Since back in the day when I started sp debate kids have been saying the same thing over and over again
“Oh sp, your a genius and I totally agree with XYZ, however judges don’t like that so untill judges change I will just keep doing the losing thing that I have been doing kthnxbai”.
Most recently Anshu’s sock puppet echoed these sentiments in regards to making arguments about evidence. So lets clear this up once and for all: this is not a chicken/egg thing, debaters drive change- not judges. Let’s look at this logically with 2 examples: K’s and CPs. Here is how debaters caused CP’s to happen
1. Debaters on the neg hated losing
2. They thought “hmm, let me see… how can I … “counter” if you will… all these aff plans…
3. They read some CP’s
4. Judges were like “uh this is weird, don’t know how I feel about this”
5. Bad ass debaters were like “tough I am gonna keep reading this”
6. Judges were like “ok”
How would this have worked if judges created the change?
1. Judges are like “i sure don’t like voting aff so much”
2.?????
3. Profit.
What? Argument innovation has to be driven by debaters because you are the ones making the arguments. Debate is like fashion only lamer and generally people eat things. Somebody decides “cap K is the new black” , then they get to a late elim at a tournament and all their little disciples are like “super sweet cap K”. These people are like old navy- they mass produce a cheap immitation of the original product. Now next weekend I am at a tournament with the cap K every round and I’m like “well this is stupid”- how do I as a judge go about changing that? Well I can write in my judge philosophy- how well does that work? Not at all. Since I wrote it my JP has had a pretty big section about
-how I think pics are ridic
-how the politics disad has no link threshold and is a joke
-XYZ other things
Most people still go for politics /ridic strats and the aff just rolls over.
The other thing I could do is start writing ablog- but only narcisistic losers would do that.
Now- The K. What happend here- since we can agree the K is less universally accepted than say a CP. Did this happen because
1. Judges were sitting there going “man, I really wish someone would bring back the question of being cause, jesus, we’ve almost totally forgotten about that mother”
or
2. Debaters were like “hmmm, super cheap shot win ftw”
You be the judge… although now that you are a judge you are largely incapable of changing anything.
Now we get to the meat of the issue- you are all probably thinking “oh well great, what can I do, I will just make this arg and then judges will blow it off and I’ll be like “i told you so”.
Seriously, get over it. Before you wrote (insert the stupid aff you read last year) you didn’t worry- oh will judges accept this? You just did it, and you got to a tournament and did your thing. Judges are like sheep- if you tell them what to do and you insist on it they will do it. There is a reason the pool of successful debaters contains so many cocky d-bags in it- because they lack any social graces and so they aren’t opposed to just demanding that people do things for them. Most people lack the gumption to stand up to people like this so the judge/other team just let it slide.
I wrote up a bunch of examples of times this has occured but they are totally irrelevant. The point is this- Insist on it. The best debaters are people who by the end of their speech have their opponents believing that their arguments were silly and fraudulous- they do this because they hammer it home. All of you have grown up in a world of speed and tech and offense/defense and much like calculative thinkers you can’t envision that another world is even possible. However, such a world existed only like a decade ago. When I debated in HS through my junior year judge comments I got were always too fast, conditionality is illegit, risk of solvency deficit to states o/w politics etc etc. And this wasn’t at like bumpkin local tournaments either. But did I quit? Did I listen to judge comments and learn from them and adapt? Of course not, I put my head down and plowed through it and now I am in a promising career field with plenty of opportunities for advancement…
Generally, when I see people try and go out on a limb and try a new argument they mutter it out the side of thier mouth and try and sneak it in like its something to be ashamed of, and they don’t forcefully extend it. No value to life- that they will scream about for 5 minutes but blog evidence bad- heavens no they can’t talk about that with any sort of emphasis.
So in summation- before you reply with another “judges are the problem blah blah blah” rant, think about this:
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