New comment at gurdur's:
Welch here. (the reg. setup in this comment engine is somewhat suboptimal)
"I don’t see the pit as a uniform mass (confusing Eliza with Welch and Welch with Franc Hoggle? Never in my life!!!). I understand that you are different. Nevertheless, be honest: there is hardly a day without mentioning Ophelia, PZ or RW. That’s the focus and one would have to be blind not to see it. "
Yes, compared to all the days and weeks and months on FTB without even the slightest mention of the pit. Nor is it specifically mentioned in comment policies.
That, by the way, was sarcasm. It is rather difficult to take Ophelia's, or rather anyone at FTB seriously when they do the *exact* same thing they excoriate others for. I mean, seriously, as someone said, it's like listening at my kitchen window and complaining that I said unkind things about you. if you hadn't been on my property, eavesdropping, you'd have not heard any of it. However, that's a really bad analogy, given the nature of a public blog. It's more like complaining that I drive down the road your billboard is on and read it every day, then go home and bag on it with my wife, with the only reason you know this being because you drive by MY billboard thrice daily and read it, even though there's no other reason for you to be on that road.
If Ophelia is THAT bothered by the pit, why. does. she. monitor. it. so. closely?
Why *especially* does she monitor it so closely when one of her primary complaints is?
That the pit is "monitoring her". How? *by reading her website*. I mean come on, at some point, I start to get tired of figuring out adjectives to modify hypocrisy. I've a decent vocabulary, but it has limits. Ophelia, and to be accurate, the entire core FTB crowd spend a *lot* of time monitoring everything said in the 'pit. I'm pretty sure were I to come up with a brand new way to deliberately misspell her name in an insulting manner, she'd be in arms about it within a fortnight. Probably by day's end.
Why should I take her complaints about me seriously at all when she monitors my words FAR more than I monitor hers?
"I guess that in the end the message is: the people you are targeting are also different. Some of them may be strong; others may find it difficult to distance themselves emotionally from what happens. It doesn't have to be vanity or narcissim; it's rather that sometimes the distance is really hard to find. And it simply seems to me that noticing this and acting on this could make the world a slightly better place. "
Being charitable, and taking her distress at the pit at face value, why can she not stop obsessively monitoring it. I'm quite sure that were she to stop for a week, a month...heck, *today*, she'd feel noticeably better. I don't know what the vast majority of people who know me or know of me say about me, for good or ill. It's quite simple: I don't look for it.
People may be saying kind things, they may be saying horrible things, but I'm not going to spend any amount of time caring. The people whose opinions I DO care about, I know what they think, we talk, regularly. Why does my opinion of Ophelia, for good OR ill matter to her in the least?
That is what I cannot understand. It's like the joke about the dumb guy who gets a job at the sawmill, and is told "don't touch the blade, it'll cut your finger right off."
Not being the smartest lad, he of course, sticks his finger in the blade, and ZING! Off it goes. He starts screaming and hollering, and the other folks in the lumber yard come running in and ask what happened.
He says "I was just seeing what happened when you touched the saw blade, and THERE IT HAPPENED AGAIN!!!"
at some point, *ophelia* has to take some action to not read the 'pit every day. Demanding over 600 people who aren't her change their behavior to suit her is has not worked, is not working, nor is it *going* to work. Maybe she should take her own advice and, if it upsets her so, stop reading it?
"But of course it won’t happen. It's war and as you say, communication is not possible. I know; I’m not that naïve. "
She doesn't seem to want an end to the war as much as she wants people to stop returning fire. There's a difference.