STFU!

There are some worlds that none of us will ever be part of. Communities that rise, fall, divide, reunite and never enter our lives. The internet has made this more possible. However it has always been going on. I find it petty a lot of the time, but interesting too.
Before the internet
- Mothers getting insanely worked up over whose daughter got to play the lead in the kindergarten play
- Vicious political infighting in the elections for the local golf club
- Dangerously obsessive behaviour by young girls trying to be the lead cheerleader/netball player/dancer in the school production.These sorts of things mean everything to the people involved. It consumes their thoughts, drives their decisions, and guides their measurement of success. Conflicts in small communities can really hurt people. It happens in schools, churches, business, politics, community groups... it happens where people are.

Recipe for community conflict
- People
- Differing motivations
- Pride
- Self righteousness (a massive one)
- Small stakes

It seems like the less there is at stake, the more people will fight like hell for victory. I'm not sure why. Self righteousness is the one I think that really hurts people. The judgment, the superiority, the moral high ground - usually completely unjustified, of course.

The internet has opened community conflicts to even more people.
- flame wars on forums
- splitting of fan sites and fan forums over disagreements on moderating
- the creation of entire communities of people with limited social skills, who are suddenly put into a position requiring wisdom, intelligence and the ability to calm.
- they also result in images like this one, which makes sense to someone, somewhere around the world.
Anecdote
I remember my cousin was involved in running a pretty large anime festival in Victoria for a while. He's a friendly, social guy who gets on well with anyone. He's been involved in sports teams and musical groups since he was young. Basically - he was normal. Unfortunately, many anime fans (in Australia) tend to come from a specific social group. A group that did not develop social skills as well as others, due to their isolation from their peers. When that group reached uni age and wanted to get involved with anime and running events, things got bad. 18- and 19-year-olds should have learned conflict resolution and how to keep their emotions under control. In this case, that didn't happen. My cousin ended up leaving the festival organising committee after a couple of years of hard, hard work.

Anyway, I find it interesting that so much of people's lives are caught up in tiny conflicts that may or may not have any real significance. In the case of internet conflicts, they definitely have no significance. I used to read the forums at Fametracker all the time. The articles posted on the main site were hilarious, and the forums were interesting discussions of movies, music, and mostly, fame. Then the moderators got too busy to police their own draconian forum rules, started banning people for asking questions (even if the question hadn't been asked somewhere else etc) and created a massive feeling of ill will. Eventually the forums were shut down. Without them, the site lost a lot of visitors and also went into hiatus. It was sad.

Anyone else been involved with "terribly-unimportant-yet-we-argued-like-the-fate-of-the-world-depended-on-it" style community conflicts?