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CaringandReal -> RE: It's rather sad actually... (11/15/2010 5:51:44 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: sunshinemiss
Recently there has been a spate of whiney whiney posts. We can't find what we want; the perfect, true, real x, y, or z (sub, slave, unicorn, dom, fetishist, master, mistress, cuckold, silver tongued devil) has not fallen into my mailbox within ten minutes of my joining this site; you aren't doing it the right way! The real and trues are strong and passionate - they need to tone that nonsense DOWN and listen to ME (Capital = M-type of course)... And dammit I can't get oral sex from nobody! You don't do it my way, therefore you are wrong! I know the onliest, rightest, perfectliest way! I've been around for a bazillion years and will drop some names to prove it!
What is up with all this?! Seriously.
LOL! Great post! Capital M, of course! (hats off to you)
In answer to your question, it may be just a phase. Message boards seem to have moods, the way the individuals that comprise them do. If this mesasge board were a person, I would strongly urge it at this time to take something for its digestion....and for pete's sake, to stop trying to regulate its colon in such an "anal-retentive" fashion! :/
Or it could be age-related symptoms. I've noticed this over the years (Ok, decades) this I've been communicating over a computer. There's a growth cycle to many message boards, or several growth cycles. The "feel" of this place to me at the moment is dry and arid, and I "see" a wrinkled 70-something face wearing a prune frown. Sometimes I go back a few years into the archives and the intellectual/emotional climate-change astonishing: it's like stepping out of an arid desert into Un'goro Crater (er, a verdant jungle)! Luxiourous growth of ideas was everywhere. Open-mindedness, even in some of the posters that seem so deadly closed today, was also rife. It makes me almost like them. (It certainly makes me curious about WTF happened to them.) The attitudes of some who are now so jaded and bitter were so open and fresh then! My tentative guess for this message board is that it's going to worsen for a while and drive away many, even the die-hard posters, and then the new crowd even now trickling in, will assume control and there will a renaissance of sorts. But the new growth will look a lot different than the old growth and will probably alienate older posters who cannot accomodate it. Those who like new things, and you certainly seem to be in that group, sunshinemiss, will have no problem at all when the sea change comes.
While individual posters aren't exactly in control of the "elimination habits" around here, there are certain things we can do to change the overall health of this place, however decrepit it has gotten.
First, ignore the whine threads (or other negative threads), don't even read them no matter how fascinating they seem. And never post in them, even if you believe you have something really worthwhile to contribute. (I've learned that fairly recently--these threads are contaminated grounds and will infect you with their poisonous malice far more quickly and effectively than your single post will help anything.) If you find yourself by accident in one, stop reading it. Ignore it. If I read these threads, I'm more likely to feel angry/whiney, and maybe even contribute to the generally bad atmosphere with a reactive post.
Second (and I realize you in particular know this already but I'm not just writing to you), work hard to think up a thought-provoking threads. See this as your obligation if you hate the overall trend on the message board, your contribution to making it a better place. It doesn't have to be on something radically new, just a topic that wasn't already discussed (as far as you know) in the last week or two. It's scary to start threads. I almost never do so, because I don't want to face the potential shame of nobody responding to one. But I think it's what we all need to do if we want to keep this place more interesting than annoying. Ask questions in your thread, don't make it about a personal issue (I think all those personal-issue threads add to the general enui and lack of creativeness that's been a recent curse around here), but do make it about something you are very interested in or passionate about.
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