But that supports my point that Zak is engaged in Socratic questions. Though perhaps more the sort of questions that pissed off his listeners and that earned him a cup of hemlock as his reward for his 'service' to his fellow Athenian citizens.
They kinda look like Socratic questions, but Socrates would build off of the answers he received, while Zak just keeps doing repeating his questions over and over, pissing people off and eventually getting hemlocked by rpgnet. Though they do seem to be in a hemlock mood the last few years, so that's not saying much.
Pretty much every person I've seen online who goes apeshit over the "Zak Question Thing" is someone who was asked very simple straightforward questions and then turned themselves into knots trying to make it seem like they were being interrogated by Satan's own Lawyer.
The reason I said "Zak's shtick" is that it typically goes like this:
Poster Zak disagrees with (pzdw): says something Zak doesn't like.
Zak: Jumps in with a way over the top numbered list of a dozen or so questions, some with sub-questions, many with follow ups further down the list, many of them leading "gotcha" questions, by which I mean Zak implies a certain answer is correct, and a "wrong" answer is unethical, and gets in pzdw's face on that point.
pzdw tries to engage, and answers the questions as best they can.
Zak gets pissed off at the answers because they aren't what he was looking for (saying pzdw [strike]is an idiot[/strike]
misunderstood the questions), and re-states the questions, rewording them and becoming more aggressive.
pzdw is confused, and tries again.
Zak is unsatisfied, and [strike]pixel bitches[/strike]
asks again.
pzdw get frustrated because it doesn't seem to matter how they answer the questions, they always seem to get it wrong. Like being interrogated when you don't know what they hell the interrogator wants you to say, and they are going to keep asking until you say it. Pzdw gives up after this or a couple more fruitless cycles.
Zak declares pzdw is a liar.
After seeing this exact scenario play out over and over again, I now just skip those posts since the signal to noise ratio in them is all noise and no signal.
But like I said, when the signal to noise ratio is much higher, when he's not doing this and he's talking about rpgs (or sometimes on art) he frequently has useful and interesting things to say.
*Except maybe that one time when he seemed to eventually figure out what multiple pzdw's were saying over the course of a couple hundred posts. Maybe in the rpg.net thread that he eventually got banned in? I can't quite remember. But then again it was an rpg thread, not one like this.