1984 was a novel in which Big Brother honed in on, careened toward and then literally decimated offending citizens.

Shouldn't that be 'careered'? :)

(Y'all would have been proud of me the other night. I managed to get a friend of mine and his DW arguing about whether or not 'slayage' was a gerund.)

(Other possible islands)

Piping up to say, I understand and share some of the butterflies-in-stomach feelings about being forced to handle m. this way. But that, to me, is the point: I feel that he forced our hand. We either had to conform to his manner of discourse or he had to leave. He was the source of the rumblies in the tumblies, when he responded to the slightest of disagreements with name-calling and aspersions cast over the entire board.

Perhaps we are averse to confrontations here, but we aren't afraid to disagree. It's just always been the Buffista way to argue without raising voices or calling names. M. couldn't handle that, so he's gone, and I for one will breathe easier once I shake off the unpleasant but necessary taste of it all.

Still being fairly new to the board myself, I was unaware of the extensive discussion taking place here on this topic. All I saw regarding the 'stomping' was pretty much "He's gone now let's not talk about it". (Thanks for indirectly letting me know about this discussion PMM). And to Rob (and the follow-up posters) I was using 'big brother' in the modern colloquial sense rather than the strict literary sense. My intent was not to offend, merely to try to stimulate some deeper thought on the matter (see first two sentences). I apologise for causing any offence with the reference. I am still somewhat disturbed by this episode including what I feel are repeated mischaracterizations of Mieskie's posts and intent, but it appears that this is my issue alone, and to avoid a lengthy series of rehashes of other people's opinions on the subject I will refrain from elaborating more here as it appears that those who feel deeply offended are heartily supported by the vast majority. While Mieskie was abraisive at times, I feel that many (not all) who responed to him were equally abraisive and insensitive. Also, I take issue the the rather glib, negative and out of context characterizations regarding Mieskie's posts in Cindy's 'nilly' of them. This is not in any way meant to be an attack on Cindy, merely a statement of my opinion. Were this board not such a generally engaging and entertaining way to pass the time while contributing in some small way to a worthy cause I would probably have simply written it off over this incident (and probably would have never de-lurked in the first place). I did feel that I had to respond somewhat to some of the posts/comments made about me and to express perhaps a little more fully my feelings of unease. I am quite curious to see what kind of a response is generated by this (if any). Have a wonderful day everyone and a very happy new year.

Mike

Edited for my wonderfull spulling... :)

And to Rob (and the follow-up posters) I was using 'big brother' in the modern colloquial sense rather than the strict literary sense.

But that's how we lost "decimate"!!!!~!

I was using 'big brother' in the modern colloquial sense rather than the strict literary sense.

What is the modern colloquial sense of 'big brother'? How does what happened to m. match that sense? I'm really curious about this, since I just don't see it.

I am still somewhat disturbed by this episode including what I feel are repeated mischaracterizations of Mieskie's posts and intent...

The bottom line for me is that regardless of what his intent was (and for the record I think his intent was to rile people up and cause trouble), it was coming across as negative, insulting and hostile. If I'm mistaken and his intentions were good, then there should have come a point where he realized that he wasn't getting across what he was trying to convey, in the proper way. With as many people winding up offended that did, he should have taken a step back and realized that what he was intending and what he was achieving were two oppsite things. But he didn't do this. Didn't even come close. Instead, he mocked and insulted, and in my eyes, basically dared us to do something about it.

Rob, As I indicated in the wordy post above, I was unaware of the extensive discussion on the topic here. In the Firefly thread there was a post from DXM that M had been suspended, Steph blessing the decision, then Scrappy posted a reference to M's farewell 'big brother' reference and Jon posted a request to not talk about it any more. That was the only discussion of which I was aware at the time. At that point I was afraid we might be seeing a quickly suppressed, no discussion suspension. Hence my attempt to cause some deeper thought on the matter by referencing a cultural icon for suppression. I apologise for my ignorance, but if there was any indication of the discussion going on here other than PMM's reference to it after my post I missed it entirely.

I hope you understand why that sort of discussion takes place here rather than in the substantive threads, Mike. As it was, I felt that a lot of insubstantive discussion took place in the Firefly thread in response to M's posting, and people who read the threads solely for show-specific discussion would have wandered off in disgust or discomfort.

We realized early on that we needed a Bureaucracy thread in order to keep the administrative stuff out of the way but still publicly accessible to anyone interested. Consider this the "Community Access" channel of buffistas.org. *grin*

repeated mischaracterizations of Mieskie's posts

How am I mischaracterizing "Piss you off again later"?

The objection, made consistently and by people other than me*, was not to the content of Mieskie's posts, but to the manner of them.

This has, historically, been a place where we could disagree agreeably. Where people could say "I appreciate your position, but I'm not going to agree to it." We don't object to argument, far from it. We do object to deliberate confrontation for the sake of pushing buttons.

* By which I mean, I'm not the only one who objected. I certainly did object.