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I agree with Haus, pretty much.
For my own curious worth, here, I lurked for a long time, because I liked some of the conversation, but didn't want to find myself making idiot arguments whenever something came up that offended me or seemed entirely unnecessarily tactless. I joined when it became a sort of precept of Barbelith that posters were expected to behave themselves on certain fronts most online forums wrote off as being uncontrollable, in terms of unexamined or vitriolic exclusionary or pigeon-holing commentary, be it racially, sexually, or however-else motivated. In terms of not making absurd personal attacks repetitively and unnecessarily.
Expected didn't and does not now mean it always works out that way, and certainly there are some indulgences (and indulgers) allowed, some flare ups that have to be taken in their context, and of course, missteps from even the best of posters. But, even that expectation is still astonishingly unique across the great internetty world.
And there's actually great patience around Barbelith. Right, go on, laugh a bit, but there is. Snark and sharpshooting aside, the majority of the board go out of their way, even in a banning thread, to give benefit of the doubt and hope for growth and change. Maybe some of that's because we don't have an iron-hammer we can bring down until certain distant parties, but Tom's never been the absent Barbe-Father to me, he was just some guy, used to post in Comics occasionally. If I never set foot in policy, I'd never know we're supposed to be adrift helplessly in search of a new planet to colonise so we could get the Head Shop running at eighty percent optimal or such.
I did not join Barbelith for Tom Coates, or because I thought I could get on the good side of the superspecial oldguard elite I keep hearing about, to champion the sacrosanct or rearrange the connectors, nor even to talk about comics and magick and share stories of inane and horrifying local politics. I joined Barbelith because I can converse about comics, magick, and LOLcats in a relatively intelligent, polite and otherwise civilised environment, where disagreements on a theory, a method, or the application of such does not necessarily devolve into 'You know nothing' or namecalling.
And if this is it, if this is the End Times and the Apocalyptic All Going Away Now, then dammit, after-party! I don't care that 'after' is the goofiest looking word in the English language, I beseech you all, the world's over, the song is over, crimson and clover over and over, let's enjoy the booze and the dancing and the last dregs of good conversation!
And if we do hit up a new board, maybe we'll all feel like superspecial oldguard elite and see where that gets us. Beats historical revisionism, this pseudo-new-start stuff. |
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