From experience. Getting early, sincere suspicion on you as scum is very frustrating. I'm fairly certain he wasn't banking on people finding him scummy this soon into the game. And so far, his reactions seem to fit pretty well with him being frustrated scum.
PPE: 1
(Sorry, this is getting broken up into multiple posts since I'm having trouble formatting on my tablet).
Here's scummy post #1. Getting frustrated at suspicion definitely isn't a scum trait or a town trait, it happens to everyone -- no one likes being lynched, especially when the arguments appear to be fairly empty. What's scummy about this post is that Ichi's taking a neutral action and trying to turn it into Joseph being scummy. Rather than looking at the evidence and making a conclusion, this reads to me like Ichi starting with the conclusion (Joseph = scum) and fitting the evidence to that conclusion.
This can come from both scum trying to manufacture reasons (since they don't have gut reads or anything of the such), or town who's already made up their mind and wants to "prove" their read is correct.
Obviously you either missed or chose to ignore my last sentence. There are different kinds of frustration--and different ways to react to suspicion on you. So far, I have found Joseph's strategy of continuing to joke about being scummy (I understand that he has stopped doing this in recent posts) difficult to see why town would continue to act in that manner. Why would town do this when it is obviously anti-town and was what got him suspected in the first place? Plus, his play just feels a little apathetic. He's not really defending his behavior at all. It's more like a passive defense and a hope that people's attention goes elsewhere. He pretty much admits that too.
I just don't see Joseph trying here at all. He claims scum. And how does he expect to avert people's scumreads on him for all of his "joking"? By doing the same thing and purposefully acting scummy--he's embracing it. This is our lynch today people.
Scummy post #2 -- the same traits as scummy post #1. People will try to avoid lynches as town or scum, there's nothing in Joseph's behavior that you've pointed out that I think is even close to an exclusive scum behavior, but once again you're attributing this to Joseph clearly being scum.
So basically what this comes down to is you don't think Joseph's behavior is a scumtell for him. I disagree. Interesting that you single me out for having the same reasons that other people are voting him. This just feels bad to me.
I'm open to lynching someone else today, but Joseph has acted in a very scummy matter--no matter how much you and WW say his behavior is a null tell, it doesn't feel that way to me. People have taken strong stances on him--and I feel like his partners are working to dissipate that suspicion.
TLDR: you're singling me out from the group that all has pretty similar reasons for voting for Joseph. The question is why?
PPE: ADK I agree completely.
PPE: TA. I can understand your point of view I guess. I feel pretty zealous that Joseph is scum. That being said, I'm not someone that believes in cutting days prematurely short, or going with the first real wagon that shows up D1. It's not impossible for me to be convinced that Joseph isn't scum--it isn't even unlikely. I joined the wagon to help force reactions out of him, and so far those reactions haven't really convinced me at all.