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remram | on: Ross Ulbricht granted a full pardon
> When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought

You mean "when I read the part where the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought"?

This part makes your comment super confusing. Where you there then or later?

inopinatus | parent | next
I believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, serendipitously aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly immerse us in medias res as we follow their remark.

Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.

InDubioProRubio | root | parent
[flagged]
vidarh | root | parent | next
Singular "they" dates at least back as far as the 14th century, and I've yet to meet a person who objects to it but does not use it themselves now and again without even noticing if you observe them speak enough. It's entirely integral to English.

The interlude during which some pushed for "they" to be exclusively plural, was a mere brief blip in the history of the language.

It's also a couple of centuries older than singular "you", so if you want to complain about a pronoun changing between singular and plural, that's a better candidate.

defrost | root | parent | next
In commonwealth english "they" can and frequently does work to indicate a singular person.

Here it's clear the word is referring to a singular stranger.

oneeyedpigeon | root | parent
What word would you use instead in this specific case?
InDubioProRubio | root | parent
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inopinatus | root | parent | next
I’ve been writing they to refer to individuals in the third person for five decades. Usage of they as a neutral singular pronoun began in the 14th century. Stercus alibi iace, outrage monkey.
oharapj | root | parent | next
It's so funny how outrage poisoned partisans have such crushing issues with pronouns. The word 'They' has been used to refer to individuals for hundreds of years. Get a life
Nevermark | root | parent
> It's so funny how outrage poisoned partisans have such crushing issues with pronouns.

They might just be illiterate.

Let’s all be charitable.

oneeyedpigeon | root | parent
Ok, and in this case, those pronouns are...?
InDubioProRubio | root | parent
I dont know, ask the commenter - he who reads OPs story and comments on it, projects himself into it when commenting on it.. there is no fixed answer to this.
oneeyedpigeon | root | parent | next
There is a fixed answer: the neutral pronoun "they" which English speakers have been using for 700 years.
defrost | root | parent
If you're not a native English speaker and need help with this then do feel free to ask.

Many of us here have spoken English since birth and correctly used "they" in the manner above for several decades.

| parent | next
{"deleted":true,"id":42788248,"parent":42788164,"time":1737513396,"type":"comment"}
coldtea | parent | next
It's obvious what is meant given the context...
wolfgang42 | parent
I thought that starting my story in media res would make for a better dramatic effect, but it seems I overestimated my audience and went a little too heavy on the narrative ellipsis.
sdwr | root | parent | next
Boo! Don't blame the audience!

> Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.

Alternately:

> Ulbricht had walked into the public library

gives the game away.

If you still want to play around a bit:

> I could see where Ulbricht walked into the public library. The table he sat at. I looked up and saw where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.

That way you are leaving some ambiguity, but are not directly lying with the tenses.

pineaux | root | parent
Well, a lot of times the audience is to blame... There are many people that are stupid, aren't trained in style figures of writing or just not trained in reading in a way that allows for complex conceptual frameworks. It also happens in software: someone writes great code, it's very complex and some people don't understand it and blame the author of writing unreadable code. Its easy to call something unreadable if you don't understand what it's saying. Let me bring it differently: it takes two to tango. I found his story interesting and engaging. Let me bring it in another way: Sometimes the joke is brilliant, but the audience just doesn't understand it. It's not a bad joke or a bad comedian. It's a bad audience.

To go into the meat of this: he is imagining it while reading in the same location as the incident happened. This is a style of writing. It's definitely not wrong.

oneeyedpigeon | root | parent
To paraphrase the asshole quote: "if one person misunderstands you, that's their fault; if everyone does, it's yours". The same goes for your comedian analogy: sure, you can tell a brilliant joke in French to a Chinese audience, but why?
Dylan16807 | root | parent | next
I think you could have told it as experiencing the events without making your post confusing, but you'd have to redo your first paragraph. Your first paragraph is external, meta, and places his arrest in your past, which throws off the effect when that suddenly changes in the next sentence. It's not the audience's fault that that is hard to parse.
oneeyedpigeon | root | parent | next
> it seems I overestimated my audience

I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, somebody who aspires to be a better writer. But, no, this clarifies that you're just pretentious.

TeMPOraL | root | parent | next
Can you form vivid mental images in your head?

Many of us can't. Personally, for nearly three decades I thought the ability to vividly experience a book this way was just some overused and extremely exaggerated metaphor - and then I discovered aphantasia is a thing, and I score close to top of its severity scale.

So perhaps it's less about your starting point, and more about describing a frame of mind some in the audience don't have, and can't relate to.

Curiously, I don't recall ever seeing this particular style of writing before, in any of the books I ever read.

ipaddr | root | parent | next
I found it interesting and could visualize you as you were visualizing it while reading. The only part that made me go back was I thought he sat down to your table until I reread you could see the table he sat down at years ago.
homebrewer | root | parent | next
> I overestimated my audience

How many languages do you speak? A large part of this site speaks at least two, and usually English is not the first one of them.

vasco | root | parent | next
I've seen this type of thing recently and also have been told some comments were "obviously" meaning something else. I think people must've stopped reading books and lost interpretation skills.
kurisufag | root | parent
I enjoyed it, personally.