A "contributor" to a Current Events board wrote to a newbie:
Quote: "Please feel free to join in here. It really is fun, if you don't take yourself too seriously."
The statement was topped off by a cutesy wink.
Those who come to message boards for cheap thrills can be trusted to slip up and betray her real intentions, though they protest deep conviction and concern about pressing issues. That facade they put becomes too, too heavy a mantle to bear at some point. They fumble and drop it. The veneer then breaks and we get a glimpse into the mind and emotions of the morally squalid and emotionally truncated.
I am not singling out the person who wrote the above for being raked over the coals. Au contraire. My purpose here is to bring the reader's attention to a phenomenon.
It has been said to me a number of times by "contributors" to CE and political issues boards that I "take myself too seriously". I fluffed the accusation off, knowing that I laugh quite heartily at myself. I took it as a ploy to get me to laugh at myself thinking they were laughing with me, when in fact they would be laughing at me. So, I ignored their "friendly" suggestion.
But then the above quote was written and I realized that the case is that they come to CE and political issues boards only for "fun" and "laughs".
It is the issues that they take lightheartedly and light-headedly, not themselves. Not one of them ever laughs at himself or herself. No, only others are fair game and the butt of jokes to them.
People with a genuinely good and mature sense of humor laugh first and foremost at themselves; they never do
I realized in a flash that these are the very same people who are those who take a position in favor of Arab terrorism. I always knew that they were assuming an obnoxious position in order to get people who are genuinely concerned and passionate about matters that concern all Human beings incensed so that they could have a good laugh at someone who lost their temper. But now I realize that the only people who can take the positions that they take are people who are among those to whom Jimi Hendrix was referring when he sang: "there are many here among us who think that life is but a joke".
The matters discussed on CE and political issues boards are not jokes. They are matters of life and death and Human welfare. Anyone who comes to such boards for fun is perverted.
Certainly, we may enjoy the mental and emotional stimulation of sharing opinions, having our opinions challenged and amending them. But this is not "fun". It's not a cheap thrill.
Certainly, there is no reason for brooding solemnity all the time on a CE board or political forum. There is most definitely room, even a need, for tasteful humor that lightens the atmosphere and helps us to cope with the very difficult. But a general atmosphere of respectful decorum is in order – both for the contributors and for the issues being dealt with.
It took me a long time to realize that so many who people CE boards and political issues fora are there for nothing other than kicks (I mean this in every sense of the word). It is so far from my mind to conceive of things that way that I could simply not understand for the longest time.
But there you have it, in so many words. While a war is raging that could engulf other nations, the contributor who wrote the quote above is having fun and not taking it seriously and that person is hardly alone. Of course, s/he can't say that. So, s/he says that s/he is not taking herself seriously. Oh, no? When did s/he ever have a good-natured belly laugh at his/her own expense or allow anyone else to?
No, it is life itself that is a joke to those who take the side of terrorists. To them it is only a fun "bang bang shoot 'em up" show.
I am indebted to the person who wrote the quote above. I needed to have it presented to me in very blunt terms. I would not have understood it for myself had it not been pushed so indecorously in my face- thank God.
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat (Safed),
