Disturbing New Influx of Unoriginality

[Ash]

Ok, by now all of you 10-20 serious regulars of this board know me well from my writings here...some of my writings are so-so and garner only a few responses and then some posts I write are really good and literally get the whole board going and gather 50+ responses.  
I figure if a thread I wrote gets 50+ responses, then it's been viewed by two or three times that many who didn't respond...but maybe it made them think. ;)

Now I'm not trying to talk myself up or anything...quite the contrary!
I do not have illusions of granduer here by any means...It's just that this is one place where I KNOW MY VOICE IS HEARD and appreciated!
Others here have also written threads that everyone and their grandmothers seem to want to respond to.
Others here have written excellent and original threads that inspire you to respond.

I'm not the only one here who is a good writer and writes about interesting s**t that everyone wants to throw their 2 cents in on.  

But....I have noticed that this board, once the epitome and epicenter of good ideas,  thoughts, resourcefulness and original creative thinking has come under the assault of multiple newcomers from God knows where that have literally nothing to offer to this board but juvenile expressions & opinions.
I have been here for over 3 years now and never have I seen such an influx of unoriginality & non-imagination as I have witnessed lately.

I am quite sure that many of you have noticed this.
One of us will write a very good thread about an important issue only to have its recesses invaded and/or desecrated by a degenerate who writes a response to it that smacks of childishness.

You can always tell them apart from the rest....the first number one aspect is that their names are always something unoriginal & forgettable.


The most important fact that THEY OFFER NOTHING to this board and their opinions usually are more meant to start arguments than offer a legitimate view on the subject at hand.

AHHH!!  
It's so frustrating to click on a response from someone only to see that it was written by a 15 year old with no grasp of serious intelligence, spelling and the English language!

Have you guys noticed this!?

We have been overrun!!

6 months to 1 year ago this board was smokin' hot with originality & fresh new hot topics and now....now it is not.
At least I don't think it is.
Do you?

Have you noticed a serious Disturbing New Influx of Unoriginality on this message board lately like I have?

What are your thoughts?
Do you think it will pass?



Post Edited (04-13-04 18:18)

[Brother Ragnarok]

 (yes I think I'm a good writer...if you disagree then do a
> search using my screen name and look at the general number of
> responses to my posts...I average 20 to 50+ responses per
> thread...because I write about s**t that you can relate to and
> cannot help but respond to)

This does not change the fact that I STILL HAVE YOUR f**kING SHOES!

> You can always tell them apart from the rest....the first
> number one aspect is that ...

There's such a thing as a second number one aspect?

Brother R

[Ash]

Damn!

I totally forgot that you DO have my good pair of black shoes!

What's it been?  Almost a year now that you've had them?

Damn close to it!

And to think you told me that your dog barfed on them & chewed them up!

Hehe!


Dude, I'm gonna have to take a road trip to recover them....how 'bout we go see Kill Bill Vol. 2 this weekend and I get them then?

s**t!  I hope they still fit my feet!



Post Edited (04-13-04 03:52)

[odinn7]

I haven't really been here long enough to give my opinion one way or the other but something you said irritated me somewhat.

"Maybe it's just me but to spell one's name in all lower case signals a lack of creativity."

The fact that I spell my name in lower case means A) I'm one of these bums you refer to and B) I am not creative. On the opposite of that, I guess it would mean that since you spell yours with the caps lock on, not only are you above anyone who does not, but you are also ultra creative. I'm not trying to start anything here but I'm trying to point something out to you Ash. To just generalize like that is plain wrong. There are people here who use lower case for their names and they're not the non-creative bums that I would suspect they are from reading your post.

[George]

ASH.....

You are certainly entitled to your opinion.  Obviously it does have some validity.

My only issue is that you write.....

"But....I have noticed that this board, once the epitome and epicenter of good ideas, thoughts, resourcefulness and original creative thinking..."

I'm not sure I would consider this the epicenter of good ideas, thoughts and creative thinking.  Many times the ideas I see are ones that people like Roger Ebert or the folks at Entertainment Weekly have already published.

The board is just like a movie....for entertainment.  I don't care if you can't really make a phaser because the technology doesn't exist.  I don't care if, even though space is a vaccuum, you hear the boom when the Death Star explodes.  I don't even care if Texas Chainsaw Massacre was based on a true story and Leatherface was really a 5'2" woman.

Just ease back on the throttle a bit and coast.  I enjoy the stupidity of some posts as much as the well thought out ideas of yours or any of the other "regulars".

Thanks for your attention to my tirade.

[dean]

<Maybe it's just me but to spell one's name in all lower case signals a lack of creativity>>

I've posted here on occasion, haven't had really anything too important to comment on that was worth it's own post, and I just used my name and have yet to be bothered changing it [I'd like to but can't be bothered, and besides, some made-up post names can be kinda stupid sometimes]  If you care that much I'll change it, just for you Ash :-p

But I'd like to think that at least I have contributed in some way something creative, helpful and interesting, and not because of my crappy name that's in lower case letters and whatnot.  

Though I do agree that some of the new folks are in need of a bit of a personality booster.

Oh, and bear in mind that you can only talk about old movies a few times without going over the material at least once again at a later date: There's only so many times one can b***h about the TCM remake etc.

[raj]

What you said, odinn7.  All caps usually is an indicator of shouting.

[AndyC]

I think I see where Ash is coming from, although, metaphorically speaking, I think he's used a sawed off shotgun to make his point, when a rifle and scope is in order.

I know exactly the sort of people he means, although it's hard to identify them because they don't stick around very long. I don't know about all lower case, but I do admit that when I see an unfamiliar handle that looks like it took all of two seconds to think up, alarm bells start to ring. This is particularly true when the name seems tailor-made to the thread it appears in. Chances are, there is going to be a post that some movie or other "sucks" and nothing to back the statement up. It's just meant to start a fight, and the guy often doesn't even continue to participate in the discussion. Trust me, when I see one of these, I take note of where the guy is posting from, in case he shows up again under a different name, agreeing with himself. There have been a few posts that made me suspicious.

Still, annoying as it is, I don't think it's quite the invasion that Ash makes it out to be. The funny thing is that some of the dumbest threads can turn into a decent discussion after the original poster abandons them, and the rest of us take over. It is actually very hard to get a fight going on this board (with the exception of one or two touchy OT subjects), and I suspect we are at least as frustrating to trolls as they are to us.

I don't know about the other mods, but in the last four months, I've intervened once. It was a post titled "f--k" from a guy called "f--k" and read simply "f--k f--k." There were no responses. I think I caught it before most of you even saw it. The guy has never been back, to my knowledge.

As for unoriginal posts, those of us who have been around for a few years are going to see the same questions come up a few times. We are always going to have new people coming along who don't know as much as we do. I'd say it's our duty to help them, and do our part to make it enjoyable. Personally, I think it's more fun to discuss a subject again than to refer someone back to an old thread.

A bigger concern for me is that there does not seem to be much activity of any kind on the board lately. There have been a few times I've checked out a thread near the top of the page, only to discover I was the last to post - the previous day.



Post Edited (04-13-04 12:06)

[ulthar]

I'll have to ditto that on the 'all lowercase' thing as well.

I use all lower case for a very good reason.  User Id's on Unix (and Unix like) systems are generally all lower case.  Most things on Unix systems are all lower case, because the shell interpreter is case sensitive, and when you are working on such a system a lot, it is far easier to just use lower case for just about everything (not passwords, tho).

So, almost all of the screennames I use are all lower case...it's habit born of many, many years of experience of choosing usernames for computer systems.  Also, it is my own homage to Unix/Linux that, again, almost everything is done in lower case.  It's my way to make a statement.

A username on a computer system (or bbs) is not a proper noun.  There is no formal reason it needs to be capitalized.  It is simply a textual index to a set of database records.  A better and more formal name for it is userid rather than username (or screenid not screenname).



As for the quality of posts going down....again, don't read the posts from the folks that irritate you.  This *is* a fun board (imo) for a variety of reason.  Truth be known?  I don't browse here to read about topics of great fundamental import in my life.  However,  it's nice to see that kind of thing once in a while (it helps us get to know each other).

[ulthar]

WARNING!  WARNING!  Tongue in cheek satire to follow:

Maybe we can ask that ASHTHECAT be appointed as supermoderator to the board so he can approve all screen names, all posts (for originality, content and social relevance) before they are posted.

Just teasing, Ash....to make a point.

I too have noticed a trend.  Ash, you tend to judge everyone's posts from time to time; I've seen this before, where you point out what is lacking in other people's contributions.   If it bothers you this much, just read the posts from those 10-20 'regulars' that you know and trust.  It really is that easy.

By the way, I don't think it means ANYTHING to judge a poster's 'quality of topic' by the number of replies it gets.  If you post a topic like "what's your favorite [insert noun here]," you'll get tons of responses, and they are usually On Topic to the board.  OTOH, if you post something like, "George Lucas is Gay," you get tons of responses, but the general consensus when it was all done was that that was not a very good topic for this board - too inflammatory.

Or, you can post something that gets zero replies.  I few months ago, I posted a thumbnail sketch of an Australian movie called "Visitors" that my wife and I rented that we thought was pretty cool.  No one responded.  Does that mean no one read the post?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Does that mean the board in general thinks I'm an idiot whose posts should be avoided?  Maybe.  Maybe not. Not really likely (at least based on that one fact  ;)    ).

My point is that this is a forum, which means "public discussion" (from New Pocket Webster Dictionary), which to me means "open."

Finally, sometimes the posts in reply to the really dumb ones are very interesting...and creative.  I seem to recall a thread called "I hate nudity" a while back that started out dumb, but led to an interesting discussion on the issue of censorship.   Sometimes, even a dumb comment or question sparks interest in those that *HAVE* creativity and thinking minds (fwiw, I did not participate in that thread, so I do feel justified in calling those that did creative and thoughtful).

Regards.

[maria paula]

i like it when people creates a bit of controversy,
i do care if theres some cretivity and originality in this forum?? to be honest, no, at all,  this is just a phorum thats all, nothing else, people, come and go, they post their opinions, its just that, so why do u care so much?? keep writing, if u get  tones of responses to your postings then its ok, u are popular, and if not, then its ok too, u will get it next time,keeo on trying boy. to b honest, i preffer to use my creativity and originality in my ordinary life, and i dont need to show anything just to be judged for some people that i dont know.
so dont get stress if u dont like the pople who  is feeling free of posting here.
u have 3 choices.
1- keep posting here without judging other people.
2- if it annois  u too much u can go to others phorums, internet its plenty of them
3- as ulthar wrote before u can read the 10 or 20 regulars that post here.
this is just a sugestion, but for me your and all the rest of the opinions that people gives in the phorum are very welcome :).
by the way, im spanish so i hope u dont judge too my english writen, i try to do my best .

[Brother Ragnarok]

I disagree with you, dean.  One can never b***h enough about the TCM remake ;)

Brother R

[daveblackeye15]

 ASHTHECAT:

My reply is similar to someone else's respond. My title is in all lower case characters is because when I signed up for mail it wouldn't allow higher case letters. If I typed in Daveblackeye15 it would just say "daveblackeye15" so when I came here I just kept the same I don't see much point in capitalizing it. And if my name sounds like it was created by a kid, well, it's more or less my first screenname so it's pretty old.

[TheEvilDoctor]

While I haven't been here for too long (I guess 2-3 months now) I can relate to what ASH is saying. I visit a lot of forums, and I have left a lot of forums for just the reasons he stated. Annoying posts that seem to be made just to get attention while they have no content whatsoever, and somehow end up getting 20 replies full of 'nothing'. I see a post like this and I think 'hey a post with 20 replies in a day', I start reading it and after 5 posts I just go on to another topic because, frankly, it is of little interest. I can relate to the annoyances this creates.
About the lack of originality.... well I guess that on a forum that has existed for a few years now (don't know quite how long) for example Plan 9 From Outer Space should have been discussed to death. But recently a topic about it popped up. While this may seem annoying to some people, there will be others who haven't discussed it yet and will be happy to participate in it :)
I have seen quite some forums degenerate into a smoking scrapheap, but honestly I think a forum like this will last a looooooong time. Why? It's easy. Your average everyday Joe doesn't come here because he doesn't like b-movies, the people that got onto this site did so by showing interest in b-movies and, well, just ending up here (at least that's how I ended up here) so it's not like an average video-game forum that's populated by 15-yr-olds who just say 'that suckszzz I pwnzz you' just because they found a videogame forum, it's a forum about b-movies on a site about b-movies.
In conclusion: I don't know how it was before, but I think this forum is quite alright the way it is now (sue me :P) and I don't think it will degenerate into a 12-yr-old flame 'this sucks' type of forum any time soon because of it's specialized nature.

BTW one more thing: I'm from Holland, and I'm also really annoyed by people who can't use correct English :) I don't know why but it just looks dumb. Oh and maria paula your English is pretty good for someone from Spain :P

[Ash]

I should've know that you regulars with all lower case names would have a hissy fit.

I was not referring to you...

I edited that s**t out about lower case names....happy now?

Sorry if I offended anyone....that was not my intention.



Post Edited (04-13-04 16:29)