I think it's time to fess up. M Wicks is (or rather was) a parody of a
psycholist. Basically my real opinions are pretty much the polar
opposite of M Wicks'. The original purpose of M Wicks was to gain the
trust of the psycholists in order to get some information, but in the
end this didn't happen for various reasons, and so M Wicks simply
became a pastime of sorts, becoming ever more ludicrous (hence the
Christianity, the repulsive homophobia (sorry about that...I probably
shouldn't have gone that far!), the "swearing" business, the capital
letters, etc). Even though he's obviously a dick, I must admit I got
quite fond of him at times...he doesn't mean to be a complete and
utter wanker, he's just very misguided, slow to learn, and reluctant
to change his mind about anything (remember, he is a psycholist).
It seems that what I was doing in posting as M Wicks was "poeing", not
that I learnt that term until just now.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe%27s_Law
states that it's difficult to distinguish between parodies of
fundamentalist extremism and fundamentalist extremism itself (which of
course psycholists exhibit in spades), since they're both equally
insane. I think M Wicks has demonstrated that this is the case: I set
out to be as much of a nutcase psycholist as possible (within reason),
and yet it was a while before anyone started claiming it was a wind-
up, and not everyone did. Also, even those who did think it was a wind-
up seemed to think it was actually a real psycholist (e.g. Mason)
pulling the strings, rather than an "anti-psycholist". So it seemed
that they thought M Wicks was just a sock rather than a piss-take
(oops...I shouldn't be swearing! Children read this newsgroup!)
I thank those who (rightly!) argued with M Wicks, and I apologise to
those who feel that their time has been wasted by remonstrating with
him (but one could argue that any posting on uk.rec.cycling is a waste
of time!) I also thank those posters who were in on M Wicks and who
played along so convincingly. I must admit it was quite a novelty
arguing with people who I'd never normally disagree with, like JNugent
and Judith. And I confess that I did somewhat enjoy winding up the
likes of Dave and NM at times. Sorry Dave/NM: I guess it was a novelty
being able to spew out so much utter bollocks, and a little utter
bollocks goes a long way in irritating those who are rational!
That's so much the case that I can imagine that people like Phil Lee
know (possibly only subconsciously) that what they're saying is
ridiculous rubbish, and they've just become addicted to saying it
anyway because they know it winds up reasonable people. After M Wicks
I can see the attraction of lobbing a grenade of carefully crafted
utter nonsense at a load of rational posters and then gleefully
watching as they loudly complain! This, of course, is what the
psycholists claim that their opponents do; god only knows whether they
are conscious that it is in fact their "side" which do that, time and
time again, with the result that M Wicks didn't exactly stick out as
not being "one of them", whereas I'm sure it would be much harder to
parody an "anti-psycholist" (any psycholist is of course welcome to
try to prove me wrong, but I should think they know better than to do
so!)
(Talking of Phil Lee, I did enjoy the time when I came up with some
random anti-motorist bollocks and then decided to add "Was it Phil Lee
who came up with that?" Sure enough, he replied "Not quite, but the
idea has merit"! Ha ha! Aren't I good? Well actually, I'm not
particularly, yet people still believed that M Wicks was a real
psycholist...Poe's Law indeed!)
Anyway, I don't know whether I'm going to get flamed now, or
congratulated, or a bit of both. I guess it'll probably be mostly the
psycholists (particularly those who agreed with M Wicks!) who'll
display annoyance if anyone does. But to anyone on either "side" who
replied or referred to M Wicks, thanks: I couldn't have done it
without you. :-)
(I wonder if M Wicks will still get his posts approved on URCM now
that he's fessed up to being from the "dark side"? If what the
moderators repeatedly claim is true then I shouldn't get treated any
differently on that newsgroup just because of this post. But we all
know by now that what they say can be taken with a large pinch of
salt, to put it kindly....)