| Sep. 6th, 2005 @ 11:32 pm Heh...long time no see |
|---|
Mood: indescribable
So here I am. No, I'm not dead. At least not yet.
I parted ways with my old site and the co-owner. Well, sort of anyway. And I thought, "What better way to aire my frustrations than on a good ol' LiveJournal - Land of the Overly Dramatic.
I've been running a site for some time with these two women. Well, ONE really. The other was just there so that the one I was working with wouldn't feel guilty parting ways with her. I honestly had all the best hopes for this merge. I was getting into writing and drawing comics again, and she had an active and more mature forum than your usual trolls and flamebait which so often overrun webcomic forums.
Things started off okay. Thanks to my friend Emtu (with whom I haven't spoken with in far too long), the forum was up and running with no loss of data in the transfer of domain and servers. And things went pretty well for sometime.
As time went on, however, it became more and more clear that the members I had invited were coming less and less. The reasoning, I suppose, is that webcomic fans get a little bored with threads about kids and other domestic life. Anyway, I was really getting the feeling that it wouldn't work out after all. Despite this, I gave it my all and made the best of the situation.
Then my wife joined. Things changed.
To give you some background, my wife had never really taken an active part of a forum before. A true n00b in every sense of the word, it took her some time to fit in. When she had established herself, she had gotten into a bad habit of arguing with people just for the sake of arguing. She readily admitted that she enjoyed "stirring the pot" despite my warnings to her that it really wasn't that wise of a decision. At the same time, my co-owner expressed her many concerns over my wife's online behavior. What I told her - as well as what I told my wife - was that if she felt she was getting out of line, she would let her know in no uncertain terms.
In retrospect, this was a fatal error on my part.
To add another wrinkle, my views and opinions were getting far more criticism than usual. I don't think I've ever shared this on here, but I'm pretty close to being Atheist and I've become a fairly staunch Democrat. To my horror, i'd come to realize that I'd surrounded myself with fairly close-minded Christians who took in the bulk of their news from the FoxPravda channel. Not a great mix to be sure.
Upon the horrors of Katrina, I had begun to express my outright anger on a variety of things. Most notably - and this plays into the drama - a story about a minister in Louisiana who had stated that Katrina was God's answer to New Orleans less-than-pious residents and general demeanor. I posted it in outrage and let loose a volley of criticisms against Christians for letting this assmonkey continue preaching what was, in my considered opinion, no better than the hate speech of Osama bin Laden.
To my shock, I was lambasted by the Christians who were more interested in defending their silence on the matter - and in my opinion, guilty of defending this fucktard. I took it in the keister a few times before finally throwing up my hands wondering how on earth a pseudo-atheist like me was defending the Christian faith more voraciously than these so-called Christians.
My wife, who had not been to the site in a couple of days, came on to post and was horrified by my cricifixion at the hands of, shall we say, less than learned individuals. She immediately came to my defense and called it as she saw it.
In some twist of fate, my wife was ambushed by a large number of members at the same time - in multiple threads. So I came on, knowing full well that the bills were being paid by me, and basically demoted everyone. This probably wasn't the peaceful way of doing things, but I was beyond upset. After a thread was started by the non-active, non-owner admin in which she criticized me for doing what I did. It wasn't long before each and every member of this crew of uninformed individuals joined the thread in public outcry.
I stated, in more clear tone than I really thought I could muster, that I was done with the forum and had had it with most of the people there. Some claimed that I was "holding the forum hostage", but I really didn't have a choice in the matter. It was my check card that was tied to the host. It was my PayPal account that was set up on the site. My fear was that if I went off the way I did without protecting my financial interests that they would find a way to screw me. After reading the post by the active admin, my fears were proven true by her call to "spam the place" until she got "her forum" back.
My god, I hate some people. Not that they'd do such a thing, but that I'd correctly foretold their reaction - they were completely predictable in their venomous retorts. There was a mod there who took the position of insulting me as much as she could. And even when the active admin and I had started to work things out to where she would get the forum, and I would just keep the measly $40 in the PayPal account for a site that was paid up until June 2006, this spiteful little bitch and the non-active admin just kept spewing insults and making tawdry and unfounded accusations. I'd also come to the conclusion that no matter what I wrote, no one would read it anyway, so I gave up defending myself.
I got on IM with my soon-to-be-ex-co-owner and we worked out the bulk of the details involved in turning over the site to her.
I'm saddened that things ended the way they did. I really am. But it got to the point this evening where my wife was being assailed for no reason - by four pathetically misinformed people who completely missed the point of my thread. (Full disclosure: Most of the time they didn't read my posts entirely, so it really shouldn't have been a revelation of any kind.)
So what did I learn from all of this?
Well, for one thing, I need to come up with a new domain name, so any suggestions would be appreciated. Secondly, I've come to realize that I don't necessarily want everyone to agree with me - but I do want people who disagree with me to at least understand me and the points I try to make. If you're a Christian, chances are I'm not going to agree with your theology - but I have enough respect to allow you to explain things to me. Aetre is a good friend in that respect - he knows where he stands and I think he knows where I stand, so there's no point in debating the finer points. And on a side note: The only response that was thought out and respectful of my feelings was his. I'm very thankful for that.
Anyway, I know this isn't what you were expecting from me considering that I haven't posted in a while. But I have some plans for what to do with my new site. I just need a name.
Laters. |
|  |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
nichodaemus's journal
cold
content
pensive
tired
annoyed