About that Elephant in the Room

[shadowkat]

Have come to the conclusion - after re-reading my last two entries - that I need to write shorter posts or just break up the information more. This stream of consciousness or spontaneous posting style - certainly has its drawbacks. Methinks, I'd have more readers if I wrote shorter posts or at the least more responses, then again, maybe not. When it comes to internet correspondence, people remain unpredictable. Spent two weeks (not the entire time of course, just about ten minutes here and there...took me at least five days just to notice - since I rarely check my userinfo any more) trying to figure out who defriended me (because my 86 readers went to 85), when I finally figured it out, spent the next two days trying to figure out why, this was after defriending them back of course, because you really don't want folks who've restricted their locked posts from your eyes to be reading your posts...well that, and the whole revenge thing. Truth is, knowing the person, it probably was nothing more than I've got 115 correspondents and I've got to kick a few to the curb to stay sane - heck, I've done that, haven't we all or rather those of us who friended more than 20 people. In some respects, not all, internet correspondence particularly on blogs is fairly impersonal and superficial. The rational part of me, knows that, the emotional part? Not so much. (This may be why I no longer defriend unless the person has defriended me first or royally pissed me off and I mean royally. Yes, I can be a vindictive little bitch, I admit it, even if it tends to hurt me more than anyone else. One of the things I hate most about being human is all these stupid emotional cracks or flaws.) [ETA: this in a nutshell is why I'm a bad editor, I can't edit without adding stuff and making the post incredibly long - if you think it's grown since you last read it? It's not your imagination.]

Talking to Wales today, and came to the realization that I like to pick at the elephant in the room, which in way could describe the taboo topics in the paragraph above - which may or may not get me into trouble.

I hate conflict, but I find the tension or unresolved conflict far more annoying. So will risk it, even if I live to regret it. Much prefer to reveal the elephant, mention how stinky it is, and suggest we might want to get rid of it and maybe clear the air...then sit around politely ignoring it, until someone goes nutty and screams there's an elephant in the room for crissakes! Wales likes to do it too, but she thinks it's out of devilish glee. Me? I just want to get rid of the damn elephant.

Speaking of elephants...I write about politics in the hopes, possibly pointless and naive, that I might change someone's mind. This feels somewhat silly, considering that politics are a bit like religion - people are stubborn about it. They want you to change your mind and agree with them. Why should they change their mind and agree with you? I know this. This is why I don't discuss politics at work or in most social situations like on the ride yesterday.
But on lj - I have my own private little soap box. If I can't do it here, where can I? One must have fun with one's soap box, after all. Also, the other reason - it's the only thing I can think of to do...to attempt to get people who may still be undecided but basically agree with how I view the world to well...you know. So sue me, I care about this upcoming Presidential Election - it is the first time I've actually felt hopeful about a Presidental Candidate. The prospect of Obama winning fills me with hope. Possibly false hope, I'm anything if not cynical about these things. But I'll worry about that next year.

Comments

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

I haven't friended that many people, mostly because I really don't have time to read and respond to a lot.... The ones I friend are the ones I really want to read. At MySpace you can 'friend' someone without having to subscribe to their posts (isn't that mean? LOL), but of course some of them get around that by spamming the bulletins (which leads to me de-friending them). MySpace is weird anyway. I prefer posting to lj.

I had a number of friends who were Hillary supporters, but they were pretty tolerant of my pro-Obama (which included some anti-Clinton stuff) position, which I thought was very open minded of them....
I would have had trouble reading them if they had been all anti-Obama!

I have friends in RL who are Republicans, and are supporting McCain, but we have a pretty clear 'no politics' rule in our friendships....

I recall one evening when Obama was on Jon Stewart, after the interview was over and Obama had left, Jon looked into the camera and said something to the effect that 'he's going to break our hearts isn't he? I wonder how? I'm hoping for a financial scandal!'....
I think we've already seen that sometimes Obama is more conservative, and/or more willing to compromise, than all of us would wish... but I'm cool with that. I don't need him to vote exactly as I would like. I still believe he'll get us going in the right direction.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Joining LJ was a different experience for me - partly because I migrated to it with a lot of other people from a posting board, the ATPO board. In fact one of the people from that board gave me a free invite at the time to join. (She told me that LJ might be a better forum for me than fanboards to write essays and stuff.) As a result - when I joined, I more or less had about 30 people friended from the outset - with a wide variety of views, politically and otherwise.

Then, I found people on their lists and vice versa who looked interesting, and friended them.
"Friending" isn't really the best term - it's more adding people to read or correspond with, because 9 times out of 10, you really don't know who these people are. I have met in person (ie. face to face) and/or know the real names of only about 15% of the folks on my flist. A huge percentage of the people I've friended or friended me - don't post or rarely post. Occassionally they'll pop up and say something, but usually - I don't see them at all. This means that even though I have 68 people that I've technically friended, roughly 30 actually post on a consistent basis. And of the 30, about half do it daily. Most of them post little bits about their lives, a few do fanfics (which unless it is a Spike fic, I tend to skip), a few do political posts, several movie/tv/book reviews, and one does theater reviews. Five are professional writers - who have published books or write professionally for a living. About 10 are professors or teachers. Several are in the computer or IT industry. And there are quite few librarians. About 90% of them loved Buffy and Angel, and Firefly. And 90% agree with me on Barack Obama.

There are a few who supported Hillary and appear to be on the fence. And one McCain supporter - who I think has wisely decided to ignore my political posts. (The other McCain supporter surprised me - and switched to Obama, I sincerely doubt it had anything to do with lj.)

Like you - know quite a few people in RL who are die-hard Republicans. Heck 80% of the people I work with are. Long Island is VERY conservative.
The gal who helped me get my current job is a die-hard fan of Bush and loved Rudy Guilani. She's also an animal shelter volunteer and dreams of running her own animal rescue shelter. I've learned to not discuss politics with her. Very well-read, she just finished the biography of John Adams.

Agree with you on Obama, he's far from perfect, but I think his middle of the road approach is what we need right now.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

If you have a chance, you might mention to the woman who volunteers at the animal rescue shelter that Sarah Palin wants to take polar bears off the endanger species list....
but come to think of it, you shouldn't need to, someone at the shelter will be sure to mention it (a friend of mine who has joined animal rescue websites got an information email on Palin last Friday night, not 12 hours after she was picked for VP!).

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I don't think it would change her mind. AT our last job, she used to tell me that she thought Hillary Clinton was the demon seed.
When I recently asked her what she thought of Obama - expecting her to be happy Hillary was no longer an issue - she said that Obama scared her more than Hillary did. I seriously doubt polar bears would change her mind.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

How to find out who's friended/defriended you (http://marnanel.org/joule) - just put your name in.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Although I'm on the fence about how much I really want to track this.