You all know how much I love to spot trends. :-) One trend I have noticed is that actual creativity (and, as a result, the amount of actual content in posts as opposed to the same old same old drivel) waxes and wanes. NOT just on FFL; this seems to be a larger phenomenon. That is, at the same time that FFL "goes boring" and no one seems to be able to come up with anything new to talk about, so do all of the other forums I read.
But the fascinating thing for me is that when one of these Boring Periods happens and no one seems to have anything interesting to say, *posters tend to fill the silence with arguing*. It's as if arguing has become a form of misdirection used by those who are bored and have nothing to say, one that allows them to pretend that they have something to say. One way you can always tell when someone is arguing just because they're bored and don't have anything to say but feel compelled to say something anyway is what I call the déjà vu factor. That's when someone is so desperate to say something -- anything -- that they trot out and restarts an argument they've had dozens of times before. This happens a LOT on Fairfield Life. And it kinda makes me wonder about the intelligence of the people who engage in the *same* argument over and over -- week after week, month after month, year after year -- and with the *same* people. Are these people so stupid that they actually believe that they'll "win" the argument this time, and finally convince the other person that they're right? If that were true, it's pretty much one of the textbook definitions of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. It seems to me that with regard to several déjà vu arguments -- like the existence or non-existence of global warming, the idiocy or non-idiocy of Sarah Palin, the "bestness" or the ordinariness of TM, etc. -- everyone here already knows what they believe. What they believe on these subjects is never going to change. So why do they keep arguing about them, *as if* they could somehow change the other people's minds? I think it's because the people rerunning these same déjà vu arguments over and over and over are bored and can't think of anything else to say. It's just a theory. And one that is easily disproved. All that the chronic arguers who keep arguing the same déjà vu arguments over and over and over would have to do to disprove it is to post something creative and new. I'll wait...
