TurquoiseB wrote: ..... Bronte, It might help you to put it in perspective that what I was replying TO when I made that crack was some newbie getting all pompous and trying (in her first post to the forum, no less) to lecture everyone here on how they should conduct themselves, on a forum she had obviously not spent very much time reading."
Edg: Turq, this word "obviously" is not so easily validated. It smacks of an ad hominem attack in that it SEEMS to imply that Bronte has a personality that is "not up to Turq's standards of message board scholarship and thus deficient to some degree and in need of fixing." I don't think that the cogency she's shown us thus far deserves this kind of treatment. In fact, she told us all that she'd been lurking, so if that's true, her "lack" of seeing the "whole picture" that you seem to "have" comes down to her having a POV different from yours. There's tons of wiggle room in which I can have the thought that Bronte is not a "yokel lacking insight and unconcerned about it." However "lite" you've been in your "labeling," I do feel that, indeed, labeling has occurred. If a ten year old child somehow started posting here, we'd all handle the child with, ahem, kid gloves, ya? Bronte may indeed need to do more reading to get a feel for "this place," but it she were a ten year old who had not read widely enough, the group would throw a cream pie in YOUR face for "chiding the child" and "expecting too much too soon from a "starter nervous system." I think we need to treat each other with this kind of delicacy if we're to turn around the flaming here. Now, to add to your understanding, let me testify that I too lurked for years here, and when I started posting, I thought I knew the score, but I was quite off about most folks here, and I found out in short order that the reactions of others to my thoughts are quite different than I would have predicted. Suddenly, the "trolls popped" and I could see them as I had never seen them before -- but only after they'd reacted to me. In short, it may be very hard to "get a feel for a place" by merely lurking. It's one thing to read the words of a troll, it's another thing to read the words of a troll about "me." Then it becomes personal, and the flaming of the troll is felt much more deeply than if the troll had attacked someone else. Edg The Antiflamer
