Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?

I could name a bunch if I spent 30 seconds looking. I could probably name half a dozen others - including names most people would recognise, e.g julian assange - who I think (but am not 100% sure from memory) suffered similar restrictions without even searching.

I happened to name Mitnick because of the "national security" example.

I noticed that you haven't given any reasoning as to why a receptionist working at a hospital would not consider "I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" reasonable, or why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid? Hospital receptionists deal with all kinds of edge cases all the time.

"I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" is perfectly reasonable and not at all outlandish if you're a sex offender.

"I'm banned from using smartphones because I'm a hazard to national security" is not reasonable. it's crazy. like, who the hell asked? are you saying that if you manage to get your hands on an iPhone the state would be in danger? are you bragging? trying to impress me? i've never heard anyone say this before, it doesn't make sense. are you court ordered to say this? why wouldn't you say that you just don't have one?

that's a more likely thought process than "oh yes, just another mean, lean walking threat to the security of the state. i hear this all the time when asking someone if they want a text message confirmation of their appointment" as the short, wimpy looking man wearing khaki trousers you're serving continues to grin at you disconcertingly.

  > are you bragging? trying to impress me?

Yes and yes! That is, indeed, exactly what a person who is part of that culture would likely do. For example Tsutomu Shimomura is hilariously famous for it - the book he wrote about capturing Mitnick is a great example. And part of the reason Mitnick's restrictions were so absurd was that he liked to make grandiose and outlandish claims, and they were believed. All those guys LOVED to toot their own horn, and never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I think it only really stopped being a thing because people started going to jail and their silly claims were used against them in that process.

I noticed that in your simulated internal monologue you didn't actually mention not believing that it was true at any point. It's certainly far more plausible than your "i don't have a phone because aliens took it".

I also noticed that you still haven't given any rationale as to why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid. Maybe you forgot.

I think that in reality, your internal monologue is incorrect. I think your average hospital receptionist would effectively stop listening/caring after "I don't have a smartphone", and just get on with her work without thinking about it much at all, because she's too busy to bother with it and doesn't actually care very much at all why you don't have a smartphone. Hospital receptionists are busy people and they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.

Not sure why you’re focusing too much on the hospital receptionist part - in reality they deal with crazy people all the time.

It’s ok to think that the average reaction to someone pronouncing that they are a ‘hazard to national security’ in otherwise normal interactions wouldn’t be ‘well that person is crazy’. You don’t need to take it so personally.

I just hope you don’t go around saying awkward outlandish grandiose lies to strangers thinking their reaction is anything other than “well you’re crazy”.

Interesting, I didn't know goalposts could move quite so fast or often.

Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist, or why you chose to echo my point that they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.

I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security, and that 'He might as well say "i don't have a phone because aliens took it"'.

You chose to repeatedly fail, despite being prompted, to address even a single point I raised to counter your claims, instead shifting goalposts and making up invalid scenarios to try to prove some kind of point unrelated to your initial premise. It seems like you're the one taking things weirdly personally.

it's always good to ensure you read what you are replying to, just so everyone is on the same page.

> Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist

from: "When I run into this (most recently at a hospital)"

> I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security

and we're back to "Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?"

i guess your long winded answer to that is "yes", and i guess we'll just leave this discussion at that because i don't believe there is much to add to that.

in the future, you could have just replied "yes" to that comment and saved us all some time. instead you derailed the discussion because you couldn't identify the outlandish part in the sentence "i'm banned from using a phone by court order because i'm a threat to national security", then continued to focus on what a specific receptionist might think rather than see that it's obviously a stand-in for someone else you're interacting with.

to summarise for you in clear language, because i think you perhaps you need to hear this:

- telling someone else that you are a threat to national security when you are, in fact, not a threat to national security is a strange, outlandish lie

- it is very obvious to people if you tell them strange, outlandish lies during a conversation

- the general reaction to you doing something abnormal like that during a otherwise normal situation is for the other person to consider you abnormal

- the colloquial, catch-all term for this is "crazy"

Well it seems I forgot a detail, and you didn't make up the hospital receptionist, you just brought her up and then for some reason asked why I was responding to the scenario you brought up.

  > and we're back to "Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?"

No, I already responded to that, pointing out that I could name a bunch of others if I spent 30 seconds on it. And in fact i did name another right there. And you totally failed to respond to that part of my post and instead decided to wildly guess what the internal monologue of a receptionist might be, as if that was somehow relevant.

It's always good to ensure you read what you're replying to, just so everyone is on the same page.

In the future, you could have just replied "ok so my comment was hyperbolic" to my initial post and saved us all some time. Instead you derailed the discussion by trying to shift goalposts and change the subject to something you thought you could "win", for some reason.

There's other things in your long-winded posts which I could respond to, but given that you've repeatedly failed to respond at all to points I've made, for example where I asked why you seem to think there's no middle ground between "common" and "outlandish lie", but why would I bother? It's not like you'd respond to any points showing how your logic is flawed. So I guess we'll just leave this discussion at that because i don't believe there is much to add to that.

To summarise this for you in clear language, since I think you perhaps need to hear this:

* There are multiple already-cited precedents for exactly the type of thing you're calling an "outlandish and obvious lie". If you'd like more examples, I'd suggest a search engine, where you'll find lots of them.

* It's possible for things to be uncommon edge-cases without being "outlandish" or "obvious lies"

* Hospital receptionists deal with these uncommon edge cases all the time, and are trained to do so. They also regularly deal with crazy people too, and are vanishingly unlikely to even bat an eye at the claim you're calling out. It's unlikely to be the craziest thing they've heard today. And it might even be true.

* There's no compelling, widely-accepted evidence of extraterrestrial visitations to earth, or of their interest in smartphones. Which makes the claim "i don't have a phone because aliens took it" orders of magnitude less likely to be true than the claim that one doesn't have a phone because a court decided that they are a threat to national security - something that, while uncommon, has definitely happened.

* Simply assuming that something is a lie because you haven't personally heard of it before is an excellent way to be incorrect.

* It's actually not a personal attack when someone points out that your logic is flawed and that you're lacking relevant information. And so you probably shouldn't take such things personally and get all upset because your obvious, incorrect hyperbole was called out for what it was.