Tuesday, July 31, 2007

 

Thanks for the Memories


With this post, the Daria Fandom Blog officially comes to an end.

Beginning tomorrow, August 1, I will begin deleting posts from the blog. For all of the archivists out there, you have 24 hours to make a copy if you have not done so.

... well, on the other hand, see this post’s comments. ~ G

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Monday, July 09, 2007

 

Taking a Break


Tafka sent me a private message. While I’m not at liberty to divulge the contents, I will reveal this excerpt:

And some advice from a friend — take some much-needed break time. You’ll feel better for it.

I hadn’t actually asked Tafka for break time — I believe the comment was more like, “I think you need a vacation. Seriously.”

However, I intend to hang on to this advice like a drowning man hangs on to a piece of smoking lumber from a burning ship, and I shall indeed “take a break.” Possibly for a month, maybe more. Lest this be misunderstood as a plea for pity, I shall make it clear — it is not.

The parties involved in the argument will have to solve their own problems. No more HaloScan comments will be posted from this blog, unless one asks very politely — and I’m going to make every effort not to check the comments, lest my resolve break.

As for now, I’m getting out my Hawaiian shirt, packing my suitcase, and enjoying a rest — to my relief, and undoubtedly to everyone else’s.

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Sunday, July 08, 2007

 

The View From Above

(by guest-blogger Ruthless Bunny)

I escaped from Daria fandom about three years ago. By “escaped,” I mean I conquered my addiction. At first I can say that I was drawn to the fandom by the fiction, then the people, then the interaction of the people; and then I got disgusted and left.

The addictive nature of the Internet is well documented. Like gambling, the pay-off is intermittent. Human nature is to chase an experience that we once found pleasurable, even if in doing so we subject ourselves to stress and unhappiness. It seems that, again, Daria fandom is performing as advertised.

Last night, James told me about a situation on one of the boards. The short version being that some people were slagging some other people in a forum designed just for that purpose. The result was anger, hurt feelings, and various threats of people taking their equipment and going home.

Normally I smile politely and nod, usually while I am taking mental inventory of the pantry. Frankly, this stuff is boring these days. I don’t even know who the players are anymore. This time though, I did know the players, and I was repulsed.

First of all, I’d like to go on record about three of the four pivotal people in this drama. The first is Tafka. I like Taf and I pretty much always have. I find her intelligent, interesting, and frankly refreshing. I still have a lovely hand-drawn Christmas card that she made for me displayed in a prominent place in our house.

Like most people, there are two sides to Tafka. One is fun and a good friend, the other — not so much. I know that there are certain imbalances that can cause people to have two different personalities. Hopefully one is aware of these tendencies and one tries to head off the more problematic sides of one’s personality. Sometimes the “evil” side takes over and wreaks havoc.

I believe that Tafka gives herself over to these impulses too often. She gives herself license to do so under the guise of not being trodden upon. Sometimes she’ll attach herself to someone else’s cause and tilt at their windmill. Either way, it’s not pretty, nor is it productive.

The other person in the drama is NoNameJane, a.k.a. Cynigal. We were never friends, nor will we ever be. She is responsible for no content of any type; she weaves not, neither does she spin. Oh, so clever is Cynigal! It seems to me that she is an attention whore, probably stemming from having no self-esteem.

The other side of that same ugly coin is the contempt for others that she has, whereby she justifies her pitiable existence with the argument that she is just too smart for the rest of us.

The problem with stagnant intellect is that, like stagnant water, it becomes the breeding ground for all sorts of pests. In the years that she’s been floating around the fandom, she has produced nothing. She has the temerity, however, to dump all over people who are productive, both in the fandom and in society at large.

It is said that Cynigal/NNJ is a delightful person in real life. So that says something interesting about her. She comes to the fandom to use other fans as her whipping posts, and she’s a total pussy. It’s one thing to tell someone something to their face, and to stand by that opinion. It is quite another to slag someone behind their back, and when caught out in your bullshit, to then say: “Can’t you take a joke?”

There is no love lost between us, and that’s just fine by me.

The third person is E.A. Smith. He is a friend in real life. I don’t know him in the fandom, I only know him as a person. He is super-smart, a productive member of society, and he has good common sense. I can’t say the same of Cynigal, and I’m beginning to wonder about Tafka.

As for the fourth person, Deref, I don’t know him from a bar of soap.

So how do these different people converge? In Daria-land, of course.

Frankly, this stuff is the best excuse to not be involved. When I was involved in fandom, it was a diversion. I made some friends, I made some enemies, and when it stopped serving a purpose in my life, I left. Many addictions start as diversions. Gambling, alcohol, and drugs can be recreational or they can ruin your life; it depends on their importance in your life.

So as I stand here, a recovering Internet addict, a bit smug in my recovery, I wanted to testify a bit, here in the den of iniquity, so to speak. First of all, I know: pot-kettle-black. But here’s where I differ. Yes, I was mean, but I was always up-front and direct with the people with whom I had issues. I didn’t say anything behind someone’s back that I wouldn’t say to them directly. That’s just chicken-shit.

I also left behind some darn good fan fiction. You can still go and read it.

What exactly were Tafka, Cynigal, and Deref trying to do anyway? It looked an awful lot to me like high school. Cool kids, ragging on the even cooler kids. I know that both Tafka and Cynigal had horrible high school experiences. Cynigal, I believe, left high school before graduating. The teachers were all such assholes. (Sense a theme here?)

The people who make the most derisive comments about the “sheeple” are actually the ones going around in flocks themselves. It’s still a clique, even if you’re still unpopular.

Is this what your life will always be? Finding an authority figure and rebelling against it? What does it say that the authority figure you’ve chosen is a guy on the Daria message board? It’s like robbing a lemonade stand that’s next to the 7-Eleven. A bit too easy and very lazy.

It’s probably easier than confronting your own demons. You’re stuck in dead-end jobs, have no marketable skills, and suffer through terrible relationships, with family and an ever-dwindling circle of friends. Why try and deal with that, when you can go on a message board and protest “the man” there?

I also posit this to the other Dariaites out there: When Cynigal and Tafka both start up that same, wheezing old calliope of “My job sucks, my boss sucks, my neighbors suck, and half the people on the board suck,” why do you even engage them in discourse? Consider the source. Is anything in their lives any good? What things are they doing that will actually solve those situations?

As my wise, old father said, “When someone calls you an ass, hit them. When many people call you an ass, buy a saddle.” Ladies, it’s time to saddle up.

This is not the first time that something like this has happened, and I can predict what will happen next. There will be some insincere apologies. People who say they’re finally done and over with Daria fandom will come back with a sheepish smile on their faces, forgiving all. Hell, I’ve done it myself.

So either the ladies will get their respective acts together, or they won’t. Deref may learn from this experience, or he won’t. E.A. will return to the fandom, or he won’t. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter.

 

Seigenthaler’s Rule


“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.

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Friday, July 06, 2007

 

No New Posts for a While


Jupiter saw what simple and foolish creatures they were, but to keep them quiet and make them think they had a king he threw down a huge log, which fell into the water with a great splash. The Frogs hid themselves among the reeds and grasses, thinking the new king to be some fearful giant. But they soon discovered how tame and peaceable King Log was.

In a short time the younger Frogs were using him for a diving platform, while the older Frogs made him a meeting place, where they complained loudly to Jupiter about the government.

To teach the Frogs a lesson, the ruler of the gods now sent a Crane to be king of Frogland. The Crane proved to be a very different sort of king from old King Log. He gobbled up the poor Frogs right and left and they soon saw what fools they had been. In mournful croaks they begged Jupiter to take away the cruel tyrant before they should all be destroyed. — Aesop


For personal reasons, there will be no new posts for a while until I decide the final fate of the Daria Fandom Blog. If new posts come back, you might with that they had not returned and that the CINCGREEN of old had stayed in retirement.

Right now, I sort of feel like Julius Caesar felt when he saw Brutus standing over him with a knife after he had been shredded sixteen ways to sundown on the Senate floor. “And you, too, Brutus?” he said.

Caesar’s brain was probably looking for the nearest fasces, one of the rods carried by the Protectors of the People, so that he could smile and say to himself, “I’m going to take one of you sonsabitches with me” as he decided which knife-wielding senator was within range.

But when he saw Brutus — noble Brutus! — among his assassins, his heart said, “Oh, fuck it,” and that was the end of Caesar. As Antony said in the funeral oration (according to one W. Shakespeare), that was “the unkindest cut of all.”

I’m coming to the opinion that this fandom does not deserve any of its good points to be registered. None of its stories, none of its essays, nothing. It deserves nothing new or fresh, and nothing more than the proper amount of derision and scorn to be heaped on those who would perpetually leach the good will from those who do their best to keep it alive.

The pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the “nice CINCGREEN.” Perhaps the evil, nasty-as-all-fuck CINCGREEN needs to make a reappearance ...

... but his reappearance might be hailed in some quarters. And I don’t want to give the fandom even the secondary pleasure, the way that I feel right now. I want to bring lamentation and woe.

Kara Wild was right. Sweet baby Jesus. I apologize profusely.

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