Machinery drives the cogs of Ufiedom...
*WHIRRRR* *CLACK CLACK CLACK* *WHIRRRRRRR*
Yohimbe: Kickstart!
*WHOOSH*
Kickstart: What is it, Yo?
Yohimbe: The UserFriendly board is out of balance!
Kickstart: Balance?
Yohimbe: Yes! As we all know, the UserFriendly community exists only as a delicate balance between two extremes: religious and sociopolitical debates that threaten to tear it apart, and hippy-esque lovefests to bring it back together! Recently, we've had an excess of the fighting... but not enough love!
Kickstart: I see. *Shrug* Get Ravenlock to do it. He loves that crap.
A button is pressed, and somewhere, Ravenlock sits down at the keyboard...
--------------------
So I was thinking today while we were talking about job searches and health insurance and personal history and such, and it occurred to me that as of this summer I've been an active UFie for 2 years.
Now, 2 years isn't necessarily a terribly long time, but what surprised me is just how much, in those two years, this community has become an expected part of my day to day life. It's rare to find a day when I don't post something here, and rarer still to find one I don't at least go back and read the board I missed later. When I have an idea, I typically want to share it with you guys. When I want to celebrate something, I post about that here too; and when something really sucks, no group commisserates like UFies.
It's strange - it isn't that I don't have offline friends, far from it; many of us are very social people off the computer as well as on. But somehow, this board doesn't feel like an "online" community; at least, not like any other I've seen. I feel like I know you guys - many of you, anyhow - and I come back not just out of the boredom that would normally send me to a message board, but to see what specific people had to say, follow their stories, listen to their opinions.
When I started 2 years ago, I showed up because I was doing a summer internship with a lot of down time, and somebody had pointed me in the direction of the strip, so I started reading it and eventually got to the message board. With so much time on my hands at work, I started posting - really, just for the heck of it. I still do quite a bit of posting in the downtime at work, at least until an employer hires me who minds my doing so. ;) But I know now that if I couldn't do it during the day, I'd come back at night, or read over the weekend, or something. I wouldn't want to leave.
In the 2 years since, I've learned a lot from you guys. I've sharpened my debate skills (thanks Naruki & friends - pains in the arse :-p), and I've picked up odds and ends of computing knowledge, historical knowledge, cross-cultural knowledge; heck, culinary knowledge, on occasion. ;-) Most significantly, I've had the realization reinforced that both bigotry and tolerance exist everywhere, in different degrees - they can be no more assigned to a group than can any other non-physical trait. I have many of you to thank for that, and I do.
Good people, truly, are where you find them. Many are here.
Thanks for a good 2 years, guys. Here's to many more to come.
----------------------
Kickstart: Well, crap, he probably pushed it too far.
Yohimbe: Abortion debate tomorrow?
Kickstart: See what DR does first. If nothing, then yes.
*WHIRRRRRR* *CLACK CLACK* *WHIRRRRRRR* |
