That's it--I've had enough!

The BBQ Pit
1

Okay, people, I am sick and tired of this shit.

This is an online community (if you are one of the “only a message board” people, please leave now) where people come to not only fight ignorance but also to share their hopes, dreams, successes, failures, jokes, rants, questions, opinions, etc.

However, it seems some hideous ugliness has taken hold of our fine community and we are at an impasse.

You see, over in MPSIMS, we have some individuals who are delighted and excited to share their newfound love and happiness with us. Seeing as how the SDMB was a factor in their meeting one another and in the subsequent blossoming of their romance, it only seems fitting that they share such joyful news with us. However, there are individuals around who insist on trying to dull that happiness.

These people are very sad individuals. Apparently, if they ain’t happy, ain’t nobody gonna be happy. These individuals are upset that the love and joy shared by these couples is being flaunted in their faces. Perhaps these individuals would like to go off and form a new message board with Rich G7subs. That way, they could all sit around and discuss what people should and should not post in front of people who might not agree with them.

Of course, eventually, the same thing would happen there and eventually all these insecure individuals would have to just sit at home, alone, because there would be no place for them to go where they could be assured of not encountering anything unpleasant or different.

Strangely, at the same time, we have some interesting individuals in the Pit. You see, far from not wanting individuals to share good news with the board, these people don’t think anyone’s bad news or rant is worthy enough of our attention. You see, no matter what is posted, these particular people have it worse and they are offended that you could even bother to complain about such minor injustices in your life.

Lost your job? How can you complain about that when there are people who have never even had jobs? Accidentally cut off a finger? Whiner–these individuals lose entire limbs at a time. Your pet cat hit by a laundry truck? You should just be fucking grateful you ever got to own a cat and besides, not everyone even has laundry trucks in their area, you ingrate!

You see where the problem lies? We are quickly approaching a point where no one will be allowed to post good news or bad news for fear of one of these fucked up individuals showing up and harassing him or her. You know what? We should be happy for people when they are happy and we should be willing to be a shoulder when they are sad and even be sounding boards when they are upset. If you choose not to play any of these roles and yet still insist on responding to threads that call for one of those actions, rest assured that your pathetic ass will be called on it.

Oh yes, you all have the right to speak your mind but so do the rest of us. And some of us like this community and we like how strong relationships can form between posters. And we refuse to let a handful of insecure children and a couple of individuals suffering from delusions of grandeur fuck that up. So take this as a friendly warning. You MPSIMS people need to learn to do one of the following things.

Either:
[ul]
[li]Learn to not open threads that are about Poster X when the thread starter is Poster X’s boy/girlfriend.[/li][li]If you insist on opening such threads, do not comment unless you have something nice to say.[/li][li]If you insist on behaving like a toddler and say something negative, expect someone to call your sorry ass on it. Some of us will not be nice about it either. You are, of course, then free to either IM your friends to discuss how horrible we are, run off to chat to whine about the nerve of some people or go over to Fathom or the Pit and form a “wallowing-in-our-own-self-pity” club.[/li][/ul]

And as for you Pit people who feel that the only serious injustices in life have only happened to you–get over yourselves. Life sucks for everyone now and then, you do not own the patent on misery–although, you may have one on incessant whining.

This message board is a great place. The fact that people are being criticized for sharing their happiness and joy is seriously fucked up. There are people who post here who are bursting with happiness that they feel they cannot share with this community for various reasons. It sucks to not be able to share your happiness with friends and I refuse to let that become the case for everyone here. Fuck that. I will do everything in my power to make sure that a few petty, selfish individuals do not ruin such a great place for other people. Grow the fuck up.

2

Goddamnit, evilbeth, why do you constantly have to bore everyone with this ‘oh-pity-me-people-aren’t-respecting-the-comuuuuuuuuuunity’ bit?

[sub]RUNNING AWAY VERY VERY VERY VERY FAST.[/sub]
Just kidding. I agree with you. 99%. (I’m saving the other 1% for personal use.)

3

friedo, bite me! :wink:

That’s it, you’re voted off the SDMB! I’ll show you community…

4

I annoint thee the Imperial Goddess of Wisdom on the SDMB.

Here is your robe, crown, and mighty whacking sceptre.

Long may you reign.

5

so who is the bad guy, John Wayne?

LOL, good rant libby…

6

This is my post, and I’ll rant if I want to.

<ducks and runs for cover>

I give it a 9.3!

Give em a few whacks for me Evilbeth.

7

Ugh. I don’t want to say anything, but I don’t want to not say anything.

So I’ll just say this: I think this sucks. I like all the people involved in this a lot. I don’t like seeing my friends called on the carpet for posting about something wonderful and meaningful to them. I don’t like that their happiness hurts another friend. But raining on their parade doesn’t make the pain go away.

And evilbeth? You rock.

8

You forgot her gilded throne from which to smite the wicked. :wink:

Well done, evilbeth

9

Oooooh, catbiker called Bethie libby.

‘Dems fightin’ words!

Seriously, I can’t for the life of me figure out why people don’t stick to tearing apart other people’s lives via email, IMs and phone calls. You get to impress all of your friends with your cattiness, look like a saint on the boards and nobody gets hurt. Win-win situation for everybody!

:wink:

10

I hereby nominate the OP for “Longest Overdue OP - ever”. It’s about damn time someone said something.

evilbeth, you’re my new hero.

11

Personally, people who don’t like the lovey-dovey threads so much should simply start their own anti-lovey-dovey thread.

I’m not the biggest fan of 'em, that’s for sure. It’s just not my cup of tea. What do I do? I DON’T READ THEM!! I don’t go in and say “You all suck for being happy”… I save that for the “Happy people suck” threads, where it’s s’posed to go. :smiley:

Then again, the occasional, light-hearted joke about not having a girlfriend is just all in good fun.

12

I completely agree! Coming into a thread about crushes and posting something like, “Not that I would know…no one loves me :(” is quite a stretch from deliberately coming into a thread where two people are sharing happy news with their friends and saying

That’s just pathetic.

13

are we talking about anyone in particular here? A reference to any particular thread? I’ve noticed in a couple of threads that someone commited a faux pas and everyone knew who it was(except me, of course) but nobody wanted to say that person’s name.

Help me out, here.

14

I don’t open the threads, but it’s somewhat annoying when someone will post a flirt directed towards their online crush which is only somewhat related to the posts in the thread, or when they have countdowns to meeting their crush in their sig. Seems just a bit obsessive to me.

I don’t flame them, just figured this would be a good thread to voice my annoyance.

15

This may sound strange coming from me since I was one of the people who started this unfortunate trend, but I agree with EvilBeth…I have come to realize by talking with various people that I was wrong to start up the thread and I was wrong in my position. I know now one of the things that I love about this board is that we are a community and as such we share a bond, not just an intellectual bond but an emotional bond too, it is natural to become attached and friends with people here. When you do become friendly with someone you want to share the good and the bad, and the boards are a place to do that. It doesn’t bother me to see peoples undying loves declared on the boards and this would be a sad, sad place if it didn’t happen any more. I also want to hear about the sad things in their lives, and I know our support does help, it has helped me in the past. I guess like all things we have to remember that there are real live humans on the other end of the keyboard, and that we should treat everybody the same as we would treat them in real life.

I have apologized to everybody who was indirectly indicted in my thread, and if there is anybody I missed I hope you realize this apology does come from the heart. I can’t fathom though how someone can make a deliberately spiteful and hurtful comment in a thread that is directed at meeting a couple, it is as if you are willingly putting yourself in a position to be seen as a martyr.

In conclusion I will post any good things or bad things going on in my life if I feel they are of interest to the board in general, I will also comment in those threads if the people are people I know, and if a thread bothers me, I won’t read it, and if I do read it, I won’t pollute it.

Keith

P.S. Beth you rock big time…

16

I just don’t post about my personal life on message boards. :slight_smile: Seriously, though, is there a thread that this rant refers to?

17

Yes, there is a lot of BS going on at MPSIMS. Things that are probably better left unsaid in certain threads. I don’t dispute anyone’s right to be happy or to crow about that happiness. Or for anyone’s right to be unhappy and request compassion, either. (After all, I am the one that started the “Pick-me-up” thread just for that, and I have mentioned the good things going on in my life right now, which includes dating lurker) However, I can see the point of some of the people who are disturbed by the saccharine sweetness going on and that are sick of seeing it. The threads that are specifically for that purpose, I have no problem with. Keep it there, spout your love and undying passion for the person you love. I’m happy for you. You’ve found something special. Enjoy it. But when I open thread after thread and see the same people crowing about how wonderful it is to be in love with poster X, I just want to scream “Get over it already! Yes, you’re happy, and yes, I’m happy for you, but please, ENOUGH ALREADY!!!” I don’t object to it being in people’s sigs… That’s something that’s seperate from the post itself. But turning a lot of posts into a post about poster X… that’s what gets to be a little much.

I think what bothers me more than anything else is that if someone does say something about how it bothers them to hear it everywhere they go (ala Odieman’s thread in MPSIMS - and Keith, I don’t think you were wrong to start the thread, because it was what you were feeling. What makes those feelings invalid?), they are told they’re wrong. So where is the happy medium here? The people that are happy can spout their happiness, but the ones that are tired of hearing it all the time can’t say that it bothers them? That is what, IMO, seems to get to people more than anything else. They have to “hide” their feelings, while others get to espouse their own. Sometimes, it does feel a little unfair.

I may be guilty of going overboard myself sometimes, too. I’ll admit it. I don’t always see it. But if I’m wrong, or hurting someone by mentioning something too often, whatever, then tell me. On the board, in private e-mail, I don’t care. I’m an adult and I can handle it. I’ve been accused of being blind more than once. All I ask is to not hold it against someone if they feel the need to say something against something that’s bothering them, too.

18

Oh…For Christ’s sake people. I have been talking to various people about this exact issue, and we’re all disgusted. Thinking on it now, I realize that we have one thing in common, we’re all adults. This saccerine, 14 year old, “ahhh, widdle me and widdle you are so perfect” shit is getting REAL old, REAL fast. I’m not saying don’t be happy, by all means, be happy. But spreading it over every post you make is just childish. The post quoted above was a bit misguided, because it was made in a thread that was specifically for kissy kissy stuff. Those threads are fine, though I generally avoid them, as is my choice, but c’mon people! Adults accept relationships as a fact of life, they don’t feel compelled to giggle over them at every oportunity. The saccerine shit should be confined to it’s own threads, not played out over the boards at large. Grow the fuck up.

19

Let’s see if I have this straight. People are “disturbed” by reading sweetness in posts, they’re “sick” of seeing it, they’re “tired” of hearing about it and it “bothers” them. Gee, I think that speaks volumes about those individuals. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say they have some very serious problems. If it really bothers someone to see other people happy and sharing their joy, they should look inside themselves as to why that is, not go spewing their misery all over the happiness of others in order to - what? - bring them down, too?

Sorry, but I see no double standard here. Everyone’s got a right to have an opinion. That doesn’t make it at all appropriate to go around pissing on everybody else’s cornflakes just because they’re miserable. Or do you really believe in the philosopy, “I’m in a bad mood so I have a “right” to tell people to shut the fuck up if they’re too happy for me to deal with”?

As I said, if the fact that people are happy and posting about it is bothersome, sickening or disturbing to someone, that someone needs to figure out why, because there’s something wrong with that picture.

Jeg elsker dig, Thomas

20

My only comments:

First, for those who are wondering, one of the relevant threads is here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=67157

Second, I would like to apologize for the tone of my post in that thread. While I still maintain the feelings behind it, there was certainly a better way to express them, and I should have found it. Again, I apologize.