Something is perplexing us. Is it common for some oldtime Catters to wander into threads, leave a barbed (mean spirited) and sometimes personally directed comment then wander off again?

Just something us newbies have noticed, spats aside, that we sometimes get clobbered by a veteran Cat, for no apparent reason.

I missed this thread earlier... Well, yes, every newcomer here has probably experienced what you are alluding to, I know I did when I first arrived here. And a lot of us oldtimers sometimes get combative and snippy over this or that too. It's the club thing. You will find that the same thing happens in 3-D life too, if you're a newcomer to a club or a long-established social scene of some kind.

The veterans will share some strange humor that you don't understand at all. You may think they are quarreling when they are just goofing around, pretending to pick on each other...just doing it for laughs...and that may be clear to them, but not to a newcomer.

Then there are certain old feuds or sore points (specially in politics) that come up again and again between certain individuals, and this can trigger some nasty exchanges. Anything, for instance, that has to do with discussing Israel and the Arab world...or the Democrats and the Republicans...or the Irish troubles...or USA foreign policy...or religion and atheism...OUCH!!! All that stuff is just like a minefield. One is often best off to just avoid discussing it at all, but some of us can't resist. Any newbie who gets involved in one of those threads may get a shock at the stuff that starts flying back and forth across no-man's-land.

My best advice is, try to maintain a sense of humor as well as a sense of detachment, and as time goes by you will get more comfortable with the whole scene, hopefully, and you'll also begin to understand the "in jokes" and more bizarre stuff that goes on here. Then you won't be a newbie any longer.

Tip: Amos and Rapaire and I insult each other frequently on certain threads. We do it strictly for laughs, because we're friends. It's just a big long running joke, that's all. Same goes for the ludicrous stuff that Catspaw49 posts with all the bad language. He's a lovely guy, and we all know it, and he pretends to be a rude idiot because it's funny...since he really isn't like that at all in real life.

And there are other things like that going on too. It takes awhile to figure them out, that's all.

There's also some genuinely mean-spirited stuff that goes around now and then here, and that can hurt. But remember this: it's only the Internet, so don't sweat it. Take a look at the vicious and stupid stuff that gets posted under so many Youtube videos by people who can't even spell half-decently or express themselves in a semi-human manner, and you will begin to appreciate that Mudcat Cafe isn't so bad after all...for the Internet. ;-)