Well, what is it? What don’t I get? I haven’t been here for years, but I’ve lurked and posted long enough to see the whole Melin thing. But that can’t be the whole of the story.
This is like watching a recently divorced couple argue. There’s just way too much resentment for what pass for logical, likeable people. Is there some ancient wound that will never heal? Or is this place just a magnet for whiny martyrs?
What am I missing?
You are missing two facts (it took me a while, too).
These people all go way, way back, to the AOL message board days. In terms of real Earth time that’s, what, maybe a few years, but in terms of Internet time that’s like forever. They’ve known each other for what amounts to decades. So, yeah, they sound like a bunch of old married couples fighting the same fights over and over again.
Some of them know each other face to face, so that makes the stakes higher, and makes it much more personal. You get angrier with people you really love and feel an emotional tie to. Anybody can tell an faceless poster to “fuck off” and come away from the keyboard feeling refreshed. But if you feel impelled to tell someone you’ve eaten pork barbecue with, and shot pool with, maybe even started up a message board with, to “fuck off”, you’re going to feel twice as bad.
My advice is to do what I do and stay out of the way. I wouldn’t dream of stepping in between Ralph and Alice Kramden, either.
“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!” - the White Queen
Admirably stated. Consider this a gathering spot for kindred souls–with time depth, history and some souls who turned out to be not-so-kindred.
It’s no-win, trying to reconstruct emotional history. It isn’t even like trying to make sense of a hit TV program you just noticed 3-years into the run. It’s more like Rashamon on crack, or a neighborhood party where all kinds of old grudges and issues bubble up like methane in a swamp.
The onlookers have several choices: ignore the brawl (almost impossible, given the raised voices and bloodshed), leave (sigh) or try haul the combatants apart until sense and manners return (good luck).
And then there’s ducking under a table and watching the hot lead fly in the finest, cheesy 50’s western tradition.
Translation: it’s your basic clusterfuck, where tragedy met comedy and promptly degenerated into farce.
Veb
It’s like watching a bunch of cannibals at Thanksgiving dinner.
In general I’ll defer to Veb’s eloquent take on Marx’s elaboration. I doubt that any finer analysis would make any better sense.
What are you missing? Nothing that even merits the question.
Don’t look back.
Dr. Watson
“I’ll be damned. It’s Friday.”