Still ready for that debate?

[Xantar]

Okay, let me explain this clearly for you guys since some of you seem to have misunderstood what's going on.

We members of PVG often get into debates. There isn't anything formal about it. It just happens. When we disagree, we tell each other so and then start discussing our different opinions until we're satisfied that we understand each other even if we still don't necessarily agree with each other. These debates don't arise because we are out trying to prove our intellectualy superiority. They never have. We just like debating because we think it's fun and it makes us think.

Two weeks ago, we decided to issue a challenge to GT for a debate in the same spirit. That thread can be found here

Be sure to read the entire thing so that you know what's going on, but in the meantime, I'm going to point out this particular quote.

Originally posted by Marc in the challenge thread

Ok, Xantar and I have thought of the idea to make all of our members think, and what better way to make someone think? A Debate!

So you see, we never intended to prove our superiority in any way. There was some incidental posturing, but it was all in good fun just like my comments in this thread were and just as I assume Joeiss' comments were (although, Joeiss, you really should come up with something new. I've been hearing homosexual jokes in this forum for years now).

So let me sum up again. We like debating and we decided to ask some members of GT if they would like to join a competition for debate's sake as well. Now ask yourself why we chose GT of all places. If we just wanted to stroke our egos, we could have gone after XBA or TeamXbox or heck just challenge the entire IGN boards. But we didn't. We wanted a good debate against people whom we knew would put up a fight and maybe even win. Because that's the kind of debate you learn and grow from. And we thought the GT members could provide just that very debate.

Well, as it turned out, some GT members were interested in such a debate with us. Four of them, to be exact (I'm not including BreakABone because...well, just read the thread). So the teams having been drawn up, we realized that we hadn't ironed out all the kinks in the debate rules yet. So we postponed the date to the 20th (tomorrow). Nobody, and I mean nobody, raised any objections whatsoever. Read the thread I linked to if you don't believe me. Therefore, we thought that the GT members had agreed to meet with us in a debate tomorrow.

Yesterday, I made this thread containing a little boasting in good fun and a clearer explanation of how the debate was going to work. None of it was new. It's all there in the old thread. I just wanted to remind the GT members that they would have an opportunity to decide some of what the debate would be about.

So let's go over your concerns again.

Have we challenged GT to a pointless exercise so that we could stoke our egos? No. I have made it abundantly clear that we wanted to do this for debate's own sake, and apparently so did the members of the GT team.

Have we just gone out looking for a rival and then declared ourselves the winner when we couldn't find one? No. We did find an opponent, and it appeared to us that we were all agreed on the time when it would happen. That time is coming and we find that nobody seems to even remember the debate and nobody is even going to say something like "On second thought, we're going to back out. We're just not interested." Instead, we get nothing for a reply from any of the members of the GT debate team. This is not only bad form, it could be interpreted as an admission of defeat by some people (not me. I was just joking).

Now if the GT members would like us to think something different, it's not all that hard to convince us.