Amos, you took the words out of my mouth: "Aw, Homeless, mate, lighten up a little"

And Homeless - "I think that cluttering up a conversation with inane babble is disrespectful. I think that someone telling me that my opinion is invalid is disrespectful."

Don't you think there's a contradiction between those two sentences? You dismiss what other people say as "inane babble", so see that as a "respectful" thing to say - and then say that "invalid" is "dispespectful.

And that's not me being disrespectful. It's me suggesting that you are being dispespectful. I happen to agree that we shouldn't be disrespectful of each other, and that when we are we threaten the fragile ecology of the Mudcat Oasis.

Respecting each other means accepting that we don't all have exactly the same sense of humour. (Especially when we are not in a business meeting.) Which is hardly surprising since we are scattered all over the planet. (And I think some of us may be from further affield still...)

I'm reminded of the stories about how different cultures have different assumptions about what is the right and polite distance to stand from someone you are talking to. Get two people from cultures with differentideas about that at an international meeting of some kind, and the ones who think it's polite to stand 18 inches apart pursue the retreating two-foot aparters around the room.

That kind of thing desn't mean people are being unfriendly, it just means we aren't all the same. The more variety the better. Deliberate nastiness is the only variety that doesn't belong (except that there's no way to keep it out sometimes, sadly).