The Best Of...

Kumo posted:

Speaking of humility, I have something to say. I wish I'd have said it then, but here you go.

"So what's all this about?" was a question that followed us in Montreal. I tried to be as succinct as possible in my answer to limit further questions. My answer went generally like this:

"You know that kid who was picked last in kickball? The one who was really good at science and math? The one who didn't get a lot of action in high school? Well, imagine that kid grows up and gets together with other pissed off kids like him on a humor site. We share in the comedy for our own reasons, but we laugh because we're wounded. Once a year, we get drunk together."

Explaining it got me thinking about goons. An old friend once said "It's a community for people who never had a community." and I feel she was dead on with that statement. We are the sarcastic, the critics, the jokers, the alienated. We are people who never shook the feeling we somehow just don't fit in. We don't quite belong to this world, so we retreat to others and sometimes sequester ourselves there. We find it in our own studies and fields of expertise, hobbies, projects, websites, books, games, music, comics, anime, cars, guns, or something else in which we can own and carve out a niche to find that comfort or balance we find otherwise lacking.

We're nerds. And some of us are a little further along that road of figuring out exactly what that means to us. Some of us still have a ways to go, but that's okay. It's okay because we're not alone in this, and that is the last immutable reason that keeps me coming back. Because I know I'm not alone here. I am surrounded by people just like myself, some more different than others, but with the same need to just feel all right. It's why we log in when we're having a shit day. Why we joke and discuss and share and scorn. To feel that commonality that exists between us as an awkward class of people.

When we get asked why do we participate in this, why we pack our bags, spend hundreds of dollars, take off work, explain our actions to parents, lovers, co-workers, friends, family, border guards and bar owners, and travel so far to meet people we've never met before we needn't feel embarassed or foolhardy for doing something so unconventional. It takes a lot of guts to take that step. It's courageous to depart from that isolated world we've concocted and one step closer to being that person we've always thought we could be.

It's all too easy to sit back and criticize the flaws and faults in the world around us and in other people. Moreover, it gets tedious. Sometimes you have to relax. Sometimes you have to take a risk and be brave enough to create something new. We forged new memories and friendships. We have stories galore of hookers and Brendan Frasier, of tam-tams and drinking and insects and the casino and poutine and deps and strippers and larping and clubbing and other encounters and endeavors. We celebrated in the streets of Montreal and lived our own lives, irreverent, unburdened and glorious.

Aww, come on guys (oh, and LADIES! Profile CLICKED!).

A whole day and that's the best you can do? Reaching into that same old bag of worn-out jokes and tired, limp catchphrases? I guess we're done then? Aren't you going to riposte? Wound me with your scathing wit, prove me shamefully wrong, demonstrate how I've misjudged you in all your uniqueness? Aren't you GOONS, supposedly the smartest, most concise people around? All you can give me is that same limp 'you're an attention whore!' crap? All dull personal attacks?

I suppose none of you got the memo that assholes are a dime a dozen. Being an asshole is easy. It's like stoning, it's no big thing to throw a little rock, is it, especially when you've got so much company.

I don't get this forum. I joined because some of the threads seemed to be full of such intelligent people, with so many original ideas. And then castrated, e-bully gruel like this, twenty pages of people slinging insults at ONE DEFENSELESS INDIVIDUAL who isn't even posting any more, and you tell me that's 'just how it is around here'. I very much know what sycophant means, it means someone who's a toady, a parasite, trying to get favor with others. The fact that you guys do it by raining blows on someone else until they're effectively voiceless doesn't change much. All hiding behind each other, trying to see who can say the most HILARIOUS thing.

Attention whores, indeed.

None of you would have the balls to do it in real life, and you wouldn't have anything to come back with to me, either. Worst ten bucks I ever spent, I'd sue for false advertising if I could. Pretty sure MJB was the only one I ever saw with a head where it was supposed to be.

You can't even justify what you do, and yet you expect me to take your opinion of me, or anyone else, seriously. Oh, you have faults too, isn't that touching now. Makes you all the more reprehensible, doesn't it.

You're so fucking boring. Go fuck yourselves.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)