How forums work.

[crow]

In real life, there are plenty of assholes. Some of those assholes are even bigger assholes than the rest.
Of that group, some will be so dissatisfied with life, that they will set up forums, of which they are admins, or moderators. This gives them some facsimile of a control that they do not have in real life.

Consider: a forum is an alternate reality. A little world, set up with rules written by God. In this case, its admins.
Those rules are completely arbitrary. They have nothing whatsoever to do with reality. Some rules I have run into include:
Using line breaks=restricted access.
Writing posts that look like poetry=warning.
Assuming you know something others don't=restricted access.
Using the words 'trolling' and 'flaming'=ban.
Mentioning you have used the ignore-function=final warning.
Inability to admit being wrong=warning.
Pointing out bad behaviour=ban.

This is very interesting. I have been conducting research on this topic, for some considerable time.
When you enter a forum, you may be leaving the world, and entering a parallel universe.
You will not know the rules, even if you are mundane enough to read them, and you will never know them, because rules get written, on the hoof, to be directed specifically at you.

Halfwits are generally safe. They have little to say, anyway, and will back down when someone challenges them.
It is only those who really have things to say that get nuked. First by the long-term members who have become carbon copies of the admins, and then by the admins, themselves, which tends to be final.

All this is fine. If one knows how it works. If one does not, it can be a major mind-fuck.

This particular forum operates on natural laws. Sacred laws. The laws of the universe.
Nothing arbitrary takes place here. No human warped-ness occurs. On that, you may rely.
So, although you may not know it, the forum is being run according to universal principles.
Which is why those who are unable to make the transformation from being out-of-control sociopaths, to reasonable humans, suddenly vanish. Leaving only those with some inherent worth.

Consider yourselves worthy. Not only as members of some stupid forum, but of life, itself.

[crow]

My time on forums leads me to the only possible conclusion.
If one has important things to share, one does so in the time-honoured way of writing a book, having it published, and allowing interested readers to pay for it, or not.
It simply is not possible to give it away, free, because the very act of doing so renders it worthless, along with the one offering it.

Forums have a hierarchy. Those who arrive first, feel more important than those who arrive later. Lacking an effective admin, those early arrivals shut the whole thing down, so the forum becomes a gang, rather than a forum. This is evident everywhere, on any forum, dealing with any subject. This phenomenon is known as crowdism, and there seems no way around it.

The notion of equality is to blame for this. It has wrecked civilization, and will continue to do so until there remains only rubble. Then, as history shows, reality reasserts itself.

I will paint a picture:
A neanderthal, cowering in his cave. Outside are saber-toothed tigers, and he must somehow get past them, to tackle a mammoth, with nothing but a spear, just to get his breakfast. What concerns does he have? Well. The ones he certainly doesn't have are:
Women's rights, gay rights, equality, diversity, vibrancy, fair pay, a living wage, etc...

Humans have reached a point where they take their very survival so much for granted, that all they can think about are meaningless, silly things, that have no relation to anything real. Which is exactly why they can ask questions like: what is the meaning of life?
They actually, amazingly, no longer know!

[Transilvania]

Detachment from reality is often subtle we might say- the implicit context we have for life has been supplanted or buried in the far reaches of your sofa (probably close to that penny you've never been able to find in the boundless upholstery). This is the inexorable and cruel way life tends to work. What matters is always incredibly obvious, and our collective inability to locate it is the modern tragicomedic work. The more you search, the farther you get from the goal. Releasing the question to the wind (presumably, crow, you've seen a not entirely dopey hunter do so to one of your own kind) while meant to be edifying results in another further paradox- our lives turn inherently away from the truth further. The 'inexorable' seems to be embodied in this way (though if I'm off the mark, please inform me)

Which ultimately suggests that we're not getting any close to 'solving' the meaning of life, and even when we relinquish the question, it grows ever more remote.

FORUMS though. yeah. You seem to be on the money with that one.

The cold response rings in the basement: "But Forums ARE Life! Don't judge me, or I'll judge you even MORE on my forum you jerk!" Doritos rustling!

[lost_wanderer]

about judgement, instead of nobody can judge me but god, how about everybody can judge me but god. Because he is too much busy about life than to take time to judge. Life isn't about judging, it's about passing or failling. Someday, we will all pass throught death of fail before it.

[crow]

That's it. Your wisdom advances, apace, Lost Wanderer. Thank you.

[Tree]

Humans have reached a point where they take their very survival so much for granted, that all they can think about are meaningless, silly things, that have no relation to anything real. Which is exactly why they can ask questions like: what is the meaning of life?
They actually, amazingly, no longer know!

This is wisdom if I have ever seen it. Absolutely profound.

Bah, what frustration. I feel so much fondness toward this forum, and daily I read the genius comments with bouts of ecstatic glee, yet I have nothing to contribute beyond "Great comment, I agree!" Were this forum a physical community, my labor and my commitment would speak louder than my words do now. I utterly support all of you and your maxims perennially ring true to me.

The above paragraph ended up having quite a bounce to it, how nice.

[crow]

You underestimate your own contributions.
True, they seldom take form, but whenever they do, they are a breath of spring.

[crow]

The title of this thread may have been a bit misleading.
Perhaps it would have better said it as:
"How Forums Don't Work".

Here is how this one works:

We don't attack each other here.

That's it. In its entirety. One rule. Only one. Break it, and be vaporized. Honor it, and live.

[Vigilance]

Heidegger had nothing to say and his work was published.

[crow]

Didn't Heidegger write masses and masses of impenetrable stuff?
Maybe that was Schopenhauer. Or maybe both.
I often find, the longer the text, the less it communicates.
The Bible, for instance, is a no-go area, for me.
A bit of Genesis, and I'm done.

[Vigilance]

Yes he did. I suspect he did that to hide his lack of content. Sort of a proto-hipster move.

[crow]

Nice to hear from someone who doesn't idolize him.
I get heartily sick of 'philosophers' who read 'philosophers' and assume that makes them 'philosophers'.
Almost as bad as people who read Lao Tzu and declare it a leftist manifesto.

[Vigilance]

Search engine omniscience.

[Transilvania]

Heidegger deceived himself. He wanted a new language so badly, one to revolutionize the practice of philosophy, that he inscribed himself in a box of his own making. I say this without any reference to Hannah Arendt's comments on the dude either- she uses the exact same phrasing I did. Perhaps I unconsciously sourced her on this but, it stands. That being said, Heidegger's philosophy says nothing, absolutely, and is a cautionary tale in philosophical nonsense.

Heidegger says, with great pride: "People say that Heidegger is a fox." This is the true story of Heidegger the fox: Once upon a time there was a fox who was so lacking in slyness that he not only kept getting caught in traps but couldn't even tell the difference between a trap and a non-trap. This fox suffered from another failing as well. There was something wrong with his fur, so that he was completely without natural protection against the hardships of a fox's life. After he had spent his entire youth prowling around the traps of people, and now that not one intact piece of fur, so to speak, was left on him, this fox decided to withdraw from the fox world altogether and to set about making himself a burrow. In his shocking ignorance of the difference between traps, he hit on an idea completely new and unheard of among foxes: He built a trap as his burrow. He set himself inside it, passed it off as a normal burrow—not out of cunning, but because he had always thought others' traps were their burrows—and then decided to become sly in his own way and outfit for others the trap he had built himself and that suited only him. This again demonstrated great ignorance about traps: No one would go into his trap, because he was sitting inside it himself. This annoyed him. After all, everyone knows that, despite their slyness, all foxes occasionally get caught in traps. Why should a fox trap—especially one built by a fox with more experience of traps than any other—not be a match for the traps of human beings and hunters? Obviously because this trap did not reveal itself clearly enough as the trap it was! And so it occurred to our fox to decorate his trap beautifully and to hang up equivocal signs everywhere on it that quite clearly said: "Come here, everyone; this is a trap, the most beautiful trap in the world." From this point on it was clear that no fox could stray into this trap by mistake. Nevertheless, many came. For this trap was our fox's burrow, and if you wanted to visit him where he was at home, you had to step into his trap. Everyone except our fox could, of course, step out of it again. It was cut, literally, to his own measurement. But the fox who lived in the trap said proudly: "So many are visiting me in my trap that I have become the best of all foxes." And there is some truth in that, too: Nobody knows the nature of traps better than one who sits in a trap his whole life long.

[crow]

I like it. Now that's philosophy. It's even about foxes. Maybe I should start reading...