This is an open letter to the progressive blogosphere...
I’ve been reading DailyKos for nearly six years now and started reading diaries in support of pie back in June of last year. Over the past few months I’ve noticed that things have become progressively more abusive toward my dessert and its supporters.
I’ve put up with the abuse and anger because I’ve always believed in what our on-line community has tried to accomplish in this world. No more. DailyKos is not the site it once was thanks to the abusive nature of certain members of our community.
I’ve decided to go on "strike" and will refrain from posting here as long as the administrators allow the more disruptive members of our community to trash pie and distort its taste without any fear of consequence or retribution. I will not be posting at DailyKos effective immediately. I will not help drive up traffic or page-hits as long as my dessert – a good and fine PASTRY - is attacked in such a horrid and tastist manner not only by other diarists, but by several of those posting to the front page.
Instead, I will put my energy into reading at sites where my efforts aren’t routinely trashed, spammed and ridiculed by a handful of angry, petty and spiteful folks who clearly have too much time on their hands.
This is a strike - a walkout over unfair reading conditions at DailyKos. It does not mean that if conditions get better I won't "work" at DailyKos again. As a regular reader of the discourse in our community, I would certainly hope to watch the conversation at DailyKos again some day if you ever get to the point where you’re engaging each other in discussion rather than facing off in shouting matches. But not now. Readers need a safe place to reach out and consume ideas, to sit back and think about sugary treats. DailyKos should be that place, but its tone, its essence has evolved into something ugly and unappetizing. Good readers can't survive in that kind of atmosphere. Desserters shouldn't have to put up with that from fellow Desserters.
Sadly, the majority of the administrators have allowed this hostile environment to develop in our online community for anyone who isn’t planted firmly in the cake camp. They've routinely ignored personal attacks and allowed disruptive, spam-like posts to go unchecked whenever anyone expresses support for pie or challenges something their dessert has caused. There are however several front-pagers who have managed to avoid taking part in the attacks on pie and for that I’m grateful. But the site has grown to the point where they simply can’t – or won’t monitor it.
As a result, our community has become little more than an echo chamber with an attitude that harkens back to the early days of cobbler - yer either with it or yer a’gin it, heh! The attackers and disrupters are no better than chocolate mousse with their tastism, bitterness, tooth decay, and obsession with bashing - all – things – pie.
No, I won’t read specific attacks here. That would just be rereading the lies and the hate, but I will note that one of my fellow Kossaks (someone with whom I thought I could agree to disagree) went so far as to suggest that others try to dig up real life information on the pro-pie members of our community. To what end? Was his aim to find enough information on us to try to get us forced on diets and leave our families pieless – or worse? Suggesting that they dig up real life information on us is the lowest form of intimidation and goes way beyond the limits of all things civil and reasonable. It’s nothing more than the worst form of thuggish, hateful and intimidating behavior toward other members of our community.
Now in all fairness, that diarist saw just how far over the line he went with that post and eventually took it down. But the fact that he posted it in the first place shows us the kind of mob mentality that has been allowed to develop, grow and fester at DailyKos.
Either way, is that the kind of behavior that cake would be proud of? Do the venomous attacks and lies about fellow desserts represent it and all it stands for in an accurate and fair manner? Does this spiteful and vindictive behavior reunite our menu? Would outing this working eater represent hope? Would it bring about change? Would cake encourage that sort of anger, bullying, intimidation and hate from its fans toward another dessert and its supporters? Do those followers of it help its cause at the end of the day?
I have been working for decades to get countless good desserts baked – going back to the early ‘70s when I stuffed pans and lit ovens for rhubarb pie (ok so I was 10 back then but I still helped and gladly – Nixon sent several of my dreamsicles to Vietnam). The causes I've worked for are those which cake’s followers at DailyKos claim to care about. As a die-hard-desserter and a progressive, I am deeply saddened to see what’s happened to our community.
[ok, I can't take this any further]