a funny thing happened on the way to my LJ...
And I am going to say here what I was too chicken to say on the English majors community, which I actually had to leave because people are such assholes. And I wasn't about to call anyone an asshole on their own community, since that is disrespectful and that space belongs to them, but this journal is mine and here I say that the English majors community is full of mean, pretentious jerks who are full of themselves and use their community to make other people feel stupid and themselves feel smarter.
I have a degree in English from Vassar. I don't care what people say, a degree in English from Vassar is an accomplishment. I don't like to brag about it. But I worked hard to get that degree and I think after four years studying English, I have the right to have opinions about how the English language is treated and I had every right to join a community devoted to discussions about English.
English is not a weapon. It is not owned by some and not by others. A language belongs to all those who speak it, not just to those who think they speak it well or those with advanced degrees in it. It is wrong to claim that you have the definitive way to interpret anything. English and things written in it are subjective. They come from one person's own mind and own reactions to the world.
Anything that comes to a person is worthy of being written down. If someone is inspired to write, they should do so. It is therapeutic, it is fun, and it teaches you about yourself and the world. And writing is meant to be shared. If you try and tell someone that what they write is too political, not academic enough, or not interesting, you are insulting part of that person. It is not constructive to insult what someone's soul has just put on the page. It is only constructive to say that you don't understand what style it is in or that you don't know yet whether it has clear transitions. It is not okay to say that writing should not express volatile, alive, human opinions. And I didn't stand by and let that happen because I believe that is using English to abuse someone and to take away their right as a person to have their own opinions.
Am I just an idiot? Was I really an impostor at Vassar? I was just coming around to thinking that maybe I had belonged there and that maybe I was smart. I'm getting good grades in my program now. Does that mean anything? I gave up my school library media concentration in pursuit of academic librarianship because I really thought I might be smart enough to handle it.
But these people in this community wouldn't let anything go. They resented it when I referred to them as the English police, but they lived up to their name so beautifully. If I wasn't calling them that before, that is definitely what I would call them now. There is no excuse for brutally beating up someone's writing, when you could just as easily give a gentle breakdown of what could be changed. I learned from M, for God's sake, M the founding editor of the Village Voice literary supplement. Certainly she knows how to edit without being an asshole. And it has worked for her. She edits her own journal now and there isn't anything wrong with it.
And one of the things I have become interested in doing research on is what happens in online learning communities. How has the internet changed the way people communicate with one another? How is information exchanged? To me, it seems that online communities have created a false sense of power for people who have a little bit of knowledge. Online communities have created bullies, who are small people, but can hide behind these user names and anonymous identities and icons and pretend to be big. You can be anyone you want on the internet and it seems that a lot of people aspire to be angry, bitter, judgmental, and defensive people.
I used to wonder how someone could become so attached to people they only know through a site like LJ, but I am starting to become fascinated by the idea that the internet is this bizarre, twisted microcosm of the world, where the balance of power is all messed up and people are still getting hurt as much as they do in reality, in the concrete world. Online communication has brought about so many human tendencies that we have never seen before.
We have people like compulsive away message checkers - what were those people before there was AIM? What was the symptom they exhibited when there were no away messages?
We have people whose usernames are almost indecipherable due to all the decorative symbols. There is a phenomenon where you can have an AIM conversation with one person and simultaneously get someone else's private feedback on what's going on. You can't do that in real conversation. It has added another whole dimension to communication. It's unreal what is happening.
And all this because I thought I was smart enough to talk about English.