h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hello

Been meaning to ask for ages about the new lean mean HI. Not that it's that new, but your posting and debating style has certainly changed over the past few years. And I'm not complaining or criticising*. Just intrigued.

I have some gratitude also in your willingness to take on the latest incarnation of you know hoo. For some reason my tolerance is very low at the moment.


The subject line was meant to be innocuous and deflecting but I am wondering if Buffy/Angel will be the next long series I rewatch. It was last year I watched it for the first time, right through.


* except in the BNP thread where there seems to be meanness all round and I missed earlier bits of the thread so have been puzzled and a bit disturbed by it.

If you look around my journals you'll see I've been through a lot in the past couple of years and especially the last 9 months or so. I think it's taken away my reluctance to offend and made me determined to stand up for what I think is important. Just wish I was leaner.

Plus, I did have a spate of people to sharpen my skills (and my knives against) last year, warner in particular. You're not the only one to have noticed it.

I'm currently rewatching Buffy as we speak - tend to do it every school holidays. Though its position as my favourite show has been usurped by Firefly.

>> I think it's taken away my reluctance to offend and made me determined to stand up for what I think is important.<<

That's a good way to frame it.

I've subbed to your journals and will have a read through later.

I still don't understand why people bother to talk to warner. Maybe I've missed something, I didn't seem him as knife sharpening fodder. But I also get bored easily in the endless fundamentalist threads. They're just so fundamentalist. And it annoys me that all the good debaters get sucked into those threads.

I probably will watch Buffy again, sounds like once a year isn't too much. I love Firefly too, but try not to watch it too often in case it gets stale.

I described arguing with warner as being like picking at scabs: doesn't do anyone any good and any momentary pleasure is soon erased by pain or scars. Addictive though.

I think some of the nastiness directed at Effers is left over from a spat Ed, myself and a few others had with her last year. Then, as now, she was defending a pretty strange position and we got a bit frustrated with her. Not justification, just filling you in on the history.

For me Buffy is like comfort food: I snuggle up and watch my favourite episodes no matter how many times I've seen them before.

Thanks for giving a certain researcher a good telling off today. I was finding that situation pretty nasty and was about to use the T word. I mean, I know people have different debating styles, but that was over the top. Your responses were very satisfying Always a pleasure to watch a master at work

Do you have the whole series of Buffy at home? I'm using a dvd rental company, so can't really pick out individual episodes (don't know them well enough yet either).

I lent my S1 dvds out to someone a while ago, and I can't remember who, so they're gone, but I have all the others.

It is nice when I'm feeling a bit blue to be able to just pop in Once More With Feeling on singalong mode. Not sure my neighbours enjoy it quite as much though.

That researcher was being quite a prat and thankfully my telling off seems to have worked as he hasn't really been back. He just seemed to have a massive chip on his shoulder and seemed to be expecting attacks, so when me and you broadly agreed with him, he didn't know how to cope.

Interesting that Effers has said something similar about the animosity between us trendy lefties and herself, just as I described.

I don't get this thing about people in that thread that are lefties being considered as telling others what to do. But as Effers said, there's a whole bunch of history I'm unaware of.

I have been thinking about when I first joined h2g2, similar-ish time to you I think, and how for that first year I just hung out alot in the hard out debate threads, fighting with the likes of Saturnine. I've been trying to remember if it was all as personal then. Maybe the difference now is that there's so few of us and it's much more Personal and far too in house.

I think you're right about that: we've all known each other for quite a long time now and that's allowed animosities to develop and we've all learned to spot each others patterns.

I mean, there are people on here who know me well enough to know, just from my posts when I'm hungover or have had a bad day at work. Similarly, we can spot Effers' moods from quite some distance.

I suppose the other issue is that we don't have an out-and-out foe any more like Della or Justin the Preacher - even warner was a limited nuisance at worst, and so we've fell to infighting.

That said, I do remember things getting rather vicious with Saturnine, especially over the whole digibox affair, and the Della Wars got very personal indeed. I think perhaps the current nastiness is borne out of frustration or even boredom, which gives it an extra edge.

I was thinking about Saturnine pre the Digi wars (she deserved all she got in that saga IMO). I should go look at some of those threads. But yes, they were pretty aggressive.


I've just read a days worth of the Afghanistan thread, and interesting to see the same thing happening with Effers and the Coalition of the Willing Pity there's no-one else arguing her corner as it might make it less personal.

Boredom and frustration, yes. Hopefully the redesign will bring in some new punters

>>I've just read a days worth of the Afghanistan thread, and interesting to see the same thing happening with Effers and the Coalition of the Willing<<

Part of that is of Effers own making: she keeps on lumping people like me, swl, Jack and Ictoan together as if we were a conglomerate when the truth is we all have different takes on this, just in this case we happen to agree. While I've got a soft spot for swl, me and him are usually poles apart ideologically.

She does have anhaga debating on a similar line, but anhaga is getting involved with the issues, debating on specific points: him and swl going toe-to-toe is always fun to watch. Crucially, he isn't telling anyone he's ignoring their posts or calling them simplistic.

I didn't really debate with Sat before the digibox affair (and I agree, she deserved the opprobium she generated over that) so I never saw those threads.

On another note entirely, have you seen Castle? It's about to start here for the first time. I've only seen Nathan Fillion in Firefly and Dr Horrible, so will be interested to see what it's like.

I've never seen it, though people assure me it's funny. I did see a clip where Fillion's dresses up as a space cowboy for Halloween, wearing Mal's costume, and gets teased. That had me

Oh good. The promo looks a bit naff (far too Hollywood slick), but you never can tell with promos.

Castle turns out to be not half bad It *is funny, and there are enough interesting characters to stop it from being all about Fillion's Castle. And there's a degree of restraint on the compulsory primetime cop show moralising, so little it can almost be ignored.

Fillion is good too.

Just ressurecting this to say I think you've been magnificent the past few days. I don't know how you keep your cool when presented with certain behaviours - I know I certainly can't.

I don't either, and it's had such a negative impact on me I'm wondering what the hell I've been doing.

I never used to see things like the della wars as inherently bad (although bad stuff got done for sure). They just seemed like situations that arose and I always had an anthropological interest in them. Looking back now I wonder how I had the energy, but I think it's more that I found those things energising, whereas now I find them depleting. I don't know if that's age or time or just how I am in RL.

Thanks for your thoughts though, I appreciate that

How are you feeling about the move?

I just go on the heart.

If that's in the right place all to the good..creativity occurs...

It's an instinctual thing.

destructivity is a big part of creativity as well..

But creativity is alawys the most important thing if you're actually alive.

Go away Effers.

You really are such a pleasant person HI..where do you get off on that?

Do you get a real thrill from it?

But carry on mate if you get off on it.

What part of "Go away Effers" is giving you trouble? I don't interrupt conversations on your PS, don't interrupt mine especially when they're nothing to do with you.

Either you unsub or I will and me and kea will find somewhere else to talk.