Green Brownie Eaters

To contact us Click HERE
I've been to several online forums (both hearing and deaf/hh) going back to the 1990s and have participated in many debates, proffered my own opinions and facts on a variety of topics and issues. But over the years there were two online forums, which were incidentally deaf/hh forums, that stuck to my mind on the pervasiveness of such bullying type of attitudes that took place. Some form of bullying took place were quite direct and obvious while others tried to make it discreet but even their actions were obvious through the use of pervasive amount of emoticons, excessive use of memes, raucous put downs and insinuating remarks in the effort to bait people and just plain making fun of those who comment in online forums. Quackery ensues from supposed "experts" who are unprofessionally or emotionally too involved.  Sometimes moderators were of no real help with their heavy lead fingers on ban button by banning members 3/4 of the time they don't personally like because of ideological differences and whatnot just to protect their status quo and precious ideologies. Sometimes it's like that, other times not so.

The good, bad and ugly I suppose in the world of deaf/hh discussion forums.   

One deaf/hh forum was one of the earliest chat forums that was set up. It only took a few short years for members to realize the pervasiveness of such militant beliefs or attitudes in a variety of topics or issues but were exacerbated when owner(s) or monitor(s) who continually looked the other way when you have ongoing crude or bullying remarks time and time again against members whenever they simply disagreed.  In this forum former members discussed how bad one other forum was.

I haven't patronized DC or DN in months now, since I've learned of it's true colors. Now I'm finding more of a militant attitude among the Monitors (gasp!! Shades of Orwellian 1984!!) that seem to override any free expression under the guise of "maintaining the peace in here". Ahh, well... It was a good site while it lasted.

Indeed. That particular deaf forum lasted several years before it petered out into internet oblivion.  As you can see in the Wayback Machine based on the amount of online activity peaking out for many forums around in the mid-2000s years (see below for graphics). Favoritism reared its ugly head for far too many times and it became obvious to everyone except to the owners, monitors and few chummy friends of theirs who participated seemed to be immune from getting suspended or banned or hardly even a tongue lashing. Please, no French kissing jokes here. Instead of instituting their own rules strictly by the books, emotionally uninvolved, on handling members' posted comments it was often times found easier to look the other way and leave a bullying comment or heavy insinuations in place. Sometimes you get ethically-challenged people who have tried to post members' names and workplaces as effort in retaliation of sort. Certainly not the cat's meow. That very same thing happened to deaf bloggers as well. If those kinds of practices on looking the other way as a matter of practice then any online deaf forum's popularity would only last for so long. Destined for the internet trash bins of yesteryear. 

Below you can see screen grabs from various deaf/hh forums over the years based on the Wayback Machine's number of crawl times. Less postings means less crawling by the Wayback on updating a website.  Around 2004 - 2006 were typically the heady years as you can see. Most popular deaf/hh forums died out around 2007 - 2009.








Over time popular discussion forums will someday soon go to the wayside and slowly die out into oblivion into internet obscurity only to be revised on occasion through the Wayback Machine or Google caches. Or that former members of one discussion forum gets peeled away to make way their own discussion forum but only to see the same pattern repeated and eventually get destined for the Internet trash bins of yesteryear. It's only a matter of time, ya see. Yet, forum owners have every right to see how their own forums take place and what is allowed and not allowed. That much is clear.

So, by now you are probably asking what are the "Green Brownie Eaters" seen in the blog title above? Well, they're the ethically-challenged people who think they can get away with things hoping others will look the other way, even among those higher up in the echelon ladder, knowing the substance baked into the brownies they are eating is illegal in an otherwise innocuous looking brownie treats. And how they hope others will eat them as well by jumping the bandwagon. Meow!