--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb <no_reply@...> wrote: > > Well, this was certainly an effective troll.
Uh, no, it wasn't, actually. Of 35 posts in the thread, almost none actually addressed the metaphor. Obbajeeba liked it. Robin was the sole poster to argue with it, and he did so only in the context of using it to finely dice Barry's chronic ill will, pretentiousness, and lack of self-awareness. The rest of the posts were folks going off on their own trips with YouTubes and poetry and such, not related to the metaphor Barry intended to arouse general rage. Note that Barry goes on to spin a hallucinatory fantasy in which the TMers here angrily protested the metaphor. Barry *expected* them to, but they didn't. So he just invented a scenario in which they did, expounding on why they got angry, even claiming that the nonexistent angry reactions *proved that the metaphor was accurate*. Note also that it never occurred to Barry to ask himself why--if reading FFL is indeed "like stumbling across a weird group of fanatical Monkees fans"--after having stumbled across it initially back in 2005, he's been reading and contributing to it on a regular basis ever since. Why would anybody but a fanatical Monkees fan want to hang out with a bunch of other fanatical Monkees fans for over six years? :-) 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. > > >
