Way back when — let's call that circa 2000-2005 — I was a pretty "regular fixture" on a number of social blogging and writing sites/communities around Ye Olde Interwebz.
Even back then, there were "factions" and site politics and people spending a lot of their time and energy engaged in "being OUTraged" that a writer would "dare" to be part of "THIS" site as well as "THAT" site, complete with the usual power struggles, shadow banning, banishing, finger pointing, blacklisting and what have you.
Having watched this particular game unfold for a couple of decades, it always seemed like it could be essentially summarized as one "side" being the writers and creators who just wanted to be left alone to do their thing, and the other being the "mini dictators" who wanted to control both the content and content creators, according to some unwritten metric that nobody ever really understood.
Or you could look at it like there being players in a game and those players simply loving the game, and then there being the people who wanted to control the game; call them "game masters."
In the end, what seems to universally hold true is that we perhaps need both kinds of "participants" in order for the show to go on.
The problem — often leading to closed and defunct venues — would arise when one "side" or the other would try to oust or shut down their perceived opposition, or worse still, control them.
That really doesn't work!
I remember this somewhat dictatorial woman from a psychology forum I was on who insisted that she could "do it better" so the defected and created her own forum that was more or less a copy of the original.
Fine. It's a free country!
Problem was that she insisted that only people who were members of no other forums could be part of hers. And what was more, if anyone said anything critical of her way of doing things, they would be summarily banned from her forum. Her original "issue" had been that the admins (of whom I was one) weren't more willing to step in and reprimand strong opinions (read: Things that didn't agree with HER perception) to maintain peace in the community at all times.
But that's not really the point here. The point is that her forum inevitably died the slow death of inactivity and disinterest... and she just couldn't figure out WHY, because in her mind she was offering the better alternative.
Personally, I could have cared less, either way. I was there to connect over the root subject, not to play politics or take sides.
Which brings me back to the previous comment about there being some who just want to play and some who want to control, in most of life's scenarios.
To use a simple metaphor, absent the players, the "game masters" have nothing but a very pretty empty shell to offer. It may be fabulous and shiny, but it's still empty. With the forum woman from before, she abandoned a 5,000+ member community to set up her own "better" one; attracted maybe 300 followers at most, and (after many bannings) eventually ended up with maybe 10 active people who mostly ignored what the forum was about, in favor of complaining about how stupid and unreasonable everyone else was.
Meanwhile, absent the game masters, "players" have nothing to do; no place to play; no structure; no organization. They are not interested in running things, they just want to connect and participate.
This kind of sometimes uneasy relationship exists in many walks of life. When I worked in the IT industry, Sales and Marketing spoke a completely different language from Developers and Engineers, who — in turn — spoke a different language than Management. And sometimes discussions would become pretty heated, typically with "them" being labeled as "idiots!"
Again, the short and simple answer would rise to the surface pretty quickly: Most developers didn't know shit about sales and marketing, and most sales and marketing people didn't know shit about coding and what goes into creating a system/software. Meanwhile, management just wanted to know if we were all hitting the numbers, because they had to answer to shareholders.
But all three thought they "knew best!"
"Epic Collapses" generally happen when one side or the other falls into a pattern under which establishing their perceived "superiority" and importance takes over from making progress on the entire project. I have seen some truly horrible disasters happen when that comes into play!
It would be tempting to think that this sort of petty infighting would only occur and cause destruction in a very small and potentially nepotistics environment, but that is not the case. Somewhere around 2010 I watched a visually successful user-generated content site with "rewards" collapse from a top-100 ranking on both Quantcast and Alexa (yes, you read that right!) to complete obscurity and eventual demise basically because a deadlock over "who knew better" on where to take the company resulted in a total clusterfuck of self-destruction.
In the end, a web property that at one point had an estimated market value close to US $3 billion ended up basically having its assets absorbed by a competitor for US $4 million!
Of course, that's just one example.
I've been part of somewhat over 50 writing sites, and I have watched all but TWO fail completely.
But none of this is really the point here. The point is that I have also been asked — on a number of occasions — to be part of various "study groups" and "advisory committees" and I have always turned down these invitations.
Why?
Because I am a content creator, not a politician, community manager or game master! I'm just content to be a user of a system and its features.
Thanks for stopping by, and have a great week ahead!
Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!
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Created at 2023-05-29 22:35 PST
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