OOM – I’m in a really strange place here because, for once, I disagree with you. I think you’re going in too hard on SelichosGenendel and are effectively doing to her what you accuse her of doing to shopping. At no point did she intimate that she felt it would be better if shopping left (your diyukim are another matter entirely), simply that she felt that shopping was often posting for the sake of putting something ‘out there’ and that this was occurring on a far-too-frequent basis. Yes, her wording may not have been the best but from reading her post (and I’ve done that 4 or 5 times now) it does appear as if she was trying her best to put forward constructive criticism in what she thought was the nicest possible way. And I think the whole ‘most people in the CR’ thing has been blown out of all proportion too. It has been interpreted as ‘most people wanted shopping to leave’, which isn’t true and wasn’t the claim. The claim was that most people here thought that maybe shopping would want to cut back a little on her frequency of posting and also on her obsession with SUC, a claim which may have some merit (though in absence of a poll I have no idea if it is or isn’t correct).
As far as shopping’s response, I have to agree with ubiquitin and SelichosGenendel. It may sometimes hurt to be told that what you’re doing is incorrect or harmful but those telling you are not being ‘mean’ or ‘nasty’, and not all of your feelings need ‘validating’. Sometimes you’re wrong. This modern obsession with not being able to criticise because ‘you’re going to hurt their feelings’ is counter-productive – if you cannot tell someone that their behaviour is inappropriate for fear of being called ‘nasty’ then the person will never improve. To use emotional blackmail like shopping did, whilst it is a classic teenager’s response, simply exacerbates the situation as both sides then dig themselves into a corner. The party in the wrong views themselves as being more and more victimised and the party who is trying to help becomes more and more frustrated and what started as a rational criticism becomes an emotional ‘telling off’. It becomes a vicious cycle.
bladiblah – There was no cyber-bullying going on here, not sure why you brought it in.