Cleaning Out My Closet
At the risk of pissing everyone off, here's my unfiltered, unedited, except for spelling and grammar, remarks regarding what's been occurring on this site and others over the past few weeks. I want to make my final remarks, get this all off my chest, and see what happens. I suspect nothing, but who knows. I probably shouldn't even post this, but I feel like it's necessary to do so.

Over the past several weeks, it has become apparent to me that communicating one's true tone and meaning through an electronic format can be, and often is, a fruitless exercise. Reactions not only to my posts on this site but on the close web of sites linked below and comments replying to other comments have spiraled out of control, and the tone is decidedly viscous in nature. Mudslinging and argumentative discussions are running rampant on here, and it's apparent that I've hurt one person on here with my own argumentative tone and am apparently engaging in a non-stop battle on another site about the tone of my comments being, in the writer's words, "defeatist" in nature. It's obvious that there's no room for open discourse on here as of late, and this can be attributed to many, many things. I'm forced to wonder, though, why is this occurring all of a sudden?

This is by no means the first time this has occurred to me, and I'm sure countless others can relate incidents that are in the similar vein. Comments are taken out of context in any number of formats, whether it be e-mail, discussion boards, or in chat rooms. Problems arise when it's hard, if not impossible, to determine one's true tone. Something that's said vocally and taken as being in any number of accepted and recognizable tones will be greeted and reacted to within the course of a normal conversation without further comment. The problems with text are many, and it starts with the inability to determine whether what someone is saying is in a tone that's meant to be taken as being either critical, sarcastic, hurtful, descriptive, or any other number of tones. It's impossible to tell. So, what happens is that once something has been taken out of context, it's harder than ever to try to retract, defend, or dismiss the intent behind the words that are now being used against the writer.

Back to the original question about the recent rash of posts that are incredibly hostile in tone on this site and others. I don't know why this occurring all of a sudden, but I do know that it's becoming increasingly obvious that there are certain subjects that can't be discussed in this forum where it the dialog doesn't degenerate and hostile in nature. Religion and politics used to be the only two subjects that were advisable not to be up for discussion on a regular basis unless one expected a confrontation. Both of these are addressed here and elsewhere, and it's apparent that these are not the offending topics. In fact, it's a credit to the readers of this site that they've chosen not to comment on my posts regarding religion as of late because it's obvious that they could easily be commented on in an effort to start a debate, but that hasn't happened, yet. Now, what are the topics that are causing debate? Literature and vendettas.

Anyone who has read the sites in question knows that all of us love literature. So, this, one would assume, could be a topic of conversation that could be easily agreed upon. This isn't the case apparently. At the risk of sounding like a victim, it appears as if it's impossible for anyone to be somewhat critical of literature and not embracing of all forms of publishing without being regarded as being hyper-critical of a subject that appears to be beyond criticism. To go a step further, you can't even think about being critical of writing in general and writing in the format specifically. All you have to do is look back in the archives here and see the posts devoted to the deterioration of writing that this "blog" format has contributed to. I've written about it before, and I'll stick to my guns and say that not everyone should be a writer or have access to publishing. There's a good reason why, and it all stems from the fact that most of it isn't any good or worth reading, and I wholeheartedly include myself in that mix. To me, and to paraphrase a point I made elsewhere, it doesn't do anyone any good to allow everyone access to publishing, whether it be in print or electronic format. I can't help it, and perhaps it betrays the liberal agenda, but the fact is that there's no reason to be embracing of everything and everyone's right to be a part of the literary establishment. It's almost as if no criticism is welcome at all because if you like and support one thing, then you have to like and support it all. I don't know any other way to say it, but I apparently haven't been able to phrase the meanings of my argument to suit anyone. I'm either being (1) argumentative for argument's sake (2) defeatist in nature and presuming that everything has been done before, so why bother. Neither of which is the case. I expect to get the same types of responses to this post as well. But let me say this, if this type of format is for expressing one's opinions, ideas, etc in an unfiltered vacuum, then I'm exercising that right as well. This is how I feel about these topics, but I'm willing to listen to reason. I haven't heard one good reason, though, why everyone, and I mean everyone, should be allowed to write publicly.

The other topic that seems to be off limits is vendettas or complaints about the behavior of others. Apparently, there's no room for criticism here about people even with, what I consider to be, legitimate reasons. There's really nothing more to say about this other than to make a claim that this seems to be very hypocritical in nature to allow one form of aggressive remarks and forbid others from doing so.

Finally, it appears that the best course of action would be to either (1) limit posts on here to subjects that have little or no emotional value (2) just quit posting for quite awhile. I'm leaning towards the latter of the two options, but that's not definite.