Aug 31 2006
One Big Happy Family
Twenty years ago I was sent to a training for managers. There is little left of that five day event but a vague idea how sociopaths and misanthropists can function relatively well in a management by directive environment.
There was one rule however that I never forgot and I still try to live by that rule;
“It is better to have a manager who makes bad decisions than a manager who makes no decisions at all.”
I am at a point where my position as the website’s administrator demands a decision to be made on The Hidden Archives, my least successful AmeaNet site.
It is all my responsibility. I made the same mistake I made in 1996 when I started a discussion board for Dutch literature; I tend to alienate people with my responses to their posts. I remember one occasion in particular where I explained to a female poet that poetry is more than the shortest line width in MS Word. She was obviously hurt by that remark and announced her suicide in her reply to my comment. Well, I know poets are most sensitive beings but I really was not prepared for a remark like that. So from that day on I referred to my interventions on discussion boards as ‘clubbing baby seals’.
I have clubbed a lot of baby seals in The Hidden Archives over the last two years.
As a man who has a background in publishing magazines I believe in concepts and erotic art was supposed to be the main dish at the Hidden Archives. When people started posting pictures that had little to do with erotic art, I would flame them instead of just removing their posts, thinking that others could learn from that thread. Now, that was arrogant to say the least and soon I became a very unpopular admin for a crowd that was hungry for entertainment.
Then of course there were all these differences in culture between Americans, French, Russians and all the other nationalities. It does not matter how many nationalities you have on a board, the Americans will always take over, even if they are in the minority. As a habit they speak only one language and they tend to put little effort into trying to understand people from other countries. So, before you know it; you end up with Americans only and usually they go for quantity more than quality. I know I am generalizing here – some of the best posters were Americans too.
My discussion board soon degraded to the Mc Donalds of erotic art. I could have left it at that, thinking that the site was at least covering costs, but I couldn’t. Instead I started a one man’s guerrilla against a mob that had really no idea what I was talking about. Well, they knew that I was not a Patriot and they kept telling me that, but how can I be a patriot of a country I do not live in?
There was a fight every other day. Some objected to depictions of nuns and monks in erotic art because of their religious beliefs, others objected to sexual role patterns in 18th Century illustrations because of feminist points of view. The list of things they objected to was endless. The only thing they did not object to was crappy art. At least, so it seemed to me.
In the end I gave up on them and simply left them to themselves. I saw most other nationalities leave and the site started crumbling under the tremendous weight of entertaining pseudo-art.
The site is almost dead now, it needs a coup de grace, if you ask me, but I have a hard time making that decision. Every one I turn to for advice, tells me to leave the site as it is. Even my son of 21, who is an artist and a web designer, tells me to keep the site up. He is amongst the very few people I take seriously in matters like these.
So, I am heading for one last desperate attempt to bring the board back to its original concept..