Pathetic
<<2003-01-28 - 8:40 p.m.>>

I was looking forward to the new incarnation of TF. I'd gotten myself enthused about it. It was going to be collectively owned, we were going to make lots of important decisions as a community, and I was looking forward to making my new bank deposit so I could contribute a substantial amount, and hoping that there was something I could do to help. And now I feel that energy just sapped.

Susan descended upon us like an emotionally-askew tornado. Issued an apology that confirmed everyone's worst suspicions. Yes, she'd shut the forum down without a word to anyone, yes, she'd left 6,000 people with issues of trust and interpersonal interaction hanging, yes, she'd ignored people's concern and requests for help and information, yes, yes, yes.

And she is forgiven. Like nothing happened. People offering their best wishes, people saying that they understand—but worst of all, people jumping all over people who don't grovel at her feet, people who don't immediately shove their own feelings off to the side in favor of Understanding.

Fuck that.

It would have taken two minutes to put up a note instead of an Error #404 page. It would have taken five minutes to send out a mass email. Are we worth five minutes of her time? No. No, we are not.

If her reasons for shutting down the forum were so reasonable...why didn't she tell us?

Yes, she paid much of the site's upkeep out of pocket. Yes, she put in maintenance time (six hours a night, she claims, and if you buy that, I've got a bridge you should take a look at). I'll even take on faith that she was being harrassed. She had a perfect right to shut down the forum.

That does not give her the right to do it the way she did.

And an eating disorder is not an excuse. Not now, not ever. It may explain her actions, but it does not excuse them. She slammed the door, shut into isolation people who trusted her, idolized her, even, without the effort of five minutes to allay their fears. Six thousand people lost. Six thousand people, known and unknown, who may not find a new community.

Okay. So fine. She's done all that. Great, okay, whatever. So we're moving on. We've salvaged what we can, the fraction of our community (500 out of thirteen times that...not a great ratio) that we can find. We're getting over the fact that months (years, for some people) of history are lost. What then?

Does she send out a brief, informative email to everyone subscribed to the TF mailing list, thus reassuring the thousands of people still waiting futilely for the old forum to go back up? Does she call an admin to find out where we are in our own preparations for a new forum? Does she offer her help? Of course not. She just shows up. She issues a limping apology that never, ever recognizes the real harms of what she did, never accepts the consequences. Knowing that there had been offers to take over the forum entirely, she says that she'd be willing to turn it over, but with the condition that she's no longer involved. She does not quietly contact admins to offer them the database and the old memberlist. No. She stirs the entire forum up into a frenzy of ass-kissing, bitterness and recrimination, jeopardizes the new plans, and doesn't even apologize properly. All this with three posts. She doesn't even stick around.

And I'm afraid that the whole incident has jeopardized our clean break. We were moving on so well, cohering so nicely, moving toward something so fantastic.

But now it feels somehow tainted. Dirty. Now I'm worrying that the new forum is going to personify the worst characteristics of the old forum. I'm going to feel small and stupid and unliked and unnoticed and worthless.

I just know it.

I'm going to be neurotic and needy and paranoid about Safe Space and make myself a terrible childish nuisance in my neurotic, needy paranoia.

Dirty. Tainted and dirty and needy and weak.

<< - >>