Ken Fortenberry wrote:

Mike Connor wrote:

snip
It may well be that we can´t all just get along. Assuming such to be the
case, then why are we all here? Just to waste time with absolutely
hopeless
"sounding-off"?


Exactly. It's fun, it's entertaining,

I'm probably going to regret this, but I am curious about that
statement. I agree that some of the banter and the intellectual
jousting can be entertaining. But the part I don't get is the veiled
(or sometimes, not-so-veiled) threats of physical violence and the
insults that resemble schoolyard taunting.

It doesn't bother me in the sense that I'm offended, it just doesn't
make a lot of sense to me. I've been around newsgroups since 1991, and
spent a good bit of time on political groups, so I've seen my fair share
of the good, bad and ugly (mostly ugly). But I came to expect the worst
when the only common ground those folks had was their hatred of the
opposite side.

Here we supposedly have a common love of ff'ing, and in fact, most
of the participants in the most egregious name-calling have fished
together (and apparently, in some cases even enjoyed it). That's the
part I don't get, and can't really find humor in.

I still follow (most of) the threads, so I guess it's at least
intriguing (in a car-wreck-by-the-highway sense), but why is it
entertaining to call your fellow flyfisherman a poopie head?

Yeah, it's a waste of time, but so long as you have friends here,
and I most definitely and emphatically consider you a friend, it's
not meaningless.

This is not directed (just) at you, Ken, but since you brought up
the idea of friends: It sure seems like a number of folks here have
gone out of their way to alienate any possible friends they might have
had here.

Then what will you be left with?


Chuck Vance