Well, this was certainly an effective troll. :-) But the more I think about it, the more apt an analogy it is to Fairfield Life, or to Fairfield itself, and the level of fanboy fanaticism that people who frequent those worlds often display.
What I expected when I posted this was for about half the people to laugh, "getting" that their everyday behavior on FFL really *does* equate to over-the-top fans of a non-memorable faux pop group. In other words, I expected folks to be able to laugh at themselves a little. Big mistake. T'would seem that this is impossible for many here, who feel that 1) everything they write is not only a statement of truth but one that has to be sold to others *as* truth, and 2) that they are so important that they *have* to be taken seriously. That's *exactly* the level of fanatical fandom you would find in a real-life group of Monkees fans. They, too, would be incapable of seeing themselves as they appear to more...uh...normal people, and incapable of laughing at that image. Instead, they'd get angry and uptight. *Just* like a few here seem to have done. The thing is, what they're angry about IMO (and all I write on this forum *is* opinion, not "truth") is that the metaphor just *nails* it. They've managed to turn a simplistic form of meditation into a religion, just as they turned "20 minutes twice a day" into several hours a day, and being unable to talk about anything else, because in their lives there IS nothing else. Or little else. TMers on FFL have become as monotopical as fanatical Monkees fans would be, if they still existed. Anyway, I thought it was a fun metaphor at the time, and still do. And I suspect that its accuracy is proved by how strongly some reacted to having a little fun poked at them. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Sometimes, scanning the list of posts on FFL searching for one that I > find interesting enough to reply to, I find myself also searching for a > metaphor to explain the sense of incredulity I feel at the > same-old-same-old repetitiveness of it all. This morning I came up with > such a metaphor, and it made me laugh, so I'll pass it along. Consider > this my version of Bhairitu's "The Funny Farm Lounge" metaphor. :-) > > Reading FFL is like stumbling across a weird group of fanatical Monkees > fans. They get together in cyberspace and endlessly talk about the glory > days of Mickey, Davy, Peter and Michael as if they were gods. They argue > about which songs were most cosmically important, and the deep esoteric > meaning of their lyrics. When other musicians' names come up, the > Monkees fans get angry and feel that they have to put them down, because > however good these other musicians may be, after all they're not the > Monkees. Some are so fanatical and so enduringly loyal to the Monkees > that they think anyone who gets caught attending a concert by any other > musician should be banned from the Monkees Fan Club for life as the > heretics they are. But the most amazing part is that the fan club is > still going strong, still doing all of this every day, 40+ years after > the popularity of the group they revere jumped the shark. > > And all of this for a pop group that wasn't very good in the first > place. >
