I find it hard to be annoyed by most of them (Destiny)

by Leviathan , Hotel Zanzibar, Tuesday, April 29, 2014, 20:43 (3869 days ago) @ Avateur

Why would you want to hang out in a place, though, where all anyone ever does is agree with each other, nothing is thought about critically, and when things are (constructively or not, btw), they're shot down, dissed, or almost frowned upon?

It probably wouldn't be a great place either, and while you may have had a bad experience today, I really don't think this forum or HBO is anywhere close to that definition, as I've gotten so bummed out on negativity from both of those places that I've had to take breaks and block the site (to keep boredom and my muscle memory clicks from leading me back) to not drown out my patronage forever. I remember times that people were so inflammatory and pretentious to me that even after leaving the site behind, the frustration stayed with me through the day. As I've gotten older, I just can't take that kind of arrogance and presumption at all anymore. I don't want to waste my time with it; life's too short! :)

But in the past I've also tried to mediate threads before they dissolved into that nonsense - as in trying to turn someone's initial vent into an actual constructive criticism to generate a thoughtful thread or to try and stem a hogpile on a dissenter accidentally mistaken for a troll. I haven't done that as much lately - I'll try harder to remind folks on both sides to keep the calm, to construct their posts to invite discussion.

One of the difficulties with this: inflammatory posts tend to illicit a lot of independent reactions very quickly, and a lot of people react before reading everyone else's posts (I do it). All of the sudden you have this long list of people darting back, when one or two responses might have been understandable. And then that original poster gets on the defensive as it feels like a united team is bearing down on them, when in actuality it's just a bunch of individuals reacting separately at the same time, thanks to the wonders of the Internet. This sort of goes back to my "grouping people tendency" mentioned a couple posts back. And this can happen in reverse. Someone can post something positive excitedly and be met with what feels like a wall of apathy or cynicism.

Right here we have Xenos and you, Avateur, feeling pretty much the exact opposite ambiance from this forum - perhaps that shows how this site isn't skewed too much in one direction, that there is hope for good discussion... or perhaps it just shows how terrible of a medium the Internet is to communicate in. Either way, we should all try to be more thoughtful and careful in our posts, whether positive or negative, thread starters or replies. :)