Peter Daou posted a diary some weeks back that I thought was highly inappropriate for a paid campaign staffer to post here -- essentially it was a hit piece on Obama. I'm not a huge fan of Obama or Hillary but I TRed the tip jar because I thought Peter was way out of line.
As a result, Markos yanked my TR and rec privileges. I'm being punished.
The funny thing about it all is, I don't miss the TR (or HR as it seems to now be known) at all -- I rarely used it to begin with. I do miss being able to rec comments that deserve recognition, and my inability to do so has caused me to begin to lose interest in DK.
That's not the only factor. I've had a couple of pretty big changes in my life of late -- one being a new job that I absolutely love, so that's a good thing, and the other being the loss of my 19 year old cat which wasn't so good. On balance, though, right now things are good and I'm putting a lot of my time and focus on making the most of this upturn in my own life.
But it's a big factor.
Another big factor is the continuing slide of the quality of what's posted on DK in general. Sure, the front-pagers all still write quality stuff and of course BiPM is God, but I've always been a big fan of the diaries, and I have always felt that those were where the real action, and the real interesting stuff, happened on this site. But after months on end of horrendous candidate diary wars, well, not so much anymore.
A third factor is my own growing sense of disenfranchisement, not specifically on DK so much as in my own political party and in my own country. My sense that, politically speaking, nothing I believe, or say, or do, has the least bit of relevance in the real world of "money does the talking", is growing by leaps and bounds. I've given what I consider to be a lot of money to political candidates and causes since 2004, and I consider every dime of that money wasted, because it went to candidates who got elected to Congress in 2006 and then completely failed to do any of the things I helped get them elected to do. It went to candidates who took my donations and less than a week later dropped out of the race (yes, John Edwards, I'm talking about you.) Politically speaking, I (by which I mean, my beliefs and my values) don't matter. They never have. They never will.
So, over the past several weeks I've gone from having DK as my home page and looking at it several times a day, to having something else as my home page and looking at DK maybe three times a week.
I'm not mad.
I'm not disgusted.
I'm not even GBCWing... 'cuz I'm not leaving entirely. Not yet, anyway.
But I'm losing interest.
I wonder if I'm the only one.
Have a great weekend, y'all. Me, I'm going to go do other stuff. It's almost like having a life, and dayyum, it's kinda nice for a change.