The Last Message Board?

Today's when other writing blogs are whining, so I'm joining in.

Last fall I finally got run out of writers.net for belittling someone who never had any intention of sticking around in the first place.  The moderator in her infinite wisdom decided to protect that person who didn't give a shit anyway and booted me from the group after 10 years.  And now the group is dead.  Not even Jay Greenstein is around anymore.

Anyway, enough sour grapes about that.  I was looking for a new writing board and one sent me a birthday card.  I had signed up there back in 2009 and forgot about it and so decided to go check it out.  It was run by the same people as writers.net but still slightly more active.

Soon I dropped a little SPaG on someone who whined that he just wanted to know if people liked it; he didn't want actual help with his writing.  And then he got mad and called me a "cunt."  I'm like, whoa hey there but then someone else was like, "Yeah you are a bit of a cunt."

That pretty much set the tone for the place.  They'd lament they didn't get many new enrollees but when you're basically a closed loop good ol' boys club why would anyone new want to stick around?  But I have more stubbornness than most so I did stick around for a few more months.  Things cooled down a little.

Then I made the mistake of admitting I think Cormac McCarthy is pretentious and overrated.  I might as well have said the moon is made of green cheese.  Everyone jumped on me to say pretty much the same thing:  he's great!  His writing is beautiful!  It's poetic!  Yeah, so?  That doesn't make it less pretentious.  I mean for instance the thing where he uses Spanish dialogue but doesn't have a translation.  One genius was like, "Well just Google it!"  So I should have to put the book down and Google everything?  "Well, just get the gist from context!"  Yeah, but the one book of his I read was supposed to be a love story.  Tell me:  would Romeo & Juliet have been as touching if Romeo were speaking English and Juliet speaking Klingon with no subtitles?  Sure you might get the gist they love each other but you wouldn't really understand what's going on.

That then started the gaslighting of constantly saying I was dumb.  Anything they didn't agree with: you're dumb.  Or you're just the old drunk guy at the bar who says crazy things.  Um, no, that was the yutz who kept posting about interest though he didn't understand it.  Or the moron who thought we should privatize everything and rely on bartering.  Well what about roads, police, fire, courts, etc?  Meh, "someone" will take care of it for...reasons.  Those people were dumb and just saying stuff.

Part of this campaign was this one guy bitched about putting lol in posts or emoticons.  I'm like, Dude I've been posting on message boards for 20 years so don't tell me how to post.  He sulkily said, Oh well after 20 years you haven't learned much.  Like there's a "right way" to post on a stupid message board.  Such a stupid Greenstein thing to think.

A sensible person would have left, but who said I'm sensible about that?  No one.  The site "administrator" the only authority-type figure left was a NRA nut, the one who posted that lame "Lamentations of a Liberal Woman" story.  I think because of that he really championed the "you're dumb" cause.  Which wouldn't have been that much of a problem until he started using his admin power to rewrite my posts to make them say something other than what I intended.

That was when I threw in the towel.  I mean if your administrator is going to use his authority on a petty grudge, then that's no kind of site I'd want to be part of.  It's not the kind of site anyone should want to be part of.

Since then I haven't gone looking for any new message boards.  I think for the moment I'm just worn out.  If I went to another group it'd just start the cycle again.  There'd be ingrate newbies who can't handle they're not the writing gods they think they are.  And people who call me every name in the book to say how evil I am for disagreeing with their argument.  Blah, blah, blah.

I think for now I'll just sate my online bloodlust trolling Yahoo News on Facebook or something. Message boards are so 2000 anyway, right?  As for crtitique groups, I'm really past the point where I give two shits about what some amateurs I don't know think.