Team 217 - Thunderchickens

[JackG]

I don't think anybody (except maybe thefro526) really understood why people like babycakes had a bone to pick with the Chickens. It's easy to dismiss him as a jealous, lazy brat, but I bet there's more to it than that. Imagine, you're a 16 year old student on your school's team. You and your team put in hours after school, and you end up with a so-so robot relative to the other teams. Then you look over at the guys in green who win multiple regionals a year and resentment starts to build. "Hey, isn't this a fair competition? Me and my friend designed our robot, but they had professional engineers design theirs! My shaky hands and I milled our parts out, while lasers cut our theirs!" It's as if your sandlot team showed up to play and faced off with the New York Yankees. You'd feel at least a little betrayed by what you thought was a balanced playing field.

Like many of you have pointed out, there's nothing in the rules that says the students have to do the work. There's nothing that says everybody will have the same resources. But many students on lesser teams don't realize that. Without understanding those facts, the whole system seems to be a sham competition. Those who have been around for a while realize that unless they're on a dynasty team, they probably won't have much chance of playing on Einstein. But let’s face it, it took us all some time before we realized that. Some people have not reached that realization, and we need to gently help them reach it.

I know people who are much less interested in the MLB (relative to other sports) because of the lack of salary caps. Some people just don’t like the idea that not everybody starts from the same footing, and find the game much less fun for that reason. While in FIRST it makes complete sense to leave the game without a salary/resource cap, so to speak, not everyone will like the resulting system. One way of looking at the original post was that babycakes was simply one of those people and was pointing out his/her reasons. (Disclaimer: the first post, however, was highly undiplomatic and came off as a crude attack. babycakes did deserve to be flamed for that. Not for the message, but for the tone should the blame have come. Also, babycakes' second post indicated that he/she didn't understand FIRST very well, and that post was also worthy of criticism.)



While I’m on a roll defending unpopular viewpoints, I’ll say that babycakes made the right call by posting anonymously. He/she was arguing a point, and the point’s validity did not depend on the person making it. If you can refute the point, then do so. But knowing the person’s identity does not further the discussion of that point. It simply gives you ammo to launch tangent discussions. In other words, posting anonymously dodges ad hominem arguments (although, laughably, many respected members of this community found ways to make these ad-hominem attacks regardless.) Besides, babycakes chose to post anonymously because he/she anticipated that this reaction would occur. Whatever fallout resulting from the anonymity is better than newfound ill-will generated by attaching a team number to a controversial post.

So, ChiefDelphi, I’m defending anonymity outright. Let’s remember how many of the greatest writers have used pseudonyms for their work at some point. Why? Because good points do not need a name behind them to be good points, and an argument is an argument is an argument whether it springs from the keyboard of Justice Roberts or the lowliest student. Recall the line from V for Vendetta “Beneath this mask there is more than flesh. Beneath this mask there is an idea, Mr. Creedy, and ideas are bulletproof.”

EDIT: Grammar, punctuation, etc.