Steven Garrity is a Dink?

Thanks Peter. Joe’s post bothered me more than it should have. I started to reply, be decided there wasn’t really anything constructive to say. I was also hoping that other readers might come to my defence, which they have (thanks Dennis!). I butted heads with Dave Winer,/a> about this type of thing at the Zap conference. He was complaining about people like this and I basically suggested he was whinning. Now, I feel like whinning too. The thing that gets me the most is that people say things that not at all constructive and get in the way of a conversation. You don’t have to like me - just leave if you don’t (or argue against me, at least). Daniel made a post mocking the popular rock band Nickelback (who suck really hard, by the way). However, he made the post on his own website - not in anyone elses way. He didn’t go to a Nickelback fan site and call them dinks, and he didn’t call up Nickelback and tell them they suck. Is the difference so subtle? I also suggested to Dave Winer that some of his problems with disgruntled readers might just be an issue of scale - if you get big enough, you’ll be bound to attract a few bafoons. I think there is something to that. Daniel’s website is new, and the community around it is tight-nit and friendly - there is little anonymity. He is probably not going to get people coming by to say “Nickleback rules! You sux!”. Daniel thinks if I had made the same post on Acts of Volition, just due to the little bit more visibility the site has (from having been around longer), I would have gotten all types of flames. Google comes into play here too. Fantastic search indexing is a double-edges sword - it makes things easy to find, but it also eliminates the positive aspects of some level of obscurity (by the way, this is totally going to be the #1 Google result for “Steven Garrity is a Dink” in a few days). I wonder would Joe have said those things to my face? He still wouldn’t like me (nor should he), but I bet he would have been a lot more polite and accommodating. Derek Powazek, author of the fine book on web-based community issues, Design for Community, had the following disclaimer with the comments form on his personal website:

“This is my personal site. It’s like my living room. I hope you’ll come in, have a seat, and be cool. But if you’re not and you post something off-topic, mean, or just plain stupid, I will delete it and kick you out. I reserve the right to delete any post for any reason. I also reserve the right to believe that people are essentially good, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Thank you.”

And yes - I am totally going to dink on - the Acts of Volition Radio sessions have been great fun for me, and each time someone tells me they’ve listened to it (and maybe even enjoyed it), I get a great deal of satisfaction. Dink on, indeed.

Steve, it is also possible you can be both dink and radio stylist at the same time, depending on what your each person in your audience brings that day. You can also be unique and mundane. They are not necessarily opposites or exclusive from each other. To some Nickleback is the best music that expresses their life. True, that music and that life isn’t what I would want to live because it likely has bigger chunks that suck, except perhaps when out with my auto-plant brother-in-law when it makes better sense. He and Daniel would not necessarily get along but that’s ok as I get along with each. That’s the thing about expression - to do anything it’s got to get heard by people with lives. BTW, I don’t buy the living room. At best, it’s your front porch and you are talking into the street. Arseholes walk by. They, too, are people in your neighbourhood like Bob sang about on Sesame Street. But that can’t dissuade. It doesn’t matter. I get a real kick out of the shows and you’ve got me thinking about other things the medium can sustain. Dink.

If you live life out loud (even partially) you will get “dink” type comments from every “dink” within earshot. In a strange unfortunate hateful way they have a right to be angry at your successful lifestyle and say so — I agree with the comment, though, that the real nasty stuff could be left for his www.imthreatenedbystevengarrity.com blog. May I cautiously predict you will see more of this? And I feel for the dinkerator who plunked down the comment, he mentions “train”. Anyone who must commute on a train deserves an extra measure of my compassion and I can understand how other people making a living (reference: cell phone) would irritate a person under such continuous and imperceptible stress in his/her life. Rock on S.G.

Being a Dink is not that bad. It’s not a bad thing, it’s just a classification of a person type. Actually it is what you call most young couples or newly weds. Double Income No Kids Just in case someone was out in left field and thought being a D.I.N.K. was meant to be offensive.

A more fun Google search is what is steven garrity like?

According to googlism, Steven has another claim to fame already.

[shame] How is that the only Googlism on me!