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I really want to leave Something Awful right now
Well, not exactly...but as "I really want to join Something Awful right now" was a long-running thread last year and I'm feeling a bit disillusioned with the site, it seemed an appropriate title.
The main problem for me at the moment is that the "serious" discussion forum is completely overrun with people with a left-ish social justice-type agenda who hate you if you don't completely agree with everything on said agenda (and, for the record, I'm basically pretty left-wing myself). And they're really starting to get into faction-fighting with FYAD, the sub-forum for trolls, shit-posting, weird in-jokes and calling people "nigger" and "faggot" as much as is humanly possible because it's allowed there (but not elsewhere). I think both sides think they're the True Keepers of the Glorious Goon Flame or something.
Ironically, it's just the sort of thing they'd all be mocking on any other site, but whilst the mockery is fun, there's also something incredibly depressing about the endless supply of awful sites and awful posters. And Lowtax trolls his own site (or at least, his mods do) all the goddamn time, and they just seem to accept it. It makes me appreciate IJBM.
Anyone got any thoughts?
Comments
yes
do what the title says
Early BTL in a nutshell:
>Typical devil's advocate/ pussyfooting around kinda post in a controversial topic
>"AKU WA YURUSAN!"
what the fuck does that mean
EVIL CANNOT BE FORGIVEN
I still think of early BTL as something of my old shame. Luckily, we eventually chilled down.
Something Awful is a big enough site that stuff like this happens all the time. If you really want to leave, just stop posting. That way you can post any time you like and not be banned.
I blame most of early BTL's problems on Anne being on her "I'm a goon now! I'm going to be as judgmental and self-righteous as possible!" kick.
That said, I'm a goon and a lot of the culture on SA confuses me.
You could just not frequent the shitty parts of the site. If you're into social justice slacktivism, there's tons of better sites to read that don't suffer from a circlejerk of gasket-blowing that does squat-all in terms of educating and exchanging perspectives.
InsanityAddict - Yeah, I think in practice that's probably what I'll end up doing - either that or just post less.
DonZabu - There does seem to be a well-beaten path from TvTropes to BTL/IJBM/other ex-troper forum to SA, but I know several ex-tropers have come to grief there, mostly through making it too obvious that's what they were (or just being plain annoying).
I think BTL at the beginning was a bunch of kids left in charge of a sweet shop and going nuts, then after a while realising that they felt sick from gorging themselves. It was liberating to actually openly bitch about certain people on TvTropes, but after a while that just gets boring. That's one of my problems with SA itself.
I heard Anne basically decided to quit the Internet to concentrate on her studies. If she sticks to it I'll miss her.
Yeah, I mean SA has a point a good deal of the time, but anyone who thought migrating to SA was going to actually avoid the kind of trouble that plagued TVT was frankly kidding themselves. They've got plenty of the same sort of creepers, extremists, and petulant douchebags of their own. There's a reason my lurking doesn't tend to leave the LP forums.
@Crimson:
Anne is the reincarnation of [AOD]?!
I think to a lot of posters, their self-righteousness stems from mea culpa. They like to think of themselves as better than the rest of the Net, partly to justify spending money to sign up, but deep down, they know they aren't.
I still wouldn't mind joining up simply because the place is so decentralized that there's a good variety of topics going on in the megathreads and lurking has changed my perspective on a lot of things.
[AOD] lives on still
I always thought that Anne's obsession with TV Tropes was kind of creepy and worrying. It's like most of her life revolved around it, much to the detriment of other, more important things. I thought this was just an exaggeration and I had just a flawed impression on her, but it seems that there was a certain truth to it. It's good to hear that she finally got her shit together.
Maybe I would have joined SA some time too, but the paying-for-a-membership thing makes it impossible. Not that I couldn't pay, I'm just not willing to waste money for a forum membership. This, together with other things one has to pay for, and the fact that many goons are willing to pay for it, gives me quite a negative impression of them. Like some morons, who have too much money. But my interest in SA, aside from LPs, is rather low anyway.
To be fair to Anne, TVT and SA are both addictive in their own rights, and when you get a ton of positive reinforcement from one for being openly critical of the other, I can see how that would be easy to get caught up in.
As I've said in the past, SA is great as a discussion platform for various topics I'm interested in. As long as I take it for what it is and not expect it to be some kind of bastion of internet progressiveness, I find it to be worth my time and $10. They've got their share of annoying people just like any other community.
Elbeem - Actually, the most annoying element are the people who would like it to be a bastion of internet "progressiveness", when really it's just the same bunch of nerds you'll find everywhere else.
I'll admit I do have a partial view - I don't really use the media forums at all for instance, and I wouldn't be interested in LPs because I don't play video games.
Eh, I bought an account on SA, but I've never used it. I stopped posting in the TVTropes thread once I realized they were a bunch of arrogant assholes in a circle-jerk almost as bad as TVTropes. I'd participate in LPs but I don't usually bother to catch up on an LP once it's been going on for a while.
Speaking of early BTL: Yeah, we were mostly butt-hurt whiners back then, though I don't really regret writing that bashing thread about Chagen. We've chilled.
About Anne: It always seemed she got worked up too much about TVTropes. I'm glad she's taking a break, she probably needs it.
Okay, you're in 30's and I think you're putting a little too much thought about internet forums. I've always got by being having a certain amount of detachment for the forums.
^^The punchline is that said thread is mostly disgruntled TV Tropes users, which is especially hilarious when they call for purges of blood tainted by TV Tropes. Of course, Something Awful's userbase is fragmented, so other places don't necessarily resemble the TV Tropes thread since separate subcommunities tend to form around different megathreads.
The notion that "caring about internet forums" is not something that 30 years old should do bothers me quite a bit, if you ask me. And I don't think that Brass here is exactly letting it ruin his life or anything.
Well, I've been posting in forums since the late 90's and I keep seeing that issue pop every so often.
I mean what is the internet generation supposed to do as they get older chummer? Just stop giving a shit about the communities and communication styles they've grown up with because they've hit an arbitrary number?
Vacasama - Actually, I've always agreed that you shouldn't get too worked up about these things, and tbh the thread title probably suggests a greater degree of irritation than I actually feel. Also, I am still fairly new to the internet as such. I was a late adopter.
At the moment, I'm in an ongoing struggle to get the management at my block of flats to fix the malfunctioning alarm system, I have the everyday stress of my job and my social life still hasn't fully recovered from moving 10 months ago. Being bugged by SA is a welcome distraction from the major problems.
I sorta lost interest in the TVTropes thread after I saw them misquote me/take some of my statements out of context. If only because some of the people there had already expressed approval of me, only for that not to be acknowledged later on. That showed me that the people there are too fragmented to be very entertaining, not to mention that they're not infallible and probably took other quotes out of context too. And I don't have much interest in the rest of the site anyway.
Good news is, someone else paid for my account, after seeing my handling of Chagen's little shitfit about SA. That's the only reason I feel bad about my lack of activity.
I lost interest when I saw someone say that computer engineers were shallow idiots because all they ever wanted to talk about was programming. That was the point when I realized that at some point, it's only sperging if they are personally not interested in it. And the existence of the less single-mindedly vindictive and more general Fandom Lunacy thread.
Did Anne get her account on her own, or someone paid for it too? I ask 'cause I'm curious if one can exploit it. You know, diss 'Tropes, get free SA account.
Scrye paid it for her, as I recall.
No, I think that The Triumphant did it.
There are bigger things to worry about than people in a single thread (the whole misogyny thread drama and reddit thread closure come to mind). If you really want to stop posting, then do so. Just don't do something stupid to get banned.