Welcome to another addition of New Rules! This is an ongoing series in which I compile some of my least favorite meta trends on Daily Kos and then complain about them. You can read the previous diary here.
Today I'm devoting the New Rules to the infamous GBCW, or "Goodbye Cruel World" diary. This type of diary is the subject of a lot of meta on Daily Kos, so it's only appropriate to give it its own special category of New Rules.
As always, these rules are mostly in good fun. Mostly.
New Rule: If you post a GBCW, it had better be a good one.
I'm busy, I have a lot of diaries to read, and I hold people to high standards. If I see a GBCW on the recent diaries list, it has to be good. I mean, really, really good. Worthy of the Hall of Fame. The stuff of legends.
Some suggestions for how you might make your GBCW really shine:
- Call everybody on Daily Kos "fascists," "Nazis," "shills," and "dumbocrats." Use the phrase "you people" a lot.
- Say that Daily Kos is ten times worse than RedState.
- Put a nice four-letter word in the title.
- USE ALL CAPS!!!
- Splel yuor wrods icnorrcetly.
- Use improper, punctuation.
- Use grammar bad.
- Demand that kos "delete your fucking account."
Consult this paragon of GBCW diaries for more information.
New Rule: If you think you might one day post a GBCW, you have to post a HCW beforehand.
That's right -- a Hello Cruel World. By posting a HCW diary, you will be giving people a good heads-up for your forthcoming GBCW. A HCW can be used to judge whether or not your GBCW meets our lofty standards. Besides, it's just polite, is all. Who says goodbye without saying hello first?
New Rule: If you're going to post a GBCW in which your main complaint is about how "negative" Kossacks are becoming, you're not allowed to spend your entire GBCW being negative about other Kossacks.
I'm all for hearing your reasons why you think Daily Kos is becoming such a "negative" place, but there's a limit to how much you should be focusing on that in your GBCW. Why? Well, there comes a point when all that complaining about "negativity" just means you're being as negative as the people you're complaining about.
Plus, the idea of using a GBCW to complain about negativity confuses me. I learned in 5th grade math class that multiplying two negatives gets you a positive. So, if you're being negative about others being negative, aren't you being positive? Doesn't that therefore make your complaint really about how "positive" Daily Kos is becoming? And by complaining about it being "positive," aren't you really just being negative? Are you positive about your negativity?
See? Look what you did. I'm already confused.
The point is, at least spend some time in your GBCW describing some specific examples of what you perceive to be negative, as well as the stuff about Daily Kos that you find to be positive, and how you feel the need to avoid the negative stuff outweighs your need to remain active with the positive stuff. That way we'll know you've weighed your options and you're not just being negative for negativity's sake. But don't use your whole GBCW to complain about negativity on Daily Kos. That would be like writing a blog in which you complain about blogging.
(Wait -- isn't that what I'm doing in these New Rules?)
(Let's just move on, before I get even more confused.)
New Rule: If the GBCW is a spectacular flame-out or a special troll diary that will ensure the user ain't coming back anyway, recipes must go directly under the tip jar.
Put all of the recipes there. Makes them easy to reference so you don't have to go searching through the ocean of 500+ comments to find them.
In a related note.....
New Rule: If you post a spectacular flame-out GBCW, you're not allowed to delete it.
Those recipes are too good. I don't wanna lose 'em. You don't wanna see me when I lose a good recipe. Trust me.
And finally, New Rule: Don't post a GBCW unless you're absolutely certain that you're leaving Daily Kos for good.
The GBCW is not something you should post if you don't mean it. It is a way of letting Daily Kos know that you are through, done, finished with this blog forever. Yet too often, there are people who become majorly invested in Daily Kos who, for whatever reason, decided enough was enough, so they post the GBCW diary -- only to come back at some later date. Hell, I've seen people post as many as two or three incarnations of the GBCW, and they almost always return each time. By the way, saying in your GBCW that you plan on continuing to read Daily Kos diaries (as a lurker) means that you didn't post a real GBCW.
The only exception to this rule is if the GBCW of your diary does not refer to the term "Goodbye Cruel World." Maybe you're talking about saying Goodbye to the Chilean World, or maybe you're saying "Goodbye Cool World," as former front-pager Arjun Jaikumar once did. Perhaps you're talking about the Great Bay Coast Watch, or the Great Baptist Church of Waterloo. That reminds me -- somebody needs to do a diary on the Great Baptist Church of Waterloo, stat!
If you're considering leaving Daily Kos, but think there is a chance -- any chance -- that you might still want to post and read comments and diaries later, give yourself a little breathing room and say you're taking a break. That way there's no confusion if you do come back. There's a nice little acronym for that: TTFN, or "Ta-Ta For Now." And, if you allow yourself the freedom to take some time off, you can come back refreshed and with a new energy to participate on this blog at a later time.
Remember, Daily Kos is a rather dynamic website. It may not fit your expectations 100% of the time. If you post a GBCW because you feel Daily Kos has become too [fill in the blank] or isn't nearly [fill in the blank] for your taste, you shouldn't come back later only because it all of sudden became everything you wanted. That would be like declaring that you will never, ever, ever root for a certain sports team anymore because they're losing, and then suddenly decide to start rooting for them again once they start winning. That's called being a fair-weather fan.
And now, I bid goodbye to my cruel diary!...... At least, until the next one.