Everyone seems a little high strung lately. I thought I'd take a gander at our favorite website to hate and see if there's anything worth bringing back for our open mockery and ridicule.
And wouldn't ya know it, there's a meta discussion (of sorts, since it is freeperville) over there, too!
Here's the story that started it. Freeper comments below.
The more time I spend in the blogopshere, the more it seems to me that many blogs are merely online cults.
It's an easy comparison to make. Notice, for example, that blog audiences simply do not cross over. Most people who read and contribute to Free Republic stay away from DailyKos, and vice-versa. Once in a while, some brave soul wanders over to a rival blog, as it were, and is invariably banned by the owners of that blog; more rarely, there is a full-fledged flame war in which members of rival boards virtually invade each other's territory with the goal not of exchanging viewpoints but of causing maximum damage.
Notice how this behavior is perfectly typical of what, in the real world, we call cults.
Before we get to the comments, I saw another diarist do this and thought it was a classy thing to do. Since this is kind of a meta diary,
here's the diary on the bottom of my recent list that is getting bumped off.
Now to the comments!
Perhaps someone can figure out the point this person was trying to make. To me it seems to be pretty honest, but the dripping sarcasm is hard to miss.
Free Republic is a cult...
Like George Washington was only a deist.
That oughta put Demir Barlas into high gear the next time he visits Free Republic!
14 posted on 08/04/2006 1:19:33 PM PDT by VOA
I like this one because he has his political spectrum mixed up. Nazis are what you get when you creep evermore to the political right, not left. My only regret is he's Minnesotan. Sigh.
This moron would of thought listening to the Nazis was "Being open minded"
Sir or Ma'am,
When you visit a website that has NO intellectual merit, like the Aryan Nation, Daily Kos or Democrat Underground, you do NOT waste your time going back to it. To continue going back time and again to such closed minded, verbally abusive, bigoted sites is not a sign of "Open mindedness" it is a sign of intellectual vacuity. This author demonstrates a simple minded mental incompetence that cannot make even the slightest factual or critical judgments. This author's mind is so "open" because it is utterly empty
17 posted on 08/04/2006 1:20:03 PM PDT by MNJohnnie (Fire Murtha Now! Spread the word. Support Diana Irey. [Link removed to avoid traffic]
This comment could belong here, if not for the fact that it disparages us.
What's wrong with blogs?
In the eyes of the Left, and of the MSM, what's wrong with them is that they represent an unsupervised exchange of ideas. Free speech, in other words.
23 posted on 08/04/2006 1:24:29 PM PDT by Sam Cree (Don't mix alcopops and ufo's)
This person, along with a couple others, are delusioned to think that freeperville allows dissent. They don't even allow proper spelling!
Orthodoxy is all-important; dissent is unthinkable.
Well, that clearly eliminates Free Republic from the author's "cult" definition.
Besides, as you point out, FR is not a blog.
26 posted on 08/04/2006 1:25:04 PM PDT by TChris (Banning DDT wasn't about birds. It was about power.)
Some freepers actually read dKos semi regularly. I wonder what they're thinking this week...
And while I post and contribute to FR, I do make a point to check out Kos. Maybe not everyday, but weekly at least.
You just can't make that stuff up. Or rather, maybe you can.
My favorite Kos story was one where they claimed that Tajikistan boiled political dissidents in oil. They included a link to a state department report, supposedly to back up the accusation. But if you actually bothered to read the report, you'd notice that it doesn't say anything like that in there.
Got to know what the mo's are up to.
31 posted on 08/04/2006 1:26:28 PM PDT by Owl_Eagle (In Memory of my Dear Friend Henry Lee II)
This one made me snort margarita out of my nose (not a pleasant experience, let me tell you). The first two sentences reflect the sentiments here perfectly.
There is almost as much dissent amoung FR members as there are people on FR. You don't see that on DUthey are all lock step for the most part.
Here we have the big schisms between the Creationists and the Conservative Elvolutionists. We have battles between pro immigration and anti-immigration. Libertarian, Republican, and Randians. There are no such divisions on the other side. They view politics as their religion most of us view it as our natinal duty.
44 posted on 08/04/2006 1:34:03 PM PDT by Sentis
I swear I don't make these quotes up!
I think if you talk with many on FR in a discussion, you get educated well thought out positions of which the poster could go and get you links to sources if need be that are actual.
I think many other places are filled with people of various opinion who are NOT able to equally express a position from a factual point or to factually source it.
I think people off of FR are mostly more emotional and tell you more their feelings rather than compile a bunch of reasoning to give you any form of thinking whatsoever.
That is how I see it.
48 posted on 08/04/2006 1:39:18 PM PDT by A CA Guy (God Bless America, God bless and keep safe our fighting men and women.)
And look at all these different groups who belong to freeperville. I think we've hit all of Advisor Jim's Republicans and then some.
I think Freerepublic clearly has a lot of different views expressed here. We've Libertarians, paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, main stream Republicans, the Christian Right, and liberal Republicans. This isn't group think. But for a Liberal or a Democrat it's probably beyond their ken. They're forever saying we're bigots, evil, homophobes, and single minded. Starting from that perspective, how could they possible analyze the forum.
85 posted on 08/04/2006 2:22:55 PM PDT by elhombrelibre (Knowledge is power, so the MSM makes sure the terrorists have our classified info.)
They even have their own version of a pootie pic. They just need to spend more time identifying their maritime marauders.
Who's "Line56"?
I think he got ZOTTed more than once and is still feeling the wrath of the Viking-Kittens
106 posted on 08/04/2006 6:30:56 PM PDT by SandRat (Duty, Honor, Country. What else needs to be said?)
Ummmm...who on the left doesn't like the internet?
It's funny to watch the left pine for the "good old days"- before the alternative press, before talk radio, before the Internet, before we could TALK back. How DARE we question their superiority! So now we are a "cult"?
Well- it's the most polite thing I have been accused of in a long time by a leftie. Just to make a small point...I often click into DailyKos and some of the other left wing blogs, just to see what they are up to. You know, "keep your friends close and your enemies closer"? I don't expect any surprises from them, but even lab rats develop something new every now and again. But try to engage one of these morons in a "debate"? I have long experience with this and "debate" is never what you get from them. It comes from not having a single fact to support what they believe.
126 posted on 08/05/2006 6:00:25 AM PDT by 13Sisters76 ("It is amazing how many people mistake a certain hip snideness for sophistication. " Thos. Sowell)
And I'll close with probably the most surprising comment I've ever seen on this particular website.
Don't think we are a blog. But he got one thing right, we certainly are an echo chamber. (That's a bad thing, IMO.)
132 posted on 08/05/2006 7:15:39 AM PDT by Washi
I hope you've enjoyed your trip into selected comments from the closest thing I can find to a freeper meta discussion.