in my >12 years moderating and then admining this forum, i've seen so many different arguments and fights on line that i can hardly remember 1/10th of them.
to me it seems like everyone, at some point or another, feels, at some level, powerless in their lives - either underutilised or underappreciated, if not outright oppressed by their situation and the others sharing their space.
some folks deal with this by coming on line and arguing about something that they may have strong feelings about but in the grand scheme of things is relatively arbitrary and irrelevant to their lives or anyone else's, for that matter. seems like its an attempt to satisfy the universal human need to make some kind of impact on the world, to exert some level of control in a life that has somehow become otherwise often beyond their ability to even comprehend, let alone control. ultimately, though, it's like coming home and kicking the dog. wasn't his fault that someone's day sucked.
there have been, through the years, many individuals who have come to talkbass, argued and trolled themselves out the door with my, or another mod/admin's, boot print on their bottom providing the propulsion, only to have these same folks contact us 6 months or a year later apologizing, asking to be allowed back, and explaining their lapse by saying they were going through a bad patch in their lives - bad job, bad marriage, etc.
for every member who doesn't melt down sufficiently to get ejected off the island, there's countless other folks who post here with barely suppressed rage/contempt that, i think, must spring from a similar well. its a shame, really - instead of arguing and spreading the ugliness they do not like in their lives, if they put a little effort into it, a lot of these folks might see that talkbass would better serve as a haven from things if they were to attempt to build bridges instead of burn them. to use the dog analogy again, most dogs make better comforters than punching bags.
