(I’m arrogantly/wisely staying neutral on the question of whether or not it is at all useful to in any way engage with the sort of people whose project proposals can be validly argued against using squish djinn analogies)
(jokes often work by deliberately being understood in different ways at different times by the same listener (the end of the joke deliberately changes the interpretation of the beginning of the joke (in a way that makes fun of someone)). In this case the meaning of the beginning of the joke is not one thing or the other thing. The listener is not first failing to understand what was said and then, after hearing the end, succeeding to understand it. The speaker is intending the listener to understand the first meaning until reaching the end, so the listener is not “first failing to encode the transmission”. There is no inherently true meaning of the beginning of the joke, no inherently true person that this speaker is actually truly referring to. Just a speaker that intends to achieve certain effects on an audience by saying things (and if the speaker is successful, then at the beginning of the joke the listener infers a different meaning from what it infers after hearing the end of the joke). One way to illuminate the concepts discussed above would be to write: “on a somewhat related note, I once considered creating the username “New_Willsome” and to start posting things that sounded like you (for the purpose of demonstrating that if you counter a ban by using sock puppets, you loose your ability to stop people from speaking in your name (I was considering the options of actually acting like I think you would have acted, and the option of including subtle distortions to what I think you would have said, and the option of doing my best to give better explanations of the concepts that you talk about)). But then a bunch of usernames similar to yours showed up and were met with hostility, and I was in a hurry, and drunk, and bat shit crazy, and God told me not to do it, and I was busy writing fanfic, so I decided not to do it (the last sentence is jokingly false. I was not actually in a hurry … :) … )”)
(I’m arrogantly/wisely staying neutral on the question of whether or not it is at all useful to in any way engage with the sort of people whose project proposals can be validly argued against using squish djinn analogies)
(jokes often work by deliberately being understood in different ways at different times by the same listener (the end of the joke deliberately changes the interpretation of the beginning of the joke (in a way that makes fun of someone)). In this case the meaning of the beginning of the joke is not one thing or the other thing. The listener is not first failing to understand what was said and then, after hearing the end, succeeding to understand it. The speaker is intending the listener to understand the first meaning until reaching the end, so the listener is not “first failing to encode the transmission”. There is no inherently true meaning of the beginning of the joke, no inherently true person that this speaker is actually truly referring to. Just a speaker that intends to achieve certain effects on an audience by saying things (and if the speaker is successful, then at the beginning of the joke the listener infers a different meaning from what it infers after hearing the end of the joke). One way to illuminate the concepts discussed above would be to write: “on a somewhat related note, I once considered creating the username “New_Willsome” and to start posting things that sounded like you (for the purpose of demonstrating that if you counter a ban by using sock puppets, you loose your ability to stop people from speaking in your name (I was considering the options of actually acting like I think you would have acted, and the option of including subtle distortions to what I think you would have said, and the option of doing my best to give better explanations of the concepts that you talk about)). But then a bunch of usernames similar to yours showed up and were met with hostility, and I was in a hurry, and drunk, and bat shit crazy, and God told me not to do it, and I was busy writing fanfic, so I decided not to do it (the last sentence is jokingly false. I was not actually in a hurry … :) … )”)