re: #200 Floral Giraffe

The fan club!

I don’t talk about the fan club much, but that’s what they are.

it’s sorta like pro-wrestling, but in reverse, they’ve created a narrative of anger in their heads, and that’s important to them, so they watch every post, obsess over every poster. Some of those guys are pretty bright, really bright! Isn’t there a guy writing software just to track comments here? Pretty dedicated and impressive in a bizarro sense. but smart people get addicted to opiates and distracted by things of little consequence. Smart people…well, we all ain’t as smart as we thinks we is.

Much like how people live vicariously through rock stars or sports figures, and get worked up to the point of screaming over a baseball game.

We’re their pro wrestling, we’re their sports contest. because they have all this emotional investment over the place that kicked them out. They’re still all 9/11 Never Forget Get The Muslims War Of Civilizations, they came to LGf because they were those people. And then LGF moved on. They stayed the same, because they’re tribalist conservatives and 9/11 fetishists and LGF became an unambiguously hostile environment to them, their comraderie was disintegrating. They claim ownership over a thing which never belonged to them. it’s a Blog. it’s not your home. Not mine. it’s a guy’s blog, andf we’re all guests.

Every seen guys who are fans of a band, then the band changes direction and the fans get furious, because they believe they’re owed a specific kind of music from the band? because they were LOYAL dammit, and you gotta play the music we got into you for!

Anyway, that’s those guys. And they’re not unusual. This schism thing, it’s always happening, every day. I’ve been on dozens of different online communities, since the 80’s. GEnie, Prodigy, Compuserve, pro8Star in seattle, Atari ST boards, C64 warez boards. I ran a blog from about 2002 on, for years. Had many many flamewars. And I’ve seen this happen a dozen times. A hundred times.

Schisms are easy on the internet. It’s impersonal! Nobody sees you.They happen constantly, people choose sides, they make weak-ass threats, they spy on each other, they get fired up, they goad each other on, they do little weak-sauce hacking attempts, they pull their dicks in anticipation of the next big event or the next bon mot that stokes their anger.

They actually act a lot like I used to, when I was part of one of these schisms. I was just as mad at the other Group, I had my friends, we had our enclave, we sniped, we bitched, we acted like kids.

And then i moved on, because getting into dumbass pissing matches and setting up ramparts and making some anonymous internet community your HATED ENEMY? Well, guys! That is not going to make you money, or get you a career, or make you happy, or increase your skills, or your knowledge, or anything. it’s like having a penpal you hate, but spend your life writing to.

If you spent your emotional energy bitching about a blogger who kicked you off his site, and spying on his commenters, and claiming they’re not really Jews or you want to kick the ass of someone you’ve never met, and wouldn’t know if they were standing next to you? you’re wasting your energy. That’s all it is. Waste.

And that’s probably the last thing I’ll say about those dudes for a while. I know their type. I used to be that type. I won’t lie, I peek over there. And one of the reasons I peek over there every so often is because I’m fascinated by how much some of them sounded like me and my friends , many years ago, from BBSes to twitter to facebook. I got out, and I’m a lot happier. No more usenet wars. No more wordpress skirmishes. No more BBS screaming matches. Instead of angrily spying on my enemies, I play guitar or draw pictures instead. Much more satisfying.

And that’s all I got to say. :)