Okay, let's get one thing straight: This ain't a rant. It isn't a sermon. It isn't your Holy Man™ dispensing mana from heaven in those big, heavy cans. It is an invitation to discuss the future of this board in a manner which may or may not get results...By which I do not mean the admin style, etc, of the board, but the way in which we as members use it. The following are my ideas and comments and ARE NOT TO BE TAKEN AS ADMIN WRIT, but rather my own personal opinion as a member. Are we clear on that? Good, good. If the following makes your butt ache or causes any stern damage, take it up with me, do not assume that it is the admin group or board at large that has wounded your inner child. And there WILL be some wounding, because there's been some shit that I've been wanting to say for a very long time. Contrariwise, some of you may have something to say to me, and that's fine. Lay it all out in the open, but don't be a big fucking pussy about it. If it's on your ass, spew it. That being said, here goes:
1. PD is not your personal blog. It is also not your fan club, your crying shoulder, or anything else like that. Nor is it mine or anyone else's. If you cannot find a way to make the insipid details of your personal life funny or interesting, perhaps you should consider posting it on facebook. Seriously, when I log onto PD, I do not want to hear about the condition of your vagina, your school funding issues, your love life, or any of that shit
unless you make it entertaining1. I honestly don't give a shit, otherwise. It's fucking annoying. I come to PD for the weird and the challenging, not to be bushwhacked in 5 threads about your TMI bullshit. Your life just isn't that interesting, and neither is mine. MAKE it interesting, or go tell Zuckerberg's yahoos about it. Or at least make a blog thread that is advertised as such, so that people who don't want to hear about your latest romantic disaster don't have to fucking look at your mess. FFS.
2. If you can't be arsed to comment meaningfully on other peoples' threads, don't cry when your thread gets nothing but mittens or a fast trip to page 5. This is a two way street. You post content, and you read other peoples' content. Well, you don't have to do either, but the penalties for not doing so are sort of built in. This does not mean that you have to post in every single new thread: Some people can't be bothered with politics, etc, and that's fine. But if you are here ONLY for people to read your shit, and that's it, resign yourself to being the next Sepia...A great writer who hardly anyone reads, because he isn't engaged at all with the board, other than to post his own work (and because - while his style is great - he's been writing basically the same thing for 8 years, which is one risk of not engaging...Feedback comes in conversations, not in mittens).
3. On that note, emotes are not an acceptable substitute for conversation. Mittens are not a reply, they are an indication that either the person didn't read the post (in which case, why answer?), or that the post didn't have anything that stood out (in which case you should say so). We are NOT here to uncritically accept the work of our peers, but to comment, discuss, tear apart (if need be), etc, the work in question.
4. If you KNOW a subject will bring down a shitstorm and - knowing this - you post a thread about that subject, don't start fucking bitching when that shitstorm arrives. And if you do, for fuck's sake don't be a passive-aggressive shitbag about it. If you KNOW that a drug thread is going to spin out of control instantly, either don't post a thread that says "I'll just leave this here" as if you aren't going to engage, then engage, then get all fucking weepy about the results, flounce a dozen fucking times, and then forever after treat everyone on the board like they aren't real people, simply because your rectum burns. Talking to you, RWHN, if it ain't obvious enough, but it goes for anyone else who starts a thread about a hot-button topic and then starts to settle at the stern when people do EXACTLY WHAT YOU EXPECTED THEM TO DO. If you are willing to take the pounding and smile, by all means post the thread...But if not, don't be a big fucking nancy when the inevitable happens. You fucking KNEW what was coming, so why the FUCK are you upset?
5. We're getting stale. In my own case, my rants and sermons have sounded much the same since about 2005, now that I look back on them, and the fiction angle was played out a year ago. We've done some amazing fucking things here...Epic rants, WOMP, GASMs, Intermittens, BIP, etc. But they've been done, and it's high time we came up with something new. I don't mean WE CAN NEVER WOMP AGAIN, ARRRG or anything like that. I mean that we need to find a new project, a new focus, something fresh that we can sink our teeth into. We have some creative bastards here (Payne, Nigel, LMNO, and of course Cram, among others). There must be something we can whip up. Not asking for results THIS MINUTE - I don't want to force things - but we should all be thinking here and there about what to do next. And then doing it without fanfare, to see if it catches on spontaneously.
6. I do not expect people to like me. Most people don't. However, I am not necessarily always the bad guy, and if you insist that I am the default villain in every situation, I will happily jump up and down on you with cleats. The days of my merciful and tolerant forbearance are gone. That being said, I expect the same in return, and if I jump your shit and you don't like it much, you can either jump back, or PM me. If it really bugs you, I can and will simply stop paying attention to you
2, provided you do not take that as license to fuck with me. I think pretty much everyone here should expect the same thing of each other. If you CAN'T get along with someone, ignore them. If you are shitting on someone and they PM you and ask you to stop, give it some serious thought.
7. The past is the past. There never fucking was a "classic age of PD", unless you count the fucking "cookies & pie, stabbity stabbity tequila faceraping bats" era. PD has its highs and lows, and its feuds...However, there is nothing saying that a feud has to be permanent
3. Hell, if Fomentor came back today, I might not exactly welcome him with open arms, but I'm reasonably certain I wouldn't shit all over him. It's been 2 years. It's over. While I am not exactly the forgiving kind, there is such a thing as too much baggage. There is no need to dredge up old shit that can do nothing but smash any new shit that's coming along.
8. Noobs. What to do? Easy. If you want to push their buttons to see what they're made out of, go ahead. If you want to be nice to them and see how THAT works out, go ahead. But for fuck's sake, let them at least open their fucking mouths before you decide if they're Gandhi or Mussolini. Talking to you, Phox, et al. If you see a REASON to poop on them, go nuts. If, however, they just said "Hi!", and you shit on them, they'll probably leave (Doing so in an over-the-top, joking manner is in my opinion okay, since if they have no sense of humor, this ain't for them) before they have a chance to engage. I would. ON THE OTHER HAND: Nobody here is the official guardian of noobs. If you feel a noob is being treated like shit, perhaps a PM to the offender might be in order before dispensing your disapproval. There is very probably a reason for it, and if there isn't, you can always shit on the offender after learning this. I value established members more than noobs, for the most part, and I'm almost always gonna side with the established members if shit goes sideways. I am also gonna reserve a bucket of my finest poop for anyone who automatically decides that a new guy must be right and the old-timers must be wrong,
because you WANT to believe that the new guy will be awesome, or dig your shit, or whatever.
9. The board loading issues, search functions, etc. This place hangs a dozen times a day, the page load time is outrageous, and half the time it times out. Apparently, this only happens on the American side of the Atlantic, but it's gotten so fucking bad that I - the greatest PD junkie in its history - often leave for a weekend because I get really sick of timeouts and lost responses. There has to be some solution for this...Trip & Faust, I've been asking around, and it's not just me. Also, the search function thing...I know it's fucking bolluxed to hell and gone, but is there any way we can restore it or fix it?
10. It is my opinion that it's time to revise the banning rules. Someone like infinity shock or DECI4 who is obviously only here to shit all over everything should not be given the ability to do so just so we can be all self-righteous about our policies as compared to theirs. I am not in favor of being allowed to go all Mol on people because they made me all butthurt, but neither do I see any point in allowing a shitneck to derail the entire fucking boards so we can wank off to our own virtue. I'm not proposing a specific policy here, just proposing that the current policy isn't working well. It's also something that should be discussed by the board at large, not just the admins.
Or Kill Me.
1 Unfortunately, the only way you will know if it is entertaining is by noticing whether or not people give a shit.
2 Except Babylon Horuv. He's on my shit list until the end of fucking time.
3 Unless you're Hugh or Lauren.
