This is an open letter to all ot.com users:
HansiG said:
Welcome to the internet. Enjoy your stay. /b/No, actually. Originaltrilogy.com used to be above this sort of thing.
Hell, even though I’m a lurker I now feel like I need to speak up about what’s happened to this place as of late.
As mentioned elsewhere, there has been an influx of new users over the last few months (over the last year? I dunno. I’m not gonna go clicking on everybody’s account to see when they joined) and a large portion of these new users have some questionable attitudes regarding forum behavior.
Although I want to refrain from sounding like some cranky old man (I’m 34, if anybody is wondering), many of these new users allude to being VERY young when watching the prequel films. I had to google “/b/” and that was a reference to 4chan if I’m not mistaken, which further supports my suspicions (and more and more anime references are being used for user names). There is absolutely nothing wrong with liking what you like (that’s a general use of the word “you” which I feel the need to point out due to the fact that a majority of these new users don’t seem to understand certain things about the nuances of the English language), as long as it’s not harming anybody else, but ot.com was largly comprised of older individuals that conducted themselves a certain way over the many years this forum has been operating.
Ot.com was one of the very few places on the internet both I and others could visit with the knowledge that it would be free of, well, of the things it hasn’t really been free of lately. It’s hard to quantify, but something has been very off for a while, and only seems to be getting worse.
If people like the prequels, that’s fine, but I’m not going to hang out at my parents’ vinyl parties and try to tell them how good streaming albums from youtube is and spew juvenile insults when everybody rightly and justifiably has a problem with my attitude. Would you? Would you go to a gathering of something you didn’t like? Again, you can like the prequels, but you have to expect to meet opposition.
There is a way to discuss things in the world. Everybody has different opinions, which is one of the many things that make the world interesting, but almost every thread seems to be derailed into boring arguments lately. I can get that on IMDB. There’s a difference between interesting discussion and backhanded bickering that goes on for post after post, page after page, and thread after thread. Wars not make one great.
Taste is subjective, but myself and others on this site think that the prequels are objectively bad movies on a fundamental film making level. I love the movie Star Crash, but I’m not going to pretend that 90% of humans would find it horrible. Just because a movie has “Star Wars” in the title doesn’t give it a free pass (just the fact that people are DESPERATE to try to edit them into better movies shows the power of the name (just move on, guys! 😛 )). If somebody tells me Star Crash is shit, who am I to argue? Why let it bother me? It IS a shit movie! How in any way does somebody not agreeing with me give me the right to stoop to some of the language I’ve seen here? Again, not wanting to sound like a cranky old man, but respectable people don’t use the word “retard” or the other related insults a lot of teenagers use as an insult. I’m really sorry, but if that’s what you expect from the internet, this isn’t the forum you’re looking for. Move along.
All the heat that Frink is catching lately is just more proof of the point I’m trying to make. Frink is a long time member and contributor, and has a mean sarcastic sense of humor. An asshole? Really? A lot of users seem to be taking him literally as of late, which was never the case before.
Can we talk about the increase use of the word “fuck?” For the longest time, I thought curse words weren’t even ALLOWED here. Now every other post is fuck this, fuck that, fucking awesome, fucking whatever. I love the word “fuck” and use it on other forums, but long ago on a forum far, far away, when somebody on ot.com used “fuck” you knew they were being FUCKING SERIOUS. Hey, you wanna say fuck and shit and all that, go ahead, but if you took a look around the forums, you would have seen that this language wasn’t used often.
If you took a look around, you could have seen the behavior was different, too. Yeah yeah, it’s the internet, but just fucking behave like you would in real life, please.
This place was AMAZING in it’s film geekyness. The recent discussion about the type of camera lenses used on Rogue One is one fine example of the type of talk that once flooded this board. Many users on this forum have an insane level of film knowledge, but you are lowering the forum’s standards and diluting what was a very unique corner of the net.
Again, this is to nobody in particular. If my message insults you, if you get defensive over what I’ve said, if you think I’m attacking you, if you feel the need to explain yourself, then you know that your behavior is less than stellar. How about improving it? It might be fun!
Bravo! Well done and well said. Every time someone excuses someone else’s behaviour by saying “welcome to the Internet” I just sigh in disappointment. It’s not an untrue observation but it also does not mean this perception and behaviour needs to permeate into every online community simply because it is online…
.Val