Internet drama.
For the first time in years!
Most of you aren't aware, but I'm active on a Web board called the Citadel of Truth. This is where I met neat people like Rob. Most of the time it's a great place, but just now I feel the need to bitch. I've more than learned my lessing about criticizing anyone or anything on the board, so I'll use my own handy-dandy, personal, self-moderated forum to talk about it.
Tweeg returned to the board. For those of you who don't know him, he's a rabidly xenophobic Canadian with a strange obsession with the Care Bears, the belief that an un-self-consciously delivered "your mom" joke is the funniest thing ever, and no typing skills to speak of. In the past year, he's graduated school but been totally unable to find a job (can't find a computer job if you can't type? Holy shit!), his father has died, and his long-distance girlfriend (read Internet girlfriend) dumped him. For some odd reason, he's made it his mission to hurl insults at me, what are very clearly supposed to be rather personal insults, and the resulting freedom to do so back has been quite a joy to me. I'm not nearly as good as being nasty as I used to be, but I think I can get back there with practice, assuming my interest doesn't wane first. That's been the big barrier - without a job where I have the choice to either surf the net all day or sit on my ass and do nothing, I don't really have the time or inclination to keep these little "wars" going. Still, it's fun while it's fun, and then it's easilly dropped.
Magic Placebo returned, and that's a lot more annoying. I think he illustrates a huge problem with the board. For those of you who don't know anything about it, the board was originally accused of being elitist and snobbish at its inception. Now the remaining members are almost pathologically afraid of being labeled so again, and so they go to incredible lengths to try and keep anyone from ever thinking maybe that someone could perhaps have been a little curt or something. Witness the "Kathy crisis" - pretty mucheveryone hated her (except Bob), and the bitch got banned toute de suite after I left, for what I can't remember - something pretty silly. But OMG, ban someone because they annoy the fuck out of everyone in the community? You can't do that!
So now we have MP. No one likes him, that's pretty clear. And his posts are all nonsensical gibberish that still isn't particularly funny. But you can't ban him, because then people might think we are mean!
The stupid thing about it is that no one will because the board doesn't matter. It's a small board, a small community of people. And that's good - boards that matter are annoying as fuck. Witness Penny Arcade or Torch the Bridge or just about any popular board out there. It's the unimportance of the board that attracts people in the first place - Dyna too, I'd wager, for all his griping. People chat on the board as a friendly refuge from all the goatse and stupidity and fanboyism and [i]etc[/i] that happens on every other major board out there. We've all been there and we've all done that and we can easilly go back to it if we really want to. We don't, so we don't.
And even if it did matter, seriously, who the fuck cares? I hate to adopt this position again, but it's people we will never meet outside of a digital medium. It's not like we have new membership beating down the door anyways, so I don't think this positive public image is really all that effective. Given that, what do we lose by creating a place that we like?
I'll give you an example - my thursday night anime group. I get together with friends, some of who are also LJ friends, and we watch anime and shoot the shit and have snacks and whatever. We hang out and have a good time and occasionally get totally wasted. It's fun. Now, I could go to some huge dance club or bar or whatever and do that instead, but I don't, because I like the close, comfortable atmosphere of friends. I'm sure that a lot of you have your little group of pals, too.
Now, people might look at your friends and think you're too insular or too this or too that, and decide to not join your friends. Hey, oh well. It didn't sound like you had what they were looking for anyways, does it? Just sit back and have a good time. If people want to hop in, cool. If they think you're big smelly dorks, oh well, what have you lost? Some people who wouldn't have liked you anyways don't like you. Big fucking deal.
Just my two cents on the whole thing. Social interaction on the Internet seems to suffer from the same illogical bullshit every other social interaction does, but with a heaping dose of neurosis and social anxiety. It's kind of strange and disfunctional.
Most of you aren't aware, but I'm active on a Web board called the Citadel of Truth. This is where I met neat people like Rob. Most of the time it's a great place, but just now I feel the need to bitch. I've more than learned my lessing about criticizing anyone or anything on the board, so I'll use my own handy-dandy, personal, self-moderated forum to talk about it.
Tweeg returned to the board. For those of you who don't know him, he's a rabidly xenophobic Canadian with a strange obsession with the Care Bears, the belief that an un-self-consciously delivered "your mom" joke is the funniest thing ever, and no typing skills to speak of. In the past year, he's graduated school but been totally unable to find a job (can't find a computer job if you can't type? Holy shit!), his father has died, and his long-distance girlfriend (read Internet girlfriend) dumped him. For some odd reason, he's made it his mission to hurl insults at me, what are very clearly supposed to be rather personal insults, and the resulting freedom to do so back has been quite a joy to me. I'm not nearly as good as being nasty as I used to be, but I think I can get back there with practice, assuming my interest doesn't wane first. That's been the big barrier - without a job where I have the choice to either surf the net all day or sit on my ass and do nothing, I don't really have the time or inclination to keep these little "wars" going. Still, it's fun while it's fun, and then it's easilly dropped.
Magic Placebo returned, and that's a lot more annoying. I think he illustrates a huge problem with the board. For those of you who don't know anything about it, the board was originally accused of being elitist and snobbish at its inception. Now the remaining members are almost pathologically afraid of being labeled so again, and so they go to incredible lengths to try and keep anyone from ever thinking maybe that someone could perhaps have been a little curt or something. Witness the "Kathy crisis" - pretty mucheveryone hated her (except Bob), and the bitch got banned toute de suite after I left, for what I can't remember - something pretty silly. But OMG, ban someone because they annoy the fuck out of everyone in the community? You can't do that!
So now we have MP. No one likes him, that's pretty clear. And his posts are all nonsensical gibberish that still isn't particularly funny. But you can't ban him, because then people might think we are mean!
The stupid thing about it is that no one will because the board doesn't matter. It's a small board, a small community of people. And that's good - boards that matter are annoying as fuck. Witness Penny Arcade or Torch the Bridge or just about any popular board out there. It's the unimportance of the board that attracts people in the first place - Dyna too, I'd wager, for all his griping. People chat on the board as a friendly refuge from all the goatse and stupidity and fanboyism and [i]etc[/i] that happens on every other major board out there. We've all been there and we've all done that and we can easilly go back to it if we really want to. We don't, so we don't.
And even if it did matter, seriously, who the fuck cares? I hate to adopt this position again, but it's people we will never meet outside of a digital medium. It's not like we have new membership beating down the door anyways, so I don't think this positive public image is really all that effective. Given that, what do we lose by creating a place that we like?
I'll give you an example - my thursday night anime group. I get together with friends, some of who are also LJ friends, and we watch anime and shoot the shit and have snacks and whatever. We hang out and have a good time and occasionally get totally wasted. It's fun. Now, I could go to some huge dance club or bar or whatever and do that instead, but I don't, because I like the close, comfortable atmosphere of friends. I'm sure that a lot of you have your little group of pals, too.
Now, people might look at your friends and think you're too insular or too this or too that, and decide to not join your friends. Hey, oh well. It didn't sound like you had what they were looking for anyways, does it? Just sit back and have a good time. If people want to hop in, cool. If they think you're big smelly dorks, oh well, what have you lost? Some people who wouldn't have liked you anyways don't like you. Big fucking deal.
Just my two cents on the whole thing. Social interaction on the Internet seems to suffer from the same illogical bullshit every other social interaction does, but with a heaping dose of neurosis and social anxiety. It's kind of strange and disfunctional.