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What is cynicism?
Dictionary.com defines cynicism as:
1. An attitude of scornful or jaded negativity, especially a general distrust of the integrity or professed motives of others.

2. A scornfully or jadedly negative comment or act.

These generally cover the idea appearance behind the cynic, I suppose.

Why cynicism?
This is a far more important question. I think that as a whole cynics are "super-realists." We aren't pessimists, or optimists. The glass isn't either half empty or half full. The glass is generally filled with water, and we acknowledge it as such.

The cynic acknowledges reality, as it is, real. We don't live in a white picket fence world where people only bask in the sun and eat lollypops. We know that too much sun will cause cancer, and sometimes lollypops may have razors in them. That's not to say we always think the world is evil or harmful either. We're realistic about it, sometimes the white picket fence isn't so white, and when it rains, sometimes there will be holes in the roof of your house. Its life, and we know and deal with it.

Don't most of you just flame
No, although our posts tend to look that way. Because we expose reality, in all of it's harshness, people tend to accuse us of trolling, and flaming because they don't like what we have to say.

If someone is fat, we tell them they are fat. If they are ugly we tell them they are ugly. If they want to have sex with a dog, we tell them that they probably have psychological problems. If they want to be a single mother, we tell them that their psychological issues are greater than the dog rapist. It's realistic, but it's not nice, and therefore seems like a flame.

In LI most people post their problems there, expecting people to respond from behind a white picket fence. The cynic will jump over the picket fence and slap the person in the face with harsh reality. And because it hurts, it looks like flaming even when it really isn't.

So, like, what is the general attitude of a cynic?
There are as many ways to be cynical as there are cynics. In order to demonstrate this, I'll use the various Peabody Pirates as examples.

Some people are flat and curt, like Cathl, cutting off illusions with short sentences, which usually cause people to attempt to justify their positions, and therefore expose more of their ridiculous illusions for attack.

Others, like myself, tend to be more verbose and longwinded, in order to extort humor from situations. Our posts tend to hide the humor or satire inherent in them, but they are always there, generally.

Others, like Shoebert McShoeington, don't address a ridiculous problem as ridiculous, but use alternate means to show the poster how illogical/idiotic/ridiculous, they are. These often include ridiculous stories and analogies, which help show how ridiculous the poster is.

The commonality between all of us is that we are exposing the reality of an individual's situation, despite our use of different mediums.

There are no set guidelines to being cynical. In fact, most cynics are less on the 'offense' than the Peabody Pirates. While the Peabodies take pains to make their posts humorous, most cynics totally forgo this option, and only comment on how stupid a situation or ridiculous a situation is. And in fact, a goodly deal will discuss how to fix it.

Therefore there is no right or wrong way to do it, so long as you're using the scope of reality.

So, you're all just bitter, right?
No, we're not, actually. There are things we like, and many that we don't. We tend to address those things that we don't like because well, they need to be fixed. If something is good and well, we don't need to comment on it, because if it's not broken, don't fix it. If it is broken, it needs to be fixed, and addressed. Therefore though cynics always seem to find the negative in all situations, it's actually that we tend to only comment about negative situations.

Could you guys just leave us alone? Please?!
No. It's part of our nature, I suppose. We don't like distorted views of the world, as they are dishonest.

Sooo.. Is the glass half empty or half full?
-If it is half empty you're an emo idiot.
-If it is half full you're a foolish optimist.
-If you're going to contemplate the matter, I'm going to laugh at you for wasting so much time, and probably call you wasteful.
-Therefore you should shut the hell up, and finish your f-ing glass of water before I drink it.

Genius. I expect this level of achievement from you in the future.

Yeah, I have no idea why trolls have become so prominant lately. It's very unpleasant.

I think Chalda beat you, En. You better step it up now.