The Rules: Official Discussion & Debate

I saw some beautiful woman's feet in a magazine an hour ago and made me happy, but not aroused so, yes.

  On 5/15/2013 at 6:49 PM, SR4 said:

about the foot fetish/brain wiring thing..been reading a few articles about it

 

 

anywhere between 20 to 40 percent of males are said to have this fetish, with some analyses claiming up to 70 percent. It is the second most common fetish behind breasts. And levels of the fetishism can range from simple enjoyment of the form of the foot to inability to be sexually aroused without some involvement of feet or foot-related materials.

 

 

Interesting stuff.

I never understood the foot appeal personally. I get distracted all too often by butts in public though.

  On 5/13/2013 at 9:14 PM, Joyrex said:

give me your "want list" for lack of a better term in a bulleted list, and let's see if we can't come to some general agreement about the way things should go - I'm open to suggestions, so let's hear them - that goes for anyone else wanting to put their say in.

well, i haven't read all the other suggestions either, so someone might already have suggested the same idea. i'm not too much of a forum guy but in the few i went i noticed that genban is most of the times a bit in the shadows of those forums, what i mean is, genban is not so evidenced as in watmm. it's usually on the bottom of the page almost unnoticeable, while the rest of the stuff is banner like billboard. so, maybe it's a good idea to re-construct the forum main page, giving the artists and music making the prior place while genban could be on the bottom of the page. further, a random check on topic titles would be running everyday by mods in order to make genban's front page decent and nice to look at (disguising such titles), even if inside those threads we're talking about feet, god or racism...

keep up the good work dude!

  On 5/13/2013 at 9:14 PM, Joyrex said:

 

 

Well, let's cut to the chase - we can debate one another to the end of time about the merits of our arguments, but let's condense things down like I did prior - give me your "want list" for lack of a better term in a bulleted list, and let's see if we can't come to some general agreement about the way things should go - I'm open to suggestions, so let's hear them - that goes for anyone else wanting to put their say in.

 

It's been a while since entering this thread, my last post was some last point, but as a courtesy here is a reply anyways.

About that want-list, well, the irony is that I've sort of bulleted my single "want" a couple of times already in this thread.

(there's a bullet here ->) My idea is, or rather was (will come back to this later) to democratize watmm. You don't need to carry all the responsibilities entirely, and the community (including you) can continue to build this place and weed out crap whenever needed.

The other irony is, the amount of responses your call for "want lists" is not a whole lot. I know this thread is already counting 12 pages, so it's not that black/white. And the other thing is, I know quite a number of people who feel jaded from all the past experiences of similar discussions not being fruitful in any way and just stopped putting in effort.

The point I want to make, is that I have come to realise in the past week this democratic-watmm will only work if a significant part of the community can get past "just not liking things" (in order to make a decision, you have to like at least one of the options, or propose one you like) and get involved in matters even if they don't really feel like it (you also have to be able to carry responsibilities on the things you're not really interested in).

Seeing past events, I'm a lot less certain this is going to work. Most importantly, the community of regulars is just too small to have people only taking part whenever they feel like it. Part of this is that jadedness, of course. And this would improve if people saw it would actually work. But in the end it would still need an amount of motivation from a relatively small group of people that I'm afraid is just not there.

Currently, this is just a collection of personal feelings/observations. But if people are still interested (which I'm doubting) to test the validity of a democratic watmm, an idea could be to make a decisions subforum. So, whenever anyone feels some decision needs to be made, it should be discussed there. The process would be transparant for all members of the community, at any time and everyone is able to have their voice in it. I don't think polling would be the best way to make the final decisions at this point, so to test the waters, I would be happy if Joyrex or a small group of regulars have a final saying. Transparency is key, imo.

This experiment would be a success if people are involved and more or less happy with the decision-making. Failure, if it turns out to be a tumbleweed ridden nothingness. But even if it is a failure, in the end we could rightfully say "been there. done that. it just didn't work.".

If taken seriously, there are still a number of details to be worked out. For instance, how would it work if a certain decision needed to be taken in a short amount of time? And what about trolling? But before it pays to think issues like these through, there need to be more people on board. If not, it would be just as useful to spending time praying in a church.

Also, to people thinking I'm actually intended to build a site on my own, think again. Although I do think there are currently plenty opportunities (mu-forum dead, xlt close to dead, and this place metaphorically being run like some despotic state), I'm not in the business of spending my free time on individually maintaining a message board like another despot but only a teeny weeny bit different. There are two things needed for a democracy to work, leadership and people. It goes both ways. A perfect leader could inspire the otherwise unwilling people, and the perfect people can influence an otherwise unwilling leader. The only and entire idea was/is to share responsibility.

As has been pointed out by Joyrex on many occasions, but to phrase it in societal terms, watmm is an absolute monarchy. Sure he's a pretty benign leader in the sense that he can't rule over any other aspect of our lives beyond the conversations we have here. But whilst we post here, it is with the conscious acknowledgement that we are in his domain, and that isn't going to change godel.

I talked about democracy and other such things many years ago. But all of that overlooks the fact that Joy owns the site, has worked long and hard on it, has his own dreams and ambitions for it, and is the final arbiter of it's form, function and direction.

/end of

So enjoy having this space to chat with friends, but don't hope for it to reflect a greater romantic vision of an open nation on the web. As it's an absolute monarchy, with a police force and some minor consultation by the citizens with his majesty.

heh ...

Yeah, well apparently it's pretty hard to comprehend why I even took the time to have this discussion even though those many occasions in the past I'm also well aware off. Sometimes, things change. Maybe this wasn't that time, who knows. That end of thing is exactly the jadedness I pointed towards, btw. But I'm afraid people are just not interested at this point. Romantic, or not.

Thank you, police force. You're doing a good job keeping the monarchy a monarchy.

You're welcome, it's nice to know that you support our troops.

Also, it was good to discuss, because it underlined the point that i brought up in the minds of those that would ferment unrest or harbour pointless resentment over something that wasn't going to change. It has purged minds and allowed us to go on, clean of gate, with one less stick up our arses.

You're giving off incongruent signals, imo. So in a way you're saying this discussion was pointless to begin with, but people had to be remembered - again - how pointless it was? What's your point? It was only needed to put people back in their place? Honestly, do you deep down actually despise your job in the force and/or this place, or have you learnt to a accept being an enforcer in this non-democratic place?

There's no use in having a discussion if it doesn't involve influence from various sides of the argument. If Joyrex explicitly opens the door to discussion, influence is implied. With or without someone having a stick up his arse. This "minimal influence" asks little or no part of other peoples involvement, so why call it a community in the first place? Wasn't that the point?

Thank you, jadedness.

the arse stick thing wasn't a dig at you btw. Just thought it might be cool to use that analogy.

Plus after this whole process, joyrex did lighten up a little on the clean versus crude posting debate, didn't he. Hence my comment.

  Quote

"As it's an absolute monarchy, with a police force and some minor consultation by the citizens with his majesty."

On balance, i think we have a reasonable space for posting about random shit that we're interested in, with the occassional detour into autobiograhpical moaning and comments on the same by others.

  On 5/19/2013 at 1:20 PM, delet... said:

As has been pointed out by Joyrex on many occasions, but to phrase it in societal terms, watmm is an absolute monarchy. Sure he's a pretty benign leader in the sense that he can't rule over any other aspect of our lives beyond the conversations we have here. But whilst we post here, it is with the conscious acknowledgement that we are in his domain, and that isn't going to change godel.

 

I talked about democracy and other such things many years ago. But all of that overlooks the fact that Joy owns the site, has worked long and hard on it, has his own dreams and ambitions for it, and is the final arbiter of it's form, function and direction.

 

/end of

 

So enjoy having this space to chat with friends, but don't hope for it to reflect a greater romantic vision of an open nation on the web. As it's an absolute monarchy, with a police force and some minor consultation by the citizens with his majesty.

 

heh ...

Yeah I understood this from the day I joined, and nothing's changed since then as far as I can tell. I'm sure most other respectable forums on the WWW are no different, regardless of the administration's home country.

Besides, 14 years is an impressive longevity for WATMM, in the scope of how long the internet's been available for public use.

JR's lightened up, I think it's working. Let's try this out for awhile and we'll see what problems come up.

maybe we should stop all references to this being a community?

  On 5/19/2013 at 10:00 PM, oscillik said:

maybe we should stop all references to this being a community?

maybe it should be a singularity?

A matrix?

Woah!

  On 5/20/2013 at 7:09 AM, goDel said:

A matrix?

 

Woah!

Did you know the Japanese word for matrix is genban? Excuse me, GenBan.

We may be onto something, but I'm afraid too much knowledge about the apparatus itself will lead to deletion from the system.

* falls back into a fetal state of compliance*

*takes red pill*

how come that one part in the matrix 1 where Neo is shown to be the dealer of some kind of cyber digital drug on a minidisc is never followed up on in any way?

The Matrix sequels are both better than the original. More action and less boring talking. This is a fact.

  On 5/20/2013 at 9:58 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

how come that one part in the matrix 1 where Neo is shown to be the dealer of some kind of cyber digital drug on a minidisc is never followed up on in any way?

 

Because it was a metaphor for the rest of the story? He was just some pusher of another kind of drug. Break free from those conventional stories, John. Free your mind. Take the blue pill.

  On 5/20/2013 at 10:43 AM, goDel said:

 

  On 5/20/2013 at 9:58 AM, John Ehrlichman said:

how come that one part in the matrix 1 where Neo is shown to be the dealer of some kind of cyber digital drug on a minidisc is never followed up on in any way?

Because it was a metaphor for the rest of the story? He was just some pusher of another kind of drug. Break free from those conventional stories, John. Free your mind. Take the blue pill.

 

Ironically I take a blue pill every single day that helps me keep reality at arm's length.

Viagra? Arm's length? Like, baby arm length?

  On 5/20/2013 at 1:08 PM, goDel said:

Viagra? Arm's length? Like, baby arm length?

Yes I nicknamed my penis "Reality."