i was jonathan to your david ([info]anakreon) wrote in [info]thebookyoucrew,
@ 2004-08-07 13:19:00
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Current mood:devious
Current music:belle and sebastian - it could have been a brilliant career

statistical wankage
we only had 8 applicants for all of last month (July) and we accepted 2 (lj_iheartjames and lj_abbacat). if i'm not mistaken, we have had approximately 8 applicants in the past 12 hours. i don't know who we have to thank for this... but thanks, whoever you are.

applicants: do not comment here, or anywhere outside your own application. do respond to challenges.

crewers: vote early and often, because you are famous in LJ-drama land.


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[info]tom_servo
2004-08-07 06:48 pm UTC (link)
Yay...drama. I love being a snobby bastard *grin*

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[info]schwarzes_herz
2004-08-08 01:22 am UTC (link)
from seeing your votes, i say you need to be snobbier.

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[info]tom_servo
2004-08-08 01:24 am UTC (link)
*hangs head*

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[info]kickouttheiambs
2004-08-07 07:11 pm UTC (link)
I think it has to do with this post.

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[info]anakreon
2004-08-07 07:14 pm UTC (link)
holy shit, 1596 members! i guess we're lucky that more of them don't all apply at once. at least we get props.

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woo hoo we're almost famous!
[info]riddley_walker
2004-08-07 07:52 pm UTC (link)
hey do we really have a 'cannon'?!
personally, i'm just looking to help construct a group brain that everyone enjoys being part of......and for people who look like they have the ability to teach me about books i will actually enjoy reading.
and what i really like about BYC is that whatever the members intentions that is actually what seems to evolve here.
that's cool, so i stick around (thanks to the glorious mercy of the schwartz and her minions).
it doesn't have anything to do with validating the applicants existence or right to call themselves readers, or judging their intelligence, or whatever. where are they getting all that from?!
it's part of our myth i guess.
or is it all the scars from other rating communities that have not healed yet? or just scars in general......it really feels like alot of the people that get nuts when they are asked to explain their choices just have persecution complexes that they are choosing to play out in this comm and we provide the opportunity for their little passion plays.


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Re: woo hoo we're almost famous!
[info]anakreon
2004-08-07 07:55 pm UTC (link)
I think the principal source for rejection anger is the fact that most people's principal encounters with books were in school, and school (in the U.S., at least) is a very touchy-feely place where self-esteem is carefully nurtured.

In other words, most people honestly don't have the faintest idea that their taste in books is unremarkable or worse.

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Re: woo hoo we're almost famous!
[info]vadalia
2004-08-08 01:33 pm UTC (link)
think the principal source for rejection anger is the fact that most people's principal encounters with books were in school, and school (in the U.S., at least) is a very touchy-feely place where self-esteem is carefully nurtured.

Wow... I musta been going to the wrong schools...

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excuse me
[info]anakreon
2004-08-08 04:33 pm UTC (link)
you can't comment here if you're not accepted.

now you're banned.

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almost famous....
[info]rebirtha
2004-08-08 07:40 pm UTC (link)
In most common public schools, kids aren't supposed to fail. I say this because I've been through a lot of shitty public schools, a few decent ones, and my mother is a teacher in a shitty public school in New Mex. She is actually ordered not to give out F's, to "build up the children's 'self-exteem'," and so on. Now, if a principal does not know that the word is 'esteem' and no one ever fails, how are these poor bastards ever going to realize that reading To Kill A Mockingbird does not mean they have achieved the literary pinnacle of greatness, to say NOTHING of J.K. fucking Rowling or Laura Fucking Ingalls Fucking Wilder?

The crack pipe thing is that these people end up here. I mean, isn't there somewhere nice and cuddly where people can pet them for reading at all and boost their self-exteem?

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Re: almost famous....
[info]anakreon
2004-08-08 07:47 pm UTC (link)
She is actually ordered not to give out F's, to "build up the children's 'self-exteem'," and so on.

it's representative of a long-standing tension in American public schools between classical-traditionalist ideals of education, in which arcane knowledge is imparted to perpetuate a social elite, and the progressive-Deweyian ideals of education, in which education is a tool for shaping a democratic mass culture.

both sets of ideals are basically repulsive.

I mean, isn't there somewhere nice and cuddly where people can pet them for reading at all and boost their self-exteem?

Community colleges. Self-exteem is their middle name.

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Re: almost shameless....
[info]rebirtha
2004-08-08 08:05 pm UTC (link)
There's a nice little diatribe by Paul Fussell in Bad: The Dumbing Of America in which he describes how trade schools were promoted to colleges, colleges to universities and so on, just by changing their name, not their curriculum.

As someone who went to an 'Institute' and was pleased with the education I received, I must say that the elite, if we have to look at it that way, perpetuates itself: there were plenty of idiots at Reed, and there are probably plenty of intelligent, questing people everywhere else. Sure, as someone pointed out, you don't always have the opportunity to be surrounded by books that revise your world view, but you always have the opportunity to pay attention to what's going on. And me, growing up in the state often coming in dead last in American public education; well damn, I still managed to find my way to the library, plow through all the crap books, and find something good that led to something better that led to...

...well, I digress and I apologize. I don't know who the hell all these recent applicants are, but they need to get a grip on the concept that we are not here to boost their self-esteem to the point where their top twenty books of all time and defenses thereof are acceptable for inclusion into this community. I did see we got linked through some other web site, which may account for the fact that a good deal of other people's trash is being deposited on the Book You doorstep. There are plenty of places that demand less. Perhaps I should do a search, and compile a list of suggestions for the info page, in case they might choose not to waste their valuable taste and well-exteemed time.

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Re: almost shameless....
[info]mlknchz
2004-08-08 08:26 pm UTC (link)
There's always booktards. Aptly and cogently named, that

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totally shameless.
[info]rebirtha
2004-08-08 08:39 pm UTC (link)
booktards is the one I was going to suggest. They don't appear to have standards for admission beyond a willingness to subject oneself to the kind of dialogue that goes on when a bunch of people who've signed away their right to standards get together and.... this comment could get pretty vulgar pretty quickly. We should just direct people there. And if they hate it there, maybe they might oughta apply here. Maybe.

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Re: almost shameless....
[info]anakreon
2004-08-08 09:17 pm UTC (link)
There's a nice little diatribe by Paul Fussell in Bad: The Dumbing Of America in which he describes how trade schools were promoted to colleges, colleges to universities and so on, just by changing their name, not their curriculum.

Though in most cases, today's bottom-tier universities didn't start as trade schools, but rather as teacher-training schools.

Sure, as someone pointed out, you don't always have the opportunity to be surrounded by books that revise your world view, but you always have the opportunity to pay attention to what's going on. And me, growing up in the state often coming in dead last in American public education; well damn, I still managed to find my way to the library, plow through all the crap books, and find something good that led to something better that led to...

The sheer material wealth of the U.S.A. has given all our people, young and old, access to a rich system of public libraries and school libraries, and now to the ubiquitous intarweb. It's all out there for anybody who cares to grasp it... but the will to grasp it is cultural (or, dare I say, class-based?) and 98% of all schools have no interest in confronting their students' worldviews with anything as dangerous as literature.

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Re: almost nameless....
[info]rebirtha
2004-08-09 01:04 am UTC (link)
That's bloody sad when you think about teachers being trained at the lowest rung of education. Christ on a Popsicle stick. And you know everyone and his dog has the internet now, usually through some MegaProvider, through which I have learned so much I'd never otherwise have known, but these MegaProviders carefully filter everyone's experience to make it, essentially, just like television. Of course I'm off on another rant here.

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Re: woo hoo we're almost famous!
[info]abbacat
2004-08-07 07:59 pm UTC (link)
I think the vitriol being directed here is the same sort of ad hominem crap directed at any rating community: ergo, people who place themselves in positions of 'authority' should be availed of the same qualities that they are searching for in their membership. People who have not adequately read the information or history of the community without pre-existing opinions are simply looking for examples to validate their own claims; often resorting to unfounded and illogical arguments.

It becomes easier to mock the people who are in authority for their various failings, whether personal, philosophical or moral rather than address their main claims.

I'm not trying to bag on communities-who-rate-rating-communities; but no matter where you go or what is being rated, people always get offended and appeal to 'higher' sorts of ideals; essentially saying that everyone is beautiful, lovely and their own unique little snowflake and should not have to be subjected to the cruel and hypocritical injustices of others.

And you know, that's true. They forget that people apply of their own accord and that acceptance works more off of sociological & political principles than anything else.

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Re: woo hoo we're almost famous!
[info]anakreon
2004-08-07 08:01 pm UTC (link)
They forget that people apply of their own accord and that acceptance works more off of sociological & political principles than anything else.

Americans, especially, are prone to confuse free speech with the right to say what they want in someone else's forum.

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Show Me the Money
[info]criticalcricket
2004-08-07 08:46 pm UTC (link)
I want a kick back for all this attention I've generated for you. How's $50 sound?

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Re: Show Me the Money
[info]anakreon
2004-08-07 08:49 pm UTC (link)
I've never paid for sex or attention and don't intend to start at age 22.

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Any Attention
[info]criticalcricket
2004-08-07 09:21 pm UTC (link)
Don't think of it as whoring, think of it as advertising. Any attention is good attention if the cliches are to be believed.

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PS
[info]anakreon
2004-08-08 07:37 am UTC (link)
not only are you getting no kickbacks, you're banned!

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[info]yourturntofall
2004-08-07 08:47 pm UTC (link)
i just don't understand why anyone would apply if they are interested in being challenged or engaging in critical discussion

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[info]anakreon
2004-08-07 08:49 pm UTC (link)
me neither but i don't understand LJ at all

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[info]mlknchz
2004-08-07 09:07 pm UTC (link)
1)Who ARE those fucks anyway?
2)Could someone remind me why I should care what they think?

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[info]shekb
2004-08-07 10:12 pm UTC (link)
That's not even the real lj-drama. We've got to be too boring for that shit.

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[info]tom_servo
2004-08-07 10:53 pm UTC (link)
While I see the difference in the names...I can make absolutely no distinction in content between the two (save for the fact that I have a soft spot for LJ Drama)

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