I'll put the disclaimer right here, right where no one can ever say that they missed it :)
No Cops, animals or other people were harmed in the making of this Diary
Here we are, and it's Monday.
I want to tell you all about my Sunday!
Sunday started about as well as any Sunday ever can for me. I didn't wake up until about one pm.
Friday and Saturday had seen me wandering across several States on my elderly motorcycle ... we make a well matched pair and a full write-up of that adventure is coming.
One thousand and twenty two miles in thirty hours, plus stopping to collect points at over thirty bonus locations in temperatures exceeding 100F is kinda tough, so on Sunday I slept until one pm.
I missed the British Grand Prix, so the next few hours were taken up watching Qualifying and the Race with my wife. All in all I hadn't read email, Daily Kos or Facebook since late Thursday night.
Then, this evening, I turned on my laptop!
JESUSHCHRISTONAFUCKINGSTICK!
What have you all been doing?
The first thing I notice is an Inbox stuffed full of messages from people who I discuss things with regularly, but they generally don't email me. Tragically I belatedly read the news of the death of a Rescue Ranger's husband. Of course she is much more than a Ranger. She is a retired teacher, a mother and a friend. Quite honestly just that piece of news almost had me switching off. The shock was profound. All the more profound for the simple reason that it seems strange that "virtual friends" can come to mean so much, yet they do and many reading these words will understand exactly what I mean.
I have a very close friend whom I have known for many years. She was a supporter, a confidant and sometimes she admonished me when I erred ... indeed she still does, yet I have never met this woman who lives in Florida. In this digital age I feel confident that many have such relationships, and that they are every bit as real as our friendships with people we, you know, actually meet.
In the time I have known Lorikeet she too has become a friend, and both Jodie and I send our most heartfelt condolences.
It is disheartening to come to realize that people cannot behave themselves in a Diary so moving as hers, yet it is also predictable.
Okay .... the evening is now going south, and I already went south through Texas once this weekend! Now I move on, if a little soberly, to the Meta.
I want to rewind a little here. When Markos announced DK4, he stated his aim that Daily Kos should become more of a Community. DK3, while excellent at many things, was two-dimensional and the Team who run this place were looking for both depth and substance. Diary restrictions were lifted and Groups formed. Hundreds of Groups, maybe thousands and some of them are doing excellent work.
All of this comes at a price. If you are going to change from a "post a Diary, make comments" set-up, and incorporate writing that is broader in scope, yet narrower in appeal in some subjects, then the dynamic will change. People will write about specialisms. They will comment on them and learn from each other. Humans do not simply check their feelings at the door. Like-minded souls will find one another and form bonds. Call them friendships, or call them cliques it really doesn't matter. Give humans a chance and they will form a society, and a Community because it is what we do.
Those social groups, whether tangible or electronic are made up of us, just people, calm on the outside and messy in the middle. We will, and do, bring all of those qualities to any Community we are a part of. Seeking to minimise the "messy" is what all Communities do. On a small, electronic scale there are "Moderators". Make it larger, and bring it into the physical world and we call it the Criminal Justice System. I think "Mods" generally work better!
There is a new horizon too that we are getting to grips with. The electronic media is anonymous in a way that real life is not. The crossing of the boundary between "on-line" and "real life" is new, and can be both scary and rewarding. It is not unusual to find that unpleasant characters inhabit the online world, protected by their cloak of anonymity, and their shield of secrecy. They come to places like this for a variety of nefarious reasons, and we are correct to be wary.
The flip side of that is that many folk meet online and go on to make genuine friendships, even life partners. Go on, ask me how I know. The bottom line here is that most people are actually quite nice. They have Moms and Dads, kids and jobs. They probably even have a dog or cat lurking under the dining room table.
Then there are a few who are not so nice, and their general unpleasantness has us not wanting them to have much personal information about us. Yet in reality very little is actually confidential, still, the creepiness factor is enough to be off-putting and make us seek to protect ourselves. Such behaviour has been made clear by several Daily Kos Users this weekend.
It appears that several folk have been, and are being deliberately harassed by person or persons as yet unknown. Mainly, it seems, not on this site and for that we should be a little bit grateful, but it would be naive to think that those engaging in this behaviour do not have accounts here too.
That those, quite frankly, disgusting behaviours are not simply condemned out of hand by anyone posting here is shocking, yet there is also a normality about it. Not everyone makes immediate and correct judgements, and I have personal knowledge of how that works too. Sometimes that means comments are left that, in the cold grey light of dawn are, at best, regrettable. It's a function of the medium. Some folk are naive, some write before thinking, some are dicks yet few are truly mean. Egos intervene, accusations are made yet much of it is unthinking. There are few who really wish for any harm to befall another, yet they can fail to realise that there is a real person on the other end of an unkind comment or thoughtless reply, so feelings get hurt and folk turn to this Community, their Community for support.
So .... the Title of my Diary .... We cannot support a Kossack who TAGS a Diary "GBCW". That Tag has only one purpose, and the purpose is that the first Administrator who sees it is likely to simply Ban the account. If you use that Tag you terminated your account on this site, yet few ever really mean it. Most want talking down and I always hope we can get to those people before they are showing the Orange Skull and Crossbones.
In my years here people who actually want to leave simply leave. They quit posting and go. On to better things, a different life? Who knows, it is their business alone. When you post a "GBCW" you make it our business too, because we are your Community and we care what happens to you. We can't save everyone. Some do need to go for their own reasons, but I will not stop trying and it is clear from this weekend that many feel the same way. So if your Diary was a request for help ... you got it. If you wanted to get our attention .... you made it but here is the thing. The many messages of support are not posted from some sense of duty, they are posted by real people who really care what happens to you. If that is the Community that Markos wanted, then Mistah, you got it!
So we get weekends like this. Tough words fly around, hugs and love are shared, real grief is spoken of and folk reach conclusions.
I don't think we can eradicate this from the site, and while everything needs to be done "within reason", I'm not sure we should try. If you remove the humanity, the Community will go with it. I would urge people to think about that when they are exasperated by "yet another meltdown". Remember that you do not walk in that Kossacks shoes, and they are trying to tell you something .... and sometimes you have to read very carefully to hear it.
Sure there are those who exhilarate in drama, and yes it become tiring at times. Imagine though, if you will, that you are feeling so despondent that you feel that your only option is to write to your Community and tell them that you have to leave. I tried that and I hope never to feel so bad that I feel compelled to ad a "GBCW" Tag to a Diary. Remember the origins of the phrase "Goodbye, Cruel World", it is not pretty.
We are all about a reality base. The reality is that some of the unpleasantness is not accidental. Some of it is a quite deliberate attempt to disrupt the site and the works it's Users try to do. We need to root out that activity, but more than that we need to accept the humanity of each other, and that means our frailties too.
Only that way can we become stronger than those who would seek to harm us. Only that way can we hope to persuade others to our point of view.
Meanwhile ... we lost one, we got one back. One told us, quite rightly, "Yo, Calm Down", and another of us is grieving.
I feel for them all.