Forum:RW should not be upsetting

This is a website dedicated to mocking people who have irrational or magical beliefs and informing people about the intricacies of irrationality and rationality.

If you take the irrationality seriously, it will make you unhappy. So most of us who choose to mock it, do so with lightheartedness. That is good.

Unfortunately, in writing about pet projects we often get a little personally invested. This is bad, but perhaps unavoidable. So no sweat. But worse, sometimes when trying to implement our mission, we start getting all serious and angry.

Yes, trolls are annoying. And yes, everyone but you is feeding the troll. It's terrible. But in the end, it's just some guy out there. Even if other people engage him, it'll run its course soon enough. Then he'll leave, before another troll comes back or maybe the same one returns. There will always be trolls. There will also always be some persistent trolls. And of course, there will always be people who enjoy teasing or feeding the troll.

It is not something to get upset about. Really, there's almost no reason ever to get upset about it.

Think about it. Think about someone like MC. We can speculate as to his nature. It's not certain that he's socially awkward and incredibly petty and probably a little ripe. But no one who so ostentatiously desires to be thought intelligent is likely to be very pleasant or very pleasant-smelling. This is a kid who spends a large amount of time on a site where he has regularly been humiliated; he slavers over every edit, apparently watching all the talk pages on both here and RWW. If you met him, you'd probably feel mild pity and some nausea, and then you'd go quietly get angry at whichever one of your friends felt enough compassion to take him outside to meet people.

And maybe someone disagrees with you about whether or not you should be allowed to edit the subheading regarding proper use of italics, or whatever. Human and I just disagreed about whether or not forum talk pages should be deleted. It is incredibly trivial and no one should get upset about that, either. Just do what I do, and quietly road-trip out to Human's house and let the air out of his tires.

This is an internet wiki. There is probably very little that can happen that is worth getting upset about, even though I think we do produce some very high-quality stuff. Speaking of which, we do have some great articles. Sometimes I forget that until I actually go back and look at some of them that are so well-written that we don't even fight about them or edit them much anymore. The Atheism FAQ was something I just marveled at when I first came here, for example. We still do and can produce things of value, too, even though there aren't big holes like there used to be.

So, you know. Chill out. Let's talk about music. That's fun. I like jazz and death metal. I'm starting to like rap. I used to like a lot of Britney Spears, but only on mute.--Tom Moore fiat justitia 06:50, 31 January 2010 (UTC)


 * Nonsense. We should devote 80% of edits to whichever troll posted here most recently. If none have done so, we should argue about unpopular WIGOs while bureaucrats argue about code changes.
 * That aside, I lately prefer trance and piano music. Jazz is fine, but death metal and such start feeling noisy when they're not done well. ~ Kupochama[1][2] 07:37, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Trance? Fucking trance? You sick fucker. Grab some Detriot Techno, start at the mid 1980's and work forward, then try some Swedish Techno and listen to Richie Hawtin. Acei9 07:40, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * when someone reverts my edits, I feel rejected and violated, and run away to the bedroom to sob quietly under the covers. It's more important to my sense of self than my mobile phone, clothing brand, and my choice of operating system combined... or something... Maybe I just go "meh" and waste more time looking at amusingly captioned images of cats in silly poses. :P --[[Image:TheEgyptiansig001.png|link=User:TheEgyptian]] 07:48, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
 * Tom Moore ftw. Allow me to add you to our list of presidents, or senators, or something. 07:50, 31 January 2010 (UTC)