As I understand it, the LJ board that provides commentary on SDMB-related matters is largely anonymous. Do any SDMB posters post there in their own names? If so, does it have any impact on their reputation here?
There are actually several LiveJournal boards that have associations with the SDMB, (as in Dopers post there but the SD and the Chicago Reader take no interest in them). Of these, one or more at a time are generally anonymous sniping boards, the rest are not anonymous and focus on sharing information (under identifiable names) that might be focused on special interests (e.g., quitting smoking) or general chatter. There are several Dopers who post on the “anonymous” boards under their Doper identities (and a couple of “fake” Dopers who post using the names of Dopers who have never signed up on LJ, so their names were available for hijacking).
Those Dopers who tend to post on anonymous LJ boards using their own names tend to post in ways similar to their posts on the SDMB, so their “reputations” are liable to undergo no real change based on LJ posts.
Thank you. May I take it that you are one of the group of posters who post under their own names?! If so, isn’t it a bit grubby? And futile? If people are spewing poison anonymously, isn’t the cachet they get by named posters joining in just the buzz they want?
The regular SDMB community isn’t anything at all like the anonymous snark communities. It’s more like a version of nothing but MPSIMS but with pictures and you can use HTML.
Yes, it’s both grubby and futile. Much more sensible and mature to just ignore it. Of course, some of us (I’m not speaking for tomndebb, obviously) are neither sensible nor mature, and keep picking at it like a scab, and then go away having accomplished nothing but just feeling vaguely gross and annoyed.
But hey, it beats working.
Possibly. I first posted in response to a thread that was begun about me (on a now deleted journal last October). I have no idea how many readers believed or accepted my contributions. (The questions were fairly innocuous, so it was not as though I was engaging in great controversy).
Since then, I have posted once or twice under similar circumstances. I do not engage in big debates or attack those fora or the posters, there. Those threads are going to exist whether or not I contribute and I figure that some of their readers will not be so cynical as to doubt everything by a named poster, so I am getting “my side” of the story out to a few interested parties.
T’ain’t no big deal, whichever way it goes.
There is a certain amount of bantering and silly jokes among the backstabbing and snark and it seems the named posters tend to engage more in that than in the nastiness. I am hardly a regular contributor, but I find no reason to look down on those who do participate regularly.
Fair enough. The reason I asked is that I followed a link on the SDMB to one of these boards some time ago and found that I was the subject of one of the rants. Was I suffering “meltdown”? I didn’t respond as a) it seemed counter-productive and b) every contribution was by “anonymous”. Maybe even the same person. As it happened, I requested that the link be removed, as such linking appeared to contravene SDMB policy, and the thread was closed shortly thereafter. Which means it’s disappeared into the ether and I can’t link to it.
Yeh I post under a similar username. Sure there are hacks on me in the anon forums, but it comes with the job you know.
If you go to this LiveJournal addy:
http://www.livejournal.com/community/sdmb
…you will see the SDMB (not affiliated with the SDMB, etc.) community. There are more than a few Dopers on LJ. Off the top of my head…me, Gingy, Geobabe, Esprix, Doc Cathode, Zette, Diane, Mermaid…way more than that but I’m barely awake.
I post in the anon one(s) but I don’t post anon - I’m Hamadryad everywhere.
Also, one itty tip: if you find the anon journal(s) and post anon to tell the anon people that they’re jagoffs…then you just turned into one. So I don’t recommend it.
That’s sort of incorrect. The one you’ll find where Hamadryad just linked is not an anonymous community, but it is for members, and there is commentary. Some people don’t bother with the anonymous communities and find them distasteful.
I read and sometimes post to the anonymous communities (under my name) when I’m bored but haven’t in quite a while if I remember correctly.
So far as I’m concerned, whichever community happens to be current at the moment is an unofficial tenth SDMB forum and, really, a good portion of what is said there isn’t much worse than what you’ll find in the Pit or even one of the more exuberant Great Debates threads – just more crude.
Is it grubby and futile? Depends on your outlook. Since I rarely post and generally just watch to see if a friend or I am being targeted, I don’t really consider it the former and considering I never try to explain ourselves when we are, it’s not the latter either. To those that take a more active and inimical approach, I suppose it would be though.
The anonymous communities are wretched hives of scum and villainy. I’d recommend forgetting they exist, since they appear to exist only to feed a lot of posters’ sense of juvenile drama and allow them an outlet to say absolutely disgusting things about other Dopers without having to worry about a reputation hit to their Dope username.
It doesn’t really matter either way. Seriously. As I’ve learned, when you post under your own username and tell them they’re jagoffs, they tell you that “we’re all anonymous, including you, so it doesn’t really matter.” Those who criticize anonymously are told “But you’re one of us! Hypocrite!” Anonymous or under a username, it makes no difference—anyone who criticizes their little world will be given some sort of spin or rationalization.
Usually someone comes along and tries to say that they provide a “useful service” because they occasionally discuss some hotbutton board politics that aren’t allowed here. But the majority of the discussions are merely nasty gossip about how ugly or skanky or stupid some people are, or about taking sordid low blows about people’s personal lives—oh yeah—that’s really useful.
I admitted once that I was responsible for all of the anonymous communities, but I don’t think anyone believed me. Also, there’s a could recipe in that thread in case you’re hungry.
I post under my LJ handle of attackships over there. Don’t need to bother with anonymity.
It’s not all crap. Nor is it mean. Stop deluding yourselves.
The little that’s ever been said about tomndebb, for example, generally revolves around how much people like him. “Sexy brain” was the last phrase attached to him.
Of course, take what I say with a grain of salt, as my presence there makes me something less in the eyes of some of you.
Sometimes absolutely beautiful flowers grow on the banks of a sewage runoff ditch.
It’s still a sewage runoff ditch, though.
I’m on the SDMB community mostly because they sometimes talk about stuff that we can’t talk about here but it’s not usually snarky. It’s also good for info that people may not feel deserves an entire SDMB thread.
I have occasionally looked at the anonymous communities out of curiousity but I don’t join or post in them. It’s just too much snark for me. I check on occasion just to see if I have pissed off anyone enough to get snarked about. Apparently, I am just too dull and unassuming for that kind of notice, maybe I should try harder?
Or maybe not.
*Very * well put.
I’m not a LJ member, so about the only thing I’ve ever used LJ for was checking the SDMB community to see if the boards were down(this was back in the days when that was more common). If the boards go down there was almost certainly a thread about it ASAP on the LJ SDMB community. I used this as a sanity check to see if it was just me having issues with the boards.
Enjoy,
Steven