Pirates of the Blackstone
One of the most predictable and unavoidable realities of spending time in online message boards is that eventually you’ll end up watching otherwise normal, well adjusted adults threaten to beat each other up. I’ve fallen victim to this myself; threatening to light local artist Doug Chapel on fire some years back due to, of all inane reasons, overuse of CAPITOL LETTERS IN HIS SHAMELESS PROMOTING. Of course I never set flame to Doug; that would be silly, but threatening to do so…now that was a blast. I didn’t know him at the time and had no idea he was a talented, well meaning guy. In other words, the perfect target for a text based blunderbuss. Ask anyone who moderates online communities about this phenomenon and they’ll have to admit the ugly truth; people tend to act like idiots given the opportunity. This really shouldn’t be all that surprising. As cultured and diverse as we may claim to be, Americans do such a good job homogenizing their circles of influence, realizing not everybody shares your particular world view can be enough to put anyone on the defensive. And what better way to defend your positions than threatening to beat up someone you’ve never met and just as likely to be your neighbor, child’s teacher, Rabbi or anyone else you’d be hesitant to thwack unprovoked with a 2×4 if you saw them in line at Dunkin Donuts.
Such is life in make believe worlds. I can claim to have seen on at least two different occasions, on two different local communities virtual gangs form to challenge their virtual enemies to real world fisticuffs that of course, never materialize.
CAN. YOU. DIG IT.
So with this knowledge and personal experience behind me, I would like to offer the following bit of free advice to the moderators of the Telegram and Gazettes disaster of a message board, The Speakeasy:
Walk over to the server where the board is hosted, reach behind it, grab hold of the plug and before you get a chance to second guess yourself, unplug the bitch. Forever.
I’ve been watching this dizzying display of humanity at its worst since day one and everyday I’m amazed to see the Ancient Order of Editors continue to let this beast grow. If nothing else, it’s horrible PR for the only paper in Worcester, unless outing your user base as sub-cretin troglodytes is considered the hip thing to do in the shrinking world of print dailies. How can a newspaper which prides itself on being family friendly sit back and watch an improve troop of baloney heads circle humanities drain without realizing their experiment in sociology has gone way off course? I can’t imagine the goal of the paper is to showcase the crankish ideologies Worcester has long been famous for; homophobia, racism, misogyny and general stupidity being the examples that stand out. Remember T&G decision makers, people actually read this crap and it reflects on all of us who call Worcester home. But even if we move past the obvious, how’s it going to look if the paper is forced to start reporting on violence rooted in its own house? I know you’re still new in the interactive user department, but if you insist on having the service continue, grow and have the general public participate you’re going to have to cut out the douche bags before they have the opportunity to scare off the people who are going to follow your advertising trail and pay for otherwise useless services. There’s no shortage of places on the net for me to go and be an idiot, the sole paper for the second largest city in New England (eff-you ProVo) shouldn’t be one of them.
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6 Responses to “Pirates of the Blackstone”
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It’s odd that they keep the Speakeasy around. Why is the T&G paying someone to moderate and maintain a forum for bickering? Surely that person’s time could be spent on better things.
My only thought is they use it to bump their traffic to impress their web advertising clients.
I mean, on the other hand it keeps them all occupied and off of our blogs…
What´s disappointing to me is that this same sort of racist, sexist and generally harmful commentary seems to be spilling over into the T & G written editorial pages. At least, this appeared true to me while I was still in Worcester, 2 months ago. It really doesn´t make them, or us, look great.
If only we could be blessed with real alternative print news…
My thoughts, exactly Cha-Cha.
It sure would be nice to something productive come from our great and powerful Woo.
Everytime I try to use that forum, I find more problems.
When you post something, they ask for “Name” and “E-mail.” Now on most fora, when you enter your e-mail like this, it’s kept private, and just used to confirm your identity.
But on the Speakeasy, the e-mail shows up on the page! (Indymedia has this same problem, of not making clear that the e-mail is optional, but then Indymedia has a generally terrible user experience, too.)
Has there ever been any energy around hijacking part of the Speakeasy for other purposes?
I wonder–is the Speakeasy now dead? The whole Larry-Cirignano-pushing-people thing has had lots of blog exposure, with many posts and dozens of comments. But I can’t find anything about it on the Speakeasy. (Not that finding threads on that board is easy to begin with.)