To the Barricades

Malcolm Gladwell has a new article out in New Yorker called "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will not be Tweeted". He examines Iran's "Twitter Revolution" and writes about why it was doomed to failure. The argument he makes is a simple one: people are motivated to make big changes and take big risks when a movement is a "strong tie" movement - when your friends or your family are in the movement. He uses as his example the desegregation sit-ins in the 1960s and writes that the group of black kids who first demanded service at a Southern diner that didn't serves blacks all had strong-group ties to each other - two pairs of best friends with three of them I believe going to the same high school. All of them were socially accountable to each other. "Come on, man, it's time to put up or shut up. You aren't going to chicken out, are you?"

Whereas with Twitter and Facebook, the acquaintanceships formed there are "weak tie" relationships. "Weak tie" relationships aren't by definition worse that "strong tie" ones - indeed, the power of casual acquaintanceship is truly astonishing and can do many things that strong-tie relationships can't. The problem is that you can only get so much out of casual acquaintanceship. Iranians aren't going to risk their lives at the barricades because you changed your avatar to a Twitter ribbon. Oh, on a message board you can get all sorts of useful advice that you could never get anywhere else, and have access to information far beyond any your strong-tie friends and family could provide - but the important thing to remember is that the advice you get is free advice which doesn't inconvenience the person giving it. If you were going to ask someone on PPMB to loan you $5000, you might get a different answer. That's the kind of thing you can only ask a friend or family member - with whom you have a "strong tie" relationship - to do.

Another point Gladwell makes is that with strong-tie relationships centralized authority starts to form. If four friends decide to do something, there's going to be a division of labor after a time. More than likely, one of these friends will become the unofficial leader. Now, try the same thing with 400 message board posters. All of them are acquaintances as best, with no strong ties and in some cases, no emotional investment. This is why forming organizations of any kind over the internet is very difficult.

All of the above appears to apply to what I've seen happen on message boards since the beginning of the internet age. For example, there's a big difference between people who I've met in person and people I've only met "on the internet" so to speak. With people you've met in person, you feel like you know them even though you really might not - I always have particular fondness for people I've met in person. Whereas with people I've never met in person, I can know tons of things about their lives and yet come away with the impression that I don't know them at all. The tie that's formed with actually meeting someone in person - even if it's a weak one - appears to top anything I've experienced on a message board. The pattern seems to go:

Message board/chat room
Private message/e-mail
Phone call
In-person meeting

As one goes down the list, the tie that's formed becomes more and more strong. I think that most internet message board disputes could be solved by an in-person meeting; most people wouldn't have the balls to say the obnoxious shit they say on the internet to someone's actual face. (Many of those who would say such things to someone might be the kind of people so sociopathic that they couldn't function in society - they call it having 'no impulse control'. These hair-triggers generally can't hold a job and are the epitome of the insult that they 'live in their mother's basement' since they couldn't function in the outside world well enough to do what it took to move away from home.)

There is also something to be said for strong organizational power. I think the reason the PPMB has stayed alive so long is that it has a form of strong moderation - people who show up strictly to cause trouble can be controlled or banned. With weak moderation, such social shunning depends on several people who would otherwise be acquaintances to act in unison; a nearly impossible act over the internet. People who don't like such moderation are free to congregate elsewhere although history has shown that they have never congregated in large groups - or when they have, the congregation could simply not maintain itself for very long.

This leads to talking about one of my favorite subjects: one of the laws of internet trolling. Draw two axes. Let the x-axis be the number of people in any on-line community. Let the y-axis be a function of x - namely, the probability that a group of size x could be successfully trolled for long periods of time.

The resulting graph is a bell-curve: groups of medium size are the ones most successfully trolled. For small groups, the ten guys who get together to talk about collecting stainless steel three-bladed boat propellers can get together in private chat and unanimously agree to ban some trollish newcomer. For large groups, the 1,000 people who meet every day to talk about the New York Yankees are just too big to troll - there would be far too many active threads in such a board to strike and moderators could the troll when caught with only a handful of the other 999 noticing or even caring. (Most would be calling for the troll's head; it's unlikely that one person's contributions would impact a group of that size significantly.)

All of this has to do with the power of weak vs.strong ties. All message boards are weak-tie groups. The small board's ties are weak, but small groups are more likely to come to a consensus even if they are only acquaintances. The large board's ties are also weak, but at some point in its history the group must have been able to develop moderators and a method of dispute resolution and punishment - or it never would have lived long enough to become a large board. It's the middle group, with weak ties and no consensus that is in the most danger. A troll might be able to pull together enough sympathizers to survive, which could never happen in a large group.

My question then is: did Daria fandom manage to solve its message board problems because the size of the fandom grew, or did it solve them because it shrank? And has Daria fandom truly escaped the dangerous middle ground?

Screwed the Pooch

Well, my hope of writing one post per 24-hour day is over - I forgot to write today's (yesterday's) post. I'm hoping to at least hit the "one post per every waking day" goal.

We just finished hosting a young couple here for the weekend. This is the daughter of one of Ruth's friends and her fiance. She is a first-generation Cuban and he's a Peruvian of Japanese descent. They're going to get married some time in November, and we'll go to that wedding. It was great to see them; by all appearances they seem quite happy with each other.

We went out to see Machete again. Hey, it's a movie they had not seen and one we didn't mind seeing again. Robert Rodriguez should be thanking me because I'm helping promote his movie.

I haven't heard from The Angst Guy in a long time. I hope that either he's okay, or that he's just GAFIAted. I'd hate for something really bad to have happened to him.

Daria, Batman, Darth Vader and the Braves

I recently read a post on MightyGodKing titled “Mad Men and Rocket Men” which examined the cancellation of two very different TV shows: “Hank” and “Dollhouse”. The author’s point is that there was no kerfluffle over the demise of Hank; there is moaning and gnashing of teeth over the end of Dollhouse. This, of course, is explained by the fact that those who watched “Hank” were passive observers and those who watched Dollhouse were fans with a personal investment in the show.

The author briefly touches upon – but does not explore – the nature of fandom. I found one comment telling, and by coincidence, the unexplained nature of the comment ties so much into what fandom is.

The term “found object” is used in passing. In art, a “found object” is just that – some technological remnant that is repurposed; a teapot becomes a part of sculpture. The author, however, used the term with respect to certain kinds of literature, and I don’t think the term is meant to be used that way. I believe the author wanted to use the term “found object” with regards to certain types of literature/media as “having some sort of real-life property”.

For example, The Wire would not be a “found object” TV show. The goal of The Wire is to plunge you into something that is very much like the real world. In a way, one “stumbles” across The Wire the same way one would stumble across our teapot in the paragraph above. The show is meant to throw up a mirror to nature; the more realistic the presentation the better the reflection.

The author makes the point that certain genres cannot be “found objects” in literature or film or whatever because one is reminded at all times during one’s interaction with these objects that the objects had a human maker. These are the science fiction genres, the superhero/heroic fantasy genres…and of course, the cartoon genres.

Each of the items from these genres tries to present itself as a found object, and each items has a relative degree of success or failure. In the movie Star Wars, for example, a lot is left unexplained – the idea is to immerse a viewer into something that approaches real life but cannot be real life. Likewise for Batman or Daria. If it has to be explained why Kevin wears his uniform all the time or how Robin is able to beat up adults the attempt of immersion fails.

People who are fans – who have a personal investment – decide that the level of detail with which they’ve been presented is not enough. They have to fill in the gaps. A lot of fandoms on the superhero/science-fiction/cartoon scale are devoted to filling in these gaps. What I have found – at least in Daria fandom – is that Daria fans tend to have their thumbs in either the superhero or science-fiction or anime fandoms. If you’re a Daria fan it’s almost an even-money bet that you’re a fan of a genre that is not a “found object”.

(It’s also surprising how genres that wouldn’t be “found objects” have fans that explore the more artificial parts of the genre. There is a community of House fans that supposedly write their own fan fiction. What those fans find artificial are the relationships between the characters, and they work furiously at filling in those perceived gaps.)

Looking at the “found object” theory, a lot of my fandoms makes sense. I’m the kind of person who likes to fill in gaps, that likes to assist in creating the illusion. Which explains why I’m a fan of Daria and superheroes and certain kinds of science fiction.

However, there was one fandom of mine I couldn’t explain using this theorem – sports fandom. Sports is not a literary genre of any kind, and the only meaning it has is the meaning that you care to give it.

As it turned out, another comment on the post above provided clarity. It states that fans invest a lot in their fandom, to the point that fandom becomes a substitute religion. If you think about it, Daria fandom is like a religion in a lot of ways – there is canon, there are saints (among characters and fans), sinners, demons, objects of devotion, holy art, gatherings, etc.

One might argue that as a religion, Daria fandom is a very poor substitute for a real religion. There is no physical community of believers; that community exists only online. There is no overall message from Daria, and if you want to use Daria’s speech in “Is It College Yet?” as Holy Writ, then the meaning is not particularly deep. Which begs the questions, why do so many fans – even few in number – treat Daria with the kind of reverence that the local clergymen in the areas where each fan lives would be begging for?

The answer: because fan religions – “fandoms” – have removed the most unpleasant aspect of real religions – that of self-sacrifice and self-denial. You don’t have to give up too much to become a Daria fan – you just to have to have a sort of genial open-mindedness, and in some places in Daria fandom you don’t need to have that. It would be like a Christian minister saying that the only thing you have to do is love Jesus – you don’t have to treat your neighbors any differently or make any effort whatsoever to change as a person.

Sports can be considered a religion in some places – take Alabama, for instance. (Please.) All that sports fandom asks of you is to love the team above all others and to hate its enemies. And yes, sports does not have fan fiction (*) but it does leave a lot of unanswered questions, and fans love to speculate with various degrees of intensity. You would never dream of rewriting Mark Twain’s “Huckleberry Finn” but the Patriots-Colts drama can be rewritten ad infinitum.

Think about it: a religion where not only no changes are demanded of me, but a religion in which I get to write the missing chapters of the Holy Scripture? Sign me up for that.

____

(*) – Don’t ask me about “real person fiction”. Please, don’t.

Message from Another Time

(Note: review of AD15 coming hopefully today. Till then, I'm just pulling out some old material on the hard drive, dusting it off, and turning it into a blog post. This post is a massive diversion and has virtually nothing to do with Daria or Daria fandom, so you can skip it. -- JB)

If you're familiar with my long, ugly history in Daria fandom, you'll know that I happen to use the term "BNF". This isn't a term I invented. Neither are Greybird's plural for fan ("fen") or use of the term "neofen."

All of these terms come from science fiction fandom, a fandom that has existed since the 1930s. However did they do without the internet, you might ask? Well, instead of message boards, they had the letter columns in magazines. Instead of websites, they had fanzines.
Instead of e-mail, they had real-mail. Instead of instant messaging, they had Western Union and telephones.

Furthermore, these ancient fans, with little more than pencils, papers, and the occasional mimeographed fanzines, managed to have all the same dumbass disputes internet fans have had without the help of internet pseudonymity. All of the heights we think we've scaled on the internet were scaled by people about sixty years ago.

For example, I borrowed my first pseudonym -- Petrel -- from Francis Towner Laney, whose incendiary memorior Ah, Sweet Idiocy! is virtually a bible for modern Insurgents, and who was called "The Stormy Petrel". (Even then, the seeds of CINCGREEN were planted in Petrel.) You can't read Ah, Sweet Idiocy! anywhere on the net -- it's hard to find in science fiction fandom, if I understand -- but I have read excerpts on the next. Laney was an acid critic of the failings of science fiction fans, and Ah, Sweet Idiocy! was his way of burning his bridges. (To get a sense of his style, read "Syllabus for a Fanzine", where he goes after crappy webzines.

Laney escaped being persona non grata by suddenly dying. To this day, there are those who think that Laney's death was a fake and he did the ultimate "get away from it all". (Back in the day, without the internets, faking your death was quite easy. You just had a friend send mail to all your friends and enemies saying "I regret to inform you that so-and-so died." How were you going to check? However, I believe some fans of fans have found Laney's actual death certificate, so R. I. P. F. T. L.)

However, my point was to introduce you to "The Enchanted Duplicator", a story written by BNFs Walt Willis and Bob Shaw. It was written in 1954 and was basically addressed to science fiction fans of the time, but I believe that it has something to say to fans in any type of fandom at any time. From the webpage introduction:

The Enchanted Duplicator is more than a simple fairy tale about one fan's slow progress into the heartland of 'Fandom'. It contains practical advice on the pitfalls awaiting the new fan, puns wherever they could be fitted in, and it is a somewhat distorting window into a past era of fandom. But as well as all this, it is an allegory and a fable. A moral is not stated: it is implicit in every page. Simply: anyone may become a 'True Fan', but only by their own efforts. However, a sense of humour and a willingness to get along with other fans is essential.

(To that, I say there are very few 'True Fans' in Daria fandom. The Angst Guy is one of the few I know.)

The tale is allegorical. I'll close with my self-composed glossary from "The Enchanted Duplicator", now sitting on my hard drive for some time. I'll let it see the light of day and I hope that it whets your desire to read "The Enchanted Duplicator". (Iron Chef: Write a version of "The Enchanted Duplicator" for Daria fandom.)

(* * *)

GLOSSARY OF TERMS FROM WILLIS AND SHAW

Mundane -- the country where all non-fans live

Prosaic -- a village in the country of Mundane

Jophan -- a young man who lives in the city of Prosaic

Spirit of Fandom -- a magical fairy who comes to Jophan and lets him know that there is a world outside of Mundane. She carries two wands, one called Contact and the other called Fanac ("fan activity"). The wands show him visions of this wonderful world, and Jophan wants to take part.

Mountains of Inertia -- mountain range which surrounds Mundane. The mountains are supposedly unclimbable; to reach Fandom these mountains must be crossed.

True Fan -- an inhabitant of the land of Fandom and what Jophan wishes to become.

The Enchanted Duplicator -- what Jophan wishes to seek in Fandom, so that he may publish the Perfect Fanzine. (During the days of science fiction fandom, fans would write fanzines which would be sent through the mails to other interested fans.) Also known as the Magic Mimeograph.

The High Tower of Trufandom -- where the Enchanted Duplicator rests

Umor -- a shield the Spirit of Fandom gives Jophan. If he keeps it polished, it will protect him on his journey. (Umor as in "humor", i. e. a sense of humor.)

Fortress of Stupidity -- a forest that grows all around Mundane, sheltering it from the winds blowing out of Fandom

Swift, Offset and Litho -- brothers that try to distract Jophan on his journey. (Their names refer to a process called offset lithography, more suitable for large scale commercial printing.) They end up draining prospective fans of money and those fans never reach Fandom.

the Great BNF -- the major deity of fandom. (BNF = "big name fan")

Letterpress Railroad -- a railroad which promises a direct route to Fandom, only for its trains to continually break down. (Letterpress is the complicated method of printing with movable type.)

Circle of Lassitude -- A place where people who found getting to Fandom too tiresome a process and have created their own society. Many of them have never reached Fandom. When the occasionally fanzine blows by, they pay no attention to it, preferring to chat and drink instead. (Inspired by the London SF Circle of the 1950s.)

Robert George Leth (Leth, R. G, or "lethargy") -- a member of the Circle

Region of Fog -- an area within the Forest of Stupidity

the Disillusion -- a spirit that tries to convince Jophan not to proceed. Disillusion once rode into Fandom on his high horse, but no one paid attention to him. He tried to teach the citizens of Fandom, but they had nothing to learn from him and he remains indignant to this day.

Plodder and Erratic -- two neofen ("new fans") that accompany Jophan on his journey. Plodder has no Shield of (H)Umor -- but is incredibly thick-skinned. Erratic prefers to rest of long periods of time, and then make up the ground in spurts.

Hekto Swamp -- an area just inside the borders of Fandom. Many neofans perish here, to sink forever within its purple depths. (A "hekto" is a carbon used in mimeographing, and can stain one's hands purple if one is not careful.)

Abydix, Roneoaks and Ellam trees -- trees that grow throughout fandom, known for their powerful root system. (Ellam is a reference to a mimeographic inker; I don't know to what the other two refer.)

Jungle of Inexperience -- a jungle within Fandom that can bring any neofan to a standstill

Torrent of Overinking - a floodstream that occasionally carries neofans away in its wake

slip sheet -- a sheet which can be used to rescue someone from the Torrent of Overinking (They appear to refer to divider pages.)

Typos -- beasts living in the Jungle of Inexperience which attack neofans

Correcting Fluid -- a magical fluid that kills any wound made by a typo

Kerles -- a fan who has the power to make Typos do his bidding -- but not often, and not well. (Named after Max Kerles, a 1950s science fiction fan whose work was typo-ridden.)

Perfexion -- a paranoid fan who attempts to hack his way through the Jungle of Inexperience and is horribly frightened of Typos. He is making very slow progress.

Kolektinbug -- a small bug sold by the Hucksters who on the road to the High Tower of Trufandom. The bug is actually a leach that will suck the life right out of a neofan. (After "collecting bug", obviously.)

"City of Trufandom" -- a place Jophan visits on his journey. It is actually a club that spends most of its time arguing with each other, giving contradictory orders, and awaiting the election of officers so one member can boss around the others. Jophan tries to convince a citizen to join him on the way, but the young man is too afraid to progress without the help of the others and Jophan leaves.

Dedwood -- the builder of the "City of Trufandom". Unfortunately, most of its buildings are ramshackle facades.

"City of Serious Constructivism" -- a city Dedwood works on building. He hopes the public will be impressed.

Mr. Press -- a representative of the Public that occasionally visits Fandom. Jophan watches Dedwood be interviewed by Mr. Press. Despite Dedwood's grandiose comments, Mr. Press pays no attention to Dedwood, failing to write anything in his press notebook except "gosh-wow-oh-boy-oh-boy" and drawing a picture of Dedwood wearing a helicopter beanie.

Profan -- a resident of a colony between Trufandom and Mundane. He only visits Trufandom occasionally, but is willing to help neofans as long as he isn't overwhelmed by them. He tells Jophan of the perils that will face him. (A "pro fan" is a published science fiction writer who used to be a fan, thus living in both worlds.)

Glades of Gafia -- a distraction that Profan warns Jophan about. The glades seem refreshing, but they are so comfortable that most fans never leave them. (After "GAFIA", or "get away from it all". Fans that have taken a long break from fandom and never come back are said to have "gafiated".)

Subr -- a seemingly indifferent group of people who refuse to aid Jophan or even talk to him until he convinces them that he has the stamina to procced and that he will accept their help. (Probably after 'submitter' or 'subscriber', both important to fanzine life.) They then begin to accompany him on his journey, giving limited aid.

Sycofan -- a fan who refuses to proceed until he invokes the power of the "BNFicient spirits". (After "sycophant", a fan who will only associate with "high ranking" fans.) He refuses to associate with Jophan, surviving on the occasional "manna-scripts" sent to him by the BNFicient.

Egg o' Bu -- the egg of a "bu-bird". The yoks and whites of the eggs give Jophan a lot of strength. They do have side effects though -- intoxication and a swelling of the head. (After "ego-boo", or ego boost, basically a kind word from another fan.)

Canyon of Critcism -- the deadliest passage on the way to Trufandom. Many neofans have been known to perish here, their journeys coming to a tragic end.

Magrevoos, Fanmagrevoos, Promagrevoos -- Beings living in the Canyon of Criticism which have been known to hurl large rocks down upon neofans. If a neofan has not kept his Shield of Umor intact, he might perish. These creatures are plodded into activity by Headhunters. (I am unable to make out the reference.)

Fillips -- a near extinct tribe which helps neofans attacked by the Magrevoos. These fans are replenished by the Fillips's supply of Egg o' Bu. (This might come from the word "fillip", meaning "something trivial" -- possibly an exhortation that criticism is trivial in the long run.)

Letteraxe -- a fan which offers to help Jophan by sending messages to the Headhunters that control the Magrevoos. Jophan notes that it would be just as easy to travel, but Letteraxe prefers to stay where he is and send messages. (A reference to "letter hacks".)

The Magic Mimeograph -- turns out to be a rusty hulk of a machine, an eyesore. However, when Jophan takes the handle, he is invested with strength. As the Spirit of Fandom tells him, the final lesson is that "FOR THE MAGIC MIMEOGRAPH IS THE ONE WITH THE TRUE FAN AT THE HANDLE."

Got Nothing

This is one of those days where I'm actually expected to work for a living, so after eating my lunch it gives me about thirty minutes to devote to a blog.

Last night, I posted in my other sports-related fandom, where I caught up with my "responsibilities" there. Also, I had to watch Celebrity Apprentice, for the same reason that one watches a trainwreck. You know it's going to be very, very bad indeed.

We have hot water now. Our plumber came by, and wrapped a heating cord around the pipe free of charge, then reinsulated. Hopefully, we won't have any problems with the pipes freezing again.

My plans for tonight are to finally take the beta-reads and incorporate them into the final draft of "Reclamation", which I hope will be posted tomorrow.

However, this has left no time for reading fan fiction.

(* * *)

From another blog (BG's), I've learned that Martin Pollard is thinking of resurrecting "Outpost Daria". Put me down as voting "yes" if such a vote exists. Like it or not (and like him or not), "Outpost Daria" is the first stop of any serious "Daria" fan and I'm hoping it won't shutter its doors in May of aught-eight.

Yuletide Cheer in Daria Fandom and Elsewhere

Regarding my absence from Daria fandom, I spoke to a friend of mine whose user name resembles that of a paper-cutting implement from Boston and we talked about fannish issues to and fro.

Therefore, I've decided to withdraw my former abandonment of the fandom. (The Bug Man, it seems, had me pegged correctly -- "how many times has CINCGREEN left the fandom, now?") However, what I have decided to abandon is the message boards. More than likely, my first goal will to be finishing all of my unfinished works, which will be a burdensome process but will at least keep my imagination from acting as an ouroboros, with continue self-re-reflection on my past fan activities.

What I've abandoned, however, is posting on message boards. Of course, to finish some of those stories, I will have to post (unless I can get that above named friend to do the heavy lifting.) However, the to-and-fro of comment on those stories will be limited to private e-mail, as threads will not be answered. I doubt anyone shall be inconvenienced, as comment on items I had posted was virtually nonexistent.

Regarding Legion of Lawndale Heroes: Brother Grimace will still have leave to act unfettered throughout the land in posting the adventures of these superpowered teens. I love his take on the whole thing, and right now, I'm not really ready to resume the full-time chore of writing LLH. He owes me eight episodes, and I plan to extract my pound of flesh from one of the chief Angst Lords.

Furthermore, my friend decried the fact that there were no comments on the blog. Therefore, I've reintroduced comments, but not everyone has leave to speak. You have to have an account at Blogger for one; for another, unless the comment has something substantial to add to the conversation, beyond just a simple "hello" or goofy remark, it might not see the light of day, although it will certainly be read by me. People who have something substantial to contribute will hopefully contribute to a conversation; people who have little to say -- or worse, people who are so starved for attention that they treasure even negative attention will find their comments shrivel up like mice in a miser's kitchen.

I've noticed with some small interest the recent hubbub regarding comments on the pale "blunt parody" of the old Daria Fandom Blog -- the one which is not the Daria Fandom Blog II, a wonderful endeavor of The Angst Guy that should be read, cherished and encouraged. Without naming names, or assigning blame -- since as far as I know, I still have pleasant relationships with each of the parties in the dispute -- I have a simple thought exercise.

"Why are you surprised that a certain individual might take offense to an argument, even ostensibly one in parody, that said individual is a child molester? And why are you doubly shocked that said individual might pursue legal action against such scurrilous libel?"

I think when you begin slandering someone's sexuality, you automatically make yourself the loser; it was a critical strategic misstep that I would have advised against because it opens you up to attack on a wide variety of fronts having nothing to do with the original thrust of the argument. Yeah, it is kind of fun to break the rules of rhetoric and avoid fear of the ad hominem; but partakers in kinky blog-postin' fun should realize that those rules were originally intended for the safety of the writer, and not his intended victim.

Turn off your TVs

There are some huge advantages and disadvantages to writing a blog without comments.

The biggest advantage is that even though you shut out all the interesting voices, you shut out all the uninteresting voices as well. I'm one of the few people who doesn't have a cell phone, and one of the reasons is that I didn't feel that I should be at the beck and call of every person who might have my number. You wouldn't let anyone in your house who decided to knock on the door, so why should you let anyone wander on to your blog?

The biggest disadvantage is that in hearing no voices at all, you've consigned yourself to an echo chamber, where blogging becomes much like writing a diary. My mother keeps a diary, or at least kept one, and I have no idea what's going to happen to that book on the inevitable day when she can resume her peaceful nonexistence. (Life was once called by someone an inconvenient interruption to an otherwise peaceful nonexistence.) As I have no children and have no plans of having them, there's no one to whom this book could be passed. I feel that reading such a book would be a violation of my mother's privacy, even after her (hopefully far off in the future) death. In the same way, a blog can become self-contained. I've blogged private matters and have come to regret it, because really, what kind of person posts his private thoughts and deepest secrets all the hell over the web?

It's unlikely that I'll be doing further television reviews. Not only has the writer's strike dried up material, but as you can tell, the bulk of television shows deliver nothing in the way of entertainment. "Everybody Hates Chris" has become unwatchable, "Kid Nation" had a final episode which was an abortion, "The Simpsons" is still in its "painfully unfunny" period. Many of these shows weren't "funny bad" like Manos: The Hands of Fate, but bad bad, like rectal surgery. And trust me, there are so many people out there doing television reviews that I doubt my voice will be missed.

So what's next? Probably...baseball. Or hockey. I've always loved sports, and particularly sports history and statistics. Baseball and hockey are at two ends of a continuum, where it seems every gonad scratch in baseball is recorded and put into a database, whereas the only stats recorded in hockey seem to be goals and assists. Maybe there will be something worthwhile to write about that.

But will I be deleting the older blog entries? No, I won't. Might as well keep them here.

So does this mean the end of CINCGREEN's sojourn in Daria fandom? Most likely, yes. Now that I'm past forty, some sort of middle-aged gene has kicked in saying, "You know, you really shouldn't be wasting such time and effort on a cartoon about a bunch of teenage schoolgirls". When life gets shorter, one tends to look at things on a cost-effective basis, a basis which can be overridden if the activity tends to bring you great pleasure. Daria fandom got to the point where the amount of joy it was bringing me was no longer commesurate with the amount of time I put in, and like a middle-aged accountant, I cut it from my list of expenses.

I'll borrow some thoughts from Kevin Holden in Montreal and restate them as my own. Most of the fan fiction no longer interests me, except maybe for "Legion of Lawndale Heroes", and the only reason that interests me is that it was my creation and Brother Grimace is running with it. I've pretty much seen most of the fan fiction permutations out there. Furthermore, as the amount of fan fiction has dropped (show not on the air, y'know), the other chit-a-chat doesn't grab my interest.

More and more of the newer fans come off as sociopaths, undoubtedly drawn to the fandom because they sympathise with the rejected Daria, as the newer fans are real social rejects themselves --cutters, bulimics, bipolars, slackers who really really need the help of a good psychiatrist rather than a coffee klatch. (God knows *I* needed a good psychatrist; thank the stars I found one.) The current mentally ill members of the message boards can always find a sucker to listen to them, and to forgive the most egregious lapses in basic decorum or decency. (What's the old saying? "A sucker is born every minute, and two to take him?" It's a good gig, as some of those people remain coddled for years on end.) It begins to look like an episode of Jerry Springer, "Abusive Fans, and Their Enablers Who Just Can't Say No!"

The only real solution to that problem would have been to form a spin-off group of older, more mature fans -- more emotionally mature, anyway. But I concluded that it was too much time and energy to make a truly concerted effort, with no guaranteed payoff, and there would be another split of a fandom that's seen too much splitting anyway. Better to just let it go.

As Bob Dylan said, "Nostalgia is death." Time to move on to the next big thing, whatever that is.