Take three people. Three complete strangers. Put them in a room. Invariably one of them is going to have to pick a side, and one of them is going to demand that sides be picked. As advanced, and intellectually superior as man likes to think he is, he’s still a pack animal. He still subscribes to a pack mentality. It’s still “us against them”, it’s still “you’re either with us or against us”.Community. Big word, with even bigger implications being hung on it. When in reality, it’s core meaning is simply a group of people who live in the same place. It’s about location, not belief, religion, sexual preferences or even, … coffee .
Some folks have taken the very basic word community, and ascribed all sorts of new rules, new meanings, attributes and standards to it. And due to that pack mentality assume everyone has to either agree, has to believe the same way and support that notion, or they are an enemy.
People live in communities, but they socialize in packs. The “blogosphere” is a pack, or more accurately a pack of packs. And these packs do what all animal packs do, they war with other packs.
The fucked up part of it all is, that it isn’t necessary. It’s counter-productive and it wastes gobs of energy. People trying to force other people to conform to their idea of what the other person should be. And that’s bullshit. These same people will scream loud and long about their own right to be who and whatever they want, but god forbid someone else simply want the same thing.
Folks really need to step out from behind the pulpit once in a while and listen to the sermon they’ve been preaching. Listen to the hypocrisy and venom they’ve been spewing. People need to BE intellectuals instead of pack animals.
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I drink a lot of coffee, ride a motorcycle, have an 18 year old son and a decade long relationship that began in a chat room.
A very good, thought-provoking post Taylor. I agree. (Joking here–But don’t attack ‘coffee’ please.) There has been an awful lot of snarky pack-mentality in the blogosphere lately…and you are right, it is counter-productive, a waste of precious time and energy. I always hope that it will change, but I doubt it…so I try to stay out of it as much as possible. Very glad I stopped to read this. Thanks for your take on things.
Ok here comes the sacrilege…
I don’t drink coffee. Unless it’s that pre-bottled Starbucks Frappecino mostly milk overly sweet stuff in the cooler at the gas station.
So…I really don’t get this thing some people have about coffee. But…meh.
I love the Starbucks Frappecino coffee stuff too, but you should really try the McDonalds Frappe. It’s like an orgasm in a cup. Really. it’s yummy. I don’t drink much of the regular coffee either.
Good post. :)
The first line of that post on Twitter made me really curious as to what would happen to those three people. I expected more sex. ;)
Very interesting, but I’m too tired to say anything meaningful. :D Good night.
There are times when the “blogosphere” can be a very… daunting… place to be. Not that I really see myself as being “part” of it per se, I’m no where near significant enough to be… But still.
I find myself just stepping back from all that bullshit with the logic that when I left school, I didn’t want to go back to all that. Heh.
LF x