Aug. 21, 2011: For anyone who may be wondering why I'm not around much these days (and not visible at all in MeFi or MeTa), this thread is a perfect distillation of what I've grown to dislike so intensely I don't want to be around it any more: an interesting interview with a great novelist is posted, and the comments consist of nothing but a bunch of ignorant yammering about how stupid the author is and because she says something they don't like about kanji dictionaries (!) her book can't be any good.Also something to note, he winds up on exactly 100 posts, exactly 10000 comments. 7 MeTa posts, 7000 comments.
Now, I know all about the recency illusion and I've rolled my eyes many times about people saying MeFi isn't what it used to be, so feel free to roll your eyes at me, but I really don't think this kind of thing was as common (in fact, inescapable) a few years ago as it is now. I'm sure the proportions of well-intentioned, thoughtful commenters versus surly asshats interested only in putting things down hasn't changed, but the sheer numbers make it inevitable that the latter have reached critical mass and now dominate any thread that isn't directly focused on topics dear to MeFi's collective geeky heart. That wonderful y2karl Yeats thread that is still my favorite? Couldn't happen today; right out of the gate asshats would be saying "Yeats sucks," "I can write better poetry than that," "Is this something I would have to be a boomer to care about?" ... you get the picture. I don't expect anyone else to care about my frustration and disappointment, but if you were interested, now you know. I will continue to try to provide useful information in AskMe, but otherwise, I think my work here is done.
I'm leaving my account open for a few weeks in case I change my mind, but I'm gone as of July 6, 2011 for at least a month or two, and I'm seriously thinking it's permanent this time - I keep taking short breaks and coming back hoping it's just my mood, but it keeps turning out to be MeFi's culture that's off somehow. I'll come back and kill this account in a month or two, like I said unless I change my mind.His stated issues with MeFi's tone were both similar and different from languagehat's. But both seem to source to what they perceive are a rise in bad faith comments and behavior.
MeFi once felt like a real community. You recognized most of the names. Even in the most heated arguments there was a sense of fair play. Now it's become too large, too dominated by a certain self-righteous hipster "alternative"-identifed element, way too obsessed with gender/sexuality issues, oversaturated with context-free crapfilter posts, and far too tolerant of outright bullying and bad faith argument in discussion threads, and downright abusive conduct on MetaTalk especially. And ironically, even as the community has scaled out in size, a very small number of resident bossy busybodies seem to have made it their business to dominate certain topics and dictate the acceptable range of beliefs (and language!) that can be expressed about those topics.
You can tell me it was ever thus, and I recognize some truth to that. Maybe I've changed. But I started posting here under a different handle in 2005, so I've been around even longer than this screen name, and I can tell the difference. It's not just me.
Like a lot of longtimers and prolific contributors who are leaving (many longer-timers than me, and many better contributors), there's a sense that MeFi has jumped the shark and lost the essence of what made it special, really in just the last year or so.
Mostly, I don't get why a site with 3 full time moderators and a professed commitment to community and respectful discourse cannot police the piling on and bullying and shouting down that has become all too typical of this place. The content here is still better than anywhere else, but it won't stay that way at this rate. There is a deep streak of anti-intellectualism, in particular, that seems to be insurgent across the site.
Good luck keeping it real, folks. I've had some really memorable conversations here, learned a lot, made a few friends, and (if my favorites ratio means anything) contributed a little something here and there too.
Turning up the volume is not a substitute for making sense. Shouting people down is not a substitute for debate. And if you are well off enough to own a computer and have the time to post to Metafilter, you're not really all that oppressed either, no matter how you identify.
Over and out. The Johnny Cash picture expresses my genuine feeling about roughly a dozen people I've encountered here, almost all in the last year or so. But I've really enjoyed hanging with most of y'all. Peace out.
Offsite issues stay offsite....This applies also to MetaFilter issues: they belong on MetaFilter, not here. A good relationship with MetaFilter is important to MetaChat.posted by Miko at 1:48 PM on September 15, 2011
I'm pretty tired of the "MetaFilter doesn't do topic X well" construction myself, especially when it refers to a small number of people behaving badly when topic X comes up. Sometimes where the number of people is two, or maybe even only one. Usually, it would more accurately be "a tiny number of MetaFilter users don't do topic X well."posted by grouse at 2:54 PM on September 15, 2011 [15 favorites]
The other thing I don't like about "MetaFilter doesn't do topic X well" is that it is often accompanied by an explicit or implicit consequent that "therefore, we should not discuss topic X." This gives the power to shut down discourse on a particular topic to any minuscule proportion of the membership that is willing to be obnoxious enough.
Ten thousand comments,posted by John Cohen at 6:46 PM on September 15, 2011 [3 favorites]
plus seven thousand more here.
Too goddamn many.
Or we could close sign-ups entirely and have them open for random five-minute windows every day. That was fun the last time around, right?That's how I got in, and if it was good enough for me, it should be good enough for everybody!
If you want to get all passionate and beat your breast while you tell me about a quasi-magical figure who looks kind of like Santa Clause from those old Coke adds only taller - get off my porch! If you want to get all passionate and beat your breast while you tell me that said quasi-magical figure who looks kind of like Santa Clause doesn't exist - get off my porch!
it does seem hard to imagine teaching language to an infant without explicit prescriptions and proscriptionsI think maybe I don't understand what you're saying, because the exact opposite seems true to me.
Would that not be the type of thing that could just be ignored? If someone is telling you flat out to your (figurative) face that something you are saying is not true without having any evidence then I’m not sure how they could be rationally convinced that it is true.Generally it's something that happens when (a) either a critical mass of people back up the experience by saying they, too, have experienced or witnessed such a phenomenon or (b) someone from a group that the dismisser respects repeats the comment.
At the breakfast table that morning, my father explained that the name for the fruit came from the Arabic, since the word -- in Italian, albicocca, abricot in French, aprikose in German, like the words "algebra," "alchemy," and "alcohol" -- was derived from an Arabic noun combined with the Arabic article al- before it. The origin of albicocca was al-birquq. My father, who couldn't resist not leaving well enough alone and needed to top his entire performance with a little fillip of more recent vintage, added that what was truly amazing was that, in Israel and in many Arab countries nowadays, the fruit is referred to by a totally different name: mishmish.
My mother was nonplussed. We all, including my two cousins who were visiting that week, had an impulse to clap.
On the matter of etymologies, however, Oliver begged to differ. "Ah?!" was my father's startled response.
"The world is actually not an Arabic word," he said.
"How so?"
My father was clearly mimicking Socratic irony, which would start with an innocent "You don't say," only then to lead his interlocutor onto turbulent shoals.
"It's a long story, so bear with me, Pro." Suddenly Oliver had become serious. "Many Latin words are derived from the Greek, In the case of 'apricot,' however, it's the other way around; the Greek takes over from Latin. The Latin word was praecoquum, from pre-coquere, pre-cook, to ripen early, as in 'precocious,' meaning premature.
"The Byzanties borrowed praecox, and it became prekokkia or berikokki, which is finally how the Arabs must have inherited it as al-birquq."
My mother, unable to resist his charm, reached out to to him and tousled his hair and said, "Che muvi star!"
"He is right, there is no denying it," said my father under his breath, as though mimicking the part of a cowered Galileo forced to mutter the truth to himself.
"Courtesy of Philology 101," said Oliver.
posted by troll at 1:18 AM on September 15, 2011 [1 favorite]