"Are you going to shave or what?" My wife asked me. I hadn't shaved for four days, and she was clearly annoyed. This is when the light went off in my head:

'I can create an issue, resolve that issue (after she complained about it enough) and 'score some points.' Why would I do this? Because I'm generally kind of a screw up. So I try to get points where I can. And this seemed like an easy way to do it. I just hadn't shaved for four days. I would've gladly shaved. It made absolutely no difference to me one way or the other. But feeding off my wife's annoyance, I sensed opportunity.

Now of course, I played it up a bit. 'Honey, I had a goatee for a long time, blah blah blah.'

'Fine. We'll see how it looks.'

I was in. Clearly this was an issue that was going to annoy her. I would hem and haw over the next few days, you know, to really just lay it on so that when I capitulated, I'd have the old 'well, honey, I did what you wanted' card at some point down the road. I don't have many of those cards, and I need all I can get.

Twelve hours later, we're walking to dinner and she looks at me and goes 'I like it.'

Uh-oh. This was not expected. Let me explain something. I'm a wash and dry kind of guy. I don't like spending a lot of time getting ready in the morning. I've used an electric shaver for years because it's quicker. Now, I have to manually shave and groom my beard. Now it's costing me time. Now I care. I want the damn thing off of my face now.

Over the next couple of days, everywhere we went, people (especially girls) raved about it. I got hit on at a gig.

This was not going according to plan. At all.

Finally, I broke down and I told my wife. 'You know, I just grew this thing to piss you off.'

She laughed. And laughed.

So now I'm kind of stuck with it for awhile.

What does this have to do with CN?

Conflict creation. We've all seen it done. Alliance A wants to declare on Alliance B. Unfortunately, they can't seem to find a reason beyond 'I don't like you' and for some reason, no one wants to say that. So instead, they 'create a conflict' often over things that they may not even really care about one way or the other. Maybe the goal is to look tough, maybe it's to engender favorable treatment by another alliance, maybe it's to mask an activity or conflict that might go against their own goals.

And in CN, between OWF, the AP forums, and IRC, there is a plethora of material that can be used to 'create the conflict.'

However, keep in mind, when 'creating a conflict' you may well end up with unintended results.

You may just end up gaining no capital, and end up with a beard you didn't really want.