Free!

[algeh]

I finally got around to quitting support. I've been meaning to for a while, but wanted to wait until I could send email so I didn't have to open it in a public cat and have it moved. Also I wanted to write some long cranky thing about how things had changed in my time there and how I was uncomfortable volunteering for a for-profit business. In the end, I just wanted to get it done, though. Oh well.

I'm trying to spend less time on internet stuff in general. I want more time for other things. I'll probably start dropping some of the communities I'm in next. I can't bring myself to unfriend actual people, but I can handle ditching communities. I want to spend more time out in the real world or working on my various craft projects. I also want to spend some time getting in better shape. Mostly, I'm sick of internet drama, and how, in the end, every 'net community is top-down with one person at the top calling the shots. In real life, a group of people who hang out don't always have an absolute "leader". but rather usually they have a core group of people, any one of which can decide to leave and/or be a dick without ruining it for the rest of them. I like that model better.

Comments

[zind4gi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but in real life people respect each other more than they do on the internet. On the internet, it seems to be a free for all flame war and someone needs to moderate sometimes when things get out of control.

[algeh]

Well, my problem is that it's always one person in charge. Say you're on a pretty much nag-out message board, without a real strict topic. Now say most of the group gets into knitting and starts talking about it a lot. The admin doesn't give a fat damn about knitting and decides that, since it is his message board, he will ban all discussion of knitting from the board. Boom! The knitters now have a hard time talking to each other and have to go create a new space, which they may get in trouble for even mentioning on the old board.

Now, in a real-life group of friends, if one friend didn't like knitting, everyone else would just stop inviting them along when they wanted to do knitting stuff, and life would go on, because real-life groups of friends are more flexible and tend not to have a central person who dominates. I may have introduced clipdude and qousqous to each other, but now they also hang out without me sometimes, especially if they're going to do something I don't enjoy.

[algeh]

ummm "nag-out" was meant to be "hang-out", obviously.

[greatblondelf.livejournal.com]

I think that this may be a subconscious avoidance of direct interpersonal violence that leads people to "act" as if they respect each other. For instance, I have had people say things to me on the 'net that I have no doubt they would not, had I been standing less than 100 feet away from them....

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

I have had this experience as well.

[shademalek.livejournal.com]

Don't forget about meee! We still should get together and watch anime! I don't think our group has respect problems, I love hanging out with you all! XD

[algeh]

I won't, don't worry! I'm not giving up animepdx, although you may have noticed that I try not to be too take-charge with it and have given someone else admin access as well, in the hopes that it won't follow the one-admin-who-later-does-something-annoying model. As we get more momentum going, I'll talk to xiara about maybe adding even more admins, since I think the core group will be trustworthy people who won't be jerks with it, and then it'll be even less about me. I like organizing things, but I don't *need* to be in charge as long as things get done even if I'm not.

I'm more frustrated with some aspects of how Brad runs LiveJournal and how support policy (which Brad may or may not have been paying attention to) has evolved from a prove-you're-not-a-dumbass-and-we'll-leave-you-alone model to a top-down everyone-must-do-things-the-same-way model with a billion little fiddly rules.

[shademalek.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah! That's totaly understandable!

[clipdude.livejournal.com]

We should create a community for former support volunteers!