LogFAQs > #940914909

On some level, having the opportunity to vote like this can be cathartic, especially on a board that's always been obsessed with polling and numbers. It's a natural extension of where this board started. But it's easy to see the entire UotY affair as a popularity contest, much like a Save-My, where the idea of one vote becomes lost in the shuffle of mob rule. But if you take a step back, is it really mob rule? Or is it just a matter of differentiating between the Haves and the Have-Nots of the board? It can be pretty tough to wrap your head around the idea of being unliked or unpopular, even when you see people with whom you have a contentious relationship posting these concretely negative numbers towards you. It chips away a little bit each time. As long as I've been on the board, I think I've never been good at playing the game of the board. And while I can rationalize that and I can accept it, I still am hit pretty hard by negative feedback. It kind of caused me to develop this early warning detection system of being nasty on the board as a precaution. And that cycles further, causing more and more people to be alienated by me and, in extension, me to feel more outcast by these contests as I try to shield myself from feeling less-than.

Now, I could be entirely alone in the feeling that User of the Year can be harmful to some users, and as someone who has had battles with depression over the years, being able to remove oneself from the balloting was nice. But what it likely did was really put a crimp in the excitement of others, bringing the excitement levels for a popular tradition down. And, in the end, I think people pulling out of UotY was a small but crucial factor in the end of UotY. Because it's hard to look in a mirror at the perception of yourself by others and really accept that you're kind of a shitty person. Just a little bit, and just to some people. But that's all you really need sometimes; just a little validation of those tiny little demons that whisper horrible things in your ears, causing you to doubt yourself.

It's easy to blame the Discord, and it's easy to blame other easy targetable names on the Board - when I arrived on the Board, there was a certain level of cultish behavior surrounding Chris and how his decisions in epop contests were kool-aid to be drunk, for example. It's easy to hate people or to consistently put yourself in situations where you feel demeaned and insulted on this board, because that's a lot of what this board is about - unleashing opinions and gathering a mob of like-minded people in a thread to agree with you. But there's a lot of good to the board as well. And even as something of an outsider, I don't think that Discord can really be blamed for User of the Year dying. Anyone here could start the project up tomorrow. I just don't believe anyone actually will, and that's the real point of this long-winded diatribe. No one wants to feel shitty.

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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful