“Seigenthaler was a man who was a newspaper reporter, a newspaper publisher, worked with Robert Kennedy, had a long and distinguished career. Somebody put in an entry saying that he was suspected of shooting John F. Kennedy. Seigenthaler found out about it. Seigenthaler for some reason was pissed.

“Seigenthaler did not do what Wikipedians had done from time immemorial. He did not go onto Wikipedia and start editing, and join the big ball of fun. He went and published an article in USA Today, he took it out of town, and talked about this.

“This broke Wikipedia. This broke Wikipedia deep, hard and fast, because while you may look at Wikipedia from the outside as being this way, it is inside an organisation. This broke Wikipedia.”

Undoubtedly, by now most of the insiders in Daria fandom are left scratching their heads and saying, “What the hell is going on here? E.A. Smith walking away from the PPMB? Roentgen pulling all of his posts (come August)? Something about some thread being edited by somebody ... somewhere ... hell, I can’t keep up!”

To unknot this tangled Web skein requires referring to people I’d rather not refer to. These attention whores love seeing their names in print anyway. I’ll simply not mention the names, so that they’ll miss the vicarious thrill of seeing their names on the printed screen.

Rather, this is the story about the end of a message board. Which, unfortunately, is the Sheep’s Fluff Message Board, a board I formerly frequented as Roentgen. Yep. That was me, too. I mean ... Jesus. You didn’t get it? The fact that “Roentgen” is just an anagram of “not (CINC)green”?

(I would have made the best Batman villain ever, but all the great gimmicks had been taken by that time. Gotham property prices are also through the roof, and you can get mugged five times on the same block.)

Initially, the Sheep’s Fluff Message Board (if I recall correctly) was designed to sort of be the home away from home for people who didn’t get along with the board moderation at the PPMB, for various reasons. It would be the only place where adult materials could actually be posted. Finally, there would be a “Flame Wars” forum where people could let off steam about various issues.

Under Thea Zara’s adminship, the board flourished, virtually becoming a second home to the disaffected Daria fans. For once, porn, in all its sticky glory, had a place where it could be safe. There was sort of a “renaissance of porn works” initially at the SFMB, and it seemed that things were going great on that side of the universe.

However, a few things happened which sort of unhooked the hold that SFMB had on fandom at one time. I’ll mention the forces which would eventually lead to the SFMB’s decline as a co-equal to the PPMB:

• The initial popularity of the SFMB. Oddly enough, the SFMB’s hold as a unique place began to fade with its very popularity. When PPMB regulars began to mingle with SFMB regulars, they would occasionally bump into those who only knew of the SFMB and not the PPMB. Those SFMB newbies were soon dragged over to the PPMB.

The first thought, undoubtedly, of the new arrivals was: “Hey, except for porn, the PPMB has everything I want in a message board!” After a while, it became simpler to go to one place instead of two. You began visiting a place frequently, then infrequently, and then you wonder, “Hey, what the fuck happened to that place we used to go to?”

• The departure of Thea Zara from active moderation. The board never recovered from the loss of her calming influence. Deref is a nice man, and he does all that he can — but I doubt that he can separate his personal relationships from his duties as a moderator. As a moderator, you have to put your foot down, and, if necessary, piss off your friends. I don’t think Deref is capable of doing that.

Good man. Salt of the earth. Bad moderator. Those three properties are not contradictory.

• Flame Wars. Initially, Flame Wars was meant as a place to vent about, well, anyone who bothered you. The idea, initially, was that Flame Wars posts were not to get too personal, except in a jocular way where the people posting there gave as good as they got.

However, something started to happen at Flame Wars. What happened is actually rather hard to explain, and whether it would have happened sooner or later — if not for the bipolar personalities inhabiting the place — will be a matter of conjecture. My own theory, however, is that it would have happened eventually, even if Thea Zara kept a tight rein on the place.

Talking with another fan (who has very wisely stayed out of the dispute), this fan mentioned that (s)he had been on another message board, which also had areas set aside for snarky, flamey discussion. However, setting aside an area for flames and anger is like packing radioactive material in a small, densely packed container. All it takes is the slightest match, and you get fission and radioactive fallout.

The cheapening of discourse eventually spills out into the rest of the fandom. It’s as if there was a bar full of a few belligerent assholes who say, “We should kill that guy down the street,” and before you know it, there’s a pitchfork-wielding mob walking out in wait for the poor sap. It’s the worst of the mob mentality.

However, SFMB could have survived all three of those things, even the third thing, sort of crawling forward like a wounded duck. It’s the fourth thing that will eventually doom it as a message board.

• Lack of content. Frankly, there is no content on SFMB. No original content, anyway, except for pornography, and 95 percent of the fandom just isn’t interested in pornography. Or, at least, not Daria pornography, for the same reasons that they don’t read Yogi Bear pornography, because it’s just not their personal kink. They might have healthy sex lives, but they don’t want to read about Daria in the buff.

Which means that the only real content on SFMB has a very limited audience. True, the work of The Great Saiyaman is great, but I don’t know of anything I’m reading there that I just couldn’t get anywhere else.

Like it or not — content is king. Someone once said, “The most important thing about fandom is the formation of relationships with other people.” Yes, but that’s not what brings one to the fandom. What brings one to the fandom is content. Reading stories about Daria, discussing Daria, and in general, glorifying all that is Our Heroine.

Relationships feed off of that — one finds like-minded people — but really, good people can be found on any chat board.

And without content, that’s what SFMB is: the “porn and slambook” chatboard. The stories I’ve seen at SFMB are usually those mirrored from somewhere else, there only so that those who, for whatever reason, wish to limit their surfing experience to SFMB can read the latest fanfic. Most of those threads have very few page views, because most people are reading those stories at PPMB.

In the end, SFMB will end up like the Rubber Room — a small group of people chatting with each other, and very little about Daria.

I know for a fact that the two malefactors in this brouhaha can’t create content. One never created content in her life. She wouldn’t know content if it bit her on the ass. I mean, if you want to hang around with a psycho, you can have fun doing that but there are psychos on every chat room in the land.

The other malefactor hasn’t written or created anything in years. As far as the active fandom is concerned, she faded away years and years ago.

“But, CINCGREEN,” you ask (they always ask that), “why don’t you join in the big ball of fun at Flame Wars?”

I refer you to the Seigenthaler issue up above. The Wikipedians assumed that that’s what Seigenthaler would do — meet them at their ground, and join in the wonderful editing flame wars, where they would hold all the institutional cards. No. He sued them for libel. That’s when Wikipedia realized the fun was over.

It wasn’t suing that was Seigenthaler’s triumph. It was the fact that the Wikipedians figured that Seigenthaler would be forced to play their game. But he didn’t. He did an end run around them. “Rules? Your rules? I play by my own rules.” They gave him lemons, and he made a Cadillac. Masterful hacking.

“Okay, I get that,” you might ask, “but why yank all of your stuff off of SFMB?”

Well, if I don’t agree with how Deref is moderating the SFMB, and if I think that he’s enabling the worst elements there, then why would I eat up all of his bandwidth, which he has to pay for out of his own pocket, with my little curious tales? It’s sort of like having to accept a collect call from a guy who wants to chew you out — not only does the man say uncomplimentary things, but he makes you pay for the privilege. And I thought that was rather unfair to Deref. (Hey, all that space can now be used for — Flame Wars! Whoopee!)

Like it or not, there are two groups of people in any fandom. Those who create, and those who enjoy the creations. Those groups, whatever you might believe, are not equal. The second group exists because of the first. Sooner or later, everyone comes up against this iron law, this great conundrum.

The health of a fandom is directly related to how much new content is being created. The reason Daria fandom is in decline (in some quarters) is because of the lack of new content. And the way to reverse this trend is to get up off one’s hindquarters, to write, and to draw.

Labels: Essays, Fandom