The Unofficial Alan is a Fucktard thread

[redietz]

Ploppy gamblers are stupid and gullible!

When you use the words "ploppy gambler," are you referring to all non-AP players?

If not, please describe the characteristics of the subset which constitute "ploppy."

I am not an AP yet with my discipline I don't consider myself a "ploppy."

Poppies are the degenerate loud mouth gamblers that think they know what their doing but really have no clue. I think there is a clear distinction between poppies and civilian gamblers. I'd put you in the civilian category.

I hate jargon like "ploppies" and "squares." I think the use of these words has gotten worse over the years. I think part of it is the importation of Wall Street attitude and lingo to the sports betting scene. Fezzik didn't do anyone any favors by using this language whenever possible.

I think jbjb's way of using the word "ploppy" is okay in that he distinguishes between someone who doesn't know that they don't know what they're doing and someone who does know they have some skills/knowledge deficiencies. That makes "ploppy" useful across the board. Although I'm a relatively knowledgeable car buyer, having bought strings of R titles in my youth and never buying a lemon, I'm a moron compared to some guys who buy at auctions and can look at an engine and tell you what's what. But I know I don't know, so that makes me a civilian car buyer and not a ploppy. I take a more expert person with me to help me out.

So my instinct is to say the gambling ploppies don't know that they don't know. And unfortunately they often declare that they do know.

I love Alan. I think his main problem is that he spent a lifetime using his general worldliness and ability to organize his knowledge as tools to do his journalistic job. Like many journalists and non-fiction writers, he has studied (and grasped) a huge range of topics on short notice. He's done it so well that he developed a kind of Cliff Notes arrogance for gambling. The guy who was my advisor at Penn State, Robert Gannon, helped me avoid this kind of arrogance. He always had his final drafts reviewed by experts in the field he was writing about. He said there's always a mistake, and sometimes non-experts like himself can make a fundamental egregious mistake. You have to have experts review what you have to say. For gambling, Alan is too invested in what he'd prefer to believe, and I don't recall him changing his mind very often.