1: Hear about Daily Kos. This can take years, but hang in there. Some progressive somewhere will get around to mentioning it when you are actually capable of hearing what they say.
2: Locate Daily Kos. I find Google often helps. Putting a bookmark on the site and organizing it in a folder with other blogs makes it easier for subsequent tries. Note: even Daily Kos comes after your own blog on that list. (Get over it, Daily Kos.)
3: Begin reading. This part should be self explanatory. If not, you may be a Republican.
4: Find something that appeals to you. If you manage to read all the way through, proceed through some of the comments. Often these will help explain what you’ve just read better than what you’ve just read.
5: Begin to feel intimidated by the overwhelming body of knowledge contained on the pages which have spilled from the fingers of other Daily Kos readers.
6: Learn that these other “readers” are actually “members”. This means somebody somewhere has information on who they are. Continue to feel intimidated, and relieved that you haven’t joined yet and can still skulk unnoticed around the site.
7: Feel the absolute, irrepressible, overwhelming NEED to make a comment and find out that you can’t. Let that need simmer and stew until it propels you to actually join. EXCEPT… You haven’t figured out a username yet. Heaven forbid if anybody ever in the whole future history of the world found out who you are because you are bound to make a fool of yourself with your first and subsequent comments and it would surely make you die of shame.
8: One day the username will come to you in a flash. Perfect in what it says about you, ambiguous enough that nobody can trace it in any way back to you, unlike certain passwords that you use in other places online. Savor it. Roll it around in your fingers, practicing it on the keyboard so you can get it absolutely right when you type it in for the first time. You will not yet have realized that you’ve already typed it in for the last time once you completed joining.
9: Join! Hooray! It worked! The site even accepted your archaic form of an email suffix, which many sites have rejected before, the main reason you aren’t commenting on some other favorite sites. No, those (favorite sites) absolutely DO NOT INCLUDE Facebook or Twitter.
10: Make your first comment. Choose wisely. Try to start out without shaming yourself, your family, your ancestors, your neighbors… oh wait, they’re not going to know who you are, right? Think about that username again. Is it securely anonymous? OK, start typing.
11: Wait for your welcome reply. You will have seen several others by now. Wait… See the conversation roll on without it. Start to obsess on whether you’ve shamed yourself, broken the system, or the very worst possible, been ignored. Go back up through the comments and look again. Nada. Decide to check your email while you wait because maybe somebody wants to sell you something to enhance a body part you don’t come equipped with and you can at least spend three seconds laughing at them. Discover your welcome cleverly tucked in your email inbox. WTF? I’m so bad I can’t get acknowledged on the site but get a discreet private email? Did I screw up that bad? Spend several minutes weighing whether to sulk or not. Go back to Daily KOS because somebody surely will have something to say that you want to read that will distract you. You have chosen not to sulk.
12: Discover you are right. Nearly every day, several times, something is there for you to read.
13: Begin to wonder if you have become addicted. Decide it’s not important.
14: Try making a few more comments.
15: Remember to proofread before you post. No, RAELLY!
16. Start a thread. You didn’t mean to hijack somebody else’s thread, but there was something you personally could contribute, The information you’ve gotten about the site does say it’s open to anecdotal input, and you’re full of it. Anecdotes, that is. Lots of years of life experience in a whole variety of things. Kind of a Jill of all topics, mistress of… well, nevermind that part. Note in your emails that you have gotten a response, and respond back. And forth. Wheeee! Attention! Sharing! Conversation. Start haunting your emails looking for replies. Briefly wonder again if you are addicted. Dismiss the thought again, successfully.
17: Begin to recognize other posters by their names and recurring themes, note who lives “nearby” even if defined by a region. Recognize these other folks aren’t going to share — nor ask for — personal information except as relevant to a topic. Feel more secure, more a part of the community, despite noting a certain irony in a “community” of people who likely have never met nor ever will.
18: Get attacked by another poster. You have a shared problem, have tried different solutions, and found different ones that either do or do not work for your different situations. Find out that another person can read what you just wrote (reexamine for clarity) , insist you said the opposite, and claim you are a terrible person wishing ill on others because you chose the worst solution. You must want others to fail!
19: Mull over 18 different possible responses. Snark? Reason? Be offended? Seek more information in the face of evidence that this is a useless endeavor? Ignore them? Finally choose the latter as you read another person has stepped in and informed the attacking person that you did indeed say what you said. Vow to repress that first person’s identity for life and never bring up that topic again ever ever ever. At least not till next time. Once you’ve gotten over yourself.
20: Eventually try to write your own diary. Receive the (now) expected 5 comments and watch it fade away. Try again. Try again. 13 comments? WOW! bye…. Recall that you still have been unable to transfer a photo onto the site for an avatar, or the opening of a diary, despite reading “how” and working to translate that into “human”, and decide to give it up for a while. Ten years might do.
21: Go back to reading others’ words and learning stuff and commenting.
21B: Realize you missed a step in your list. You wanted to acknowledge your education in acronyms now goes way beyond WTF. Realize this means renumbering everything. Also recognize you can still read the clock across the room informing you it’s much too late to keep that many numbers in your head and do it correctly. Go to bed, declaring yourself now a grownup.
21C: Wake suddenly with a workaround for inserting additional content without having to renumber everything, and use it. Actually acknowledge the expansion of your understanding of a wide variety of acronyms from reading DK regularly.
21D: Realize you also missed acknowledging somewhere around this point in writing your diary that DK is much shorter to write and people here have already figured that out, DUMMY! Decide it doesn’t matter and quit kicking yourself, and you can still squeeze the original thought in here which prompted the “D” in the first place. Begin to remember what that actually was, and decide to write it here to avoid the necessity of a 21E: Branch out from DK and start following embedded links to other sites for more information. Begin to shop from an undisclosed number of them. Discover new somewhat similar blogs, like “All Hat No Cattle” and recommend them to your (actual) friends.
22: Discover Kos and the Herman Cain Awards series. (Wait! What? This place was named after an actual person? Who knew? Why didn’t anybody tell me?) Get over yourself after a while and start to search for this and other authors you have come to a: understand pretty well or at least better, and b: find they usually have information you want.
23: Discover Frank Pedraza’s sense of humor. Discover how many people join in with a good pun series. Envy them. Finally make one of your own. Get noticed for it. Revel in somebody actually understanding, if only once, your particular skewed sense of humor. Celebrate modestly. (As if...)
24: Discover Frank Pedraza’s detractors, read their stated reasons. Decide to pick a side when Frank announces he’ll be elsewhere for a while. Recognize humor is what gets you though some of the worst and ugliest and most frustrating things going on in this world these days. Comment to Frank that what he has to offer is appreciated. It’s not a hijack (who knew there was such a thing? Uh-oh… Oops. Uhh, mea culpa.) but a little relief, badly needed.
25: Get introduced to Koscars. (What the Kos?) First topic is snark. Read the links to stuff you’ve missed for not being here already for years. Giggle loud and long enough to scare the dog off your lap and wake up your spouse. Try to explain. Giggle some more. Realize you were supposed to be doing something else for a while now. Debate how much it matters: the topic is snark after all. Figure out how to apologize to the dog — once you’ve finally stopped giggling, of course, but OMG, that picture of the horrified baby on the spicy Gerbers jar…!!!!!!!!!!!!!
26: Discover “INAPPROPRIATE CAPS...” from the list of nominees and discover Kos and comments all over again. O! M! G! Do people really complain about all these things? Have you been doing it wrong all these… weeks? Spend at least three seconds mentally reviewing your entire history in comments sections, both as reader and contributor. Evaluate for at least another two whether you should stop commenting since you have been guilty of a few of those dire offenses yourself. Does everybody out there ascribe those motives to me? Am I truly a horrible person? Then again, remember that YOU are actually anonymous here. So far. Whew! Carry on.
27: Decide to try your hand at the mama of all comments about comments in a diary.
28: If you’re reading this, I’m still working on it. What? You wanted to know everything I’m thinking about saying on the topic of comments here? For all 13 of you? Wait, only 5? I’m sorry, come ba-a-a-a-a-ck…….