Pamela Galli Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 11 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said: Are they American? If so take it with a pinch of salt. America's military must be seriously overflowing because EVERY guy who lives in America is apparently a hardened marine who has seen war. I can think of one well known one who isn’t. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Selene Gregoire Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 22 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said: Are they American? If so take it with a pinch of salt. America's military must be seriously overflowing because EVERY guy who lives in America is apparently a hardened marine who has seen war. You're using a bit too broad of a brush there. Most of the guys I've known over the past 45 years or so, don't ever claim to have been in the military when they haven't been. There was an air force base not 5 miles from the town I grew up in. It wasn't the only AFB in that state either. There were also a few army bases (one well known boot camp about 50 miles from the town I grew up in) as well as a naval and a marine base. So, no, not every guy in America claims to have been in the military and seen war. Just the young ones who erroneously think it will impress others. It always catches up to them sooner or later. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luna Bliss Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 21 minutes ago, Pamela Galli said: I can think of one well known one who isn’t. You mean Sargent Cheeto? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KanryDrago Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 illegal? Why would the vast majority of us worry about whatever silly laws the usa dreams up? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Coffee Pancake Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 I refer to the OP to the commander in chief's statements about his personal Vietnam. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fionalein Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 6 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said: Nope. Apparently you haven't noticed how many people wear discarded/donated military fatigues these days - especially among the homeless in my metro area (that stuff makes for good winter clothing). Fun fact: if he dresses like one but is none of them... the homeless might actually shun him Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CheriColette Posted March 23, 2019 Share Posted March 23, 2019 7 hours ago, wolfshanty said: Should it be illegal for SL residents (and bannable) to falsely claim to be in the (RL) military, in text and in voice? No. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shudo Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 Americans are weird. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
animats Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 No, it's not illegal in the US. There is a constitutional right to lie under the First Amendment. See this litigation over the Stolen Valor Act. As a rule of thumb, anybody who says they were a Navy SEAL is a fake. Some former SEALs have a web site exposing fakes, and discovered there were more fake ones than real ones. So they focused only on ones running scams or running for political office. While ex-military people generally will say they are ex-military, the ones whose job was at the sharp end often don't talk about it much outside their community. If someone says they were a company clerk or an aircraft maintainer, they probably were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnek Fang Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 It can be easy to forget, but SL is part of the Internet, and lying to make yourself look good is a grand tradition. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kia Kiyori Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 17 hours ago, wolfshanty said: Should it be illegal for SL residents (and bannable) to falsely claim to be in the (RL) military, in text and in voice? I honestly wouldn't get my knickers in a twist over it. Welcome to the 'reality' of virtual reality; that's 'virtual', not 'real'. You take whatever anyone says with half a grain of salt and try to make a damn good tequila with what's left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 8 hours ago, Shudo said: Americans are weird. It depends on where you are standing.. I've lived in cities and out in the country.. In the cities you will find many weird,strange and creepy people..Mainly because they are so packed in there like rats and scared to death of each other.. Out in the country you will find some crazy people.. Mainly because they are more free and more room to let loose..I mean the, Hang on to mah beer for a minute, kind of crazy.. Not scared one bit of just about anything.. hehehehe There is a lot of people just chugging through also in both areas,like anywhere else in the world.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amanda Crisp Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 17 hours ago, Talligurl said: Besides, how is valor being stolen? One does not take valor from one person and claim it for oneself by misrepresenting oneself on the internet. Thats a very good question; and I have a probably so-so answer 🙂 ”Stolen Valor” is principally a USA term, so I’ll confine my answer to thatn demogeaphic. Military veterans in the USA make up a very small component of our population, relative to the number of civilians they represented while on active duty. Many Americans have no one in their extended family who has ever served in peacetime or war (and thats a good thing) and therefore have no frame of reference bout who the are, how their experiences shape them or the challenges they face. My grandfather came home from War and had a very hard time shifting from “Marine Infantry” mode back to “Cattle Rancher”, but he made it. His travails trying to find “normal” again were painful, as were his physical disabilities - which is why he has always been my personal hero (much of that for his determination to live a good life with my grandmother after the war) and he was the reason I scandalized my mother by enlisting myself when I turned eighteen. Veterans in the USA had a very hard time after Korea and Vietnam, either ignored or actively despised by some of their own countrymen. This makes the “veteran community” perhaps a litte bit sensitive to people who never served, but claim that they did and process to behave like jerks. Being badly represented by someone “claiming” to be a veteran tarnishes the public reputation of those who did, and sullies the reputations of friends who never got to come home and make a life like my grandfather did. There are so many people willing to think ill of veterans, especially combat veterans, that the community doesn’t really need Posers giving them any fuel by behaving badly. I won’t say anything about the morality of war except to say as a veteran myself I passionately wish our political leaders would figure out how to stop making new ones. As an aside, I will note that *rarely* will you hear a genuine combat veteran boasting about it, telling gory stories or posturing in public. Going to “the bad part of your head” is painful and usually something that only gets unpacked in the presence of others who have seen that particular elephant. My grandfather never really opened up about his experiences until I came back from my little misadventure, and told me only a tithe of his experiences even then. All this being said, I see no reason to ban Military Posers and no way to police it if there was. Those of us who *have* served can usually identify our own with a few questions, as the military is an insular community and a Pretender just won’t know some of the answers 🙂. If someone takes too long to respond, its fair to assume they’re googling and google notoriously gets “insider” military culture wrong. The resentment of veterans against Military Posers bears great similarity to the concerned about non-minorities who play minority “blackface” avatars or RL males posing as women in SL. It treads the line between Offensive and Free Expression, and as someone whose job it once was to protect Free Expression for my nation - it would be bad for me to come down on it even when it leaves me furious. This probably was unhelpful, but I tried 🙂 5 3 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BilliJo Aldrin Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 18 hours ago, wolfshanty said: Should it be illegal for SL residents (and bannable) to falsely claim to be in the (RL) military, in text and in voice? No. It's not illegal in RL, why should it be illegal in here? Why would you believe anything anyone says in here anyway? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shudo Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 14 minutes ago, AmandaKeen said: or RL males posing as women in SL Is that a *bad* thing? Seriously? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BilliJo Aldrin Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 I think we should tackle the far more serious problem of white people pretending to be black in order to gain some social, political, or monetary advantage. https://www.vox.com/2015/6/15/8784327/passing-white-black https://www.vox.com/2015/6/16/8791063/rachel-dolezal-naacp-white-black 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arduenn Schwartzman Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 (edited) 20 hours ago, wolfshanty said: Should it be illegal for SL residents (and bannable) to falsely claim to be in the (RL) military, in text and in voice? Hey, I won the Nobel Prize for Literature for my whole literary oeuvre, but particularly for my bestseller: "Should BS be illegal?" Edited March 24, 2019 by Arduenn Schwartzman 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bitsy Buccaneer Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 18 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said: EVERY guy who lives in America is apparently a hardened marine who has seen war. I don't know if this is happening much in SL (maybe the learning curve is good for something after all ), but some romance scammers working dating sites, Skype, etc claim to be in the military. The story on this grift is that they're stationed abroad, usually widowed ('cause sympathy) and have a kid staying with grandma back home. Money's needed for emergency with the kid, hero in the military has it of course but can't get it to grandma in time, so the victim is convinced to send it. Of course there are going to be plenty of other reasons why someone might be claiming military experience, but I just wanted to throw this out to increase awareness in case the scammers have found their way into SL. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arduenn Schwartzman Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 (edited) 21 hours ago, wolfshanty said: Should it be illegal for SL residents (and bannable) to falsely claim to be in the (RL) military, in text and in voice? For just a few L$ you can rent a plot of land and truly claim to be God and declare illegal and ban those who dare to wear pink on a Tuesday. Edited March 24, 2019 by Arduenn Schwartzman Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scylla Rhiadra Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 4 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said: 13 hours ago, Shudo said: Americans are weird. It depends on where you are standing.. I've lived in cities and out in the country.. In the cities you will find many weird,strange and creepy people..Mainly because they are so packed in there like rats and scared to death of each other.. Out in the country you will find some crazy people.. Mainly because they are more free and more room to let loose..I mean the, Hang on to mah beer for a minute, kind of crazy.. Not scared one bit of just about anything.. hehehehe There is a lot of people just chugging through also in both areas,like anywhere else in the world.. Shudo can correct me, but I think what is being got at here is that there are some aspects of "American culture" that seem very alien to those of us on the outside, rather than that individual Americans are "weird." (I'm sure we all of us have our share of "weird".) One element of that is the relationship that the US military has, or seems from the outside to have, to the rest of American culture. Certainly, your armed forces are much more visible (on the streets, but also in popular and "elite" culture), and much more significant in a sort of "mythic" way to understanding how you see yourselves, than is the case here in Canada. That's pretty understandable, given our different histories, and very different positions in the world order. Yours was a nation built out of a successful war. Mine, by contrast, was founded -- at least, the non-indigenous part was -- by "losers" in war: French colonials conquered by the British in 1759, and British loyalists fleeing the 13 colonies after the Revolutionary war. We have a much smaller military presence in our society and, despite the periodical attempts by our right wing politicians to emulate the US approach, it is a very much smaller part of how we see ourselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BilliJo Aldrin Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 2 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said: For just a few L$ you can rent a plot of land and truly claim to be God and declare illegal and ban those who dare to wear pink on a Tuesday. Speaking of God, I read this joke somewhere.... Question: What's the difference between God and Bono? Answer: God doesn't walk around claiming to be Bono. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Love Zhaoying Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: Shudo can correct me, but I think what is being got at here is that there are some aspects of "American culture" that seem very alien Aliens did it! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 1 hour ago, Scylla Rhiadra said: Shudo can correct me, but I think what is being got at here is that there are some aspects of "American culture" that seem very alien to those of us on the outside, rather than that individual Americans are "weird." (I'm sure we all of us have our share of "weird".) One element of that is the relationship that the US military has, or seems from the outside to have, to the rest of American culture. Certainly, your armed forces are much more visible (on the streets, but also in popular and "elite" culture), and much more significant in a sort of "mythic" way to understanding how you see yourselves, than is the case here in Canada. That's pretty understandable, given our different histories, and very different positions in the world order. Yours was a nation built out of a successful war. Mine, by contrast, was founded -- at least, the non-indigenous part was -- by "losers" in war: French colonials conquered by the British in 1759, and British loyalists fleeing the 13 colonies after the Revolutionary war. We have a much smaller military presence in our society and, despite the periodical attempts by our right wing politicians to emulate the US approach, it is a very much smaller part of how we see ourselves. You got all of that out of, Americans are weird? Out of everything I said..It just boiled down to,Not all of them are weird..It's really not much deeper than that.. Just two of us using wide brushes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Luna Bliss Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 28 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said: It's really not much deeper than that.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ceka Cianci Posted March 24, 2019 Share Posted March 24, 2019 1 minute ago, Luna Bliss said: All this is because I responded to someone saying,In their first post of the thread, Americans are weird? They didn't quote anybody or anything else.. You all are putting context into something someone else said..All I was doing is responding to what they said. Not all of them are.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Flickr
Recommended Posts
Please take a moment to consider if this thread is worth bumping.