posted
To be fair, Benway, I travelled to Barbelith, brought a thread idea back with me and then asked Ganesh about it on TMO, so if anyone would be responsible for making steps towards turning TMO into Barbelith, I guess it would be me.
In actual fact that wasn't my intention (though my previous point still stands); I really wanted to see how such a discussion might pan out differently here to the way it did on Barbelith.
I certainly think TMO has more than a whiff of the locker room about it at times, probably more so now than ever before. As our numbers have dwindled, so the balance of heterosexual male posters to female and gay posters seems to have shifted in favour of the former. Perhaps these things are connected.
However, despite the jokes, for the most part, I think anyone posting overtly homophobic views on TMO would quickly be shot down by the vast majority of posters here, as would anyone posting racist, anti-Semitic or pro Ben Elton comments. The difference being, we'd be unlikely to ban them. We'd let them say their piece, in some cases we'd let them say it over and over until they become a laughable figure of fun, we'd argue with them and we'd mock them but in the long run, we'd allow them free speech in order to undermine their viewpoint on the boards.
I was wondering whether that makes TMO a more comfortable environment for a homosexual or a Jew than somewhere like Barbelith, for example, where these people would just be banned. I mean, what would Barbelith do with Herr Norton?
posted
There seems to be very little point to TMO taking an overtly pro-gay/anti-gay or pro-straight/anti-straight stance on any issue, simply by taking a pro-whatever stance we'd stunt the 'discussion' and the board would be too biased a place for me to feel comfortable.
I agree that we are going through a period of stagnation, older more regular posters have dropped out of circulation and newbies seem to be either automatically called shit or expected to produce quality prose along the lines of <Fill in quality posters name of choice here>.
We're also suffering from our open discussion policy a little, it's hard for anyone stumbling across the forum to figure out where we are coming from or what to make of us, for the longest while I liked that, it meant that if you wanted to join in you had to put in a bit of time working out what the forum did, how it evolved and the forum tone in general.
I guess in my heart of hearts I yearn back for the days when the internet was a new and exciting place to be, and websites were a fun place to talk and exchange idea, when the online crowd seemed just a little more elite than 31337 or l33t than it is now, and I suppose we need to evolve the forums a little in order to catch up.
-------------------- my own brother a god dam shit sucking vampire!!! you wait till mum finds out buddy!
H1ppychick
We all prisoners, chickee-baby. We all locked in.
posted
Don't apologise, I thought what you wrote was completely on the money, although maybe a better place for it would have been as a new thread - which I suggest that you start.
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