So What Is It Now? What Should It Be?

[odeon]

Discuss. What is Intensity, today? How about tomorrow? And never mind the past; this is about what it is, now, and what it should be. People have left and others have joined. We won't be going back cos we shouldn't. It's not healthy.

Me, I still think that it's about enabling the spazzes cos we won't moderate them unless required to do so by the TOS (bestiality, that sort of thing). It's the place where we can say what's on our minds and be chastised for it. It's the place where we can speak our minds or choose to post mindless banter. It's the place for high Internet drama, and it's the place for sadness and quiet reflection (well, it could be). It's not for the sensitive type, but these days I wonder if it's because of a lack of interest rather than actual fear.

It's also just another message board and as such, not the end of the world.

[Parts]

Discuss. What is Intensity, today? How about tomorrow? And never mind the past; this is about what it is, now, and what it should be. People have left and others have joined. We won't be going back cos we shouldn't. It's not healthy.

Me, I still think that it's about enabling the spazzes cos we won't moderate them unless required to do so by the TOS (bestiality, that sort of thing). It's the place where we can say what's on our minds and be chastised for it. It's the place where we can speak our minds or choose to post mindless banter. It's the place for high Internet drama, and it's the place for sadness and quiet reflection (well, it could be). It's not for the sensitive type, but these days I wonder if it's because of a lack of interest rather than actual fear.

It's also just another message board and as such, not the end of the world.

 
Places like this are few and far between.  There is such a variety of opinions expressed here you can be part of it if you want or post about almost anything else you want no matter how strange or objectionable to some.  A place you can post your thoughts and creations or just be spamy     Like you said the past is gone lets head to the future and post. 

[odeon]

My thinking, too. There aren't many places like this one. At times it's bloody painful because it doesn't take more than two prolific posters to fuck up the contents and post nothing but an argument, spread over days or sometimes weeks, but it also doesn't take more than one poster to turn it around.

I miss most people who've left. Some I consider to be my personal friends and one I'll always love, but for better or worse, ideals or not, the people here are the ones to decide the board's future, not the ones who left.

[Pyraxis]

I'd love it to be more about advocacy in the real world. As a whole, the autistic community (at least this corner of it) seems to have gotten a lot of the drama out of their systems, fighting with each other. But the fucked-up stuff that drove people here in the first place is still in full force.

People are still scared to ask for the reasonable accommodations that in most places are their legal right.

It's still hard to get a diagnosis in adulthood, despite skyrocketing diagnostic rates in children.

Even when there are plenty of services for children, people are still hitting legal majority and being dumped out in the cold.

There's been some of it already, with parents sharing stories of trying to get help for their kids and deal with various conflicts that have come up with their schools. But I think there's the potential for a lot more. Where is the energy going, that had been caught up in the conflict of forum drama? It doesn't just disappear. Are people focusing more on their IRL lives? Have they given up on being able to change anything?

Might the cats become easier to entice, if we quit trying to herd them and they get sick of hissing and spitting at each other?

[P7PSP]

I don't know what the differences are other than reading the old stuff with a lot of callouts. I joined on my BD last year but never got past 10 posts until early December. I belong to 4 sites for Aspie/Autie people, zOMG can be fun but I haven't been there for a few days, WrongPlanet is noticeably much less mature on average and Fionae's site is pretty much dead in the water. I like this Forum.

[Phlexor]

This place is a real aspie support place is the sense that it supports the aspie ideal. None of us like being told what to do or how to do it. Every other place just seems like an excuse for the person running it to be a little dictator and they jerk off when they get to tell people what to do and and have a bunch of sicophants kissing their arse over it.

fuck that shit.

[odeon]

You can kiss *my* arse, though. 

[Phlexor]

I thought you'd never ask.

[odeon]

Hell, I always knew there was an advantage to being a replacement despot.

[RageBeoulve]

This place is fucking rocket sauce. Don't change it.

[Leto729]

I'd love it to be more about advocacy in the real world. As a whole, the autistic community (at least this corner of it) seems to have gotten a lot of the drama out of their systems, fighting with each other. But the fucked-up stuff that drove people here in the first place is still in full force.

People are still scared to ask for the reasonable accommodations that in most places are their legal right.

It's still hard to get a diagnosis in adulthood, despite skyrocketing diagnostic rates in children.

Even when there are plenty of services for children, people are still hitting legal majority and being dumped out in the cold.

There's been some of it already, with parents sharing stories of trying to get help for their kids and deal with various conflicts that have come up with their schools. But I think there's the potential for a lot more. Where is the energy going, that had been caught up in the conflict of forum drama? It doesn't just disappear. Are people focusing more on their IRL lives? Have they given up on being able to change anything?

Might the cats become easier to entice, if we quit trying to herd them and they get sick of hissing and spitting at each other?

This is what My Partners in Policymaking is teaching Me to do in the end.

[punkdrew]

The thing I love about 1² is that I never feel the need to censor myself, as one almost automatically does on social sites like MySpace and Facebook. I don't need to concern myself with being PC or whether posting nude pics of pretty women will upset anyone. "If you don't want to look, then don't look, and don't whinge about it either" is one of the few rules here. Also, I like the idea that I can challenge other people's statements and have some honest (and sometimes expletive-laden) debate.

Even if I could think of something that IMO needed to be changed, I wouldn't suggest. We NEED to encourage people to say what they think, not discourage it. More debate, not less.

[odeon]

 

I completely agree. I don't want moderated support fora and I don't want a situation where people have to think before posting out of fear that it's not PC.

[Icequeen]

I'm a strange, pick-up driving, geeky, divorcee with a slightly crazy ex-husband that runs his own bar, I'm surrounded by "normal?", mini-van owning, happily married, annoyingly social, football moms whose reality checks have bounced.

If I pinch my hand in the door of the truck and mutter "fuck" they look at me like the sky is falling.
If I start talking to myself in the backyard, someone's peering over the fence to evaluate my mental health.
If I zone out looking at Christmas lights they whisper about my supposed past or present "drug" usage.

I can run somedays, but I can't hide, except maybe here. 

[odeon]

We'll hide you.