Yeah I love it there. Those sdmb snarkwhores are a riot and a half. I just love the level of visceral disgust they have to reading anything I write that is sex-related; if anything, it just encourages me. Says one anon poster,
I am so flattered it almost brings a tear to my eye. Or maybe thats the sewage fumes that are making my eyes tear up 
I too have been curious to know what these SDMB LJ communities are like, but too lazy and disinterested to investigate for myself. Thanks for the replies.
The word of the day is “homosity”.
I’d laugh as hard as you if someone said that. Fortunately for our credulity, I don’t recall hearing anyone (there or here) claim they stick around just for the occasional gem of human kindness.
Well, no, it’s not ALL nasty. But I do think some people there go out of their way to deliberately hurt people.
I don’t really understand. If it’s so nasty and terrible, why do such enlightened people talk about it so much?
:Chuckle: Methinks you’re an “agent in the field.” 
As a rule, people don’t talk about it much here. There are a kajillion threads on this board, and only now and then does one touch upon the “other” boards. I think the percentage of discussions is pretty low. So low, in fact, that most people are blissfully ignorant of what the lowest common demoninator is doing over at LJ.
The thing I’m curious about, and I’d like to ask Cranky (since she admits to participating on the anonymous snark boards) what she thinks the benefits of the place are. Cranky, do you contribute any “snark” (mean nasty comments) yourself? If so, do you enjoy it? Do you think it helps in some way, or is constructive in some way, to discuss whose the ugliest Doper, for example? Do you mind that some of us might (if you are, indeed, one of the “snarkers”) now have a lower opinion of you for what you do there? (This is all assuming that you participate in the insults and snark—I don’t know if you do or not.)
The SDMB may have more enlightened posters than most boards on the net but let’s face it, there are no Buddhas posting here.
You really answered all of your questions when you said that you don’t know if I post or not. I could tell you that I do post on those communities (which I do) but you still don’t know whether that’s true or not. I could tell you I don’t post the mean ones (because anyone can see that even in the threads with malicious intent, there are posts which aren’t malicious) but there still aren’t any guarantees that I’m not a big fat liar about that. Anyone can claim whatever they want about their authorship there. After 7000 posts and a staggering amount of blather in my own LJ I’ll let people make their own minds up.
FWIW, I have little interest in “who’s the ugliest doper” and IIRC that thread came close to dying with less than 4 responses. That suggests to me that most people don’t really care about the ugliest doper, either. Then it took off, for reasons I don’t remember or didn’t read. If there was a cash prize involved, I wish someone had told me about it as I would have thrown my hat in the ring.
I figured that since you volunteered the fact that you participated on those boards, you wouldn’t mind volunteering information about your type or level of participation as well. You answer, as phrased above, surprises me.
I would be inclined to assume that the Cranky that I know wouldn’t have anything to do with the nasty stuff, but then again I had also assumed that some SDMB members wouldn’t find any need for an anonymous snark, but I was wrong about that. So who knows?
It took off because enough people who participate there wanted it to take off, apparently.
Thank you for the clarification. I foolishly misread your post. My befuddlement has now been replaced with a warm fuzzy feeling, knowing that people are finding a happy home for entertainment in that haven of lies and vicious gossip.
I don’t think Cranky is one of the ones posting the snark-it just doesn’t fit with my impression of her. Of course, I could be wrong.
The only thing that really bothers me, though, is when people have a problem with how I’ve acted on the boards. Um, we have a place called the Pit-if I’m doing something that’s bothering you, have the balls to Pit me and let me know! How can I stop bothering someone if I don’t know that it’s bothering them in the first place? Duh!
And that’s what irritated me about my own dunking in the sewer: it appeared to have petered out with just maybe ten responses. To add insult to injury, all of the responses apart from two had nothing to do with me, and were just SDMB-style posts in which people either picked one another up for some trivial matter or indulged in some kind of in-joke that I didn’t get.
There is really nothing worse than raising someone’s expectations and then failing to deliver. “Roger is heading for meltdown because he lets his kid watch Sex and the City.” For crying out loud, is that it? I’ve got friends who say worse things about me. I was sorely disappointed. Am I that uninteresting? I’m deep and multi-layered, for pete’s sake!
Those people are cruel to an extent that I don’t think many of you self-styled smartasses realise. They draw you in, they set you up, they entice you, and then it’s all one tremendous let-down.
Sewer?! You got to be kidding. It’s more like Chinese water torture (with effing distilled water), just when you’ve been aroused to fever pitch and fancy - for the first time in your life - a bit of water-sports. A bit of dirty. A bit of sewer.
A pox on them, I say.
Because they don’t really want you to stop. They’d rather you kept doing it so they could continue to get their slimy little jollies poking you anonymously to all their cool anonymous friends where you wouldn’t normally see it or defend yourself.
Which is why I have such a problem with the endless series of SDMB_Anonymous LJ communities. It’s JUVENILE! It’s middle-school, “let’s make fun of this person behind her back so all my cool friends will laugh with me and think I’m cool” anonymous-so-the-victim-can’t-even-know-who-stabbed-her juvenile. It’s so far below the way any mature adult should be acting that it simply makes me ill. I hated people like this in school. I hate people like this in my life now. The thought that some of the posters I interact with on the boards, some of whom I respect in their board personas, could possibly be doing this in the dark corners where they don’t have to put up a front for their reputations, makes me angry. I expect better from Dopers. And I’m constantly disappointed by the general tone of the anon communities.
Why do you care so much? This whole thing is like a giant festering wound. It’s never going to get better if you don’t quit picking at it. Maybe in some way you like watching the pus ooze out of it yourself, you just don’t want to admit it.
Anyway… I never read anything on a messageboard, besides the link to the occasional depressing (real life) news story, that I could say made me ill. Are you sure you aren’t engaging in a bit of hyperbole there? It’s just entertainment, for me something to read while I’m taking a break from work or eating. If you’re sitting around fretting about what a bunch of other people you don’t even know may or may not be saying about you, you need to get some perspective. And/or take some time away from the computer entirely. Don’t take it so seriously.
Four thoughts.
One, it’s probably not really “entertainment” to some of the people responsible for the worst content. I’d wager that there are people who get a very different sort of satisfaction out of the ugliness. It’s not because it’s fun, but because it satisfies something. That’s speculative, but I’m far from the first to say it.
Two, it’s not news that some people are entertained by cruelty. Look at what some posters will pull in the pit. Anything to make another poster look terrible. Ugly names, withering sarcasm, insults. This should be shock to no one.
Three, it’s too broad to suggest that everyone there loves or supports the nastiness. You can argue that by reading it at all, one endorses it. We’d disagree on that. Just because someone reads or posts there, it’s unfair IMHO to accuse them of liking it all. Some of us aren’t entertained by that sort of viciousness, lies, and cruelty. I suspect a lot of us aren’t. It only takes a few people to generate a lot of ugly stuff. I believe, perhaps naively, that most of people who read/post to those anon boards are not closet sociopaths. As evidence I’d cite posts there which are clearly aimed at steering the communities in less offensive directions (not always with great success, alas).
Four, maybe those people who DO like the ugly lies aren’t so different from the normal person. Maybe it’s a matter of degree. For example, look at your post to me. Surely I’m not misreading you when I say your post was sarcastic. You were maybe putting a little dig in, there, making fun of something I tried to say? I’ll bet some people enjoyed reading ol’ Cranky gettin’ it from an Administrator. It ain’t viciousness, but it’s a little mean, and some people like it because some people find mean stuff funny. In different degrees, of course. Where does it start being too mean to be funny? People would draw the line in different places.
Well, I’m not qualified to be the go-to girl, chirpily relating what’s great about the anon communities, because I’m not a fan of all that goes there. I didn’t think your questions were sincere, but rather more pointed or rhetorical–I know you didn’t really expect me to launch into a discussion of what “Ugly Doper” threads have to offer the world. I would be at a loss. If you’re genuinely interested, I recall that there have been discussions about what value (beyond entertainment for the mean-spirited) an anon format may or may not have. However, I’m certain I wouldn’t be a good paraphraser even if I could remember the arguments.
In this here thread, all I started out doing was indulging in a basic grammar/logic argument with people. “Don’t say Never, Always, All, Nothing but, or so on, when it’s not accurate.” Unfortunately, it’s earning me a new interesting reputation. Such are the vagaries of posting.
It’s been grand, but I don’t know what else to say–I’m not in a position to speak for everyone who participates in LJ anon communities. I can only speak for myself and speculate based on what I’ve seen, and I’ve done that to excessive length already. I am sure there are people who have a different angle on it, and they’re likely more eloquent.
I can understand why people take what is said on a messageboard seriously. We don’t all relate to the reality behind the text on a screen in the same way. Some can shrug it off. Others fall in love with the words and the people behind them and find themselves married for twenty years. Most are somewhere in between.
I’m one who fell in love with the words 20 years ago this month on a BBS and a Commodore 64. Once I let people in a little bit, what they say matters. So I have to be careful.
From what I have learned this week, I’m glad that I have not made myself vulnerable to their words. What is said there doesn’t exist for me. Some of you are much tougher than I and can handle it.
But as a friend has suggested, I am more akin to the candle wax that is consumed by the flame. And I have to ask myself if the fire is worth the candle.
Several people have posted that they find the anonymous forums entertaining.
And I say that it’s satisfying a not-too-pleasant side of some people’s characters.
Granted. That doesn’t mean that it’s something to be proud of. Need I say that I’m not a fan of The BBQ Pit, and as a matter of fact I have stated in the past, publicly on the board, that the SDMB would be better without The BBQ Pit.
Uh, who said everyone? Perhaps you should take your lesson “Don’t say Never, Always, All, Nothing but, or so on, when it’s not accurate.” a little more to heart.
Yes, my sarcastic remarks in MPSIMS make me the same as people lying, back-stabbing, accusing posters of being child molesters etc. over in the anonymous forum. And surely those anonymous people are no better than the con artists and petty thieves in our prisons, who in turn are really just as evil as the rapists etc.
I read them snark boards. Also find it extremely amusing and entertaining. I make a very rare post there, anonymously. I’d never snark on someone for being ugly or short or a different race or anything else that’s out of their control, and most of the anons don’t either. Most of the snark is directed towards people for their behavior, which is certainly within their control.
Sometimes you just wanna say something, you wanna say it BAD, you’re gonna explode if you don’t say it to someone that knows what you mean, and you know that if you do it here you’ll get piled on. So that’s where they come in handy.
trublmakr, you’re aptly named. You are a disgrace to humanity. You have just been added to what Gilbert & Sullivan would call little.
Any relation of philosphr? I vowel to tell no one.