This is convincing if it’s true, but the accusation against Zug seems highly debated
For now I’ll UNVOTE
the one that is used in court is “pleading the fifth”, which is the right to not give self-incriminating testimony
no yeah but the joke was that I meant to say “plead the second” instead of “plead the fifth” to imply that I was gonna shoot him
but I forgot which one the gun one was and said fourth
Ive been saying 2nd all this time
Okay, so let me explain why I thought/think Zugzwang is scummy. This isn’t a full confidence read, don’t get mistaken by me going in-depther here - I mainly just want to make my thought process clear to @jail . Zug felt like a candidate for me to apply pressure to, not necessarily my preferred elim.
Summary
But to start off maybe I’ll talk about theory. I think a lot of people look for scum in people who are “not being towny”, which usually involves lurking or posting filler, but in general I don’t find scum often exhibit those behaviors unless they’re really inexperienced or polarized. Scum are going to want to try to blend in, to appear town while not doing things that actively harm the scum win condition, and when I try to read active players this is what I look for a lot of the time - someone who is giving the appearance of contributing without saying much. And I think Zug, at least from what I’d seen early, fit that profile.
To start with, his opening is pretty fluff-heavy - I don’t think this is particularly alignment indicative and likely falls to playstyle, but is important as framing context. The first real read he gives is on Kanave, coming from the exchange #348 → #356 → #358 → #365 . I don’t eally buy this as a real read? It comes a little too free for what is a pretty nothng sequence from Kanave, and I don’t really believe someone would townread her simply for saying she forgot who she was scumredign and the reads weren’t really real.
I’ve already covered #711/#716, but in general it feels like a very superficial thing to call scummy - shading gocj for a pretty harmless post. It’s a reachand it’s the type of reach I often see come from scum straining to find a real reason to scumread someone.
This is followed by a post in response to being asked about leafia, #757, which is pretty tepid and inconclusive, ending up in nullscum, but dressed up in a lot of words.
#785 feels like it’s trying to diminish jail giving a townread on YBW, but it doesn’t really go anywhere with the exchange (followup in #786/#787/#800. This is my question - what’s the point of this exchange? Does Zug seem to care about YBW’s alignment? is Zug trying to sort jail with these posts? Or is he posting solely to make conversation? I can’t see at least at a glance where this conversation is supposed to lead.
Then there’s a lot of fluff following from that point, next substantive post is #964 which is a pretty tepid ddefense of “leafia is just beign like leafia”, which to me is a readscum often make because it’s easier to fall back on that type of meta in order to project a higher level of certainty than a townsperson usually has.
I think his handling of derps in response to luxy’s scumread feels a little opportunistic - asks about volume #1121, gives two bits of meta #1123/#1124, links a recent scumgame #1129 and votes him #1130. Now, I had said at the time the wagon was an explicit pressure wagon, and I was fine with that. But it’s also an instance where if Derps is town (which is what I’m leaning now), scum would look to possibly join the wagon in an opportunistic fashion. And it bothers me that Zug went to the effort of digging up a past scumgame from derps, but if you look at the timestamps it was only a few minutes to find the game, followeed by an immediate vote - so I don’t really think Zug ever actually bothered to read the game he linked, which suggests to me he was doing it to appear contributive but didn’t actually care to do the meta check on Derps himself.
He shades Creature in #1161/#1164. Is this a bad read? I thought it was suspect at the time so it feels cheap to ding him for it now, but it’s a read I can see scum making in that situation. My problem I guess is that Zug doesn’t really seem that interested in actually investigating/sorting the more active posters. It’s very easy to make pushes based on things like activity, it’s a lot harder to actively investigate people and parse their posts fior meaning. So do kind of like that he voted Bionic and then claimed it was a test to get Bionic to towntell, but that’s a minor note in what is otherwise a very safe ISO.
I think somewhere after this point is close to when I voted him so everything after would be post-hoc justification here, but to the point zug feels like someone giving the appearance of contributing to the game without…actually saying all that much.
I thought the “not w/w” read in #1167 was a joke, but it’s ap[parently serious based on #1179, and this hits another pet tell of mine - giving "not w/w"reads on Day 1 is a great way to appear like you’re contributing without actually saying anything meaningful at all and still keeping your options open. (caught PProph off it on Day 1 a few years ago, didn’t have the guts to push it through). It’s just a read that is unlikely toactually be useful at all.
Beyond that point…I don’t really see zug developing a worldview, or actually trying to figure people out. He’s asking a lot of questions which is a way to appear engaged, but it never seems to lead anywhere. It’s just making conversation but I can’t see any point where he’s actually looking for scum.
Writing all this made me feel like I’m convincing myself to scumread him more, which is a good way to get confirmation biased but I don’t have many other people I’d likely consider for a vote here.
1 Like
jail’s progression on me, and their emotions around it, are very towny
He gets the impression everyone is wolfreading me - if he’s town defending me, it’s easy to get that impression, because he sees no one being swayed by his confident read, showing that the thread isn’t listening. Whereas, if Jail was wolf, he’d have a realistic view of how many people are pushing me, since he’d be thinking about how and whether he can get me misexed.
Quotes
The above pretty explicitly shows that he believes everyone else is against me. Also, the way Jail tinfoils:
fits well with that view. When you feel the entire thread is against you, it’s very natural to wonder if you’re the wrong one. Versus if you accurately see that there’s just two people, it’s not too concerning.
He shows annoyance about me being pushed at multiple points - if he’s a wolf, he’s happy I’m being pushed, and doesn’t actually want to prevent me from being exed. And the way he’s expressed that annoyance is hard to fake.
Quotes / Elaboration / Devil's Advocate
The above shows some annoyance, and it’s important that it’s here (as, most likely, a villager having their townread pushed would express some). More importantly, though:
earlier part of interaction - not too important so I'm spoilering it
It’s not realistic for jail to get annoyed just at this, unless he was previously annoyed. And yeah, t!Jail wouldn’t be in a good mood if the thread has been ignoring his read, and he’s started to worry whether he’s being loud and wrong. Whereas, w!Jail is happy people are pushing a potential misexe, and knows he stands to look good from having a correct read, should I go over.
Devil's advocate
One can argue this is a sufficient reason for Jail to be annoyed. But tbh I just don’t buy that, and IMO it’s more likely the extra annoyance here (see bolded) is due to game events (ie, the same point as above).
One can also argue that Jail would be annoyed if wolves are doing badly - but the votecount, as of the post where they leave thread because they’re grumpy, was:
SirDerpsAlot (2): Luxy, Gocj
Zugzwang (2): catbae, Bionic
bystander (1): Kanave
Kiiruma (1): Jarek
guavagudetama (1): Kiiruma
Leafia (1): Wazza
catbae (1): jail
jail (1): SirDerpsAlot
Not Voting (10): guavagudetama, Brakuren, bystander, Hazardwaste, Frostwolf103, Someone, Creature, YouButWorse, Leafia, Zugzwang
The wagons aren’t large, so realistically no wolf would be in too much danger. And at least one top wagon (me) is town. Maaaaaaaaaaaaybe revisit this if Derps flips wolf, because there’s the possibility Jail is annoyed at Derps’ play, regardless of whether he expected Derps would actually go over soon. Though I doubt that because Jail doesn’t seem to be the type of player to be annoyed at a wolfmate for that.
1 Like
while I’m at it:
townreads:
Jarek
YouButWorse
Kanave
jail
Frostwolf
Luxy
weaker townleans:
sirderps
bystander
gocj
creature
bionic (extreme yolo read)
null:
Someone
leafia
brakuren
kiiruma
scumreads:
wazza
guava
zug
Hazard
this is all pretty subject to revision, like creature fels okay to me based on recent posting but i think he’d specifically play to tiptoe around me as much as possible as mafia so i kind of have to be careful because nothing he’s done is lock clearing yet. any of this can/will be subject to revision, depending on how things develop so don’t take it as being set in stone, but i feel ~relatively good about my townreads atm and think it’s a good place to start from
<3
1 Like
he doesn’t want to be unreasonably searched what can i say
u mindmeld with me all day but im null ok buddy +wolf
where did we mindmeld? genuine question i don’t remember
the thought process here:
Generally, forgetting reads is wolfy, because people usually remember real reads. But, there’s also the argument that wolves don’t want to mention they forgot their reads, because they know it’s wolfy. So, I asked if the reads are fake (since, if they’re actually fake, forgetting them is NAI).
For a while I went back and forth about how likely it is for T!Kanave to have faked that read, and how likely it is for W!Kanave to try to hide under the cover of “oh uhhhhhhh those reads are fake”
but after thinking for a while, I felt that T!Kanave faking their reads, and W!Kanave saying they were fake, are both fairly likely
which makes the fact they said they were fake ~null. While there’s still the thing that T!Kanave is more likely to be honest about forgetting it in the first place, so overall this is >rand town
idk is gira mafia!!
i hate when people say town pov mafia pov
idie
I’d been asked by YBW for a read on Leafia - which I didn’t have, so I was working through it as I typed.
I’ve already seen and read through that game - it’s how I found it so fast.
This wasn’t meant as a defense of Leafia, rather, I was trying to see why Guava was pushing Leafia for something they should probably know is false from meta.
this is fair enough I guess
I’ve been working on this now, but yesterday I was kinda lazy (and I was also like “ok what if it actually just mainly the lhf”)
my bad
from a 3p PoV this comment from Bys doesn’t make sense
This is a really good point
1 Like