Here I will explain what I meant by my message in the shoutbox.
This has been going on for a while: First, Dattebayo was the one who got was treated like crap because he felt depressed, wanted some sympathy and then left because he felt bullied. I think one person apologized to him about that. It still seems to be a "thing", though.
After this, Steve expressed his beliefs in a thread, which he felt the need to instantly defend before there even were any replies... I don't think that's OK at all. I don't know what he expected or from who but it wasn't something good.
In another thread, there was a lot of hostility against Jsin because he didn't agree on a subject.
Now again, when Lee started one of his threads, which are controversial for a lot of people. Jsin lashed out at him because he didn't agree with it.
These are just a few... Why can't we agree to disagree? If we don't like something, it's really easy to not spend time reading it and avoid adding negative or condescending replies that won't provide anything meaningful to the discussion.
It seems like there are A LOT of tensions that have never been dealt with. I find this difficult to deal with for these simple reasons:
Example
1. I'm not sure I can mention anything about person 2 or 3 to person 1, because if person 1 still has beef with those people, might make things awkward and I feel it will affect that friendship.
2. If I agree with or talk to person 2 about something, person 1 or 3 or might have the same reaction and things will get weird.
3. Etc. etc.
3. This is all difficult because person 1, 2 and 3 are all what I consider good friends (even though I never met you).
I just don't know, this makes me very uncomfortable. I often feel that I must choose sides... Do I want to do that? No... Absolutely not.
But what else is there to do? Should I leave and hope to find another place that is just like this? I don't think it's going to happen. The most similar place I've found to this community is Reddit but that place is largely anonymous with it's huge user base and it's difficult to really get to know anyone there.
I honestly don't know why it's so difficult to apologize to each other and move on with our problems. It's really childish, to be honest. Especially when they the people on the receiving end are younger than you.
We have long talked about being a "one-of-a-kind" community, where everyone is friendly and prepared to help each other out when someone needs it. We want to grow by having new members joining us, but that's not going to happen if we can't even solve our internal issues between veteran members on these forums.
If we respond with hostility to topics we don't like or agree with, the result will be more anger and grief towards each other. If we then refuse to acknowledge about what's going on, it will only worsen it and lead to people distrusting each other and this community even more. Which in turn will lead to more members leaving and it will eventually wither and die.
That's the truth.
The general mood for me is that this place has been turning into what we all wanted to leave not too long ago.