Tuesday, March 9, 2010

S.A.N.

So I have been reading up on this S.A.N. craze that is going about the blogsphere and I have extremely mixed feelings on this and we are going to discuss that today since I brought it up. So, for my one reader who does not follow any other blogs, apprantly there is an organization that is forming of the blogging community on the Argent Dawn servers of both the US/Oceanic and EU. It is like the plague of undeath sweeping the land of Azeroth, no one can stand up to it and everyone is becoming infected by it. If you do not believe me, google the words and see for yourself what you get.

So anyway back to the focus of my topic which is a simple question of "is this a good thing or a bad thing"? I am interested to see in a year or two from now what does this guild look like and what does the blogging community look like because of it. Let's take for example something I may have noticed while sneaking a peak around SAN, which was the making fun of one greedy green blogger for his view points. Now do not get my wrong, I am not a fanboy, so to say, of this individual; however, I was kind of disappointed in the way that individuals were putting this person down. After all, having a blog is a way for us to express how we feel about things and explain our point of views. I am not defending or approving of the persons viewpoints, but was disappointed that there would be things like this expressed in the guild chat. I mean if this is a blog for the blogging community, then this greedy green fellow would be welcomed in this particular guild (even though he is against social organizations and therefor probably not in favor of this particualr idea). On this thought line, I would not have been annoyed by this behavior if this individual were in the guild and able to defend their point of views in a rational conversation, but it is apparant that some individuals would rather berate and belittle someone who does not share their own viewpoint instead of having an adult discussion on their differing view points.

So that was my big issue with what I saw from my initial inspection of the guild. Now there was plenty of talk and friendly chatter going on in the guild and people seemed genuine enough from what I could gather. The guild is bristling full of people and everyone seemed ready to help. So there is definitely some positive aspects of the guild. I am afraid though that the elitest attitude that many blogs claim to hate may become the norm for these individuals. If you do not believe me scan some blogs and see if there are not mentions of people accomplishing things (that have been done time and time before) and making remarks about how it was done smoothly because people knew what they were doing. Trust me, these posts are out there. I suppose that if you put a ton of bloggers together, their egos are bound to feed on each other and increase their size, which brings me to my next point.

What happens when two massive egos collide over something? Will there be a blogsphere end of the world type storm? Are these members able to simply agree to disagree? I know I am not. If you say something that pisses me off, you better bet your ass that you need to be able to prove me wrong or prepare to eat a face full of "I told you so" shit! Only time will truly tell the outcome of this little endeavor. At this point and time I am content to have deleted my character that I scouted SAN out with and sit back and eat some popcorn and watch the movie, because I think it is going to be one hell of a ride (good or bad).

2 comments:

Tamarind said...

**Not Snotty, Tam**

I guess it's the sort of thing that'll make or break itself. *shrug* Who knows. I hope we don't ego-trip ourselves to elitism. I'm not which sure which branch you checked out - I know the Green Chap has come up a few times in EU discussion, but it's generally been mild (after all, Larisa is one of his staunchest defenders) and the jokes have largely centred on the differences between the extreme sociability of a bloggers guild, compared to the, err, the rules of a ganking guild. However, it ought to go without saying that he would, of course, be welcome .

RatherNotSay said...

@Tam

First let me say, I think what you are doing is a great thing. Like I said, there are a lot of people who were sharing ideas and expressing thoughts on different topics which was really great.

I think where everyone who participates in SANs (is that the correct plural?) needs to be careful is in becoming overbearing with their opinions of theirselves, their viewpoints, and so on.

It really kind of annoyed me to see someone rant on like that in a guild which I tend to view as being a way for people from different aspects of the game to come together and share their ideas.

As far as the talk, I was merely using that as an example of how my first impression made me not so interested in something of that nature.

Like I said, I do not agree with the viewpoints of the person being spoken about, but it does tend to lend some credibility to their concepts when folks get together for a good time and then start berating someone for an oposing viewpoint.

I truly do not care on a personal level if someone were to talk down about myself or my blog (do I refer to it as a blog if I only post once a month?), but someone who is a reader or more shy may back away some if they feel like they may be spoken of badly for making a mistake or not being a top theorist of the mechanics of the game.

I personally am cheering for a good long run of SANs and hope that as a whole you avoid the pitfalls that often creep into guilds.