What I continue to find amusing about the term "Talifan" is the rush to identify with the term by those who know they're already guilty of the associated traits.
This umbrage is akin to someone walking walking down a crowded street and calling out "Any morons?" and someone actually answering "How dare you, sir!"
Simply by expressing themselves, they invalidate themselves. They look to others to help validate their message.
People that can't distinguish between personal attacks and analysis, between stalking and criticism, between opinion and dogma, between discussion and confrontation, between debate and bickering, and between lobbying and abuse - those are Talifans.
Even worse, the mobius logic that anyone who doesn't agree with the fringe concerns of these few is "on the other side". If you're not with them, you're against them, as the saying goes. I remember one of them (actually, oddly all of them, as if they share the same word-of-the-day calendar) used the word "sycophant" to describe anyone that would err on the side of the rights of the author not to be personally attacked. Obviously the point there is that these small groups are little other than sycophantic support groups. When one of them chirps, they all chirp the same song. It's a social club built around abuse, and I daresay if they didn't have someone to abuse, they'd find the uncomfortable silence to be unbearable and promptly disband.
They must know that no one will ever take them seriously. Not because of what they say, but because of how they say it.
And if the greater majority, on both sides of the author/fan coin, takes an issue with the existence of this tiny social phenomenon, then that means perhaps their time has come and gone, and the experiment was misguided to begin with.
Sorry to hijack these comments. It's just mildly irksome to those of us that actually have and use social skills to see others squander them, or worse, appear to have never developed them.
Dark Moose out
Posted by: The Dark Moose | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 05:32 AM
As an illustration of this point, see this exchange between one Darth Talas, known on other boards as a "Mr. Poe", and myself, a site moderator having had to ask him several times to stop making personal attacks on authors.
You can see the evasive tactics when confronted by their own behavior, and the sudden direction taken when cornered:
http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... 4&tstart=0
It's laughable, but sadly, it's also real. Nothing has been edited.
Dark Moose out
Posted by: The Dark Moose | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 05:55 AM
Note: Or I should say, nothing edited except for spelling and grammar mistakes on my part at the time of posting. Nothing was edited at all in the posts of the person in question. To be fair...
Dark Moose out
Posted by: The Dark Moose | Friday, June 02, 2006 at 06:00 AM
And I should also mention that I'm going to back out of this entry because it appears we've attracted the very elements we're discussing, and I won't be party to, or even associated with, a puerile flame war. I guarantee you, however, they would like nothing else but to engage on that level - it's all they understand.
It's exactly that element that is counterproductive to the message - these folks are ostracized because of their inability to maintain civility and respect.
So I'd best be proactive and take off. Thanks for allowing me to share my rants. Interesting topic.
Dark Moose out
Posted by: The Dark Moose | Friday, June 02,
KT is accusing people of "stalking and abuse". "Stalking"? "Abuse"? 