On Tue, Mar 13, 2001 at 07:15:41PM -0800, Mistral wrote:
Tavia wrote:
Mistral wrote:
Ideal to whom? I find the Lyst a welcome refuge from the fluff and chat of my other groups.
and:
Er. One person's fun and friendly is another person's fluffy and emotionally invasive.
Well, I've just done the late-at-night equivalent of walk round the block and I still think this is an incredibly hurtful thing to say.
I'm very sorry, Tavia, I was trying very hard _not_ to hurt you. Please forgive me. What I was trying to not be hurtful in saying, is that I found your original comments somewhat hurtful myself. I feel safe on the Lyst. If it suddenly goes all warm and fuzzy, I won't. Why should all lists have to appeal to everybody? There are lots of warm, fuzzy lists.
I think... (she said cautiously) that the reason why Mistral is wary of "warm and fuzzy" is because... she's a very private person.
While some people find a custom of once-a-year introductions (as Tavia suggested, as per Freedom City) to be friendly and fun, for other people, it's simply an unwelcome pressure to tell a whole lot of people about their life when they'd rather keep it private. An invasion of privacy, not a fun thing at all.
(sigh)
Me, while I'm not concerned about privacy to the same degree as Mistral (I use my real name, and my real location in my .sig) if one looks at my web page, on the "about me" bit, you won't find there any of the usual vital statistics... because telling people my age, marital status, job etc doesn't actually tell them anything about *me*, about how and what I think, about what makes me me. It just gets in the way -- labels and boxes to put me in -- just like some people have made assumptions about my opinions as soon as I mention that I'm a Christian... instead of actually finding out what they are.
Here, on the Lyst, we share our opinions - about B7, and about things that touch on that. We share bits of our lives in the context of that, bits that are made more meaningful because they're in a context. I mean... we know Iain is a scientist (physicist?) because he's brought that to bear on science-related discussions; we know that Neil does shiftwork because it's come up in political discussions -- but we know more than that, we know what Neil feels about it, because that's been part of the discussion, something that would probably never have come up in a little introduction. I like that.
I've been (and am) on chatty lists, and I've done my intro and it's been nice, but it isn't the only way to get to know people.
And none of the above was meant to be hurtful to anybody, just an attempt at spreading understanding.
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Avon: Don't try and manipulate me, Blake. Blake: Now why should I try and do that? Avon: You need my help. (Blake's 7: Spacefall [A2])