mind, unvote:
ToonyMan, what was your logic for jumping on dakarian? Mindless bandwagon really isn't a Toony town tell.
inteuniso, why accuse ToonyMan of bandwagonning, unvote and then not vote him?
Mr.Person, have you got any comments on me or dakarian, or were you just trying to avoid being sucked into the fight?
Pandarsenic, have you got any suspicions at all? I mean, if you make 4 posts of excuses, you can come up with a couple of points, right?
Dorf - any comments on people other than Pandarsenic? Is the Vector vote still random or are you pushing it?
Dakarian - You mentioned Pandar and intenuoso, the people I mentioned, but said nothing about ToonyMan's reasonless bandwagonning. Why? Similarly, why did you only mention these people when I accused you of ignoring them?
Dakarian goes so far as to say "I'm pretty sure Leafsnail is scum," but then does a soft back-off to poke at ToonyMan because "he has what he wanted." What this is... no one knows. What we have here is two people meeting, clashing, saying "YOU ARE SCUM DIE DIE DIE," and then backing off for crapsack reasons.
Since then, they've avoided each other.
What I see here is scum filling in their token interaction for the game, and then proceeding to go on their merry way--"Look! We had a big fight. That means we're not connected!"
Well, anyway. Hope you dudes find that convincing, and if not, then sucks for you.