It is interesting to me how many people try to paint deadhead as a moron.
He's well-written, logically organized, and gives evidence for his opinions even if you don't agree with him.
To me, he's easily one of the smartest posters on the board.
When people try to label him a complete dumbass, it lowers my opinions of those who do so.
It's like they want to bully him into their opinions and want no parts of actually considering there may be some truth in some of his differing opinions because it may threaten their own thought processes. And, of course, by shouting down his opinions and casting a scarlet letter on him, it attempts to persuade others into believing his opinions are idiotic and the masses are clearly correct.
So much mob psychology in message boards. And life in general, I guess. Disagree with him all you want, but deadhead isn't anywhere near stupid.
In cases where he disagrees with others' opinions, he gives his reasoning. I don't see anything wrong with that. I think a lot of it is people don't like having their opinions challenged (just look at politics -- everything is always all or nothing; my side is always right, your side always wrong, never much thought given to actually considering differing opinions and finding a middle ground). I think humans are very tribal by nature, and like identifying with groups, and feel threatened by any challenge to their own group's philosophies. It's a chicken-or-egg scenario when you're talking about incessant debates with strangers on message boards. Both sides are guilty.
He is not nearly the troll or obtuse person as often painted. I like reading what he has to say. There's a real danger in only listening to one side of a story. Then you have essentially a dictatorship which assumes the dictator is both infallibly correct and has no ulterior motives. That's never the case. For years the only side of the story I heard on fats were that they'd kill you, eggs' cholesterol would give you a heart attack, and to eat low fat and follow a food pyramid loaded with bread and grains. Suddenly all the science has shown that advice to be about 180 degrees incorrect and influenced by sugar lobbyists. There's value in retaining a sense of cynicism and not always following the herd, and it's not for the purpose of contrarianism, it's because the herd isn't always right.
These are two incredibly ignorant posts and I'll tell you why.
There's two options here.
Either...
a) you don't pay attention to what's actually being said, so you don't understand what's going on
or...
b) you do understand what's being said, but you're intentionally misrepresenting it for the sake of argument
The reason you like reading what he has to say is because he goes against the majority of the board and you love that because you love to play the contrarian too.
We get it, you're a special unique snowflake and you stand against the rest of the drooling idiots on the internet. Well done, we're all impressed. Most people on here argue against deadhead, so that means if you side with him then you're as far away from being just another average person as you can be. Congrats, it worked, you're special.
Since I'm not 100% sure which of the above two options you really are - although I'm leaning towards option "b" - I'll explain why he gets so much shit, just for the hell of it, in case anyone else wonders as well.
First off, it's not a matter of opinions. Let's get that out of the way first, that way I don't have to read the same idiotic defenses about how nobody can ever be wrong because everything on here is an opinion and opinions can't be wrong. That isn't a valid defense when what's actually being said are incorrect statements. When he shares something that is an opinion, it's usually either ignored or discussed normally. For example when he says he thinks Frost will be on the team next year. I've seen some people agree and others disagree, for various reasons.
There's no problem with people having different opinions on here, despite the cries of people who want to play the victim, so long as you can honestly back up your perspective. I've disagreed with many people, many times, and still had perfectly civil conversations. For example,
@Rebels57 and I have argued a few times over the last few days, because we have different opinions on the job Hextall is doing, and there's been no issue.
So, what really causes all the problems with deadhead is when he either outright lies or when he contradicts himself, because both expose his motives.
A perfect example is this post where I prove that he was 100% lying and contradicting himself to defend Hakstol. After Konecny started playing awesome on the top line in January, he says Hakstol's coaching is what made Konecny improve... but just a short time earlier in December (a matter of days, not even months) he made these statements, saying that Konecny hadn't improved and was still a poor bottom 6 player...
http://hfboards.mandatory.com/posts/141248221/
This is the type of dishonesty that naturally turns people against you by making it clear that you'll outright lie and contradict your own words to serve a bias, instead of being honest and admitting you were wrong.
You don't think he's stupid? OK, sure, then that means he's intentionally saying these things, knowing he's wrong. In my opinion, that's worse than ignorance and a great way to make sure nobody respects you or what you have to say.
I've argued with him a long time and we've disagreed on a lot of different things. I'll even admit I had private messaged him a few times to apologize when I went too far and was too aggressive because I know I was and at the time he didn't deserve it. But now he's been proven to be so incredibly dishonest and intentionally inflammatory, so I have zero respect for someone like that. You like to pretend it's mob mentality or a hivemind or whatever other label you want to slap on, but in reality it's just that many people recognize the exact same things and have a similar natural reaction to it.
