I often make mistakes. If someone points out a mistake to me, I will make a smart-ass retort, think about it, sulk for a while, and then admit my mistake. (If you bug me about it, it takes me longer to admit my error.)
Gather is called Gather because people gather here. Most of these people look like adults, but they have the attitudes of preschoolers. Real preschoolers (like my granddaughter) are cute, as long as no one tells them they are cute. If you make the mistake of telling your preschooler he or she is cute, the preschooler starts to get an arch and affected attitude, and becomes rather self-obsessed and obnoxious.
My granddaughter is still cute and likes to hang around the playground with the other preschoolers. [We try to avoid telling her she is cute, but I suspect she suspects.]
The Gather adult preschoolers like to gather at the Gather playground. Gather management tells advertisers, "We have a lot of gullible adult preschoolers here. If you run advertisements for toys and gimcracks at our playground, they will buy some." At Gather Management meetings, this is known as the Business Plan.
Are Gather adult preschoolers conscious of being cute? Do they have arch and affected attitudes? Are they self-obsessed and obnoxious? Does the Pope ...?
To attract more adult preschoolers, Gather management tosses pennies on the playground, calling them Gather Points.
The mistake I made was calling what people do at Gather blogging. I have a blog (elsewhere, and stupid it is), and this is not it. I don't want to call this Gathering as I'm not part of Gather's Business Plan. [see Nov 30 comment by Kathleen L.]
I will call the activities at Gather, GLOBBING.
I am going to run an experiment in viral marketing. Please start using the term GLOBBING to describe what people do at Gather. There will be no profit to me from this. In fact, if the project succeeds, I will not get credit for it.
This actually happened before about two decades ago. I coined a term (on an online service of the time) which later gained common usage on the Internet and someone else got credit for it, and I never made a penny from it. If a stupid idea is worth doing once, it's worth doing again.
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Comments: 12
The shortest it takes me to go through this process is about 10 minutes. The longest is about 10 years.
gullible
One entry found for gullible.
Main Entry: gull·ible
Variant(s): also gull·able /'g&-l&-b&l/
Function: adjective
: easily duped or cheated
- gull·ibil·i·ty /"g&-l&-'bi-l&-tE/ noun
- gull·ibly /'g&-l&-blE/ adverb
I am also easily duped or cheated, though in such cases, I am often quite savage about getting revenge.
In many articles ( not just yours ) Gather management seems to hold the most prestigious title of scapegoat. It is an honorary title given to them I think because those globbing and playing on the playground do not feel they should be expected to clean up the playground after playing, even if the playing caused huge piles of garbage and mess, cleaning it up is no fun. Please note -- I said I think -- so as not to say I know as this would be false, for me to know I would need to have psychic powers, some of which I might have but will lay no claim to them here :-).
I felt this was a very good random article, with many good random points, I say this because I like random ideas and thoughts expressed by random people.
I also have some history. About twenty years ago, I was involved in an online service called GEnie (under my real, not random name). I was friendly (on a virtual basis--she was in New York City and I was on the West Coast) with a woman whose intitials were LK. I wrote some satire she liked very much.
She became very upset about the management of GEnie and precipitated a hugh flame war and commotion. I did not support her the way she thought I should, and as she became (to my mind) increasingly unglued, I made fun of her.
I don't think you are like her, but there is enough comments that strike me in a similar fashion to make me nervous. You have said kind things about my writing. I do it in part for the "egoboo" (ego boost), so I am easily flattered by people who say nice things to me. But somebody likes my satire or opinions, does not mean that we will agree on everything, nor should anybody assume that we are compatible in every respect.
As it is not my intention to make you nervous I will refrain in the future at trying my hand at satirical humor and stick to the more basic replies.
I enjoyed this Random.