Hi all. I've been out of touch for a while, and I have some bad news. It turns out MetaJesus is very, very sick, and he needs your support. You see, MetaJesus is dying.
For those of you a bit new to the site, MetaJesus is the patron saint of Daily Kos. MetaJesus looks over the site, and performs small miracles here and there to generally keep things running -- things like reading really, really crappy diaries, intervening in flame wars, and returning the human souls of posters who have ventured too far, too long, on the dark side, and who have only barely returned, crumpled and gasping, slimy with FreeRepublic ectoplasm, to our midst.
You may be saying those are unimpressive miracles, except for that whole soul part, and you are admittedly right. MetaJesus is not Jesus: his powers are, well, more subtle. Mostly, MetaJesus cries. A lot. Well, he doesn't so much cry, usually, as just sigh heavily, or lower his head into his hands, or go off into the other room where he has a liquor cabinet and a very comfortable brown leather chair, or, when the moneychangers are in the Daily Kos temple, throw his Logitech cordless mouse across the room onto the couch, where it bounces off the cushions and lands on the floor next to the sleeping cat -- MetaJesus is a cat person, just as an aside.
Oh, MetaJesus! How we took you for granted! How we laughed at your foibles, and cheered your good spirits, and commented in MetaDiaries obsessively just so you would have something to do! You were the spark of life in the system; the ghost in the shell; the carburetor of our hip and retro-stylish Kossian Vespa! You made diaries about ratings wars secretly bearable, consoled us when the site was momentarily down (right when we were about to post the best comment, the best comment of all!), and laid your invisible, guiding hands on every pie fight and threatened purge. You provided a candle's worth of glowing light to follow troll-rating chases from comment thread to comment thread, each one a delightful
Smokey and the Bandit style romp through the Koslandian scenery, waiting for that one comment where either speeding car or trailing officers would jump an oh-so-conveniently-placed ramp-like collection of shipping crates over an alligator infested bog, at every turn knowing that one commenter or another in the chase was in danger of imminent and
spectacular decapitation.
Wherever there was a slow news day, you were there.
Wherever some person was mad that the front page stories were not talking about issue X, or drama Y, you were there.
Wherever an unmitigated blowhard dedicated an entire diary to chastising his fellow posters for not covering news event Z, instead of actually spending the same amount of time and words and space just covering news event Z their goddamnselves so we would know what the hell they were talking about, you were there.
Wherever someone had an opinion exactly like everyone else's opinion, but with one particular sub-sub-sub-opinion that was so unique, so non-negotiable, so pure of progressive spirit that it proves everyone else is a moron for not agreeing, you were there.
Wherever we found out that one particular poster among us -- and every day, it is indeed a different poster, a true miracle! -- is MORE LIBERAL THAN ANY OF YOU, GOD DAMN YOU ALL, AND HOW DARE YOU QUESTION THEM, ESPECILLY YOU KOS YOU DAMN SELLOOT, you were there.
Wherever a media outlet mentioned Daily Kos, in passing or in full, you were there, with links in hand.
Always lending your quiet MetaVoice. Lending your MetaSpirit. Lending, when necessary, about four hundred dry pounds of 'recommended' ratings, scattered like electronic flower seeds, and twenty pounds of troll ratings, the stinky, stinky MetaFertilizer that makes the rest of your spiritual MetaGarden grow.
May chants in your honor echo from the tallest reaches of the diary list!
Meta! Meta meta meta! Meta meta!
It came on suddenly. One minute MetaJesus was tending to his email and looking up addresses using Yahoo Maps, and the next, he was stricken.
We aren't sure what happened. He was weak, very weak, after several weeks of pony pictures. A series of interviews with prominent Kossacks sent his blood sugar to the stratosphere. The entire premise of YearlyKos -- through I am sure MetaJesus endorses the idea and will be there, in spirit -- gave him the quivers. But yesterday, something had snapped, had gone wrong, and we found him slumped in front of his monitor, on the Daily Kos home page, the recommended diary list before him, the text colors indicating that every single link clicked. He had been out, a few days, visiting an aunt in Ohio, and his email box was full of links to diaries both prominent and obscure, all of them so firmly entrenched in the Meta as to be nearly capable of eating themselves whole.
I want you to know, MetaJesus is, despite the fact that he is in constant danger of crying, a strong person. He survived pie fights, and he has patiently explained why gravity doesn't work all slanty just because you're in New York City, and he has, in general, survived the slings and arrows of the Noxiously Holy, that special class of commenter whose proclaimed brilliance puts the rest of us to shame. But Meta is like asbestos, or Twinkies -- it builds up in your system over time, and the effects become increasingly severe. Unlike asbestos, but possibly still like Twinkies or maybe Snoballs, there is a very clear line, an exposure above which few, even MetaSaviors, can survive.
So right now, MetaJesus needs your help. He is awake now, and resting. He needs to know he has believers, yes, and supporters. Unlike Tinkerbell, he does not need you to clap louder.
He has scrawled a few sentences on a notepad, and told me to spread the word.
The Ten MetaCommandments
1. MetaJesus says thou shalt stop whining over troll ratings as if people were cutting your fingers off with strands of dental floss. If you get ONE troll rating for something, THOU SHALT GET THE HELL OVER IT.
2. MetaJesus says thou shalt not take your past unresolved fights into every damn thread, not because you do not have a very good and interesting Point of Ultimate Righeousness, but because your cross-thread spree of indignation and martyrdom is Fucking Ass Boring for the rest of us.
3. MetaJesus says that if you engage in a slapfight, thou shalt expect to get slapped, and if it hurts when you poke yourself in the eyeball repeatedly with a fork, STOP DOING IT.
4. MetaJesus says thou shalt learn the difference between something being possible, and something being proven, and until you learn to elucidate that difference thou shalt get the fuck out of his face. This also goes for the conflation of using a "proof" that A is possible to then "prove" B,C,D,E,F .. ZZ, which is the essence of what separates the "valid argument" from the "eye-bleedingly freaking stupid conspiracy theory that threatens to cause salamander blood to ooze from any hard drive that stores it". For example: "Birds are animals, and birds fly. Therefore, squid fly too. But squid squirt ink! Let us examine why they do not sell desk squids at my local office supply center? Is it because of the Military?" No. MetaJesus is a patient man, but I assure you, He Will Smite Your Ignorant Ass.
5. MetaJesus says that if you do assert A=B=C, thou shalt not assert that anyone else who does not follow your New Numerology is "in on the conspiracy" or "being paid to suppress you". The penalty for this offense is death by rampant mockery.
6. MetaJesus says YOU are responsible for checking your own sources before posting. It is not the community's responsibility to check your sources for you. It is not the community's responsibility to "debate" materials for the two hundredth consecutive time, if they have already been debated 199 times before. Thou shalt check your own sources, and thou shalt be held responsible for their credibility as thine own.
7. MetaJesus says that if you want to discuss topics that the community here is unwilling to tolerate, like the-Jews-had-warning 9/11 conspiracies or reinterpretations of materials science that require quantum singularities to be hovering off the shores of Long Island, thou shalt take it the fuck somewhere else, and that there is an entire Internet waiting for your very important rehashings of discredited rapings of the laws of physics, and that enforcing basic rules of evidence does not constitute Oppressing Your Constitutional Rights.
8. MetaJesus says that demanding that the media/politicians/world pay attention to bloggers, then calling bloggers "sellouts" when they actually achieve the success (book deals, interviews, meetings with prominent figures) that you have yourself demanded, is the blogging equivalent of making farting noises with your armpit, and Shut Thyself the Hell Up.
9. MetaJesus says that the only thing more annoying than demanding leadership of random internet figures is getting pissy when they then provide it. Not agreeing with you is not absence of leadership: it is simply leadership you disagree with. If you meant that you wanted to be the leader, and intended your pissiness to convey that everyone should do what you say, we'll get right on that. Perhaps after a light snack.
10. MetaJesus says that if twenty different people say your diary sucks, then thou art not secretly an unrecognized and put-upon genius. Your diary just sucks. Thou shalt get over it. Conversely, if one person out of a hundred says your diary sucks, they may simply be a jackass. Thou shalt get over that too.
But teacher, I said, which of these MetaCommandments is the must important?
Fighting the urge to drift back off to sleep, he muttered a few simple words: Thou Shalt Troll Rate The Damn Comment, Not The Poster. I don't know how many fucking times I have to say that...
The additional and unspoken eleventh commandment is thus, and is one which MetaJesus uttered in his final moments of consciousness, after nodding his approval that I had transcribed the others correctly. MetaJesus says piling on with MetaDiaries when Daily Kos is in Meta mode is akin to shooting a mockingbird.
I am not a MetaTheologian, so I am a bit unclear on how the dynamics of Meta spirituality work, and do not understand how following these rules will make MetaJesus feel better. I only know that he told me they would. And somehow, I believe him.
Get well soon, MetaJesus. Get well soon.