I have the feeling that my title is grammatically not correct. Should it say: "Why not stop recommending everything or anything ? Geez, I feel so embarrassed to not knowi what would be correct English. Please let me know and I correct it to what it should be. Thanks.
I scanned but not followed in detail last week's diaries that were posted after the Elliot Rodger mass shooting happened in California. The shooter's video created an eruption of feelings among so many women that a flow of very personal and traumatic experiences of women were skillfully posted in diaries as a reaction. Clearly these diaries represented as much an urgent need to be verbalized by the authors, as they were a relief. (albeit very difficult to verbalize and post in public.)
I then realized that something very destructive was going to evolve out of those diaries, but I hesitated to verbalize those feelings.. It was too much for me to read through, as it is emotionally draining, too much to understand the dynamics of such threads and too exhausting and awful to comment on.
It worried me from the beginning enough to stay out of them with support or critical comments.
At the same time I felt that NOT participating with emotional support or critical comments of the author's diaries is as much "observed" as verbalizing your support or "voicing" your support with the rec button.
Now reading that it has ended in the banning for some people, who I at least recognize by their names, is basically the proof that my guts' feelings of what could come out these diaries, was not unreasonable to worry about and almost predictable.
When people can't contain themselves and can't stop reading and commenting (a thing that happens every so often to myself), I get very discouraged and depressed about the state of affairs of this site.
An old question that crept up in my guts before, comes back to my mind going through such episodes on dailykos. Now I post the question.
What I realized is that people watch out exactly, who recommends what and why. Be it the recommendations of diaries or comments, there is a whole movement of emotions creeping out of people's characters to ... watch over your kossack neighbor's rec and HR histories. It feels to me like your "friendly" neighbor spies on you like a hidden STASI guy, making notes of when YOU made a rec and where and to whom and why. If you happen to have a good memory those people never forget what you rec'd and HR'd for years. (Luckily I have a lousy memory and I mix up people constantly.)
I would suggest to get rid of the rec's of comments altogether. If you like what someone says, put it in words, not in a rec. If you hate what someone says, put it in words, not into a HR.
If you like a diary, "Like It" or "Tweet It" or put your feelings for or against the diary in words.
This way, at least people have to read the threads (instead of counting recs and HRs and making statistics and spreadsheets about it), before they go on and complain, bash, trash and ask for bans and the like from the admins.
It's easy to rec, it's harder to put your recommendation in words. If something is rec worthy, you should respect the fact so much to go through the effort to put your praise and agreements into words. Same is true for the critical ones.
I think it's bad enough to have a feeling that you have to watch out which diary you rec and which one you don't.
That's what it comes down to. It's not good. It does not feel right. It feels like silencing. All the good of so many diaries can get drowned by those, who have nothing better to do than watching out, who is on which side.
If you "take sides", say so and post it. Just don't stay in the back aisles, shouting "Booh" or "Hurray" with your rec and HR button. When it comes to stand up for what you think is right or wrong, don't use the Rec and HR buttons as a shield in the hope that people will have forgotten your Rec or HR you made, when you later realize your Rec or HR wasn't that well thought out and you realize you wished you may not have made them.
Sigh. What a sad state of affairs in dailykosland.
P.S. Reading through what I wrote, I ask myself, if that is snark or not. See, if one gets that confused that one doesn't know anymore how serious one is with his own words, it definitely means, one should stop writing, right?