Fiona Moore wrote:

...

Now, what bothers me personally about serious (like Neil I'd avoid the

word

...

"intelligent") conversations going silly is that often it's not a

natural

...

progression, it's a hijacking. To give a (semi-)fictitious example, some people can be having a discussion on, say, themes of class struggle in "Weapon," and then somebody else, who hasn't participated at all up

until

...

this point, will launch in and say "Ooh, I think Carnell's accent is

dead

...

sexy! What's everyone else think?" And there's the whole prospect of

further

...

serious discussion gone to pot.

Betty wrote:

Why? "Thread hijacking" is a complaint I've seen other places as well, and it's just not something I really understand, so this is a completely serious question. IMO one of the great things about e-mail as a communications medium is its non-linear nature. If person A is talking about subject 1, and person B wants to develop that into a discussion of subject 2, and person C wants to jump in and make a point about subject 3... Well, it's entirely possible to have *both* conversations going on at the same time,

Yes but it's a bit of a shock, when you're following a thread, to suddenly find, in between two posts full of Marxist theory, a post about Avon's socks, or something else of his that's a bit more personal :). Back a while ago, somebody said "if you don't like a theme, don't read it" but you can't *avoid* it when you're following a serious thread and somebody hijacks it into another direction.

But there's another sort of thread hijacking which neither of you mentioned, which is when somebody comes on the serious thread and makes a point, but does it in a silly way, say calling Blake "my sweet baboo" or calling Servalan "She who must be obeyed." Which IMO trivialises the the character, the argument and the poster's point, all at the same time.

Shane

Vila: Blake would have been proud of you, you know. Avon: Yes, but then he never was very bright.