It's been helpful to me to use the forum's BS filters to separate out the political stuff. After I have cruised the music threads of interest and done some work to participate in them usefully, if I have some time left over, I sometimes look at the BS threads. I am often shocked to see the depth of vitriol that has accumulated since I last looked, in the the number of threads that have sprung up, all while I was blissfully unaware and focused on some wonderful piece of music.

By the time I see these threads, I hope I have a little more detachment than I used to have around here, and a better sense of how the same people tend to be in those threads saying the same thing-- how little urgency there is about plopping into them "right this very NOW" to let people have a turn pushing my hot buttons.

I am also disturbed, in these threads, by the amount of hard feeling that seems to persist, over what I think are different ways of looking at things, culturally. For example, it's a high value for some in the US to speak in terms of what we know, by using "I" messages. (Like this post of mine.) But in some places, it's seen as self-aggrandizement, not as the careful limiting of one's remarks to what one has experienced personally. (See, I am learning to use the "one" approach.) So the same old questions tend to go around and around, and it can be easy to lose the exit.

Also, the medium lends itself very well to dumping off a truckload of what one already thinks about a matter, and less well to absorbing what others think, and rethinking a bit. We feel we express ourselves well (and need to) while misunderstanding what someone else has said becuse we can't see them or hear them and because they are not saying it right now but said it several hours ago.... and then we forget that someone else is going to misunderstand us exactly the same way. We find it easy to post while feeling upset at another Mudcatter, even tho that particular Catter has moved past the upset we see in their last post and has cheerfully gone off to sleep or play or have supper! So it all can get pretty HOT, when in fact the heads are trying to cool! And in another medium-- at a party for example-- if these things occurred, pretty soon people would just get up and walk away from the cranky, rude soapboxer, concluding he just likes being cranky and is no damn fun to be around.

But people seem to feel it fills a need. So I just try to keep my priorities straight.

~Susan