ClubbinGuido, please don't take any of this too close to heart. You are not the sacrificial lamb here, even though it probably appears that way from your perspective. Let's let this latest bout of Lounge flu blow over without any unnecessary victims, especially yourself.
I mentioned some time ago in the staff appreciation thread that Bluelight does a fantastic job at matching staff to their wide variety of forums. Each BL forum has a different beat. Nowhere is this more evident than in The Lounge. I know for a fact that I could not, as moderator, keep up with the pace in The Lounge and find it no less than amazing that there are people who actually can. They must suffer from higher forms of ADD or something (said with endearment).
I used to frequent The Lounge back in the day, but I was in a different frame of mind back then. You have to be, imo, to stay there for longer periods of time. The more you remain there, the more immune you become to the antics within, the more those antics may escalate and the more the outside world may be at odds with what goes on in there.
We know and admit, for the most part, that there are some posters who do go overboard. This has been the case before and is the case now. I can, but will not, name several ex-bluelighters who achieved godlike status in The Lounge through this cycle of escalating behaviour which is originally frowned on as trolling, but subsequently develops such a following as to make it quite difficult to suppress. This gives fuel to a wave of similar behaviour from other posters and before you know it, that behaviour is now the resident norm and how dare anyone take it away. This is where we are again today.
So what is the solution?
In my opinion - decorum. Lounge, General Chit-Chat, Casual Banter and similar forums exist on practically all other boards. Even on the General Bullshit forum on SomethingAweful.com, however, they enjoy a level of decorum several levels above our Lounge. It's not rocket science, it's basic common sense. Sure some may cry "censorship", "crackdown", "tyranny", "repression". So what, let them. Don't like it, don't post. I've been here long enough to have lived through all the waves of allow/disallow of racism, insults, demeaning, explicit images, and many more. One of the reasons I do not visit the Lounge as frequently any more is because all of this is constantly allowed in there, off and on, and not in the other forums. The rebuttal may come, "If you don't like it, then don't visit The Lounge". This rebuttal has indeed come many times from both posters and staff. The choice has been quite easy - I don't visit, hardly. But it's not just me. It's a self perpetuating downward spiral, The Lounge is, in its present state without any hint of decency. It may bounce every now and again in an attempt to regain composure, because "things have simply gotten out of hand". In the long run, however, unless a change is made at the core, it is doomed.
There's much more I wanted to say, but have lost my train of thought because I'm pressed for time and have to skidaddle for a bit.
I do have to come on record though as saying that I am very disappointed that this entire discussion hasn't been taken behind closed doors or, at the very least, pruned and split into separate public and staff threads.
