There is a little mailing list on which I participate, in part because it is related to professional concerns and in part, because I like the people involved. My role there is part as repository of memory, and part to reign in enthusiasm over new articles that promise the whole world will change because of this one weird thing -- you know the type.
With the last couple months being strikingly busy outside of work and normal home activities, I have not been participating much, and the list has changed quite a bit. In fact, when I returned to the folder where I store emails from this list, I was shocked at what happened: traffic surged, bloated, and then trailed off, to only a message or two a day at the present time.
Thermodynamics has won at a crawl. I started going back through the old messages, and here is what I saw. About the time that I got busy, a newish member announced that his daughter was missing. A saga followed: she had gone off to school in a small Texas city, done well for awhile, then done less well, and now was not answering the phone or emails.
I was glad to miss this thread, since I know that pattern too well. But everyone else was along for the saga. The suspense of having to make phone calls. The final outrage before he and the wife got in the car and roared down there in the dead of the night. The lying roommates. The unhelpful school (she is legally an adult, after all, so Not Our Problem). And, after a week of emotional messages, the discovery of the new boyfriend living in a trailer outside town, the bad habits, and the history of lies.
Whew, that's a lot to post on a public mailing list, I thought. I was not alone in that sentiment. A few of our oldest and youngest members told this fellow in no unclear terms that it was unwise to discuss this on the list, but they got shouted down by a group that might as well be the majority. So we tagged along for the whole drama, straight to the treatment center and academic probation.
Back to normal, I thought, leafing through the messages. But no: the list had changed, and by that, I mean that the people had changed. The hardware, software, addresses and topic were still the same. As this guy had been posting his daily list of tragedies, people fell into a rhythm. Everyone said something emotional. It didn't matter if it was pro or con, just that each person had to have his say about how this made him feel. How it affected his personal stability. That kind of thing.
And so now, each new topic was this way. Someone would introduce a new idea, and they would go right down the line, each person writing down his reaction to it. For some, it was pure emotionality. For others, it was to talk about how their personal domain of knowledge could re-interpret this new idea. Many just weighed in with total irrelevance, such as how they had a similar event which wasn't similar at all and how they acted and why they feel good about that.
Christ on crutches, we've become a support group. I had to go to one of these, a long time ago. Basically, everyone in the group had a problem, and it wasn't in the big scheme of things all that different than what got this fellow's daughter. So one guy stands up and says, "I'm an alcoholic, I ferment my mother's urine and drink until I pass out," and then everyone else throws in his general experience and his emotions, and soon it is a bunch of saps agreeing that they were all sad victims of life itself, so... well we might as well head out drinking to numb the pain. I saw the cycle forming right there.
If this long and rambling story has a point, it is this: beware emotional participation. Not all of us codgers and curmudgeons are as grumpy as we seem, but the other side, that participation trophy, it'll get you. Relish your inner cynic. Praise darkness as well as light. Revel in your ability to apply knowledge to help, but be wary of the hive-mind. Entropy killed that mailing list, and I'm not sure it can be resurrected. The culture -- the living part -- is gone.
With the last couple months being strikingly busy outside of work and normal home activities, I have not been participating much, and the list has changed quite a bit. In fact, when I returned to the folder where I store emails from this list, I was shocked at what happened: traffic surged, bloated, and then trailed off, to only a message or two a day at the present time.
Thermodynamics has won at a crawl. I started going back through the old messages, and here is what I saw. About the time that I got busy, a newish member announced that his daughter was missing. A saga followed: she had gone off to school in a small Texas city, done well for awhile, then done less well, and now was not answering the phone or emails.
I was glad to miss this thread, since I know that pattern too well. But everyone else was along for the saga. The suspense of having to make phone calls. The final outrage before he and the wife got in the car and roared down there in the dead of the night. The lying roommates. The unhelpful school (she is legally an adult, after all, so Not Our Problem). And, after a week of emotional messages, the discovery of the new boyfriend living in a trailer outside town, the bad habits, and the history of lies.
Whew, that's a lot to post on a public mailing list, I thought. I was not alone in that sentiment. A few of our oldest and youngest members told this fellow in no unclear terms that it was unwise to discuss this on the list, but they got shouted down by a group that might as well be the majority. So we tagged along for the whole drama, straight to the treatment center and academic probation.
Back to normal, I thought, leafing through the messages. But no: the list had changed, and by that, I mean that the people had changed. The hardware, software, addresses and topic were still the same. As this guy had been posting his daily list of tragedies, people fell into a rhythm. Everyone said something emotional. It didn't matter if it was pro or con, just that each person had to have his say about how this made him feel. How it affected his personal stability. That kind of thing.
And so now, each new topic was this way. Someone would introduce a new idea, and they would go right down the line, each person writing down his reaction to it. For some, it was pure emotionality. For others, it was to talk about how their personal domain of knowledge could re-interpret this new idea. Many just weighed in with total irrelevance, such as how they had a similar event which wasn't similar at all and how they acted and why they feel good about that.
Christ on crutches, we've become a support group. I had to go to one of these, a long time ago. Basically, everyone in the group had a problem, and it wasn't in the big scheme of things all that different than what got this fellow's daughter. So one guy stands up and says, "I'm an alcoholic, I ferment my mother's urine and drink until I pass out," and then everyone else throws in his general experience and his emotions, and soon it is a bunch of saps agreeing that they were all sad victims of life itself, so... well we might as well head out drinking to numb the pain. I saw the cycle forming right there.
If this long and rambling story has a point, it is this: beware emotional participation. Not all of us codgers and curmudgeons are as grumpy as we seem, but the other side, that participation trophy, it'll get you. Relish your inner cynic. Praise darkness as well as light. Revel in your ability to apply knowledge to help, but be wary of the hive-mind. Entropy killed that mailing list, and I'm not sure it can be resurrected. The culture -- the living part -- is gone.