[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..I tried putting someone on ignore once just to see what it looked like to have someone on ignore and yeah, it would stop the flow of the thread and topic if the person that was on ignore was someone who was hugely participating and active in that thread so it's not an ideal either, we all have our own self ignore button..our own decision and ability to be able to ignore what isn't relevant and what we think is personal while carrying on with the topic and using the report button if we feel it's appropriate..(sorry Niamh, more work..)...

..in thinking about this a bit I think maybe Cherie's right to some extent in that a lot in SD isn't really that much different to how it has always been in the time I've known it.../different faces but same old story in that there will always be fundamental clashes, it's just part of life and differing personalities etc...and I think it's showing honesty about that as well and accepting any part played..ten people or so might have posted something similar but only one post often being 'picked out' and so often also being responded to with hostility, whatever the topic and whatever the thread...also some posts 'invite' that picking out with 'some people in this thread/some people here' type comments...I mean when two tribes want to go to war as it were and pointedly pick out posts because it's a specific tribe then realistically the ignore button is the last thing that is going to be used because those are the posts that have become all relevant in specifically wanting to see them..and the opposing opinions are fine/they're what help to induce thought..it's just accepting and part of the personal stuff and accepting any infractions/bans etc that might incur there and being too absorbed in whether others got infracted or not...just accepting responsibility really and that any 'fault' was all our own....


...anyways, I think what has been the case though is that this year has been a particularly negative year for news stories and a highly volatile political time as well..the threads have felt samey because the news has largely been samey so opinions to it all will obviously be samey as well...Brexit/USA elections and immigration playing a large part in media reporting with both...so we really haven't has a lot to branch out of and stretch ourselves really...(and also maybe why things do seem as though they're carried from one thread to another because threads can feel 'extensions of other threads etc../the topics so similar and covering the same ground..)...all just a really negative media year and uncertain time for us all in so many ways...and I think also, well I'll only speak for myself..whatever is going on in a thread and however side-tracked it may be getting with personal stuff etc...I'll still join it if I want to comment on a topic but the times I don't are more me and maybe I'm in a 'can't be bothered today' vibe, so more my own perspective on a specific day.../that's really all that changes for me...

That's it in a nutshell, Brexit, immigration, Trump are all hugely divisive emotive subjects and that is reflected in the forum, personally I think people take the forum a bit too seriously, umbrage is taken at the merest of slights, I've never used the ignore function because I think in the main I can ignore when people are deliberately being provocative, I think it's got to to the point now where it's popular to slate SD and complain about it not being like the good old days and that opinion plays to the gallery, that's my take on it anyway, the debate about it is really is first world problems at its finest.