Okay, yesterday I published a "special edition" providing some expansion of the kind of things I'm actually writing about the hiddens in The Hiddens. A much-requested explanation of the codes and some hints, at least, as to where the inside jokes are. And it was like popping a champagne cork.
So I officially don't have time to try to deal with all the foaming and frothing of santorum (what, spell check doesn't recognize that? I'm sure google knows the term) that's going on in comments anymore. And I couldn't be happier about that.
Right now it's all the trolls in there. Well, not trolls in the DK sense. Real trolls. People who disrupt conversations instead of add to them. You know the type. People who post a lot of comments on the Internet. Which makes them look like dicks, everyone of us, eventually. Over and over.
Because Someone Is Wrong On The Internet.
It amuses me when I see references to that iconic online comic, having felt that feeling so often for so many years before the drawing, and it thrilled me when I saw enough people on teh Big Toobs had finally realized, enough to support a meme, that everyone is a dick on the Interent. Something that I've pointed out repeatedly I myself discovered in the late eighties, so frankly I am ahead of your game.
The key to understanding what is going on isn't really to think that we aren't dicks in real life. We are. We are the dickiest of dicks.
Anyone who comments on the Internet is ignoring the fact that every single thing they say is both transmitted to everyone in the world and preserved for all posterity. Which is why so few people contribute to comment threads on the Internet. But we all do. (Well, I'm pretty sure a lot of you contribute rarely, you mostly only read, but I aim to change that, and give you the ability to not get pummeled readily as soon as you try to talk to someone.)
Okay, so, you know how they say when you go to prison the first thing you should do is find the biggest guy you can beat and punch him? Well, there is indeed a reason they say that. Because that's what people do, even if they don't want to, on the Internet. They would in real life, too, if it didn't cause contusions and possible death. But on the Internet we're all safe. So we're punching each other to shit as much as we can, because it is fun, considering there isn't any real violence.
Except we know there is. There is real violence in the real world, which means if we aren't willing to be serious we are pissing in the wind. There is also, though, the bullying I've been talking about non-stop (and you, god damn you, have been reading) for two weeks. And the violence that is still real, even though it is metaphoric, in messages to human beings like what we often see (some of it not even hidden) on Daily Kos. Forgive me for relying on memory, but accusations of being something other than a "fully formed human being", seems to pass unnoticed, but the entirely reasonable "fuck you" in return is forbidden. I use that example, which is my own, not because it is a sore point but because it is one I don't need to hunt down.
It is traditional, it seems, on Daily Kos to post scads of comments your "opponent" made in other conversations in order to make some point badly. I say badly, because there are productive ways to quote things and there are unproductive ways, and trying to, in any even slight way, "shame" the person who wrote those words is by nature an unproductive way. So I'm not going to trawl through the hundreds of comments that willibro, Timaeus, and gooderservice have posted to pick out the ones I think qualifies them as (a new blanket term to HR in comments if you are a weeny) "motherfuckers".
They're nice guys, they're very intelligent, and knowledgeable. They're actually pretty reasonable, and have good ideas. Yet, they're motherfuckers. Complete dicks. Nasty. Little. Shits. On regular occasions.
They think they're doing good, but what they're actually doing is disruptive. It causes long threads of escalating insults that often end in pie fights. Or would, if they were actually the worst offenders. They're not. Like I said, they're actually pretty smart, nice guys. Usually. I just picked on them first.
Because when you get on the wrong side of them, the shit that they post is, to me, almost unspeakable. Rank insinuations worthy of Karl Rove. Undermining comments snide enough to come from Rush himself. Just fucking nasty.
Now, the nastiest thing I've ever done is call them nasty. The only purposefully personal attacks I have ever made on any on Daily Kos since the time I started posting in 2009 were them, or Kossacks like them. I respect them, I really do. I don't respect the fact that they don't respect me. And I will beat them bloody senseless, metaphorically, rhetorically, if that is what it takes to quiet them down. Go look at the threads where it's happened. It goes on for a couple hours and then they show up here in The Hiddens to bitch and moan. And try to hide my tip jars and gin up outrage against me, for imagined slights and petty insults.
That kind of thing only ever starts when I call them on their bullshit. I'll admit, most Kossacks don't hear anything much else out of me. I don't post a lot of the responses I would like to make, if you can believe that, having seen some of the ones I do. Because as I've been explaining all along, I mastered this shit long before any of you even knew it existed. Willi and Timmeh and gooder are used to being nasty little shits on purpose in order to to try to chase trolls away from Daily Kos. And it doesn't fucking work. It just makes the whole place look like Lord of the Flies. We don't need that kind of social moderation, heavy on the ridicule and attempts to shame and question other people's very humanity.
We have software for dealing with trolls. Not a one of us ever needs to engage in any conversation that isn't calm and productive. Unless, of course, there is somebody wrong on the Internet. Hide the comment, move on to something more useful. Nobody but TUs can see anything that happens after that, and all it can be from that point on is bullying.
You can't hide diaries. You can't delete comments. Learn the fucking system, okay?
This is my holiday edition, because I am not doing this shit any more today. You assholes work it out in comments and I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh edition of The Hiddens. It's Memorial Day for heaven's sake, and no Kossack should be wasting time on META. Go love your families, and appreciate our military servicemembers for being willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so that we can speak our minds openly, without fear of violent reprisals because somebody disagrees with our opinion.
