Slapfights, on the theory of.

[leahbobet]

Y'know, I think I've located the glitch in our metaphor system; the semantic breakdown:

The internet is not a battlefield, upon which a war is fought. Against an enemy. Who requires no-holds-barred force.
The internet is not your house, which needs to be defended. From, again, some implied faceless mob of attackers.
The internet is not a square mile of territory which one can be driven off.
The internet is not a community which one can be ostracised from.
You cannot win the internet.

When you stop looking at it in those terms? You'd be surprised how unnecessary it all becomes.

Comments

[pnkrokhockeymom.livejournal.com]

I think that's quite sensible, what you've said there. You can see the grains of that sort of thinking in quite a bit of it, actually. Also, replace internet with "fandom" and many of them work too! (And I'm sure someone would say, "Well you can be ostracized from fandom"--but "fandom" is a pretty big, pretty broad community).

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that substitution works out much the same way. Fandom...well, there are parts of fandom that wouldn't recognize each other as the same thing.