Drama!

[muckefuck]

A good friend wrote me this morning with a short list of questions, beginning with "You finally have drama on your lj, and I miss it all?"

Exactly how I feel.

I logged in this morning to find the whole situation already played out. androkles has deFriended me, which is a real shame, since I've always enjoyed his comments. I'm sorry he only Friended me out of a feeling of obligation and I wish we could've come to some compromise between my desire to include sexually explicit material in my journal and his desire not to see any of it. In any case, for posterity's sake, here's clarification of some of what went down, as near as I can reconstruct it:

• I did not delete anyone's comments. Therefore, any deleted comments must've been cancelled by the person who posted them.
• I don't know why danthered's comment in which he calls androkles an "asshole" does not appear in my LJ, since I received notification of it as I would for a comment. Perhaps he emailed it to me and androkles only? If so, I'm sorry if he had an expectation of confidentiality. I'm a very strong believer in that privilege up until the point where it serves to conceal verbal abuse.
• This is my journal. I write about my life here. One of the things I do in life is have sex. (This is the point at which we find out how good you are at syllogisms:) Ergo, I will write about sex in this journal. I'm willing to spare people's delicate sensibilities by putting all sexually explicit material behind lj-cut tags. Just let me know.
• I do not expect reciprocity when I Friend people. I haven't Friended everyone who's Friended me and not everyone I've Friended has Friended me back. I'm fine with that. If you're not, then you must do what you feel is right.

That's all I can think of right now. Any further questions?

Comments

[febrile.livejournal.com]

Wow, interesting -- I missed the drama, and now it seems that a lot of the dramatic text has gone missing.

People take this LiveJournal Friending thing way too seriously. I completely expected someone to razz me about my Catholic jokes, and there were some who were uncomfortable with the Death Poll. If people feel the desire to look at something else, then by all means they should.

Friending/deFriending ain't no thang. Hissyfits are silly.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See, I came from the rough-and-tumble world of Usenet, where I've seen insane rounds of mutual kill-filling and the like, so none of this phases me particularly. However, people come to LJ from all sorts of different backgrounds, so I'm never sure what kind of netiquette they're expecting.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I was thinking the same thing. Bears Mauling List, anyone?

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

You were there, too?! That was my first foray into Beardom. It only two two appearances of the Boxers vs. Briefs Endless Flamewar of Total Stoopidness to get me to unsubscribe for good. That, and they wouldn't let me post in German anymore!

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I was on the BML from about 1990 until last year ... at the beginning it was wonderful and a useful thing, there was relatively little flaming cause everyone knew or knew of almost everyone else. And also Steve Dyer moderated with the iron fist in the velvet glove. But I'm just not into now, not my scene at all. There are about ten standard flamewars that just keep recylcing, and believe me after ten years there's hardly a major argument or fine point of discussion that hasn't been chewed to death. It was definitely time for me to leave it to people who HADN"T heard them all and were interested in arguing.

Did you do the soc.motss thing? I read that for the first few years two, through the Era of Melmothra.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I joined up in 1992 and stayed on for four or five years, I think. I met a lot of great people through it, including Nuphy. You and I have probably read each other's posts without realising it. I'm sure if some of the LJ posters gave their full names, I'd be like "So you're so-and-so!"

I made one or two cautious forays into soc.motss in the mid-90's and was just overwhelmed by all the flaming--and this was after years of posting to soc.culture.* groups! Plus, I had a nice little local newsgroup with plenty of queers to bang ideas around on.

[bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com]

I posted under my full name on motss and the BML, partly to keep myself from just blurting out "you're a poopoohead!" whenever someone pissed me off (...didn't always work).

Eventually I just gave up though, disengaged. I never want to sit through the monogamy flambe again, for instance. I just don't care whether "people" approve/disapprove or even understand my position .. which is IMO the way it should be. A positive outcome, yay!

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm a name maven, Mr Wide Open Spaces, and the only exquisitely Magyar surname I recall from that board is "Fekete".

I think I always posted under my own name on Usenet and had sort of a dim opinion of those who resorted to cutesy pseudonyms. And look at me now! HA!

[danthered.livejournal.com]

Perhaps he emailed it to me and androkles only? I'm a very strong believer in that privilege up until the point where it serves to conceal verbal abuse.

Yes, genius, it didn't appear in your journal because I emailed it privately. Very good for figuring that out all by yourself. And let's be accurate: I didn't call androkles an asshole. I said I believed he was behaving like an asshole, and I do believe that. Didn't feel the need to post it in public, since somebody else had pretty much covered all the points I would've made in a public comment. All of us are guilty of behaving like an asshole from time to time, eh?

If you truly consider private messages saying "I believe such-and-such a person is behaving like an asshole" to be "concealed verbal abuse", I greatly overestimated your intelligence.

I'm sorry if he had an expectation of confidentiality

No, no, no, for heaven's sake, don't apologise! The warning is informative and valuable! Private messages sent to muckefuck ARE NOT PRIVATE, they will be broadcast in his journal. Got it.

Yeesh. I believe you've behaved like an asshole, too. (There, right out in public to save you the trouble...)

[mollpeartree.livejournal.com]

Oh, for Chrissake.

I feel like an occasion for sin now, asking you about what the dude was talking about with name-calling comment. Sorry to have set off a new chain of drama.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Don't. There won't be a new chain of drama because I don't have any intention of getting into a debate with danthered over our differences of opinion on this matter.

[dilletante.livejournal.com]

sorry for having contributed to the escalation. :(

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

See the comment from currawong to my next entry (chronologically speaking). It seems androkles' reaction is due almost entirely to the comments of one participant in the mess, and that person is not you. As usual, your comment represented a reasonable and respectful call for clarification. I only wish everyone I knew could consistently bring that to a discussion.