Early yesterday morning, I posted about what I thought would be the most stupid thing I was sure to read on the internet for the rest of the day, and then I didn’t make any more posts for the day. Was I busy with housework? Busy having fun? Was I kidnapped by headhunters and forced to be their unwilling sex slave? Had I fallen into the dark heart of a passing blackhole and been crushed into oblivion?
None of the above. I went to MetaFilter and was sucked in by a thread in MetaTalk. Reading that thread was, in fact, just about the only thing I did all day yesterday, and since it is ongoing this morning –and I hadn’t gotten to the end of it when I went to bed last night– chances are good it will be the only thing I do online today as well.
Don’t click the link. Unless you are a member there or enjoy slogging through thousands of hand-waving comments by people you don’t know on a subject you won’t care about, there’s no point. I just wanted to toss it up there for my own ease of access later.
Whatever could cause a thread so long, so contentious, no damn interesting at MetaTalk that it will take days of reading to slog through? Matt and the mods made some changes to how “favorites” work (a month long experiment to see what happens), and some people’s worlds and heads exploded. I love these sorts of threads at MetaTalk. I am fascinated by human nature, and woo boy, that thread and others like it is just full of human nature at its finest.
It’s entirely possible that as the thread starts winding down, I will be writing a post about my observations, because I do, in fact, have an opinion on the use of “favorites” at MetaFilter, and many of the responses in that thread have proven a few things I suspected about how other people use them to be true. Also, some of the responses are just too damn darling and snowflake-like not to be saved for all eternity in my archives. But, unlike a lot of people, I actually read every comment in every thread that interests me, even if it takes days (which it usually doesn’t — almost never, in fact). So once I get to the end and the end stops moving as quickly as it has been, I will be having something to say about it.
I’ll be commenting here and not there, because I tend not to comment over there. Don’t like being totally ignored or having my head bitten off, which I have found to be the two most possible responses to anything I have to say over there. Though I may have something to say over there after I have compiled my data points and gotten my rant on. Stranger things have happened.
Want to know why I don’t go to MetaFilter meetups? If the people on that web site are that tedious in text, I can only imagine my enjoyment of being in their presence wouldn’t be any less tedious, and I can’t just close the browser window and stop listening to them if they are sitting right there beside me. Yes, there are some great people over there, but the vast majority of the vocal and domineering minority of users are, without a doubt, annoying gits who always know better than everyone else.