Just what is the appeal of Batman these days?

[McStabbington]

Again, An Enemy Spy put forth a very reasonable response, and five bucks says he doesn't have a doctoral thesis on it. Not to mention the fact that it's a pretty basic concept that claiming to represent a collective based on your personal experience doesn't really work; if you lived in Peeleevania, and were asked "why is President Al so popular," responding with "well, everyone I know voted for Bob for President, so I don't even see how Al won. And if someone argues with me, I can just claim that I can only speak for what I have personal experience with, it's not like I have a Ph.D. in Peeleevanian Political Science" would very obviously be a ridiculous answer.

Of course, you could also create a false dichotomy between speaking only from personal experience or spending years of scholarly work on a subject. Whatever floats your boat.

How about you let An Enemy Spy speak for himself? He can speak for himself, and he isn't saying anything. Jeivar, the guy who started the thread, can also speak for himself, and he isn't saying anything. The only person speaking is you, and you, personally, are being incredibly insulting right now. You are singling me out when I tried to respond in good faith, and rather than honestly responding to my response, you sit in the corner making snarky comments that insult my attempt to contribute. If you don't want a particular answer or response to someone else's question, how about you start your own threads where those are already excluded from consideration?

Who died and made you the arbiter of what is and is not an appropriate response to this thread, Peelee?

To whit, I said that whatever fans might feel about Batman, the general pop-culture consensus around the character leaves out the nuances of the character, and relies heavily on the James-Bond-ian power fantasy. That's not what the character is, and that's not what the comic book fans might find like about the character, but that is the attitude of people who have never read a comic, but might pick out a Batman film for one of the five films they see every year because he is that big an intellectual property. And that is as much an answer to Jeivar's question as An Enemy Spy's answer.

To which you responded not by analyzing what I said, or treating it with the least amount of respect, but instead by trolling me about how oh, I'm only limited to my experience, and by golly, my experience is clearly inadequate. The appropriate response is quite simple: who do you think you are? Don't put words in the thread creator's mouth. Don't put words in other poster's mouth. Don't arbitrarily decide for yourself what is, and is not, a worthy response in a thread that is not yours. And definitely don't insult my intelligence or my willingness to contribute just because it wasn't a response that you wanted. You don't get to decide that. You're not the mod. You're not the thread creator. And don't exclude me from using my own experiences as a valid grounds upon which to speak.

I have every right to speak here, same as you.