FeedsMerkley and Novick comment battles continue, alienate everybody
Back in the early days of the internet, when society was still struggling to harness fire and domesticate the cow, epic battles raged across Usenet, IRC and sometimes even inter-office email. These battles, known as flamewars, lasted months, and whatever happened, many innocent lives were lost in the crossfire. Usually, the flamewars were between one or two large personalities. Tanenbaum v. Torvalds, Stallman v. Everybody. These left few alive in their wake. They're still happening today on mailing lists. However, something tragic is happening on the internet today, and that is the pervasive holy war raging on blogs, regardless of the issue or the content. It has even come down to our little Senate primary race. Merkley and Novick supporters wage battle across blogs of all shapes and sizes, leaving few behind in their devastating march of destruction towards the May primary. It's getting bad out there, people, and I, for one, am sick and tired of it.
Read almost any political blog that mentions Merkley or Novick and you'll notice a huge number of comments between each side. I'm sure you don't me to tell you what it's like, but I will anyway. It's comment after comment of annoying nitpicking bullshit and idiotic attacks. Neither side is persuading anybody to do anything except avoid this race entirely.
I support Merkley for Senate. The company I work for built his website. I'm staying out of this fight, however. When the dust settles in May, I want to be able to work with any current Novick supporters to help defeat Gordon Smith. Neither side seems to realize that after May we're going to have work together, all of us, to rally behind the nominee and give Oregon a strong voice in our nation's capital.
Part of this problem stems from the ease with which one can insult (and misconstrue) people on the internet. As the rise of blogs has brought internet discussion to more and more people we're starting to see a greater fallout from John Gabriel's Internet Dickwad Theory, which remains to this day the best explanation of how the internet works. The fallout, in this case, is greater alienation within the progressive movement.
I hope that come May we can put all of this behind us, but as it stands right now I do not see that happening. I'm seeing the childish bickering on the blogs destroying relationships and setting up strong divides. There's an Us camp, and there's a Them camp. And it needs to end. By all means, let's have a strong, competitive primary. But a primary composed of bickering on the internet? That does nothing, absolutely nothing to help us.
Come on, people. We need to pull together here.
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Comments from site editors have a darker background than comments from everybody else.this is not the time to "pull together" at all; it's a PRIMARY. It's a time to compare the candidates and weigh their strengths and weaknesses.
What evidence do you have to show that any significant number of people have chosen to "avoid this race entirely?" What "devastating march of destruction" are you referring to, specifically?
It's not May, it's November--and we've got a job to do before May, to evaluate the best candidate to represent Democrats, and test and prepare them for a likely bloody general election. Compared to the Kulongoski primary, Merkley and Novick supporters are exchanging flowers and kisses...and I seem to recall Ted strolling to victory despite the internecine discussions on that one.
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Coming from one of the most vitriolic fighters out there, I am not surprised by this argument, even though you clearly missed the point of my article.
The blog fights are NOT comparing the candidates. Rather, they are creating strong divides and weakening our party. In effect, people on the blogs are doing all the negative campaigning a candidate could want, which, in addition to creating a nasty atmosphere, lowers turnout.
There's no discussion. It's a brawl. And it sucks.
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they may be creating strong divides (although I see no proof of them being lasting)--but there's no doubt it's strengthening rather than weakening the party. The party would be much weaker if there were no primary.
I would challenge you to find an example of me being vitriolic towards Merkley. And I didn't miss the point; I simply don't find it substantiated, and thus can't agree with it. It's not a brawl, it's a primary. CA GOV--THAT was a brawl. This is a tea party by comparison. And it's an Up with People convention compared to what Smith will make the general.
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I agree with you. I wholeheartedly approve of a competitive, substantive issue-based primary. I am not anti-primary, quite the opposite. My problem is not with anything the campaigns are doing, but entirely with Merkley and Novick supporters attacking one another (and often the candidates, but it's the infighting that I'm most opposed to).
Bring on the primary. Let's see substantive conversations and debates. You're absolutely right. But that's not what we're seeing. Do you have any ideas on how to fix this?
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Just a note: I would suggest people take a look at this dailykos diary. It's in a very similar vein.
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If you read the Kos article, you'll see the CA GOV race and the OR SEN race bear absolutely no relationship to each other at this point. One guy was calling the other a closet Republican (or Arnold sycophant, at least), the other was calling his opponent a tax-and-spend Democrat. Nothing even close to that level of accusations is going on.
Also note that it has nothing at all to do with what you say your point is, which is about the supporters of the candidates--CA GOV was all about the candidates talking smack themselves.
As for seeing substantive conversations and debates--it starts with the candidates. One is essentially refusing to participate so far, which makes the conversation nigh well impossible at this point.
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