There is something that is specific to online interactions that I find fascinating. I call it the online flounce, and it’s when someone in a community announces loudly and at length that they will leave if blah, blah, blah doesn’t happen in the group/community.
Yes, in real life, there are people who will take offense at anything and threaten to leave/never talk to you again/etc. But in general, they don’t do it because they just want you to dance to your tune. Which, strangely, is what people online want as well. They want you (general you) to change your behavior or they WILL FLOUNCE OUT IN A HUFF.
This is as old as LiveJournal. It’s continued on through MySpace, Facebook, The Social Media Platform Formerly Known As Twitter, and probably Bluesky. I’m on it, but I’m not on it, if you get my drift.
For whatever reason, there is a certain type of personality that thinks they need to dramatically announce that a website is SO DISAPPOINTING TO THEM AND IF IT DOESN’T SHAPE UP, THEY’RE LEAVING.
Even on Ask A Manager, which is a blog about work life, there are people who do this! They have to say how disappointed they are in the commentors (usually. Rarely mad at the website itself) and how blah-di-blah-blah.
I’m not indignant about not liking that a website is moving in a certain direction. I get that. But loudly announcing that if it doesn’t stop, then you’re leaving, well, I mean, who cares? Nobody gives a shit if one person leaves a website.
Again, I’m not saying someone shouldn’t make their displeasure known. I think it’s good and healthy to talk about in which direction a website is going. But threatening to leave if things don’t go your way? Yeah, I ain’t got time for that. What I say, internally, to that is, “Cool. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.” And that’s if it’s someone I like in general.
Which is not usually the case. If it’s someone I don’t like, then it’s more, “Hell yes! BYE.” Sadly, those people rarely leaved. They just threatened to do so because it gets them attention. Yeah, I said it. They are egotistical people who need to be petted and cooed over. They want to feel important, which I understand, but they look for it in unhealthy ways. It really doesn’t matter if you go to a website or not. I mean, it matters to you and it matters if enough people stop going to that website, but one person doesn’t matter at all.
Side note: This is the same with environmental conservation and how the corpos managed to maake it about individuals rather t han companies, but tah is a vastly different post.
I’m fascinated by the flounce, though, because I am a student of people and psychology. I find the intersection of the two endlessly fascinating because while people are a rich tapestry, their motivations aren’t. There’s a trope in writing that there are six plots. It’s pretty much the same with people in general. What motivates people? Fear, love, anger, jealously, ambition, to name a few. Oh, love, I guess, but that’s wrapped up in other stuff. If you can keep in mind the basic reasons why people do things, you can usually map other motivations onto the basic reasons why people do things.
One ways I wind down is to hit the ‘random post’ button on AAM. Or read the original post of a repost. She is on vacation right now, so there have been a bunch of reposts. I can’t remmeber which post it was on, but there was a debate over different words and whether they were offensive or not. These were not any of the biggies. They were lesser-known, and there were a few people adamant that one of the words was not offensive.
That person got heated up and said that if the website was going to go in that direction (more ‘woke’, I guess), then they were out. They went on at length about it, and it’s like, ‘Stop talking about the flounce and just…flounce.”
I understand they wanted to explain why they were leaving, but again, no one cares. No one commenter is going to change a website. Not to say that commenters don’t make an impact. They do. There are some I like better than others, obviously, but it’s not as if there will be a permanent hole in my heart if one leaves.
It’s a ‘how will people know I’m gone if I don’t announce it in advance that I’m leaving’? Most people won’t care. And that’s what they can’t stand. They want to believe that they make a diffirence when they don’t. That’s the dichotomy and the duality of being online. You both matter and you don’t. There can’t be a community without people, but no one person matters. I guess that’s the human condition in general. Everyone matters and no one matters. If I died permanently, maybe a dozen people would actually care. Yes, those are real people, but life will go on.
I can understand wanting to feel like you make a difference. When I first joined the RKG Discord, I had a few people tell me how glad they were to see me. Conversely, I’ve had people in the chat for RKG public videos not happy with me talking. I was stoked about the former, but I was also amused by the latter. In part because it wasn’t as if I was talking all that much, but it’s because one, I have a very distinct name. Two, I’m not a dude. And three, I’m Asian. These three things meant that i stood out in the sea of white boys. For both positive and negative reasons. I just laughed at the guy who wanted me to STFU. He can block me if he wants! But he can’t make me shut up.
I will say that Gav calls me out most streams, but it’s because I have a distinct name, I think. And because I’m funny as fuck, yo. And because by this point, I’m a known quantity. I show up to a lot of the producer streams and I’m not shy about commenting. It’s the familiarity factor. Now that he knows who I am, it’s easy for my name to catch his eye.
But. If I disappeared, after a few motnhs, it would be as if I were never there. Becasue that’s the way online communities work! And that is more than fine with me.