kalpurna

Hey: commenting unenthusiastically on squee posts, or combatively on meta posts. What's the deal with that? Why does it annoy me SO VERY MUCH? Don't I encourage free and open public debate on my LJ?

( No, actually. ) Me personally, whenever I'm interacting directly with someone I don't know very well, either online or in real life, I try my best to go into that conversation with the best attitude possible. And for that reason, whenever I am planning to leave a comment on a post by someone whom I don't know, I do ( the following: )

I do realize that these aren't rules everyone operates under (obviously), and I also realize that I am hardly in any kind of position to autocratically dictate how others should behave, and that's not what I want to do. Also, I fail to live up to these ideals myself plenty often. But my belief in their general validity is why I'm so sympathetic to poor keepaofthecheez and the comments she seems to get to her I Love Everything Jared Does posts that say things like "I like Jensen better!" ( That is so USELESS. )

*breathes heavily*

I don't know. Aghh, I'm already subsiding from my High Horse of Moral Indignation, because hell, I know that some people just don't really get social cues, or don't have the same ones I do, and that's not their fault. But it might still be worth saying what I think about this issue, because hey, if they don't automatically see the same cues I do, then I might as well tell them about those cues explicitly; better to antagonize someone on purpose than by accident, that's what I always say.

Hey, and one last thing: this problem mainly seems to arise, in my experience, from the friendsfriendslist and from newsletter links. So all I'm suggesting is that anyone who gets to a post in that way, who doesn't have a relationship with the person who posted, might have an obligation to try and adapt herself to the venue she finds herself in, because of what cereta says here about venue and appropriateness. Tread carefully, please, O Fandom! It only takes an extra moment to be courteous!