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Originally Posted by Halx
SC, I view irresponsible posts as bandwagon responses, knee-jerk criticisms, and diversions from a topic. If you can think of a reasonable way to respond to a post that you feel is a little too pompous that displays your maturity and intelligence, I want to see it. I don't know if I'm even addressing your concerns, but all I can do is seek new ways to say the same thing at this point. I think the social game has too much sway on topics. In today's society, it is more important to be popular than to be right. Why is that? Why can't we be different?
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I appreciate your non-reactionary response to my criticism. You are getting warmer and colder at the same time.
Hal, even though I know you are trying to look at the quality of this post and not rely on what you know about me... of the choice between being right and being popular,
you know which I would choose just as well as I do. Of course, I would prefer being right only because I prefer to be the best person I can be and to grow when at all possible. I would prefer being wrong to being popular, too. Popularity holds little value for me. You said everything above as if you were trying to get me off of my irrelevant topic and onto this important one, but this is the topic I have been getting at all along.
Anybody who has read at least a handful of my posts or some of my journals has probably come to expect that I put a lot of thought into what I write and generally stay pretty level-headed. This has not changed about me, and yet the nature of my posts has obviously changed of late. Why is this? Because we are talking about why there aren't as many interested (or interesting) people on the TFP as there used to be. I have heard the reasoning of seasons and waves of interest. There are down times and up. I understand this and my participation changes like this as well. But there is another reason why
in the last several months (aside from transitional times such as when I was relocating or out of town) I have not felt the desire to participate here as much. That is because there seems to be a somewhat pervasive desire for popularity rather than one for expressing our ideas honestly, no matter who agrees. It is a social pressure, and I don't think it affects everyone, but it does affect enough people to make a difference. When I refer to 'hens' and how the TFP is becoming a 'henhouse' in the other thread, this is what I mean.
It is starting to feel like it is only okay for men to display the full range of personalities around here, and when a woman sticks her head out too far, some [passive]aggressive hens come and peck at her. I was also going to point out that roosters sometimes join in, too, specifically thinking of when Ch'i said "Such hostility, Supple Cow!" But now that I look for the post where he said it, I see that he has edited that part out. Thanks for leaving that part out, Ch'i. Maybe this place won't be overrun by henhouse antics after all.