A community without shame has no future

I know that it is always the case that you go through a stage in your life where you think that The Man is trying to keep you down. There have been wonderful works of art produced and profound ideas resulting from this implied tyranny over ideas. We would have not had William Blake's poetic rebellion, complete with drawings for those who could only look at pictures and not understand the words, had he not felt the religion of his day was oppressing him. We would have missed Albrecht Durer's art had he not felt that the standard paintings of his day were styled in a way that confused the whole idea of how depth perception should be used.

None of these folks who advanced our culture felt the need to tell us exactly into what sort of linen they chose to spill their glee juice. They were human with human needs and desires, but things such as this were considered off limits for public discussion. For a good reason.

So E2 is a place that can hold as much data as can be produced by as many monkeys with typewriters can pump out in as many days as they are alive. My house could hold bags full of human waste, fingernail clippings, urine, feces, menstrual blood, boogers, spit, and splooge for all of my family's life, I suppose. (If we cleaned out the attic.) And somehow I am to understand that collecting all of this and storing it for the next family that lives here would somehow help them to understand us and who we really were, on some higher level? I suspect that they would not only think we were absolutely insane, but that the real estate agent might have a hard time closing the deal.

I am not sure about whether E2 is actually a community or not, even though there are some wonderful thoughts along those lines scattered about in the data base. This has been covered before, again and again. "Earn Your Bullshit" used to be one of my favorite places to refer folks for dem bones' attitude about all of this. I think the point is this:

Folks who have found a home here have either regretted giving out TMI and had it removed, or they learned early on that there was no need for telling it all. So the long-time users live in a house which happily invites anyone in to share their stories and wisdom and humor and specialized knowledge. And some of those folks who will not actually take up residence in the house will spill grape juice (or worse) on the carpet and expect others to not only clean it up, but to actually thank them for doing so?

I'm sorry, but this makes no sense to me.

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If you took exception to the word shame in the title, or otherwise misunderstood what I was trying to say here, I wish you'd look at ymelup's w/u down there. These are the sorts of new noders whom you might just have run off with this sort of nonsense, had they not been stronger. Now, that would be a shame.

So, I believe that shame is a good thing when felt over truly immoral actions -- murder, theft, breaking one's promises (such as monogamy, if such a promise has been made). It's separate but equal in power to guilt as a deterrent of repeating those actions, and may serve as a warning to others. However, the TMI phenomenon has nothing to do with shame; the people giving out too much information on E2 usually haven't done anything they are or should be ashamed of.

I myself think there are a lot of really stupid social "rules" that people live by. One of these is not talking about our sexuality. How many times have you ever heard someone in real life say "I masturbate!"? I have never. Why is it bad? Well, because other people don't want to hear it because they believe it is socially unacceptable to discuss. Fine, they can feel that way, and I will respect their desire not to hear it.

In the case of the node in question, a topic was brought up and a discussion ensued. The biggest issue I see with this is that it's probably a GTKYN. But as for the content, well, I'm afraid I don't see the problem. No one was forced to read it. It was an honest discussion by several people, which I also thought was quite funny. I am not ashamed, and I see no reason to be ashamed of being honest.

I personally think we are all a lot better off being open about our sexuality. I realize that some people are not comfortable with this, which is why I would never force someone to listen and instead I would only discuss it with others who are comfortable with it. Now, all I can say is that if you go to a node called Where do I come when I masturbate?, well, what do you think it's going to say? If you encountered someone on the street discussing this, you'd walk away. You can do the same thing on E2.

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not ashamed of any writeup that I've done here. If someone is ashamed for me, that is their right. If the editors are ashamed of my writeups, they'll get nuked. Thus is life. But I don't believe there is such a thing as too much information. There is information that is not pleasant, indeed. There is information that some may not want to hear as well. But that is life too.

Anyone wonder why this discussion never takes place over nodes about women nearly drowning while masturbating?

Go ahead, vote it down, you know you want to.

If you read dannye's original w/u, he's clearly talking about the former. My understanding of what he is saying is not that he cares about people discussing masturbation on E2. Rather (as indicated by his reference to Earn Your Bullshit), he is talking about the general lack of care for the quality of the information being stored in E2. There seems to be some E2 users who think their every thought and experience is worth noding; with no regard to quality and no concept of noding for the ages. What I believe dannye is saying is: Have these people no shame? Don't they care about having these crappy nodes to their name? Don't they worry about their reputation as quality noders?

The issue of shame in the sense of disgust from discussing indecency is not what I think dannye was talking about. Look at some of his nodes ... things like Everybody loves sluts.

I wholeheartedly agree with dannye's sentiments with regards to the first sense of shame. I also feel that some level of the second sense of shame is important to E2; and that many people will, later on, delete the nodes that they think are so cool now. Experience brings with it humility, and I hope that soon, some of the two cents' worth noders will realize that not every word they type is worth preserving.