My transition seemed fairly quick to me, but it was far from a day. I had been on Askville when things started to get very high schoolish. I was in a particularly vulnerable period of my life and I was getting depressed and I blamed some of it on the way I was being treated on Askville.
A bunch of people were leaving Askville at the time, and so they mentioned fluther. I thought I’d try it out. I liked that it was similar to the good parts of Askville, but it had moderation which kept out some of the bad parts of fluther. More than that, it seemed to emphasis egalitarianism. There was no competition because lurve didn’t mean anything. That was most important to me.
Of course, I did want to build a reputation here and to a large extent, lurve does signify the degree to which people appreciate my contributions, whether questions or answers. So I feel appreciated by other jellies, and that makes an enormous difference.
Still, being sought out or recognized is a big deal to me. There are certain questions that I really hate because they remind me that I’m not really the kind of person people would want to hang out with. These are the questions that ask others to rank jellies. I argue against them mostly because they always make me feel bad.
The only thing I do well at is answering questions, I guess. I do it because it’s fun and because it gives me an excuse to write and I learn things through the questions here. Random things. Being popular is not something that I ever was nor ever will be. Perhaps people are surprised that I even care, but it’s not a skill I have.
It took me a long time to learn these things—probably years. But I guess with in a month or so, I stopped going to Askville at all, and my allegiance was fully to fluther. I’ve had my problems here. I’ve quit two or three times, but I never could stay away. I hope, some day, to not need to be here. But I’m not there yet.
