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Never too tense for agroup hug, although sometimes the tension makes people a bit... overexcited.
Now, Alex, you've already got into a bit of cleft-stick situation: although you have not read everything, you are claiming the right to comment as if you have. In fact, you use two words in a single sentence - "always" and "everything" - to suggest to the reader that your perspective is total. So, we've got a problem there. It's the second paragraph before you admit the possibility that you're not actually qualified to make absolute statements. So, there's a further problem there. There's an issue in the language, as well - we've got some emotional verb choices - "jump on", and, as a break from the dreadful metaphor, a dreadful simile about ... oxygen denial?
So, how about we look at a "little thing" I did let go? This one, for example, in which DM shared his inability to empathise with gayers, because they don't like boobies, as a tangent to a discussion on a film he hasn't seen but in the thread of which he nontheless needed to comment. Now, this was 16 days ago, which I think is past the point at which he (and, it seems, you) believe that his resolve to stop "posting impulsively" had been made, but what do we have here? We have a post to a thread that ignored the actual content under discussion (which in fact DM could not comment on, since he has not seen it), in order to share the thoughts of Chairman Winky, without any real consideration of what it might do to the thread. It's an astonishing testament either to Barbelith's acceptance of cockwittery in the interests of charity or the level of demoralisation of the moderators in the face of a bubbling stream of the white wee of truth that more was not said about this.
So, before we go on it might be worth checking your basis for generalisation. Thus:
Most of the time, you seem to argue about his use of language when it seems pretty obvious to me what he's trying to get across.
Examples, please?
Supplementarily, I think you've missed the point rather with:
Its not like you were actually disagreeing with the points he was trying to raise, more the way he said it.
There is no point to disagree with. Things with a point, when placed upon a surface, stick. Just as "I just don't see how gayers can not like boobies" is not a point about Brokeback Mountain, "wrath is like a piano: if you drop it on someone, there's gonna be broken bones" is not a comment about the preponderance of Agent Smiths on Barbelith. It's noise, and it is noise which allows for a lowering of the general standard of discussion (see Cassandra/Chad on Brokeback Mountain, immediately sequential, and then further threadrot about that subsequently).
Which leads, to drag this one back ontopic and away from the deadly gravity of the winky, back to one of the complexities, I think, with the way the question in this thread has been formulated, to wit that it creates an idea of them and us which I don't think is entirely accurate. OK, so Jack Horsley, say, is a them, in the sense that he isn't to our knowledge a member of Barbelith, but that's a distinct and discrete situation from, say, Jack going in with a reducer on Dr. Argenteum. In that context, everybody is us.
As such, we get on to PW's idea about the duty to educate, but again I see this is not really taking into account that the flow of information out and in on Barbelith is broadly level. So, we can educate zoemancer, say, about whether or not the Holocaust happened, but what he is doing is also education, if that's the word we're looking for - he is making information which he feels ought to be known. The division of tutor and student, or wise person and ignorant person, is an imposition by us not built into the software of the board. Likewise, to an extent, DM's "I like boobies". So, context becomes very important - everyhing you put on Barbelith basically just exists as a datum the value of which is not inherent in who you are, but, and this is a big but (for which form of interjection, as I have mentioned before, I am unable to conceal my fondness), it also has consequences for the data around it. In an extreme case, like the Fetch's anti-Semitic numerology, this means that not only his contributions had to be cut down and burnt but also those of everybody else on his threads. More generally, it can mean that a datum has the power to affect the flow of data from there - for example, to tie it back, feminism being turned into winkiepalooza, the thread in Policy on Barbelith being "anti-het" diverting into a lengthy discussion of gaying in shopping centres, or a thread just quietly dying of despair. |
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