[ConsiderThis]

Here's what I noticed today:

I forget when.

But I noticed that the 5 stars that had been by the How can we get new members thread that I started, had changed to 3. I was sad, of course. I had been surprised to find the 5 stars, and they'd made me happy. So I went around and put 5 stars on a lot of other people's threads, so they'd feel happy to. I was going to put them on all the threads... but then I got confused about whether that would be good or bad.

I also went back to my thread and thought I'd up it to 4 stars by voting myself, for 4 stars. I thought that would tip it back. But it didn't, so then I knew that quite a few people had voted to lower the rating.

Who would want to lower the rating... people in favor of BT2? It didn't seem very likely. People who were mad about the existence of BT2 and how much I said about my experience there. That seemed more likely.

So, when the Attention Whore post came up... well, I chose to laugh about it and I tried to engage people I trusted in laughing about it with me.

I don't know how many people are aware that "Attention Whore" is used on at least one forum the way that the word "member" is used here:
http://community.realitytvworld.com/...ForumID6&omm=0

When I first went there I found it very confusing. I didn't realize it was a part of the forum.

So from that point of view the post didn't bother me. I didn't' mind the young woman in it. She looked happy. She looked healthy.

I think if I could have posted something more like this when I found it, that it would have been better than what I did. Because I could hear in the responses I got that people were more shocked by the words than I was.

What shocked me, was that the number of stars had been changed on the thread about how to get more people here.

But of course that's harder to talk about because it's like me saying, Hey, I really liked the praise and darn it, I want it back!

Now, there are mods.

I don't feel comfortable with mods because of what happened at Brain Talk 1, and because of what happened when I belonged to that Reality forum... and others.

The best way to describe how I feel, is to liken this to the War on Terror. The reduction in my personal liberties does not make me feel safer. Bombing a lot of innocent Iraqis doesn't make me feel safer. In fact, it reminds me of when I used to kill earwigs because they scared me... the way they look. And when I sat outside in the evening, earwigs were always crawling up on my feet and biting my ankles.

Then, a snake, a small grass snake, moved into my yard, or else it had been there and it suddenly let me see it... and I decided I shouldn't kill things that it might want to eat. I've never killed an earwig since, nor have I been bitten by one since.

Okay. So I feel threatened by the mods. I feel that if one wants to ban me, that one will convince the others in the mod group.

Not just me, but anyone whom one of them decided to single out, or feels has singled themselves out in an objectionable manner.

I liked this board. I tried to help get it going. I tried to be supportive. I really appreciated all the support I experienced. I won't hug you all here, but I want you to know that if I did I would increase the length of this post by a lot.

I feel that without mods I am much safer because ordinary people like me tend to like me. I like people.

When a lot of people are all involved then I feel safer than when the power of all the people is delegated to a few.

I remember on BT1 getting these lovely emails from people. But then when I was banned and someone gave me the way to get back on to watch, some code thing, I forget, I saw those people who had seemed to like me, who had written me things that made it clear they respected me, kowtowing to the people who had banned me.

I could see why they did it, they wanted and needed the community and they had to protect themselves by making-nice/ingratiating themselves to the strong arms. It made me sad, not just because they appeared to jettison me, but because they demeaned themselves. It's hard to explain. I can explain, but it would take time and be revealing.

So, all in all, I think I'm better off going back to what I was doing before I found this forum and began to like it. I don't want get involved and then be ostracized. It's not fun.

I'm pretty into fun.

To me, the person who posted the Attention Whore things, was trying to get mods. If they were familiar with forums, they would know that would be a good trigger.

Love you guys.