First of all, I appreciate your sense of humor, Wasisname. I hadn't recognized that before. You seem like someone that would have attended the SF Worldcon in 2009. Were you there? Here's hoping Montreal gets the Worldcon again soon. It's a great venue & a great city for it.
Next, and I have said this over and over again, the Merb board is dead. Maybe I should be more open-minded and simply encourage both men and women to post, because mostly this board is filled with crickets. I think people feel intimidated and are afraid to post because of the hostility to which they'll be subjected. Maybe this is a little our fault. I'll accept some of the blame. I've been a little hostile from time to time. I think people should feel more free to post in general. And I know that I'm going to be criticized even for this, because now I'm saying that everyone should feel more free to post and not just women. Go ahead. Your human punching bag is here.
Fakeness. I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Let's face it: a lot of us are here because our "real, civilian" relationships were fake. Are we really going to complain that our client/escort relationships are also fake? Did she fake an orgasm to help get me off? Did that girl who's 25 years younger than me only pretend that she was attracted to me? Who cares if some things are fake? When I'm on the flume ride at Disney, I know that I'm not actually riding on a log in a river. When you meet a girl and she compliments you for this or that, you know that you have to take it with a grain of salt, but so what? Even though it's probably fake, it still makes you feel good. Would you prefer it that the escorts were always 100% honest. That's the real way that Canada can get rid of prostitution: make it okay as long as the ladies are completely honest about the guys they're seeing. And yes, sometimes the fakeness bothers me. I don't like it when a lady I've never met before calls me "darling", for example, but this whole thing that we're doing is fake! How can we really complain about fakeness?
Hello Human Punching Bag. I am the System's Bitch, glad to meet you. [Drew Carey reference]
First things first. I am a nerd but not a fanboy. I've done my share of the pen and paper roleplaying but my nerdality is expressed more in being a history/public policy geek and being a general dork. [Salute the general]. I don't consider watching a blockbuster like LOTR or even reading the books to be nerdy. Why in my time yadda yadda yadda.
I have no problems with your second paragraph but I think it is not fair nor accurate. [in that I accept what you say, but I disagree with it]
1: Terb in centered in a province of 12 million. Merb ignoring the absolutely dead from a hobby perspective Atlantic region 8 million. Although de jure and de facto it is a bilingual board it is very English dominated. I am not sure but there can't be too many unilingual french here, maybe a few who insist on posting in French [as is their right] all the time but if you don't know the English this board would have to drive you nuts with being forced to use Google translate to follow most of the conversations. So terb is going to be much busier than the merb. I've been on bilingual but french dominated boards as a unilingual anglo... not very fun.
2: Go on terb for a while. Same owners but the rules are not enforced as consistantly or as strongly as here. It is a madhouse of scum and villany although it does have a good house band. However that doesn't seem to be scaring away the post count. Well OK it does, but compared to here they do very well. Thus leading to point 1 as a reason for deadness. Perhaps a perbite could chime in. Merb is actually a pretty civil board, it might not be all tea and scones but on the contium of a party of orcs and a party of hobbits we do tend toward the hobbit side. I've heard complains from both angles, that merb is too strict and drives people away and should be more like terb and terb is too loose and drives people away and should be more like merb. Oddly enough I prefer the merb level of moderation.
3: No offence but until this thread you never really registered on my radar. I doubt if you are to blame for driving down post count. Also there is an ignore function if you start getting all Blackrock13@terb ish.
Is there hostility on merb. Sure. Especially the poltical threads and sports threads which often get themselves shut down. There are also groups of people who seem to have it in for each other. I don't know how to resolve the latter but in both cases the hositlity seems to be very finely focused. I personally can't imagine that anyone but the most sensitive soul would be scared off by that level of hostility when it isn't expressed towards them and still manage to stay on the internet.
I haven't done a review but is every thread filled with venom and bile or only a few. If most thread degernate into a fussin and a fueden than that is a problem. An occational vigious difference of opinions OTOH, I can't see being a problem in a board with adults. I mean dammit if you insist on being a fiscal hermet crab every time the Nikki undergoes a correction, how can anyone not be enveloped and express a mighty rage that burns with the power of a 1000 suns.
As for fakeness there are two issues.
One is the whole social discourse/fantasy thing. Yeah, that guy really doesn't care how your day went and that escort is just trying to fill a fantasy.
On the other is when it passes from asking you to suspend your belief to insulting your intellegence.
Example.
Mr Perfect being perfect.
Ted Dibase really being a millionaire.
The Big Boss Man really being a corrections officer
Asking me to suspend my belief
Doink the clown
A dead guy called the undertaker.
Insulting my intellegence.
It doesn't happen often but there are times when posting goes from, ah that is a provider expressing her opinion to , ah sounds like advertising but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt because there isn't enough information or she has been around for a while posting normally etc, then you slide into the, oh come on, you gotta be shitting me.
It is something a profession in any field on any social medium has to be careful about.
However I don't really remember ever getting that WTF reaction from any provider post on the merb. At least not on the merb. On terb it happens, stage 2 for sure, sometimes I get utterly convinced.
It is a bit like product placement. Love it or List it is really bad for the ham fisted way they do product placement. It is just so in your face that it is insulting. It is counter productive.... darling
On an unrelated side note. I wonder with my posting espcially recently on merb when I've become more vocal if I could ever arrange a meeting with my merb handle or if I have totally come across like some twat monkey. Which would be sad because my mom says I'm cool.
