Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

Normally, I avoid Site Feedback like the plague. I don't really enjoy hearing that, because on person got banned for repeatedly flaming but chose to lie about it upon return, I am some kind of incompetent, power-tripping, user-hating fascist. Double that if I've never heard of this person in my life. Site Feedback, in my experience, tends to be pain. Nevertheless, I wander in there now and again in the course of my duties and against my better judgement get sucked into trying to actually answer questions or explain why Idea X is not feasible. My last adventure, a few weeks back, made me think of something.

Now, I'll be skirting a fine line here, but bear with me. Pay attention to the idea, not the particulars. Anyway, last I checked, some user has a "bad experience," legitimate or otherwise, with a staff member, and suddenly we're all evil. We're all in on some big Gestapo joke on this one user because we are not here to help, we are here to ban your account, take your stuff and kick your puppy. People feel entitled to mouth off to me when I answer a question because someone else did them [a percieved] wrong. I've had many people take me to task for things that, in my little world, never even happened because I heard/knew nothing of them. Every single moderator bears the burden of the whole staff.

However, these same users who lump us into one big mass have no problem taking their train of thought right back around, and every time we speak of general problems and ideas, choose not to listen because oh, they don't do that (Fun fact: more than half time time, they do). I say, for example, that users on the whole need to exercise more self-control when posting in misplaced threads, and someone will jump on me because they "don't ever do that." What the hell, internets?! This selective narcissism is insane. Personally, I feel if you take offense at an idea without particulars, it's a guilty ******** conscience, but I say that as someone who has more than once checked post histories and found that the person who has "never flamed" in fact called several people twatwaffles in the past week alone. It just blows my mind that anyone could take a non-specific statement from the internet, the biggest place in the world, and fly off the handle because it was somehow personal. Do the math, your chances don't look good. Mostly, it irritates me because I try to help people by explaining in abstract and they choose to attack me with their big pointy egos. No good deed goes unpunished. Thoughts, comments, domos for internet solipsism?

Also, happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, ye wee scurvy seadogs! pirate

EDIT: I am so afraid that, even as I write this, someone has read/is going to read it and think, "This is about me." Even though it's not. Unless of course you are someone who has, in a conversation with me in SF, has taken any general statement of mine personally. In which case you might wanna lighten up. That much stress cannot be healthy. Should I have something to say to you, you'll know. It'll sorta feel like a hammer to the forebrain.