My name is gnothis and I'm a lurker. Everyone in the circle reply, "Hi, gnothis." Though I am now a member of dailykos and posted a few diaries and comments I still lurk at a number of other sites. Hell, I still lurk here. You see I have an addiction--there's no such thing as too much information. I pull on a thread and then find it's attached to a million other threads that are each attached to another million, lather rinse and repeat. Pulling a thread and then branching off to explore the connected threads is one of my favorite things to do. The internet has provided us all with an almost infinite number of easily accessible threads. It's humbling. My lifelong obsession with learning is a central part of my character and for that reason I'm not a fan of the term lurker as used on the internet. Lurker is pejorative and if you would like to know why please join me below.
Let's start with the word itself. On Dictionary.com the first meaning of lurker is "to lie or wait in concealment, as a person in ambush; remain in or around a place secretly or furtively." Sounds a lot like a recently acquitted murderer to me--not very flattering. Another meaning is "to go furtively; slink; steal." This is similar to the first, but adds the wonderful connotation of thievery. And slink--who wants to slink? I'm no slinker. Gollum slinks. We hateses slinking. These two are the most well known and most widely used meanings associated with the word. When you get to the third level you get something approximating the internet usage: "to exist unperceived or unsuspected." And the recently added fourth meaning is "to read or observe an ongoing discussion without participating in it, as in an Internet newsgroup." It's a progression from malignant to benign, but it's the first two connotations that are the most prominent.
Language isn't fixed and words change their meaning all the time. With lurker even though the meaning we are trying to express is relatively benign, those other connotations don't just disappear. It's not like saying bad when you mean good, it's a label for a person and I hear the person being shamed. Shamed into compliance. Shamed into conformity. When I see someone being labeled with the word I know the intention is to say "those people who read or observe without participating" but those other connotations are not very far under the surface (behind the facade?). The insult to this injury is that "lurkers" are educating themselves. They are lapping up information, growing and exercising their brains, and amazing friends with their mastery of Jeopardy and/or Trivial Pursuits. I thought about calling this diary "Unashamed lurker", but that's not true--I do feel the shame and think that that is part of the intent--consciously or subconsciously. I am not trying to lie in concealment, be furtive, or to steal, or slink, or to exist unsuspected--I'm just trying to inform myself in a country with a co-opted media establishment. To me this isn't just gratifying, it's a civic duty.
Having given up on much of the tradmed after the Clinton impeachment and the 2000 coup de scotus, I began to seek information from the internet. Developing a newspaper habit as a boy, I still had my daily fix of articles, columns, crosswords, comics, and opinions, but I couldn't stand cable news, was getting more and more annoyed with the networks, and even 60 Minutes wasn't cutting it for me anymore. The build-up to the criminal invasion of Iraq turned me against the papers as well--and I loved newspapers. I was even finding myself frustrated reading the Guardian, which was a revelation to me when I lived in the UK. Bartcop, mediawhoresonline, Atrios, the Daily Howler--I felt empowered by these sites and then dailykos came along. Other sites became part of my daily trawling for information: Americablog, Rawstory, ThinkProgress. Really there are too many to mention, some are gone now, others have expanded tremendously, and then there's Atrios.
I had found an oasis--found it, not furtively ambushed it from a concealed position. This water in the midst of the American media desert sustained so many of us. It gave me hope. It helped me to understand what the hell was going on, and it showed me lots of cats. We are all lurkers at some point.
Why did I lurk? There are a number of reasons and here are some in no particular order. I found a lot of the comments to be bombastic and unthoughtful. Many seemed to have read a completely different posting. It was like talking to someone who is always thinking of the next thing to say instead of listening. This site is better than most and better than it used to be in this regard. There was a lot of ego and "look at me" in many forums and postings and this turned me off. Another factor was my long familiarity with the newspaper format. You were lucky to get a letter to the editor published. Everyone was a lurker. To an extent I felt like I wasn't ready to join, or post, or that I couldn't contribute in a meaningful way. Maybe this was shyness, low self-esteem, humility, or a mixture of all of them. A strong force against me joining in was that I will not be shamed into doing something. Lurker bothered me right off. By far the biggest reason was that I wasn't going to these sites for those reasons--I wanted information.
After a few years of reading dailykos frequently I started to feel that I was part of a community. This was not happening with any of the other sites I checked regularly. I got to know more about the front pagers and many of the diarists. The new design sparked my interest in reading more diaries. I found writers I liked, thinkers I liked, and analysis that got me to think and helped me to better understand a variety of subjects. It was a familiar cast of characters. I got to know the quirks, the rolling debates that went on, and I was fully on board with "more and better Democrats". An experience common to many liberals in the last decade plus is a sense of relief in finding on the internet that you weren't the last sane person in the USA and that many were just as concerned as you about the direction of our politics, economics, foreign policy, and the lameness of our media. My long experience with the site and with so many thoughtful diaries eventually opened me to the idea of joining and starting to post diaries and comments.
That's my journey from pure lurker to quasi-lurker and that brings us to the conclusion. Can we stop using this word in this way? Is this a cry in the wilderness? Am I alone in thinking like this? Out of consideration for others, out of a respect for people informing themselves and working toward being better citizens and voters, and in recognition that we want the widest possible readership on this site--can we ditch "lurkers"? How about "readers" as an alternative? We all read here, just as we all "lurk" here. Isn't that the only distinction; someone who reads as opposed to someone who reads and writes? That's one idea, but I'm sure that the members of this community can come up with many others. I know that I can't change this by myself, but I will no longer use the word in this context. It's a change I would welcome in others, and I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way.