TweedleKeys
Spider:
I’m saddened that you didn’t get my message as I meant it. Let me try to say it more clearly:
The way in which you debate makes me uncomfortable.
You may view it as ‘perhaps three sarcastic sentences’ but the overall impression I got was off-putting. This is me letting my opinions be heard and trying to resolve misinterpretations. I hoped the story would make these feelings a little more clear. I want the guild to be a welcoming place too, but it’s not when I look at the latest posts and my reaction is as such.
It sounds like the problem is that what I see as progressive and welcoming, you see as patronizing mollycoddling.
If I don’t want to read that style, I certainly won’t respond to it. Do you really want to effectively shut out the people who feel the same way I do? It’s hard to respond to you because the message your tone sends to me is that you don’t want to work with me towards a solution.
Maybe you don't see it that way or intend it that way, but to be perfectly honest I'm also somewhat insulted by your choice of story. Maybe wording it differently would help make your point better, but you essentially likened our discussion to an obnoxious, potentially dangerous, jackass on the train... with the only difference being a matter of scale. I can see where you're trying to go a different way with it by saying that you're describing the feelings evoked, but those would be entirely different too. Maybe putting your qualifier first would help, because my blood was boiling just a little of the way in, and I had to wait at least an hour to re-read it and try to suss out where you were going. And even then it was offensive.
Because the guy on the train is clearly showing no restraint, shouting totally unacceptable things at great volume, and a possible and real physical danger should he decide to lay into someone nearby. Whereas we are, at most, taking pointed but good-natured snipes (********, those were more restrained than what goes for casual conversation around here) at each other while genuinely discussing points of the advice that Ash gave Spider. One is a case where any person would reasonably feel concern... the other is a matter that so far looks like people being hypersensitive.
People decided it would be an offsetting, angry, divisive, stupid argument, and are now holding us to that with little to no explanation or defense. Wonderful, just ******** wonderful.
Amusingly, the discussion you're so concerned about isn't where the arguments here are coming from. Its the people who were sitting on the sidelines til Hila asked up politely to take it elsewhere and we ended it quickly. Rather than reward our good behavior in tying it up quickly, we get the "yeah, same from me" treatment and a third party op-ed soliloquy about the "a*****e on a train" with heavy overtones of lofty disapproval. I'm sorry we ruined your hopes of a perfect backlog record by actually having a discussion about the merits of advice offered to a troubled Spider... and now by having the audacity to be annoyed that people can't leave us alone on the argument we JUST DROPPED.
The "argument" is between Spider, Ash, and me. But that one ended when Hila asked us to remove it from the guild. Then Azure decided to "back up" Hila on something that was already resolved then in her second post ignored every goddamn civil word I used to explain things. And now we have "a*****e on a train" and more "disquieting words". I'm noticing a pattern here. People trying to end the argument are starting new ones that I can guarantee they see themselves as being innocent parties in.
Let things die down on their own. Endless jumping in just as things begin to settle down only serves to stroke egos and stoke the fires.
You know what? I'm getting the feeling that a handful of AGers want things discussed a certain goddamn way, but they're reluctant to share the particular standards everyone is supposed to adhere to. I invite the lot of you to actually put them to words. Go for it. Because if the entirety of conversation is restricted to people talking about the current drama in their lives, comments about groping, and no disagreeing allowed unless one extends their pinky, wears a monocle, and observes every convention of 1700s british courtesy, then its gonna get real boring real quick.
But the lot of you can just pass this off as Stream having another temper tantrum if you'd like. Clearly it is perfectly expected that I can't disagree with someone without a desire to badmouth them.
Lastly, anyone relatively new to the guild who thinks that discussion was in any way mean enough to be reasonably unsettling should see if there are any examples of my work from 03-04 still around. If not, ask someone who was around in those days like Mala, Kin, Shouj, Zero, and PG. And I don't mean just the posts in the AMC against the ravening hordes... I also mean the conversations we regularly had among ourselves with nobody asking that it be taken to PMs or trying to shame the participants into talking exactly the way people wanted them to.
