Debate
A community on LiveJournal that occasionally proves to be the breeding grounds for all kinds of incredible drama. Just trolling the debate community slightly can often net tons of laughs, as many of the users take themselves very seriously. It is almost impossible to get banned from Debate without directly trying to.
Let's meet Debate
Debate was created by 
absolutcalm at some point in LiveJournal's mythic history. To all modern knowledge its userinfo has been handed down from that point like a pair of stone tablets, and is just as archaic and irrelevant to the community as a whole. Other than the moderators, who live in eternal fear of Absolutcalm, the rules and guidelines on the userinfo are never cited by anybody that isn't a troll.
The moderators of Debate have changed several times throughout the community's time-span and the community can probably be dated based entirely on the period between a flavor-of-the-month poster being granted moderator powers, and the 'core mods' removing those powers once they realized that the community was improving.
Absolutcalm left the community several years ago and only returns to do one of two things,
- Delete Debate and claim the reason was because people were breaking ToS. When this occurs the community will invariably be undeleted after two days without any breach of ToS being shown to exist, and without anything having actually been deleted from the community.
- Yell at the moderators for not doing a good enough job of enforcing rules he's thought of but hasn't yet told them.
Both events will be accompanied by him complaining that Debate "has gone to shit", or is "overrun with trolls" - despite this being the natural state of Debate for as long as anybody can remember.
Debate Clones
The primal nature of Debate, a pool of slime with no purpose, has proven to be a prime evolutionary ground for inane spin-offs. There are two categories of Debate spin-offs: the ones that the members create in order to fulfill a function they perceive as missing, and the ones that are created by people Debate members flamed out of the community - almost without exception during Debate Rape. Normally, this new community will immediately be overwhelmed with debate members and destroyed. (i.e. worthydebate).
- Debate Functionaries
- Debate_mods - co-ordinates moderation, and serves as an ideal place for Absolutcalm to discuss things with the moderators that he never uses for such.
- Debate_classics - provides easy access to all the great debates that are now unreadable due to brainlesswonder getting his accounts suspended every two weeks.
- Debate_folks - allows Debate members to talk about each other without making ad hominems.
- Debate_arena - allows Debate members to satiate their gigantic egos through pretending to be gladiators.
- Vs_and_tap_it - allows Debate members to talk about which unachievable woman they like the best.
- Debate_laws2 - allows Debate members to chronicle the various laws of the internets
- Failed Debate Spin-offs (think Trapper John, M.D.)
- debate_furries
- retard_debate
- debate2
- debate_awards
- debate_drunks
- debate_irc
- Inferior Debate Clones
- Thought_club - created by Iworshipsatin, constant source of lulz for real Debate members.
- Worthydebate - created by sweetbums, nothing special.
- Elitedebate
- Top_debater - created by vriane, current residence of disconscious where she posts about Nazi Isræl and the successful run of communism in the USSR.
- Beniceorshutup
Debate Rape
The phenomenon that happens whenever the words "I am new" occur in a post. Debate Rape will lead to the entire post being ignored in favor of personal insults, talking about bullshit, and generally any behavior that results in the poster receiving emailed responses but doesn't directly address the debate.
During Debate Rape bets will be placed, based on the original poster's responses, as to what name the Debate clone will take.
Jumped the shark
Members of Debate have been discussing when, exactly, it jumped the shark for well over two years now. The answer is a paradox because despite continuous arguments that it is "now a shithole", the only posts offered in support of a Golden Age of Debate have four replies to them that all consist of "I agree" in varying levels of verbosity.
The first law of Debate is that any time the members of it agree on a specific moment when the shark was jumped, Debate will improve for a month and everybody will forget about the conversation. The second is that as time passes, the probability that that single month will be named as a period before the shark was jumped approaches 1.
The incidence of shark-jumping debates has deceased to 0 ever since Debate 'mascot' mr_flagg was banned from the community after he, himself, jumped the shark by hi-jacking the entire community - after the moderators gave him mod powers as part of an April Fools' Day joke - because he felt that nobody was taking him seriously.
As of July 26, 2005 Debate has officially lost any semblance of funny. Moderated posts, membership, and frequently screened comments have killed the lulz.
Continental Drift
During the hi-jacking of 2004 the remainder of the vanguards of Debate leaked into political communities - desperate for their fix of stupid comments and the belittling of others. Most of them have not returned to Debate.
It is now believed that the LJ Community liberal is the new Debate.
Debate Memes
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