My Green Gather Pasture or Gather’s Hemingway Wannabes

I like to explore the site and see the sights fairly regularly. Usually, I keep my doors locked and windows rolled up, slowing down enough to silently capture the essence of what is happening among those who are sharing this piece of cyberspace called Gather. Never having been one to pay too much attention to groups because they were not implemented in a way I thought was useful, I just throw my posts in a few generic groups, unless they’re political or religious, bearing an appropriate placement elsewhere as well.

One group that I  have noticed more, only because the members and editors get so ticked off when people inadvertently or purposely, perhaps to annoy, place inappropriate posts within, is the Gather Writing Essentials Group. If you watch Gather’s People Page, you’ll often come across the most scathing epithets when some uppity Gather Essential Writing Editor has noticed an inappropriate post that has been submitted to one of the group’s sub-groups for which he or she is charged. You’d think someone had spilled red wine on a $500 white dinner dress, indelibly staining it and ruining her whole evening.

There are only a couple of editors who are/were so gauche, and I’m sure you can guess easily enough, so no names will be required. It’s fun to watch for a while as the poor culprit usually writes another post expressing his or her distress at being so flagrantly abused, and threatens to leave the site as his or her friends flock swiftly to attend to a funeral where the buried alive is the host or hostess. They’re also usually visited by the editors themselves and the horde of followers of the editors who are most usually not even members of the group, but feel the need to come by and hammer the last nails into the coffin, usually pointing out grammar and spelling errors in the guilty party’s self-written epitaph. Since these editor followers aren’t writers themselves, most of the grammar and spelling errors are reflected in their own comments, but that’s just side-show entertainment for those of us who are partial to comedic irony.

The couple of editors to whom I refer were peeing in their pants with excitement last summer when Gather chose them to be Writing Essential Editors. I almost bought stock in Kimberly-Clark, predicting an exponential surge in Depend sales.  They even wrote articles that they were to be engaged in the same enterprise, like two schoolgirls who had just been chosen for the Dallas Cowboy cheerleading squad.

Actually, I was rather happy for them knowing they would have some purpose for being here other than to constantly complain that the site is for writers, having given up all hope for some published work they might be hawking after nearly three years here. Some writers just aren’t as prolific as others, I guess. I also knew it would provide some further amusement, sooner or later, for my entertaining drives through the site. Over the last few days, there has been quite the commotion within the Writing Essentials Group. Apparently, a most pertinent question was ignored completely by a certain Gather CEO, and there is conflict and dissension abounding, leaving us with some of the juiciest tales they’ve ever told. Some lesser Hemingway was chosen to be an editor and jealousy and envy abounds.  You’ve got to love the drama among the writers. It’s really some of their best writing and the closest they’ll get to Hemingway, so maybe it’s all for the best.