One Wank After Another

[coalcube]

A blank assignment is a funny thing, isn't it? When you have it, you don't appreciate it, and when you miss it, it's gone.

Wednesday 10 December: Default deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 17 December: Assignment deadline (9pm UTC)
Wednesday 24 December: Main collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 25 December: Madness collection works reveals (9pm UTC)
Thursday 1 January: Author reveals, end of event (9pm UTC)

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

1. Coal is not different people. We're all morbane.

2. Obviously I'm aware that different voices say different things and coal constantly disagrees with itself. But one of the interesting things about an enforced-anon comm is the way the voice of the comm as a whole does come through, and certain reactions and turns of conversation become absolutely, ludicrously predictable. (You can also read how the "averaged" voice of the comm changes year to year, and over the course of the year, as different groups of voices drop in and out. It's cool except when it's grindingly tedious.)

3. I had to change the subject quick or we would have ended up endlessly relitigating the details of ramna regarding a question that was never even asked and that's one of the grindingly tedious parts.

[(Anonymous)]

Except what you're doing is picking things a single person has said and that you disagree with as "the voice of the comm as a whole" to try and make a point.

(Also, generally speaking "the voice of the comm" is whoever is online most at any given moment. It doesn't just change from year to you, it often changes from morning to afternoon, and from day to day, and week to week, and it's distorted by people willing to same anon to manufacture agreement.)

[(Anonymous)]

No, I'm describing patterns that happen recurrently - people picking out one example and turning dissecting that example into the main thrust of the argument (happens multiple times a year); people losing sight of what the OP was actually saying and attributing something entirely different to them (happens multiple times a thread); somebody saying something about how coal discourse overall works and somebody else jumping in immediately to say Not All Coalies (every goddamn time); somebody trying to self-mod by going meta on a thread (frequent, questionably useful).

Certainly individual coalies being more or less active is part of how the general feel of coal changes over time! but those things I listed above and their kin are not One Coalie, despite how good coal thinks they are at recognizing individual anons, it's habits many coalies have that blur together. And there are also larger things about how people expect coal to work, how internet discourse as a whole changes, groups of multiple coalies with similar styles/opinions/histories moving in and out of coal for various reasons, etc.

These are things not unique to coal, but there aren't many other active, fully-anon, completely-unmodded, threaded comments communities around anymore, so coal is one of the main places they are demonstrated.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm morbane though

[(Anonymous)]

Oof you've got coal in a box.

The part I find most annoying is how much it can vary depending on who's around. The same exact thread can experience a lengthy if meandering discussion or get wanked into the Crab Nebula depending on if the first few people to respond are reasonable good faith coalies or abrasive assholes who will project a grievance and then get mad about it.