| | These are open experiments in free association.
The results are a hint that the size and scope of reasonable association tends to smaller constructs, not larger constructs.
Perhaps it is just too easy to disrespect casual others on the commons when the crowd is huge and difficult to accurately navigate without inadvertently(or otherwise)colliding with others in an unintended fashion.
The loss is exactly as Michael describes; less variety in the spice in exchange. But sometimes the upside is more manageably respectful discourse. Not everyone has the same preferences or tolerance for the level of discord, and well, we sort.
Ken and I(he might still, I don't know)used to post regularly as tended to be minority more conservative leaning folks at another local family-like niche which tended to be more left-leaning in the local population. The place was surprisingly affectionate and largely well behaved in its contention. But it, too, tended to be an eddy of folks, not a current. I never thought that was a defect, I just largely attributed it to the fact that there are more forums on the internet than there are people(or so it seems.) Beyond a certain size, large forums(most of us have been at this so long we still think of them as 'boards' as in the days of BBS...)tend to remind me of those old party line phone numbers that some of us would call in Jr High, discourse lost in noise. That was our generations' Twitter, I suppose. (Twitter, to me, comes across as largely pointless succinct grunting, not to be confused with overly verbose and pointless grunting or this present unfocused sream of coniousness.)
I found(with great pleasure) the RoR site in 2007, and looking back at the old threads, I seem to have missed the Golden Age of Popularity. For some reason, for an extended period of time, this site looks like it once managed to maintain a large and vibrant collection of folks, like a statistically aberrent mass of unstable plutonium that exceeded critical mass and defied physics for a few years. I missed whatever the Lindsay Perigo split was all about. I post on Lindsay's site once in a great while, and same with Michael B's site. I never fully understood the either/or nature or the 'reasons' for the splits. I just always assumed that it is the inherent nature of the medium, with its too easy to misunderstand poor conveyance of tone, which exacerbates conflict.
Even, blue on blue/ friendly fire conflict. But especially with different personalities and regard for what conflict is and isn't.
My wife and I have had to wrestle with a related problem. I was raised in a small family, parents and one older sister(and a much older sister who moved out when I was very young.) At dinner every night, the four of us at the table would have loud and raucous talks mostly about things we didn't know anything at all about, because wedf only learned of them in the paper or on the news. Politics, the space program, religion. It was usually my mother who launched the topic. She would blurt out her opinion on something that she clearly had no knowledge of and that was the family's sign of a jump-ball. Example, "Those damn moon shots are screwing up the weather." And then we climatologists and meteorologists would have at it. These dinners would get loud and raucous and contentious and animated, but never to the point of actually throwing food, because in the end, we all understood that this was really for fun. We were talking about the world outside of our family. Often, my father would hurl his favorite nonsensical retort at my mother, who would tend to say the most outrageous thingsjust to get a rise out of him, "You are fuller of shit than a concrete monkey." The thought of him being so agitated at my mother (they adored each ofther for over almost 80 years, childhood sweathearts)sufficient to get out his big gun still makes me laugh. In out family, such contentious discourse was a kind of close affection, a faux-animus, and to this day, 50 years later, my sister and I still enjoy such discussions and look fondly back at those years around the dinner table. The issue that my wife and I have is, her family dinner tables were nothing like that. They were quiet, reserved, and any sign of discord like that would not be taken as a sign of close family affection, of enjoying the verbal wrestling with each other, but of actual discord. It has taken a while, and it still drives her nuts, but she is slowing coming around. I think.
I experienced the same thing in football locker rooms. Nobody ragged on you more and said the most foul things to your face than your closest friends. It is an odd form of intimacy not always appreciated or correctly interpreted, especially in this medium, and not appropriate for strangers. But after a while, even casual acquaintances on the public commons are not actually strangers, and collegial faux-animus pokes its head into the tent.. It is not everyone's cup of tea. It is too easily interpreted as actual animus, not collegial faux-animus. And that misunderstanding is one of the fundamental forces of the universe that tends to drive us apart.
It is why, in my profile, I have listed this:
"Thank you for participating in my cheap substitute for much needed therapy. The tone of my posts is best interpreted if you imagine a can of beer next to my keyboard."
regards,
Fred
(Edited by Fred Bartlett on 1/22, 6:12am)
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