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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5106731" data-attributes="member: 3424">At the risk of repeating myself, it is not pointless even if some people can't be persuaded or have their concern addressed, but only if all people can't be persuaded or have their concern addressed. The people being persuaded need not even include the person taking part in the conversation! Because these exchanges take place in a public forum, the audience includes everyone reading the messageboard post (Hi, everyone! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />). If just one person reads a post and concludes, "I used to believe that this was a video game trope, but now I see that it did not originate with video games," or "I used to think this was unrealistic, but I now have an idea of how to make it plausible," then I believe that the discussion was not pointless. What to me is closer to pointless is the simple declaration that, "This is videogamey!" with no further elaboration. I wouldn't say it's completely pointless because it still tells me that the speaker thinks something is similar to video games. It's the why and the how that would lead to a more interesting discussion, provided, of course, the speaker is interested in such a discussion and does not consider it pointless.</blockquote>