Why do so many of you hate DailyKos so much? Sure, there are a lot of nuts in the diaries, but the front page is fine. I don’t agree with every bit of it but the polls are great and the analysis is generally intelligent. What’s the problem?
Reader Interactions
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CJ
Reading diaries and comments there makes me want to try out for the Olympics in hippie punching. They deserve it.
Just Some Fuckhead
Too many Anti-Obots over there.
Nalbar
What’s DailyKos?
arguingwithsignposts
Meh. It’s better than HuffHo.
Just Some Fuckhead
And Markos himself hasn’t been sufficiently deferential to Obama. There’s no excuse for that.
Doug Harlan J
@CJ:
But they can’t control the comments and diaries.
PeakVT
The problems is that people make the mistake of reading the comments or looking at the diary list (or the two-fer of reading the comments on a rec-ed diary – yeesh).
But the polling is definitely a good thing.
Doug Harlan J
@arguingwithsignposts:
Damning with faint praise.
Hunter Gathers
It’s not all bad, but the the amount of permanent butt-hurt displayed there makes me want turn in my dirty fucking hippie membership card. Moulitsas is also an annoying jerkwad. Primary this, asswipe.
Josie
I agree, DougJ. I read the front page and the excerpts from various pundits and ignore the diaries. I get useful information and good analysis from the front pagers. I don’t agree with everything any more than I do with front pagers here.
David Atkins (thereisnospoon)
just who do you mean by crazy diarists, huh????!! You lookin’ at me? You lookin’ at me?
Seriously, though, you’re right. Some of the FP content is dry as dust, but most of it is pretty good. The diaries section tends to lead to flamewars, which turns a lot of people off.
But to this day, Dkos is my #1 hangout, followed by Balloon Juice, then TPM, then DDay at FDL. There’s really nothing else like it out there.
Just Some Fuckhead
And let’s be honest, there are way too many opinions over there and I can’t ever be assured I’m not going to hear something I don’t like. Imagine how that makes me feel.
mr. whipple
I thought their polling outfit was run out of a Kinkos.
Joel
No antipathy for the KOS. I’m just not a fan of that type of layout. I like fast, streamlined.
stuckinred
@mr. whipple: There is no such thing anymore.
arguingwithsignposts
@mr. whipple:
I will give Kos credit for this: They have been pretty straightforward in trying to make all their poll results transparent as much as possible, and even ate major crow after their earlier pollster turned out to be less than accurate. And they’ve polled a lot of stuff that nobody else polled over the past years.
Ken
I stick to the front pages, it seems to ease my stress.
arguingwithsignposts
@Doug Harlan J: Yes, that’s true. I’ll also say he is nowhere near the egomaniac Ariana Huffington is, and he hasn’t laid off hundreds of employees.
Doug Harlan J
@David Atkins (thereisnospoon):
It is tough to find good comments sections anywhere. That is why I’m so thankful for the friends I do receive here.
Jim, Once
I got really tired of the pie fights, but they seem to have that under control. I’m back to reading it every day. I agree with ‘generally intelligent’ – esp. the Wisconsin reports. I just can’t read Huffpo anymore, though. It’s just too much to fight my way through that swamp.
Hawes
Once I stopped reading the diaries – which was a lot easier to do with the new format – it was fine. Love the APR to kick off the day and the Midday Roundup, too.
But I have to agree that – especially last December – the whinging and simpering about Obama making the hard choices of governing were insufferable. Hell, I started my own blog at that point, just to find an outlet where I could write and not be ripped to shreds by 75% of the commenters who were convinced Obama was “just like Bush.”
I swear if I hear one more person say that, I will reach through the Internet and punch them in the brain.
geg6
I feel fine with the GOS front page. Lots of good stuff there, especially the polling. I sit on election nights with BJ and GOS up on the computer and flip between PBS and MSNBC on the tube.
The problems with the GOS are all in the diaries and the comments. I don’t ever go there. Stupid hateful crazies all over the place there.
Baud
I discovered BJ through GOS, but it was the diaries and comments that eventually caused me to stop frequenting that site. The front page is generally much better, and I still follow the front page through my RSS feed. I think the big problem with the site is that they don’t have a real idea of what kind of site they want to be.
Marty
I used to read a few diarists on Kos quite regularly. Then one day I learned that one of them was about fifteen years old. And that was the end of it for me.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
Oh, paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaluueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese
Outside of the polling, there is no original reporting or analysis.
So why waste your time, when you can spend your time directly at the various blogs they base their posts.
NobodySpecial
They are The Other, we must watch for them.
handy
That place has gone to pot since Armando left.
/ducks
RossInDetroit
The only thing I read there is their hate mail roundup. It’s the pinnacle of my Saturday. Priceless. I still scan the front page now and then but rarely find anything worth the time to wade through.
I have TPM on my RSS reader and look at every post. Josh Marshall has a good eye for a developing story.
bleh
It’s just the usual intelligent criticism gone a little haywire. It’s to be expected on the Left — especially to such a lightning-rod site as DK — in the same way as blind obedience to the Stupid is an expected fault on the Right. But give me a little excess of criticism any day, given the obviously disastrous alternative.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@Jim, Once:
but what about their posts on boobs and apple-bottoms?
Bob
@CJ: or anyone. What is “hippy punching”? I’ve read definitions, Urban Dictionary, but I dont get it.
Comrade Scrutinizer
Some of the FPers are okay, although I preferred the old crew (I signed up shortly after the site underwent it’s second upgrade.) Still have the four-digit UID!
I stopped playing in the sandbox over there during the PUMA algere riverdaughter mess–not because of that, but because the place, especially the commentariat, was getting too tedious for words. Too much hooray for our side, with little critical thinking. Kinda like a blue (orange?) version of RS.
Just Some Fuckhead
Someone once commented on a non-recommended diary that Obama should be primaried. I closed the browser, uninstalled it, reformatted my hard drive, then destroyed my computer, turned off the cable modem, then cut the cable and then had the service disconnected.
I don’t need that shit.
Paula
The first and last time I gave that site a serious shot was in 2004 … suffice it to say, I was not particularly shocked that Bush won that election.
EDIT: of course, one could substitute any number of “lefty” blogs for DK and I’d feel the same way …
metalgirl
I love Daily KOS and check it multiple times daily. I only read the front page stuff but it’s quality stuff. I like the new design just fine too. I also read BJ when I get home from work and Steve Benen over at Washington Monthly several times each day. Those are my top 3. I can hardly stand to go to HuffPo anymore — way too much crap!
Midnight Marauder
I do enjoy it when you answer yourself in your own posts.
But seriously, the Chicken Little routine over there got exhausting a long time ago. I think all reasonable people can agree that the front page at Daily Kos is a respectable enterprise, unlike the content that festers in the diaries and comments.
Anya
Why I hate dailykos, let me count the ways. It’s filled with whiny chicken little, hard to satisfy, overreacting purist assholes who think they’re the gatekeepers for all things progressive. Also, too, I loath “Saturday hate mail a palooza”.
Baud
@Just Some Fuckhead: LOL. I hear there is a nice place in Pakistan without any phone or Internet connection that just went on the market. You should look into it.
che
@handy:
He is back tho.
General Stuck
sTuck don’t know
after my one and only diary years ago, on UFO’s and my support for Dennis Kucinich finding “the truth”, the bruises from the native response are still fresh. It was supposed to be snark, but those fuckers are serious as dick cancer.
DarrenG
The polling is indeed good, but it’s even better when aggregated with other stuff by TPM, Pollster, or 538.
I find Markos and many of his chief acolytes over there suffer from the same “my way or the highway”/”you’re either with us on everything or you’re Evil, and must be destroyed” tribalism that killed most of FDL for me, and I disagree that the left needs the sort of circle jerk or propaganda operation that pollutes the right-wing side of the web.
mr. whipple
@stuckinred:
I’m troll rating you for denying my personhood.
quaker in a basement
The eponymous host’s wildly exaggerated self-estimation.
maggiejean
@metalgirl: There are some great community diaries there. The OND (overnight news digest), IGTNT (a tribute to the fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan) are two that come to mind.
MikeJ
I’m with DougJ. I read it daily, but ignore the comments and diaries. Basically, I ignore the community part of the biggest liberal community site.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@handy: Hate to say this, but before he embraced his inner psychopath, Armando had some of the best diaries on that site. His series on Lincoln’s election was killer. Problem was, he was so thin skinned that he would start trashing the comments. During his psychofuck period, I can’t count the number of diaries he wrote in which his comment section became littered with him telling everyone to FOAD for the silliest reasons.
The guy’s FP stuff was primo, though, even when I didn’t agree with him.
alwhite
There is no site that I agree with 100% & I don’t mind reading contrary opinions if they are founded in the real world, make sense & the author can take criticism & admit fault. I have never read the diaries but always stop by GOS because, even when I don’t agree I don’t feel cheated.
Compare that to Sully or the Leak of Ordinary Gerbils; it easily demonstrated that GOS wins hands down.
taylormattd
Because a lot of us are kossacks. We participate there, and know and understand the commentariat, which is includes a very large number of people who are absolutely deranged with hatred of Obama. The action at Dkos is in the diaries, and at any given time, you can usually find multiple diaries screeching about how Obama is an evil republican who has betrayed us all.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
That is the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard. How can it be any good if you don’t agree with it 100%?
stuckinred
@taylormattd: Are you sure you are not talking about FDL?
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@Baud: leave fuckhead alone, he’s still grieving over bin Laden’s death.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
I enjoy the APR and a number of the FPers, though there are a couple that I can tell have reached their complexity-of-the-world limit. I read a few diaries, comment a couple of times, and then remember that I am not going to be able to correct everyone wrong on the internet.
Then it starts all over when I come here.
ETA: And then David Mizner shows up there and here. Now there’s someone I would like to reach through the internet and punch in the throat.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Just Some Fuckhead: I’m giving you doughnuts for that, troll. Where are the Diary Police around here, anyway?
Doug Harlan J
@taylormattd:
That makes sense.
LT
The sense I’ve gotten here is frankly just elitist. Like a lot of people here feel like they’re hanging with a better breed of people than they would on DKos. (I mean John’s a smart, worldly, hip, dude. He used to be in the army – and now he gardens! He’s like “The most interesting man in the world”!)
I spend a fair amount of time at DKos, and my comments are mostly along the lines of “This place would be a lot better if aliens came to Earth and shot you with a laser cannon,” but I still like it. There are a really lot of good writers there.
Odie Hugh Manatee
While the front page is good at times and I do like the polling (along with the admission of their last poller being full of bullshit), the manic-depressive mosh pit turns the place into a dive. I dropped out of there in 2005 and I’ve had no desire to go back and use my account since. I still read it just about every day but I limit myself to the diaries of people who have functioning brains and aren’t pursuing their personal purity pony.
OK, I occasionally visit the diaries of the Purity Pony Brigade just to rubberneck the inevitable train wrecks that they become.
So I like to laugh at fools…lol! Who doesn’t?
Hawes
@Baud: I think this is a good critique. Markos had a handy bumpersticker for his site: “More and better Democrats.” That meant you put up with Mark Pryor grandstanding some issue because you know you needed the vote somewhere else. First, you get more Democrats to get rid of GOP misrule and then you improve the quality.
The problem is that their efforts to get “better Democrats” often meant taking their ball and going home when the “more Democrats” didn’t give them everything they wanted.
So we got More and Worse Republicans.
The mindset there was always better suited to oppositional thinking.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@stuckinred: no, at FDL it’s all obama hate. GOS has balance.
JGabriel
DougJ:
I check the DKos front page and recommended diaries almost every day. So, I guess I’m not one of the haters. I’m just throwing that into the ring as a control group/balance.
My assessment of their worth pretty much matches your own:
.
LT
@CJ: “Reading diaries and comments there makes me want to try out for the Olympics in hippie punching. They deserve it.”
That is just fucking nuts. That place – and I like the place – is over-poppulated wiht fucking moderates who think John Kerry’s a fucking hippy. Drives me nuts.
Calouste
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s a bar you can jump over in a wheelchair.
Just Some Fuckhead
I stopped reading Kos regularly in 2004 when those fuckers had me all jacked up with polling showing Kerry was gonna beat Bush and then.. reality.
I can’t let myself hope like that anymore.
Paula
Seriously though, how much of poli-blog behavior has been cross-checked with Fandom Wank?
Hawes
@LT: John may not be the most interesting man in the world, but if he was…
LT
@David Atkins (thereisnospoon): Thereisnospoon is one of the really good things about DKos.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Hawes: Well, that, and Markos having started out as a Reagan republican, still flirts with the idea of melding libertarianism with Democrat to produce Libercrats, or Demotarians, or some such nonsense.
MikeJ
@Anya:
Really? I love that. How could anybody hate the hate mail?
LT
@Marty: “I used to read a few diarists on Kos quite regularly. Then one day I learned that one of them was about fifteen years old. And that was the end of it for me.”
That’s an inane comment.
Chris Wolf
I go there many times a day. Say what you will, but the coverage of Wisconsin politics at DKos has been incredible.
And Nir and Waldman are 2 of the smartest political bloggers anywhere.
And of course, Meteor Blades is just smart about everything.
Markos sank a lot of money into the website, and it shows.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@LT: Why? Because he read a few diarists regularly?
arguingwithsignposts
Heh. They almost reach den Beste-ian levels of loghorrhea.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anya:
Last time you discussed Kos in the comments, you said all the frontpagers over there are racists, if I remember correctly..
Slowbama
So many proud victims there. Politically correct beyond the point of self-parody. Every white college student considers himself a spokesman for Black America, and conversely thinks white people can do no right. Most of them think every Southerner is a cave-dwelling illiterate teabagger who paradoxically also wields near-total control over their lives. Dozens of Dickensian, embellished tales of medical insurance woe which on close analysis seem to boil down to a dependence on many prescription drugs. Serious mixed message from the site proprietor, who fetishizes Blue Dogs as the Party’s True Path to Power, then changes his mind when they’re not “progressive” enough. I could go on.
Baud
@Hawes:
The problem with that mindset (which is not limited to Dkos) is that it is incompatible with actually advancing a political agenda, which is something I think a lot of folks there think they are doing.
LT
@Comrade Scrutinizer: You do know Armand o is still there, right? And that hes also daily at that whatshername’s place
Shoemaker-Levy 9
Because BJers are every bit as capable of irrational cliquishness as anybody else. In fact, I can’t think of a thread where somebody said something like “The Daily Sporge is a great site with great writing by some great bloggers” followed by a couple dozen hearty endorsements. Possibly that’s happened, but I don’t remember it. There’s a dedicated group of BJ groupies who can’t get through a day without a “I so stopped reading [Kos, FDL, Greenwald] in 2007!” and I believe when an outgroup engages in behavior like that it’s termed “epistemic closure”.
I have Greenwald and FDL and Kos in my blog rotation and I read them with varying degrees of engagement and edification. Oh well.
HRA
The only time I go there now is when someone provides a link that makes me curious. Watching Markos on a few TV interviews convinced me to drop it. It seems like a long time ago now.
Balloon Juice is a must daily read along with Memeorandum where if it seems interesting enough I will pick a blog to read the post and the comments.
LT
@Comrade Scrutinizer: “@LT: Why? Because he read a few diarists regularly?”
That’s why it’s smart to cut and past what you’re replying to: What are you talking about?
Tim Ferg
I don’t have a problem with DKos. I agree that the FPers are great.
It’s the Kucinichites nuts over there that drive me crazy. Anything less than 100% liberal purity is not tolerated by those people.
woof woof
Most of the creative diarist were chased off of the site by asshole frontpagers like dickhead in michigan and poor little miss laura years ago. It’s been downhill in a hand basket ever since. Markos shot his wad on the redesign only to find out that no one wanted or needed it. Not only, but also, the site is as ugly as 18 miles of mud road, and totally hosed their mobile phone presence. Brilliant!
McJulie
They started to lose me gradually with the high percentage of PUMA rubbish back in 08 and it got steadily worse and worse. It wasn’t just the weirdly virulent anti-Obama stuff, it was the groupthink, the concern trolling, the endless self-important whinging.
If I want somebody critiquing Obama and the Democrats, I can read Amy Goodman or Paul Krugman. If I just wanted to see a bunch of stuff that would make me feel a pissed-off despair, I could read a Republican blog. Except I don’t. Because I don’t want that.
LT
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: “There’s a dedicated group of BJ groupies who can’t get through a day without a “I so stopped reading [Kos, FDL, Greenwald] in 2007!” and I believe when an outgroup engages in behavior like that it’s termed “epistemic closure”.”
What do the Fonzie’s here say? Oh yeah: This.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@LT: No, I don’t waste my beautiful mind on GOS any longer.
whatshername’s place? You mean TalkLeft? That place turned into a sewer.
gypsy howell
I read bits of the front page– though not as much as I used to, but maybe that will pick up again as we get closer to the election. But the diaries? Nah, I gave up on them — even the recommended ones. I can’t abide really bad writing, and most of them are just godawful – so bad that I can’t get past style to absorb the content. Half the time I give up in frustration — “what the fuck is this person even trying to say, and why is it at the top of the rec list?”
As for the comments – way too many flamewars. If I have to scroll down past increasingly narrower and narrower comment threads to get back on topic, past 52 posts of “Oh yeah?” “Oh yeah!” I just can’t stand it. Limited attention span on my part, I suppose.
But that being said, I don’t hate Kos. It’s just not that interesting to me most of the time.
cinesimon
I’d visit the place if the format was better.
I just found it to be trying to do too much, without sorting it out so we punters could actually find what we were looking for by perusing, as opposed to having to search and coming up with all sorts of diaries as well.
So – cleaner, simpler, better.
Probably could do with tighter editing – I’ve found the issues the right wing have gone absolutely nuts over haven’t been a big deal and(of course) blown all out of proportion, on the other hand, some of it probably shouldn’t have been on a website looking to foster intellectually honest debate and policy progress.
gogol's wife
@LT:
The idea that Balloon Juice is elitist makes me smile.
Doug Harlan J
@LT:
I think the comments here are honestly higher quality than those at DKos. I get what you’re saying about the feeling of superiority but I enjoy reading comments here and I don’t at DKos. I don’t take any credit for that, it’s on our commenters.
Hal
I had to take a break from a bunch of sites including Kos a few months ago because I was about to develop a brain bleed over diary after diary, or comment after comment, calling for primarying Obama, not with, oh say, I candidate who could win, but with Noam Chomsky, or Alan Grayson, etc.
Obama’s a war criminal, a homophobe, Bush III, and oh boy, look out when I back away from my keyboard long enough to unsubscribe from Obama’s mailing list! He sure won’t be getting my 20 bucks in 2012!
Just a little too much of that for me.
Which is not to say I don’t disagree with much of the criticism or complaints. I think many people have called Obama out when it’s been needed, and done so intelligently and pointedly. It’s just that so much of it seemed to be Liberal fantasy land, and I can only take so much of the “destroy the world to save it” theory of politics.
Joel
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: I think that’s bullshit, and that’s coming from someone who agrees with you most of the time. Most people here (pie-lovers excepted) have honest-to-god opinions and express them freely. Now, some of those opinions differ. It’s really as simple as that.
LT
@HRA: “Watching Markos on a few TV interviews convinced me to drop it. ”
That people can make such a comment without a glimmer of realization of how fucking shallow it is is amazing.
CaliCat
I hate the asshole, old-fart, hippie commenters over there. Not to mention all the stupid DK rules they’re constantly quoting and throwing around.
And some of their main page writers aren’t up to the task. The writing used to be very good but no so much anymore. I’ve seen some really stupid shit on the DK main page in recent times.
Just Some Fuckhead
The worst part is we got stuck with all the intolerants who left there. So now this place is like a fucking thought police state.
LT
@Comrade Scrutinizer: “That place turned into a sewer.”
Why do you say that? I go a couple times a week.
cinesimon
JSF – only if you let them.
nepat
I’m with the king of the Obots – the big man himself – on this one: it’s boring.
Also too – any site that referred to Tim Geithner as “Timmeh” – even once – deserves to have its domain name decommissioned.
Just Some Fuckhead
@cinesimon:
How is it my fault? John had one front pager that wasn’t completely enamored of Obama in the last how many years and the Obots completely lost their shit and you haven’t seen him since, right?
burnspbesq
I have recently grown to like this place a lot:
http://www.samefacts.com/
LM
Not always, but way too often, the front-pagers not only believe unsourced rumors from WaPo, HuffPo, politico, and the WSJ, but also magnify and help mainstream them. They are impatient and prone to panic, imo prematurely mistrusting what they’ve actually heard Obama say or seen him do. They can be informative, yes, and so can select diarists. It is generally worth checking dKos. But the front-pagers seem to lose their bearings at the slightest hint of ill winds. And when, as is frequently the case, rumors turn out to be false, they pretend they helped shoot down a “trial balloon.” That aspect of dKos is tedious. It’s just non-researched faith in a other unreliable media. It feeds unwarranted cynicism and sometimes tracks the rightwing narrative.
lol
The diaries, as already mentioned, are almost universally garbage.
The front-pagers aren’t particularly good either. The front-pagers are generally inconsequential fluff (open threads, what’s happening in congress, videos, etc) or simply posting a couple paragraphs of news stories with a line or two of comment. When they do venture into actual analysis, it’s just as garbage as the diaries, which is why they do so little of it nowadays.
McJoan and BarbinMD are the worst of the lot. Frequently wrong about basic facts and clueless on policy and politics. Meteor Blades as a mod is an absolute joke.
The funny thing is that Kos himself is actually pretty solid (manic progressive moments aside) and what he’s done with polling is great too. He’s one of the most savvy people in the Netroots. ie: He liked what Edwards was selling but was smart enough not to buy. So it’s a pity he’s too busy writing books and appearing on TV to write on his own site anymore and that he’s left his site in the care of lunatics and fools.
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!):
Yep. On one side you’ve got people who hate Obama because he’s feckless and weak and on the other side you’ve got people who hate Obama because he’s history’s greatest monster and worse than Bush.
Balance.
Joe Beese
There are probably as many articulate commenters at the GOS as there are here. But here they’re not being drowned out by hundreds of yobbos.
It’s true that it got fairly ugly over there for Obama after he extended the the Bush tax cuts. But they love him again now after the bin Laden assassination.
Evilbeard
It’s an easy reason to articulate: annoying angry circle jerk
cinesimon
JSF – what I mean is, you let them get to you, they make much more of an impact.
I didn’t mean to infer ‘fault’.
Ignore the ‘thought police’, and they’re not very effective coppers, right?
skippy
why do i hate dkos? it’s all on record
Joel
Now, here’s what I don’t understand.. if you don’t like a place’s content, why visit? I mean, I like the content at a lot of blogs and I don’t visit those. So why waste time at places that suck?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Joel:
I’m afraid I’m confused. Did I say otherwise?
LT
@Doug Harlan J: “I think the comments here are honestly higher quality than those at DKos. I get what you’re saying about the feeling of superiority but I enjoy reading comments here and I don’t at DKos. I don’t take any credit for that, it’s on our commenters.”
Well, you’re right. But it’s a percentage thing. There are a thousand comments there to every one here, so the great comments get a little lost. But I don’t want to sound like that’s the only reason for being here – I come here every day. (Maybe I just wanna hang with the cool kids, too?) And good lord, there are some really fucking horrible commenters here, too, sometimes, so let’s not forget that.
cinesimon
I agree, lol – I think Markos would be much better off building an entirely new project, without the baggage the site has developed.
He does have plenty of great things to say, his heart’s most definitely in the right place, he’s solid as a debater on cable which is handy, and he understands how to utilize facts in a debate, regardless of the format.
Pity so much of his site diverts from what he could really offer.
LT
The people here using the “They want to primary Obama!” as evidence of how wrong the place is – wtf? That’s an example of YOU being rigid, not them. I look forward to voting for Obama in 2012, but if someone wants to primary him? What the fuck do I care? Why would I hate that idea? Just so dumb.
magurakurin
@McJulie:
that’s what did it for me. I have DKOS ID of 20000, so I was there quite a while. It used to be an amazing nexus, but the pissed off despair seemed to grow and grow. And with the election of Obama it absolutely exploded. I stopped reading there and now I don’t get that pissed-off despair and I am no less informed by reading the other blogs I always read anyway. Occasionally I pop in for a look, but that despair and depression still permeates that place.
ChrisNYC
I read the KOS comments. I get a kick out of the meta fights and the constant debates over HR’ing. So funny. And pointless.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
you know, if you were only 1 or 2 degrees more stupid and a mere .05 of a degree more tedious, you’d be indistinguishable from Uncle Clarence.
One-note-wonder-trollz. We haz ’em.
[cue: “but I’ve been here since the beginning of time, and you’re just a noooooob!! Brraaaaawk!!”]
JSM, the only Real Balloonzian.
John Weiss
@CJ: Awww. Come on. What about Devil’s Tower? Great stuff!
Kobie
I don’t hate it, but I pretty much restrict my reading to the FP. The diaries are either too emo, too tl;dr, too whiny, or too overwrought with demands for ideological purity for me to take.
Also, the next comment that Just Some Fuckhead makes that has any merit whatsoever will be the first.
Doug Harlan J
@Kobie:
You didn’t read the karaoke thread, he was golden there.
Doug Harlan J
@LT:
As you know, I’m not a DKos hater, but I’ve got to give the people who comment here credit for an overall great effort you know.
BattleCat
Haters gonna hate.
JGabriel
lol:
I love that you put what’s happening in congress in the category of inconsequential fluff. On a website devoted to politics.
Why are you even here? Discussing what’s happening in Congress is one of the sine qua non, one of the raison d’etre, of political blogging.
(Boggles flabbergastedly.)
.
CaliCat
@LM:
Yeah, exactly. According to the DK main page, President Obama was going to call for the gutting of Social Security in his SOTU. Whatever happened with that?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Doug Harlan J:
And here, the Obots just can’t handle criticism.
water balloon
Most of the diaries there read like bad attempts at literary profundity written by emotionally troubled shut-ins. The comments are worse.
Some of the front page stuff is fine, but it’s mostly the worst kind of amateurism on display. They should get some people with actual expertise or at least an ability research interesting issues on board.
Kos is the best writer there, and his infrequent posting hurts his site. The polls are OK I guess, and Chris Bowers is a decent substitute.
Just Some Fuckhead
That’s why they’re here, complaining nonstop about there. Which is why you have this thread.
skippy
just measuring: my kos userid is in the lower 4 digits
random asshole
It’s quite amusing, isn’t it? I wonder how many people here, like me, simultaneously agree with you, yet used to visit there regularly in the past and, in fact, discovered this blog because someone there linked to it.
MikeJ
@Doug Harlan J: So did you wind up doing David Soul’s Don’t Give Up On Us Baby?
SBJules
Kos was the first political blog I read so I have good feelings about it for that. It doesn’t bother me, I like the polling. If something irritates me, I quit reading.
Doug Harlan J
@Just Some Fuckhead:
If you think that people shouldn’t roll their eyes at the idea of primarying Obama, then you and I disagree seriously on that topic.
Loneoak
@gogol’s wife:
Totally. I would like DKos a lot better if it stopped taking itself so seriously. Where are the pet pictures? The dick jokes? Fetus watermelons? Music puns in every other thread title? Hugely successful fundraisers for a tiny pet rescue organization? Regular threads dedicated to Chuck, a show no one watches? Plus, we have NFL threads par excellence.
If there’s a sense of superiority here, it is well deserved and derived from a culture of not taking ourselves seriously while taking other people’s well being seriously. Compassionate irreverence, FTW.
Edit: Wrong link originally, copy and paste fail.
CJ
@John Weiss:
I dunno, I can’t read a diary or go five comments without encountering poutrage or some form of handwringing over Obamamania. I’m sure there are some good people there, but all I ever see is the “Obama is worse than Bush I’m moving to Norway to live among true progressives!” types.
Still peruse the front page though, I appreciate the voluminous polling and the hate mail makes me chuckle.
Paula
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
TRUE DAT.
As a shut-in myself, I find it sad that some people are never less than an hour away from participating in a pointless flame war.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Doug Harlan J:
Why would I care what some anonymous commenter thinks about primarying Obama?
PETE
Jed Lewison is a perpetual butt hurt machine. Like Aravosis but less bad and not gay. Other than him, the front page is OK. But I did downgrade them to Tier 2 on my RSS feed.
devtob
DKos is not perfect, but it is pretty good.
The FPers are experts, and entertaining writers, generally.
And the no-name diarists tell some great stories — not all about politics of the day.
Markos has created a successful business by providing an online place for Democrats to write and argue about politics, or about gardening, pets, favorite sports teams, personal trials and tribulations, etc.
DKos is not for everyone, but it works just fine for many thousands of people like you.
Doug Harlan J
@MikeJ:
No, here’s the working list right now
Easy Like Sunday Morning
Rock With You
Rock This Town
Celebration
Raspberry Beret
Under My Thumb
Brandi
I will do the first definitely then two out of the next three, depending on time, consumption etc.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@LT:
The sheer volume of commentary at Kos is what has always kept me from participating there, and also makes it impossible to fairly make a generalization about its quality.
General Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Somebody give fuckhead a crying towel and hug, to soothe his po obot tortured soul. There are maybe a dozen of us, or so, at any given point in time here. But it is nice to know we wield such power without actually having any.
It’s not that we think we are superior, though that is part of it. it’s that it’s fun to tune up independent thinker types coughing up the latest netroot dogma mush.
LT
@gogol’s wife: Your comment at #83 and DougJ’s following it actually really did make me smile.
Kobie
@skippy: Nice. Mine’s in the neighborhood of 50,000.
Corner Stone
The truly amusing add on to this question, at least to me, is the people here who constantly bring DK or FDL into a thread. Time after time they will profess how much they hate {insert name}. Yet somehow they can’t stop themselves from constantly going there. And then coming here to tell us all about it, and how kuhrraazzyyy {insert name} is with their latest offering.
Martin
DKos gets hysterical too often. This place does too, but there are much better self-correcting measures here than DKos (or most sites) have. Once DKos goes around the bend over some perceived slight, you get the wreck list full of hyperventilating diaries and commenters trying to one-up each other for the title of most certifiably outraged and pure. It’s like a BJ post but with only Beese and Canadian Observer commenting.
ChrisS
Dkos# 371 here. I was on that site back in the run up to the glory of Iraq arguing with some dickhead republican named John Cole.
stuckinred
@Kobie: Hmm, never thought about it, 116694 for me.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Corner Stone:
Does this crazy shit happen anywhere else or it unique to here? I can’t recall seeing it elsewhere but I don’t read a lot of comments elsewhere.
micah616
Why the DKos hate? Too. Much. Meta.
JAHILL10
I like the GOS’s immediacy especially during the interminable 2008 campaign. When news is happening, they post early and often which I really appreciated. They were my indirect life line to the debates in 2008. Since then the emo has gotten too heavy to digest on a regular basis. I’ll check in a few times a week for DPR and Midday Open Threads and the polls, but for the most part the front page posts swing between tedious droning and screaming false alarms. Few of the FP writers have a journalistic instinct in their entire body (always lead with their feelings, follow with facts, if indeed they have any). You’d think by now the front pagers would have figured out who the president is instead of indulging in these manic depressive swings between Obama love and worse than Bush. They hurt their purported cause by coming off as a bunch of hysterical whiners all the time.
mikefromArlington
IMHO the only blogs worth a damn for cut through the crap and not get caught in the inside the beltway memes is this place, benen, charles Johnson at littlegreenfootballs, plumline and Josh Marshall. Many of the other tmp’ers drive me nuts.
FDL and KOS seem a little too anti eatablisment for the sake of pandering to the anti establishment crowd. I get it. That’s their niche. Those that frequent that site thrive on opposing the establishment, no matter who it is. It’s how they roll.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Doug Harlan J:
You gotta videotape that so I can die.
LT
@Just Some Fuckhead:
It happens at DKos all the fucking time about FDL. Fucking exasperating. (Marcy Freaking Wheeler’s at FDL! And DDay, who I’m pretty sure is a robot.)
water balloon
Matthew Yglesias has the best comment section, if just for the sheer number and dedication of interesting lunatics that post there, mixed with intelligent discussion.
cbear
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’s because you’re a racist.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@LT: It became one of the worst PUMA sites around during the election. I liked to read Jeralyn on legal matters, but the site went off the rails in 08, and became pretty toxic, if you didn’t agree with the PUMAs there.
Karen
I started at KOS, even wrote a few diaries. Through KOS I learned about BJ. What I hate about KOS is the all or nothing attitude. If I ever dared to say anything positive about Obama I was instantly called an Obot. I don’t love everything Obama does by any means but unlike PUMAs at KOS, FDL and Taylor Marsh, I recognize that he’s the most viable candidate right now and I’d rather have part of a loaf than hold out for everything and get nothing. I got the feeling with KOS and FDL that they care more about winning the fight than losing the war. Look where that just got us.
Roger Moore
@Loneoak:
This. The thing I like about BJ is that it recognizes that the current crop of Republicans are so vile and crazy that they can’t be fought head on. The true believers can’t be convinced with facts, and trying to refute the Republicans lies, slanders, and calumnies only seems to validate their craziness. The only avenue that can work is ridicule, and snarky ridicule is BJ’s weapon of choice.
Maude
@Doug Harlan J:
What about: You Light Up My Life?
First couple of bars of that will clear the room.
Could always do an encore with: Seasons In The Sun
Sometimes there are wonderful conversations in the comments here. People pitch in with little facts and the words flow.
Edit: spell fail
Paula
Hey, having never once registered or commented on Dkos (and having gone there maybe 3x in the last 3 years) is it my place to judge?
Hate registering. I don’t know if BJ is somehow objectively “better” that Dkos but I don’t have to register and someone can call someone else a bitch or a troll without someone getting all offended.
Oh wait …
/bitch-troll
stuckinred
@LT: Fuck Jane Hamsher. There, ya happy?
Just Some Fuckhead
@cbear:
I am Co-Leader of the Cracker Pack.
Ron
DKos is huge, and anyone can write a diary or make comments. If you base your feelings about them on the diaries and comments I think you are missing out. I do think the front page is more useful than most of the diaries by far. I don’t know where people get the idea that Markos is some kind of purity nut. He’s made it pretty clear over time that he thinks a priority is electing democrats. He would prefer “better” democrats it’s true, but then so do I. Do I really ‘like’ Ben Nelson or Joe Manchin? nope, I don’t. Basically my thoughts on them is they are probably better than the alternatives. He at least seems to understand that in WV or NE you aren’t going to elect an Al Franken type. Yes, he supported a primary opponent of Blanche Lincoln, but this was someone who had won statewide election there so had to be considered a viable candidate.
Doug Harlan J
@water balloon:
It is so crazy though, some of them. I like it in small doses, like Dennis Hopper outtakes from Apocalypse Now.
eemom
@stuckinred:
dunno about him/her, but I am. : )
taylormattd
@Doug Harlan J: Just Some Fuckhead is one of the morons currently representing a plurality at Daily Kos that shriek non-stop about “Obots” whenever somebody fails to understand why Obama should be primaried.
KeithW
I just logged on for old time’s sake (UID 280, baby). My last activity was a pissing match with Armando in the comments. Absolutely couldn’t stand that guy.
I think I stopped reading DKos because it became so po-faced. I like my politics with a side order of sarcasm and humour, and I get that from BJ (and before then, Billmon and Atrios).
I see also from my comments log that Kos himself pissed me off with a front page story about how “This country, while far from perfect, /is/ the best in the world”, which would have been stupid mindless jingoism even if it wasn’t at a time when y’all were about as dysfunctional as a democracy can get.
jo6pac
It’s a love/hate but the polls are in the hunt
Tim, Interrupted
@Just Some Fuckhead:
JSF, you have been right on, and completely hilarious, through this entire thread. Thanks for all you do to inflict just a teensy bit of self awareness on the BJ Obot Kool Kids.
Especially on Eemom, who CANNOT handle it. Which pleases me.
askew
@LM:
That basically sums up my problems with DK. The front page really went off the rails when Joan McCarter started writing stories during the health care debate. Those stories were frequently based on wild speculation and rumors and were filled with errors. Unfortunately, too many of the site bought those lies hook, line and sinker.
The other problem with the site is an increased amount of racism. The site admin, Meteor Blades, ignored the racists and the complaints of multiple African-American posters.
The only thing worth reading now at DK is the elections sub-section of the site, which replaced Swing State Project.
stuckinred
@eemom: It
Karen
I’ve heard the FPers mentioned. What blog is that?
Kathy
Like the front page, read the diaries that have talked about Wisconsin and Michigan (which have the bonus of not containing FDL type butthurt). I normally blow off the comments, life is too short. I find the site quite tolerable and even somewhat interesting with these narrow parameters.
Kobie
@Ron: I don’t necessarily think Kos is a purity nut, but a great many of the commentariat there are.
Just Some Fuckhead
@taylormattd: You are a fucking idiot. I’ve never weighed in on the subject outside of what I just said here.
If you can’t make a coherent point then you should just stick to bitter invective like eemom and Stuck.
stuckinred
@Just Some Fuckhead: bitter? sheeeeeeet
eemom
I don’t hate DK, mostly because I’ve never hung out there. In addition to all the downsides noted above, I fucking hate that nested comments/”rec”s/stupid quotes under people’s screen names format.
That’s one of the good things about here. The commenting format is SIMPLE. Hell, Cole wouldn’t even let us do the avatars — and in retrospect that was a wise decision.
joel hanes
dKos asked me to quit reading their stuff, and I complied.
I use adblock because all too often blogad providers are down or overwhelmed, and the display of the front-page posting I want to read hangs while waiting to load some ad in which I have no interest.
DKos explicitly disinvites people who use adblock;
they present an overlay window that says
“we ask you not to read our stuff and adblock”.
Fair ’nuff.
I whitelisted them for a time, but then I was back to waiting while Firefox tried to connect to http://irrelevant.annoying.ads/ to load content/obscure/imgage3997.png, and there was nothing on dKos
that I cared about that much.
So I restored adblock and quit reading them,
by their request.
LT
@Karen: FPers = front pagers, the rotating hired writers at DKos. (If you were joking, well, this is just me being my usual obtuse self.)
stuckinred
@eemom: My little red doggie was nice!
RossInDetroit
BJ is eccentric. The GOS is just plain nutty. There’s a critical difference and that’s why I’m here instead of there.
Doug Harlan J
@Tim, Interrupted:
I haven’t made up a new category in a while, but that will be one.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Speaking of GOS comment threads…
stuckinred
9 Bush officials on the Sunday shows.
General Stuck
@Ron:
I’ve followed Marko’s career fairly well from the beginning with DKos, and I agree that he isn’t a “purist”. But I think at some point, he had on his hand a huge group of followers, many of which are purists, and other assorted crazies, fanatics, etc … and he took some pretty stupid stands, like with HCR, and other issues bowing up and getting “purist” as in all or nothing.
When you collect that large a number of hungry partisans, they need feedings of red meat. I don’t think any of the so called “progressive” blogs are the least bit progressive in their commentariat, and being inconsolable idealists. I suspect a pragmatist like Markos’s was and is surprised as anyone to have attracted so many of these types of dems.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
no actually, he should make “coherent points,” just like you do.
The same TWO coherent point, over and over and over and over again:
1. Obots suck.
2. I’ve been commenting here since before this blog was a gleam in John Cole’s eye.
stuckinred
@eemom: sic em, I gotta crash!
Dee Loralei
@MikeJ: I’m thinking he needs to do some Rick Springfield, like “Jesse’s Girl”, but really anything in the ouvre……
stuckinred
bbye boston
Mr Stagger Lee
Delete my socialist f*ckstick hate mail Kos!
Tim, Interrupted
@Doug Harlan J:
I will eagerly await my monthly residual check. :D
Just Some Fuckhead
@stuckinred: Jesus, hide behind eemom much?
cleek
i have no interest in the diaries, and the FPers have never done much for me.
Kobie
@KeithW:
Oh man, I forgot about him. IIRC, I got into it with that guy as well. Yeah, he was quite an asshole.
eemom
@Tim, Interrupted:
Timmeh! How nice to see you’re only too chickenshit to talk TO me, and not about me.
The mark of true, um, character.
General Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
LOl, no, just bouncing from thread to thread whining about how Obots keep your happy ass from having anything nice.
You sound like Makewi with the prissy butthurt.
LT
Oh, and Doug: I used to run an Open Mike (over a decade) and the bar sometimes asked me to host their karaoke night. Best karaoke song: “King of the Road.” (The real version.)
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
There’s a lot to like about B-J. But mostly, I like the me I find here.
Linnaeus
I don’t hate Daily Kos at all. I’ve been reading it since at least 2002 or 2003 and have seen the successive waves of defections and declarations that it sucks, it’s irrelevant, that’s it’s going to fail, etc. Yet it’s still with us. I think Daily Kos functions as an aggregator of left-liberal thought that few if any blogs can match (though a good deal of that has to do with timing). I don’t comment there as much as I used to, but I’ve decreased my blog reading and commenting generally due to work and academic priorities.
I can understand why some – even a lot – of people don’t go there. There is a lot of crazy shit that goes on there. But I like it in spite of all that. If there’s stuff there I don’t like, I don’t read it. There’s enough content there that I do like.
different church-lady
@PETE: relieved to see you say that about Jed Lewison. He really drags their front page down. I was thinking I was the only one who noticed or cared.
Kobie
And GODDAMMIT CELTICS GODDAMMIT
Doug Harlan J
@LT:
I can believe it, I would do it but it’s a young crowd and they probably don’t have it.
It’s a great song, anyway.
Anya
@Just Some Fuckhead: liar
Karen
@LT:
Nope, I was completely serious because the only thing I could think of was Freeper and I knew that was ridiculous!
Thanks for the info!
Jim, Foolish LIteralist
I thought Jesse’s Girl was Rick Springfield’s oeuvre….
I just fell out of the habit of reading D-Kos early in the primary, before the War. My preferred FPers were getting crowded out, and the comments section(s) just got nuts, because of the nesting, the pie fights and the ratings, and what I called the Hall Monitors (THIS COMMENT IS OFF TOPIC! READ THE FAQs!). Kind of funny that they’ve gone Firebagger purist. It was the supposed O-Botism of DK that provoked the great PUMA ‘strike’ of ’08.
eemom
the fuckhead jokes, they write themselves.
Just Some Fuckhead
@General Stuck:
Only an Obot could come away with that interpretation of this thread. Lemme break it down for ya in my very clever way:
DougJ: Why do so many of you hate DK?
JSF: DougJ, they don’t like DK because they’re a bunch of thinskinned wankers who can’t handle the criticism of Obama on DK.
Obots: (slow moronic drawl) Ah cudn’t handal the anty-Obama stuff thar.
Other Obots: Stop critizing us JSF! Damn you! Damn you to hell! Shut up! We hate you!
different church-lady
For me it’s really simple: the emos have taken over what used to be a place that was both informative and instrumental.
Now it’s all-hair-on-fire, all the time, and OBot/PurityProgressive flame wars. When it’s not wall-to-wall Palin, that is.
numbskull
I got no beef with the GOS. It’s a big world with lots of stuff in it. Part of being adult is picking and choosing. GOS is big. It’s going to have good, bad, and middling. Deal.
Just Some Fuckhead
@eemom:
And amazingly, yer still humorless.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@LT:
Roger Miller, right?
CaliCat
@askew:
Bingo. MB’s weak tea approach to moderation is infuriating. I always felt he was biased in favor of the Obama hating assholes. I think he’s intimidated by them. MB’s a sucky moderator. Might as well not even have one.
eemom
@Kobie:
Is Armando the same as the BTD who trolls here, or not? I’ve heard rumblings to that effect.
cbear
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Did CS get promoted?
Btw, I must have missed the memo—are we wearing the utility whites at the next meeting, or can we go with those fabulous purple numbers?
Kobie
@Doug Harlan J: Where do you do karaoke, Doug?
LT
@Doug Harlan J: Ah, you’d be surprised. It is always a hands down hit. Youngsters and all.
RossInDetroit
I read the GOS as far back as 2 renovations ago. Linked to it and to TPM by Eric Alterman, who I liked and have lost track of.
I never got comfortable after DKOS expanded because there was so much going on I couldn’t get my bearings. I’m more secure reading single columnists like Krugman, where I approach the posts with some background and context. Easier to process than some detailed blow by blow on DKOS from a local race 2000 miles away that I’m 5 minutes into before I can decide if I care.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@eemom: Armando became BTD when “Armando” was outed a few years ago.
Kobie
@eemom: No idea.
askew
@CaliCat:
From what I understand, they don’t have an admin any longer. Kos declared the Meteor Blades as admin experiment to have failed and now it is just community moderation. So, I am assuming it is back to the usual pie wars.
General Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’m laughing at your dude. I may start calling you Scarlett, for making yourself the center of attention with nothing but a stream of bullshit. Seems like all the other Obots are laughing too. But you love the attention, dontcha? just a little.
LT
@eemom: Armando is BTD. And I personally like him. I got into ASSHOLE wars with him at DKos, but it always seemed to be a bit tongue in cheek to me. He’s a smart motherfucker, and his heart is obviously in the right place, is all that matters to me, and I’m glad he shows up here.
ruemara
I read DKos for years and never joined until I tried to do more activism online instead of out here by myself. What can I say? It was a waste of time. The basic news aggregation is decent, but doesn’t match Think Progress or TPM. The analysis by FPers is… useful with a grain of salt. I got very turned off to Dkos over the HCR battle. When I figured out how much misinfo was in the action diaries and analysis (seriously, seriously misinformed nonsense) and has now become the gospel of HCR according to progressives, I understood that on the left as well as the right, we do groupthink and ignore facts we don’t like. I still like native american kos, wrecklist, green kos; IOW the community specific stuff but I stay out of comments because of the all or nothing aspect. Polling is relatively easy to work with but, I can go to TPM too. I don’t hate it, but I don’t find it to be the end all be all of progressive community. Fuck all the morons here and there who think if you don’t agree with them against Obama, then you’re a “Obot”. You’re idiots.
pluege
After being a daily visitor for years I quit Dkos in 2008 during the Democratic primaries – couldn’t take their outrageous misogyny against HRC. Never went back. Same for TPM and OpenLeft – haven’t been back in 3 years.
different church-lady
@Jim, Foolish LIteralist:
No, no, it’s completely bifucated now: it’s about 300 O-Bots headed up by a hard-core dozen, in a death match against about 300 firebagers headed up by a hard-core dozen. The objective? Domination of the rec list. (Edit: add…) Most of the rest of the “community” is actually in between the two poles, but they get nearly ignored except when one of them manages to get a “pox on both your houses” diary on the rec list.
The thing most of them have in common is their willingness to be whipped into a frenzy over something they read or saw, usually driven by cable TV news.
It’s a microcosm of recent US political dynamics, played out on the left edge.
eemom
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I don’t think so, fuckeleh. Au contraire, I find you ROFLMAO hilarious. Especially in the company of your little acolyte, Stoned Cracker.
[cue fuckhead thrashing madly through old comment threads to find some shit to hurl in response]
fhtagn
Some of the diarists are good (teacherken comes to mind), but the volume of noise to signal in the comments is just too high. Also too, far too many of the diaries read like another matoko/hermione/ghanima first draft of a love note to ED Kain. That said, I did enjoy the time when the PUMA corps stamped out in disgust, only to find everyone else cheering their departure.
James E. Powell
@stuckinred:
I am No. 156. I stopped going there sometime during the 2008 primaries because it was all just too much. Too much flaming, too much hysteria over everyday campaign events, too much vituperation, and just too much stuff to read in order to get to a decent discussion.
I returned to look the new format and started cruising by once or twice a day to see what’s going on. It is very good for that.
I’m not saying this to be a dick, but the quality of the writing has deteriorated. I miss billmon!
Cain
I just read reddit now. In general I find commentary to be pretty decent and nobody takes anybody too seriously, and the snark is awesome. Plus I get some really cool observations on race relations. I mean.. black women wanting to date a white guy or that there is african americans and “niggers” which seems to be a catch all for lower class blacks. Wow.. I learn a lot there.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@LT: Armando’s invective never seemed tongue in cheek to me: he sounded like a guy with serious anger management problems. But I agree with you that he’s scary smart, and that his heart’s in the right place.
google
Problem with gos is that nutters over there take themselves too seriously, cry too easily and have way too much time on their hands.
Go, get a life for chrissake instead of seeking validation of your life on teh internutz.
eemom
@General Stuck:
bwaaahaaahaaaahaaaa.
“As Gawd is mah witness, Ah’ll never be Obotted again. No, nor any of my folks. As Gawd is mah witness, Ah’ll never be Obotted AGAAAAIIIIIIN!!”
handy
DougJ trollin for lulz. And 220+ comments in, I call success. Good job, sir. I doff my cap to you.
PanAmerican
@eemom:
That’s the one.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@eemom: Sure. Fine. Whatever.
Joel
@Doug Harlan J: @Tim, Interrupted: Is that an imperative?
different church-lady
@James E. Powell: We *all* miss Billmon.
lol
@JGabriel:
I’m talking about DailyKos original content. The schedule gets pretty much copy and pasted with little to no analysis and the comments might as well be an open thread.
Ditto for most news stories that are posted to the front page.
When they do venture into posting anything original, it’s not pretty.
@eemom:
Armando = Big Tent Democrat = BTD
So, yes.
@Corner Stone:
I like to nutpick and laugh at the commenters at Free Republic too. Or rather, I like other people to nutpick and post comments from Free Republic for me to laugh at.
So it goes for GOS.
fhtagn
@handy:
If DougJ wants to crack the 1,000 comment barrier, he should put up a post announcing the return of ED Kain as Site Editor with Full Banning discretion, and watch Matoko-Splat projectile vomiting at least 300 comments worth of cognitive hairballs.
Can't Be Bothered
This has been some of the most piss poor trolling I’ve ever seen. It took Just Some Fuckhead like eight posts of waving his arms around to get someone to take the bait and then it basically amounted to NO U. Trolling is a art. And you don’t have it dude. There’s waaaaay better places to troll than here anyway.
Kobie
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Yep, I’ll agree with that as well.
Mark S.
I have a theory that the best comment sections are the ones that are nearly equal in men and women. I’ve certainly had enough of sausage fest comment sections (Yglesias, Drum, every sports blog, etc.).
Just Some Fuckhead
@Anya: Sorry, I could be remembering wrong. Can you remind me exactly the point you were trying to make regarding Daily Kos?
CaliCat
@askew: Thanks, askew. That’s too funny. I haven’t been there in a while so I wasn’t aware of this change. I applaud folks like you who still go there and battle the ignorance.
dww44
@LT: Agreed. Always read his diaries.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Can’t Be Bothered: Thanks for bothering.
LT
@CaliCat: @askew
I dont’ think that’s right. I recently saw MB ban someone. (And the desire by many to personally go after MB because of this is just wrong.)
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@Just Some Fuckhead:
21 posts in one thread about how much you hate obama is enough.
fuckface, you are seriously diseased and in need of medical intervention.
Obama derangement syndrome is a powerful and sad disease.
Can't Be Bothered
@Just Some Fuckhead:
ba dum tsss. Uncle Steve will be here all week folks. Nothing worse than an attention whore troll. See ya around.
CaliCat
@different church-lady:
This couldn’t be truer. LOL.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Can’t Be Bothered: Who’s really the attention whore here? Me, answering DougJ’s thread topic question and handling the blowback?
Or you, ignoring the topic and running in to pile on the “attention whore” and thereby gain so much of that sweet sweet attention you begrudge others.
Help me out here.
birthmarker
Dear Markos, (In case you catch this thread)
Loneoak at #127 touches on an important fact that I have wanted to bring to your attention.
You little joint used to be FUNNY. A case in point-a post in June of 2006 about a David Brooks column calling users of DKos “rabid lambs.” Much hilarity ensued in the comments, as you can imagine. Classic.
Now I hit BJ for humor and entertainment.
Professional trolls, determined to undermine a popular dem site, showed up at DKos around the 2008 elections, and have never been adequately dealt with. Around that time I made a comment along the line, of, Markos, you are getting run over with trolls. IMMEDIATELY one of them hopped right in and said, “How DARE you suggest that Markos moderate DISSENT!!!” Oh, the horror! Oh, the pearl clutching!
Another example–BlackWaterDog was run off for aggregating some positive pics of Obama. RUN OFF. Some of these pictures would bring tears to my eyes. Poignant. I thought they should have been a front page feature.
I first went to Kos when googling around looking for Katrina pics in September 2005. That started me reading political blogs in general. Without these blogs providing some pushback, where would we be as dems?
You have a great site and I go there daily. I don’t spend as much time there as I used to, though.
askew
@LT: I don’t normally go to DK outside of the elections sub-section, so I am just relying on a link I was sent to a diary by kos saying that the MB admin experiment was a failure and that they are tweaking the formulas for autobans + community moderating to replace MB’s role.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Can’t Be Bothered: Now Darrell and miqsubzero were trolls!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!):
I don’t hate Obama and haven’t said anything of the sort here.
I appreciate you helping me to make my point but I don’t really need your help.
hhex65
It used to be great in opposition, raised a lot of money and focussed on elections over a single-issue approach but it seems that since 08 it’s dominated by personality and self-righteousness.
Maybe the redesign will shake things up, I think the software platform is what made it work so well to begin with.
lol
The 2006 elections were pretty much the peak of DailyKos’ (and probably the Netroots at large as we know it today) relevance. They won a few primaries against the establishment (Tester, Webb, Lamont) and did their bit to push some Dems to victory.
And the slide downward started almost immediately on election night with Lamont losing to Lieberman. They bet a lot of reputation of getting rid of Lieberman and they didn’t even come close.
But wait! The presidential primaries are just around the corner! Surely, they’ll be influential there. Nope. Obama more or less ignored the Netroots, built his own on-line social network and grassroots organization and raised a ton of money on-line without their help. He didn’t even have the decency to put a couple bloggers in his employ. (The Obama campaign spurned Jerome Armstrong and he spent the remainder of the election season trying to make them pay for it.)
DailyKos bet heavily on Edwards (and Dodd) because he sucked up to them and hired some of them. And they lost.
So now they’re stuck with a President they’ve disliked ever since he went into the Senate, blame for Lamont losing by double-digits and absolutely did nothing to get him elected.
The health care fight came around and they decided to draw a line in the left by opposing that. They bet heavily on defeating it… and lost.
Then primary season came around and the only primary challenger they came up with was in a state where no Democrat was going to survive the general. They bet $10 million… and lost.
2010 came around and they bet heavily on Netroots poster boys Grayson and Feingold… and lost.
It’s been nearly 5 years now and the Netroots has repeatedly tried and failed to be relevant at anything. They so desperately want to be the new beltway cocktail circuit (see Townhouse) and it’s just not happening.
(And just to be clear, when I say “Netroots”, I’m mostly referring to the blog writers/owners, not the commenters/audience.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@birthmarker: I forgot all about “rabid lambs”. That was a reference to the pro-Lamont activism, wasn’t it? And I have to say, as skeptical as I am of the blogosphere’s influence in the larger political world (IIRC less than 10% of voters are regular blog readers), I do think Kos and his site deserve a lot of credit for CT’06. I really believe that if Lieberman had gone down, it would’ve been a big shift in our politics. A valiant effort, if ultimately unsuccessful.
master c
Huff Po just looks so bad, looks like a really old site, cant believe it’s not cuter.
Kos has a good look and I like to check it out, as they do local and national.
CaliCat
@LT: Not sure what you mean by “go after”. I don’t think MB’s an effective moderator over all. That’s my opinion.
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@Just Some Fuckhead: 21 posts in one thread. over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over about how much you dislike the commentariat at this site.
we got it after the first ten posts, you don’t like obots.
Seek help.
your obsession is pure demented illness. Like Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction” you’re a half of step away from breaking into every obot’s house to boil their pets.
google
@lol: yup. dkos and other nutroots are as effective as a vasectomized, 50 year old man trying to make babies by jerking off.
Corner Stone
DougJ, as far as trollin for lulz goes you got nothing on the AP Editors:
Despite differences, Obama, GOP eye Medicare limit
Now that is some art!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!): Weird. That’s like getting Fundamentalist Christians confused with a benevolent God but I accept your correction.
Now you wanna issue a correction about your Libya bullshit? Remember when you were sacking other commenters for even suggesting that Obama was going to intervene in Libya, before it happened and you disappeared?
CaliCat
This thread is guilty pleasure good.
handy
@Corner Stone:
It’s a shame poor Obama has to be forced to compromise with those big mean Republican racists. Imagine if he had a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress, the possibilities!
handy
@CaliCat:
I keep hitting Refresh on my browser. How about you?
Badtux
I quit reading dKos when Markos went from being an independent blogger to being a fat-headed king-maker (in his own mind). Watching him suck up to politicians has been painful. Add in a complete loss of any sense of humor (the entire site now has all the snark content of a vanilla milkshake), and it just got too dull and compromised to attract my attention.
Spiros Vondas
So when are eemom and JSF gonna make out? Don’t make me fast-forward to the good parts
Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!)
@Just Some Fuckhead:
yet another post on how much you hate obots. you are one diseased obsessive compulsive fuckface.
Karen
@Just Some Fuckhead:
No, the words “I hate Obama” never crossed your lips in your posts. Neither did any positive word for Obama at all.
If Obama were to cure cancer tomorrow, you’d have something negative to say about him.
The only thing about you JSF as opposed to other PUMAs, you don’t say racist things about him or talk smack about his wife or his family. You hate Obama the person because you hate who he is. Not because of his race, which is more than I can say for the other PUMAs. But just because unlike you, we don’t think he’s the incarnation of Satan, that doesn’t make us Obots.
Kobie
@Badtux:
That’s one of the reasons I just got bored with the site as well. It has become a bit stuffy around there.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!): So no correction on that?
CaliCat
@handy: Yes. I have chores to do but here I sit drinking a margarita and refreshing…Damn you, Balloon Juice.
Sarah Proud and Tall
I’ve always liked the GOS and the Kossacks as a rule. They were certainly kind to me when I started posting there, and there was only a small percentage who didn’t get the joke.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Fuck you, fucker.
/no real reason but everyone else seems to be piling on
cynickal
The only thing worse than reading the DailyKOS commentators is reading Balloon Juice commentators.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@cynickal: I know a cure for both….
Corner Stone
@cynickal: This thread is climbing aboard the HSR from lulz st. to metaville.
Elie
Late to the game, but I scan DKOS quickly several times a day looking at diary titles but mostly avoiding the comments.
I mostly blog on BJ, WA monthly… In between I read NY times, and a variety of other sites to just check in. BJ is my main “squeeze”. I can speak my mind but also read comments across the spectrum. I also laugh a whole lot here, and that to me is very very important these days. In fact, the laughter mixed with the informed opinion is what to me makes BJ light years more important to me.
DKOS — don’t hate it — just go there with care and a great deal of skepticism.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Karen: That was simply brilliant in its Obotty goodness. Thank you for making me smile.
Tim, Interrupted
@eemom:
Oh…go bugger yourself, you nasty old crone.
I mean that in only the most respectful way.
benintn
@Slowbama:
This.
hitchhiker
1. too earnest
2. community moderating invites organized takeover
3. 2007 primary wars were too stupid for words . . . and oh, god there were a lot of words
4. did i mention too earnest? think I’m too old be a decade or so to be that earnest
I went there first as a refugee from the old DFA site once the Dean campaign collapsed with a tinny scream. In those early days it felt good to have people to talk to; 2003 was a lonely time.
I lost interest in the place forever on the day that I went there and saw that kos himself had a front page post up accusing the Clinton campaign of doctoring a photo to make Obama look more black. And it was generating a boatload of wild rage from people who were spooning up that horseshit with pitchforks. Completely insane & easily could have been copied and pasted right into Freeper-ville without missing a beat. Who needs that?
But it’s nice to hear that’s it’s still workin’ for some of you.
Elie
@Spiros Vondas:
LOL! a fine example of why I come here — mixed with a lot of serious, informed comments. DKOS doesnt have that and in fact, I think its structure makes that hard to do. When every comment can be commented upon, you lose the flow required to have the fast give and take of snarky and sarcastic responses. You have to have speed for that rather than getting lost in the detail of who responsed what to each individual comment.
I think its hard to comment here without being ready for a challenge and/or appreciating snark. I LOVE that
Elie
Just to clarify, you can comment here on each comment but somehow the whole thread and its context remains more in tact to appreciate snappy humor
mr. whipple
What? There’s a joke?
Shit!
Gus diZerega
@lol:
Interesting – not once did you mention issues – just personalities.
Sort of like a Republican lite. Or maybe the MSM.
Failure, Inc.
The doomsayers and the lunatics ran Bonddad out of there for not being sufficiently deferential to the groupthink over there, and for daring to publish well-researched and provable facts.
Not making him a front-pager was disappointing but understandable; his work was more pure economics and less red-meat politics. But to allow him to be run out of there by a massive and well-concerted trolling effort was unconscionable.
I might add that by following his analysis and advice, I lost less than 1% of my 401k in the Crash of 2008. I owe the man a drink or ten if I ever get to meet him.
At any rate, no point in going over there since they ran the last smart guy out. If I want stupid, I just sit here and wait for Joe Beese to show up.
WaynersT
I posted too many jokes and got banned.
AxelFoley
@handy:
Well, he’s back and it still has gone to pot.
mr. whipple
You forgot to mention the frequently rec’d blogs relating to economic matters that feature doom and gloom predictions that never come true. It’s really pathetic for a ‘reality-based’ community.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@mr. whipple:
One can but try.
AxelFoley
@Mike Kay ( Geronimo!!):
If you call 80/20 Obama hate balance, sure.
Jc
This thread is constNtly making me smile or chuckle. Thanks!
For me, I like parts of DK. LLoyd of great stuff, for certain writers, and then lots if knowledgable people in the non- political groups. Good to read.
The problem with DK as said by others, is excitable ranging to hysterical purity trolls, of different types.
I don’t wade into comments because of this. Too much butt-hurt to good comments ratio.
But yeah, people here tarring DK as “I hate that place”, is being simplistic.
Lots of good information, and a fair number of good posts.
Rihilism
When I noticed there were 200+ comments to Doug’s post I assumed it was going to be a bloodbath. Very nice to see that it wasn’t.
Personally, I prefer my political blogs infused with humor and find the DKos FP mostly humorless. I visit there from time to time, checking in to see how the battle is progressing, but often find the same info just as easily reading Think Progress (which I do daily).
To me, a more fruitful discussion (i.e., more bloodbathy, yet I assume more one-sided) is why people hate HuffPo. Myself, I check it daily for half-naked men and crazy celebrity antics….
Jc
iPhone commenting is a problem.
Failure, Inc.
@mr. whipple: I thought it would be like mentioning that I’d found a lump of shit in my shit sandwich. Why pile on, though? There’s so many good reasons to loathe that site.
mr. whipple
@AxelFoley:
That ain’t ‘hate’, it’s ‘internet activism’ that provides ‘pushback’ to keep Obama from straying too far from the wishes of the ‘online community’.
Obama quakes in fear of the sternly-worded diaries, and through their efforts they have kept Obama from going full- Hitler, as the smart ones have predicted from the beginning.
Bob Loblaw
@Just Some Fuckhead:
What’s a crypto-racist like Anne Laurie need to do to get some attention around here?
/I know it’s too late to successfully troll this thread. Shame on me for watching the Celtics/Heat and missing this bitchfest. Missed opportunity.
Nom de Plume
@General Stuck:
It was supposed to be snark, but those fuckers are serious as dick cancer.
Quite possibly the most humorless site on the internet. Though it isn’t so all the time, which is puzzling. DK commenters are like a fractious relationship–you literally never know what you’re getting from one day to the next.
different church-lady
@hitchhiker:
Not his finest moment, and I said as much to him at the time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nom de Plume: You remind me of the time I made a reference to al-Foxeera (stolen from James Wolcott) and one of the FPers, I think it was Meteor Blades, commented on my comment, to suggest that my levity was most unseemly.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead: “Who’s really the attention whore here? Me, answering DougJ’s thread topic question and handling the blowback?”
I take it that you are that guy in the cartoon who can’t get off the internet because someone is wrong…lol!
You truly live up to your nym. Kudos to you Fuckhead.
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s another thing that pissed me off to no end there, the fainting couch pansies who take an innocuous comment and turn it into a personal insult against themselves (or insert whatever oppressed group here).
That and their Donut Brigade got fucking tiresome.
Nom de Plume
@mr. whipple:
It is an interesting phenomenon. Some people seem to draw energy and excitement from doom itself. Like rapture prophets, they don’t seem to mind that the big day they keep predicting never comes. The point is the coming doomsday, and how exciting it is to contemplate it.
MikeJ
@Doug Harlan J:
I once caught Alex at the 9:30 in DC (after growing up seeing once a month at the Antenna) and he announced he was going to do “the last good song Michael Jackson did.” Since I was standing next to the stage (and he was bumming smokes from me) I asked if it was going to be ABC. He chuckled and said, no Rock With You.
And, uh, that’s my Rock With You story. I do still miss him. America’s greatest artist. RIP Chilton.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
i am going to reserve judgement on the commenters at the daily kos until either andrew sullivan or krugdingo weigh in.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
No, I was just pointing out that I wasn’t doing an attention grabbing hit and run like our attention grabbing hit and runner.
Go smoke some more dope and try to clear yer head.
Glennsyank13
because how does being liberal or progressive make one a kossack? and then people calling other “fellow kossacks” and crap like that. it’s just dumb.
Geoduck
@Bob:
“Hippy-punching” is shorthand for the tendency of Serious People inside the Beltway to prove they are Serious by determinedly crapping all over the “leftist” position of the moment. Bill Clinton taking an axe to welfare during his term in office is one of the classic examples. Leftists are all dirty filthy hippies. Punch one in the face to prove you’re a real man.
As for Kos.. I can’t remember now the exact comment/post by Kos, but it was probably one of his screeds about women. I just said to myself “OK. That’s it. I’m outta here.”
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
You need to tell your nursing home psychologist that your meds quit working.
different church-lady
@mr. whipple: First, as point of reference, pound your head on your desk repeatedly for a minute.
Then, with that in mind, try disagreeing with even the most minor point in any diary by bobswern.
Then calculate the order of magnitude the former is preferable to the latter.
Then of course, there was the day both he and “badabing” had diaries on the rec list trumpeting the impending take-down of Bank Of America by Anonymous within the next 24 hours.
Oh, and the day Slinkerwink tried to get us to believe that 100,000 sex workers were headed to Dallas for the Super Bowl…
Sly
Any political site where posts/comments are rated by the community is doomed to become another DemocraticUnderground. It is inevitable.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Oops, sorry yer first passive agressive swipe didn’t work out for ya and you had to lose the semblance of cheerful affection.
Sucks to be you, I guess.
mr. whipple
@Nom de Plume:
That’s a great insight.
Funny thing is if those commenters sat down to watch, say, Jack Van Impe, they’d laugh their asses off. And then go right back to rec listing their favorite versions of the same thing.
Good night.
goblue72
@KeithW: Take it from the guy who supposedly outed Armando and called him on his B.S., I feel your pain.
http://psychosy.blogspot.com/2006/06/and-now-its-armandos-turn.html
http://socraticgadfly.blogspot.com/2006/06/my-armando-post-that-got-deleted-from.html
Omnes Omnibus
@different church-lady:
Must have been for the corporate types of the Steeler fans. All the Packers fans needed was a win, beer, and maybe some cheese and brats.
Nutella
@benintn:
That’s a reason to prefer BJ to DK? It’s a very common attitude in the comments here, too.
Sly
@Geoduck:
You’re referring to “Dirty Fucking Hippies,” not “Hippy Punching.”
Hippy Punching is used by the paranoid left to denote incidents when they are baited or berated for insisting in 100% leftist purity in all things, largely because they don’t understand the necessary compromises implicit in democratic politics or are prone to bouts of nauseating hero worship.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Oh, you wounded me! I don’t think I will ever be able to recover from your rapier wit that sliced right through me like a hot knife through butter. I tells ya, ise ben moretully woonded.
Your task is done, you can sleep like a baby now.
Sly
@Nutella:
Give us some credit, will you? I’ve seen plenty of evidence that commenters here realize the truth about the South: that Southerners stopped living in caves after 1970.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
You love it.
different church-lady
@Hawes:
You can’t punch what ain’t there.
Omnes Omnibus
@Nutella: Nah, since there are some Southerners who comment here, we know that the description doesn’t fit all Southerners, just the vast majority of them.
fhtagn
@Sly:
Some of them have even managed to use fire in cooking. At least, that’s what Fox News told me at the gym.
General Stuck
@mr. whipple:
And good luck!
CaliCat
I was going to say something but nevermind
askew
@different church-lady:
Lordy, I don’t miss those two posters. The day that kos allowed slinkerwink and nyceve troll DK to make $$ for FDL during the health care debate was the day that DK started its descent into crazytown.
OzoneR
Its just too big and has no meaning. It’s become like the speakers corner in Hyde Park in London, an idiot can babble on in tongues and another can give a passionate speech about world hunger and neither will be taken seriously because they’re given the same soapbox.
MikeJ
@different church-lady:
Technically speaking, I was a volunteer, not a worker.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
Damn right I do! There’s nothing like poking a fuckhead with a stick because you know he can’t resist responding.
It’s what makes Fuckhead the perfect fuckhead that he is.
different church-lady
@nepat: Holy cow, that link explains a TON.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
He doesn’t seem to want to play with me. I suspect it’s because I’m fictional.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I’m sure that he’s fictional too so that might be the reason why.
Opposites attract and all that. ;)
AxelFoley
@different church-lady:
What, how’d I miss that?
Just Some Fuckhead
@OzoneR:
What if it’s two idiots babbling the same thing? What if it turns out it’s not two idiots but one idiot playing two idiots? What if it’s one idiot playing three, four or five idiots? If such a thing like that were to occur on a site, would that site be worthy of shunning?
Or would it be okay as long as it was done in the service of a greater good?
fhtagn
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Could be he’s too busy engaging in some sort of dubious cyber activity with matoko. Unless he is matoko. They do seem rather similar.
Just Some Fuckhead
Oh hell, I got a whole freaking clique of Obots taking out after me now, saying mean things.
Whatever am I to do?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
Fuckhead is in the fictional closet. He’s not yet comfortable with his fictionality.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Revel in it, like you usually do?
Just Some Fuckhead
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
I dunno, maybe I could run off in shame and then come back as a new character like the rest of you.
fhtagn
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Snuggle up with matoko, stroke her plastic sides and achieve whatever fulfilment you can in your twilight years?
google
well done doug. 330 odd posts about another navel gazing site ? nice trolling.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I’ve only got one character, and she thinks you’re funny, so what’s a girl to do?
hitchhiker
@different church-lady:
So what did he say?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Pretend that it’s a pile of crap and roll in it like you’re Rosie.
IOW, the usual. You love the attention and that’s why you do everything you can to attract it.
Revel in the attention, you’ve earned it!
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
You might have a point there…lol!
Just Some Fuckhead
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Are you aware you started the crap with me, and now you can’t stop responding while accusing me of not being able to not respond and “reveling” in the crap?
I mean, you aren’t so completely mindfried you can’t see the irony, hmm?
fhtagn
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Damn it, you are so boring tonight, Fuckhead. Did someone steal your copy of “Snappy Responses for Dummies”?
Just Some Fuckhead
Jesus, there are three of you and this is the best you can do?
different church-lady
@AxelFoley: To be fair, it was a somewhat tangential point she threw into a diary about the NFL not wanting to sign on to an anti-child-sex-slave campaign.*
The odd thing was that when people tried to call her on the obvious unlikeliness of it, she just dug in.
It’s one of the things that happens all too often there: someone starts of writing about a noble cause but then decides the way to be effective is to layer on several feet of bullshit.
(*This is from memory, so apologies if I don’t have the exact details right.)
different church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: How many idiots are you playing at the moment? (Cavuto mark)
Just Some Fuckhead
@different church-lady:
All of you, apparently.
fhtagn
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Well, that response is definitely going make Oscar Wilde afraid for his laurels. The originality, the elegance, the poignant wit!
different church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: On the internet nobody can tell you’re a dog.
But most everyone can tell if you’re an asshole.
different church-lady
@hitchhiker: Not a thing.
Just Some Fuckhead
@different church-lady:
Yes, it was clear to me when you responded to my question to OzoneR with a slam.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Sarah Proud and Tall: well to be fair, acceptance of fictionality has many cultural barriers, in many cases, the people who most deny their own fictionality, are the most fiction-phobic.
i for one grew up in a household that was very tolerant of fictional people, i never really had to come out as fiction, because, i think, it was always assumed i was somewhat fictional.
my concern, was more along the lines of whether to confine myself to the fiction-ghetto, where the coming out as fictional story, and the need for fictional people to feel a sense of fictional community is very real, and thus some what alienating, or to try and live fictionally in the real world, thus demonstrating to the real people ,that fictionality is an every day thing, and fictional people are everywhere and do everything they do.
FlipYrWhig
The colossal FAIL of DailyKos is that the people who post there are entirely convinced that they are The Base. Many of them also think that up-rating someone’s comment makes you an Activist.
It was bullshit when the whole place went the Full Monty for Obama and bought into all the anti-Hillary nonsense about racism, and then it was also bullshit when the whole place went loco with Kill The Bill and the constant worry about Obama’s looming anti-Social Security jihad.
Something about the place leads to these mob mentality episodes. It’s peculiar. Other places have their moods, like the gloom of Digby and the randomness of Yglesias, but IMHO the DailyKos “community” is _so_ prone to paranoia and gullibility, from the front page on down, that it’s no longer interesting to visit.
What’s the mood of this place? Fuck all y’all, there’s the mood of this place, also Andrew Sullivan said something stupid and we should talk about that for a few hours.
Can't Be Bothered
Pretty great basketball game happening right now if anyone is interested. Oh, everyone still too busy pointing and laughing at aptly named attention whore troll? Carry on then. But seriously, double overtime right now.
FlipYrWhig
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
Oh jeesus, I just read _Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead_, and you’re making me have flashbacks like a Vietnam vet staring up at a ceiling fan.
fhtagn
@FlipYrWhig:
If we spent a few hours on every one of Sullivan’s stupid utterances I doubt we’d ever get any sleep around here.
handy
This, and someone upthread also mentioned a lot of humorless hall monitors love to throw the rulebook around. That also.
hitchhiker
@FlipYrWhig:
Nothing to add.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
With a name like Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal wouldn’t everyone just assume you were science-fictional anyway?
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@FlipYrWhig:
post-modernism, symbolically hiding under your bed and telling you to buy a futon, while you sleep, since 1952.
piratedan
well I still use DK daily as a means to stay in touch with local goings on. Since AZ is one of the focal points of “teh stoopid” there’s a fair amount of crap that is going on, and keeping tabs on the latest outrage is a challenge and it helps keep me informed. DKos is a great mechanism for that, especially so if you have an outsider status that renders you invisible to the process, it helps you get involved if you want to or at least educates you if you choose to be.
Is it perfect, no, but I don’t want to get into that old “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good” thang. Considering the lack of MSM help for intelligent rational thought, anyplace that shines a light on the issues and people what are part of the problem is a good thing.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
@Sarah Proud and Tall:
in a post-singularity, erotica sort of way, hopefully.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal:
True. I’d always assumed your armor had lots of buttons and handy flaps.
JC
Sarah Proud and Tall,
See, here’s the thing – pretty soon you are going to want to ‘marry’ a non-fictional character. What’s the world coming to, when a nice upper class fictional Republican wants to marry a hot young stud like Levi Johnston?
It’s bad enough with TEH GAYS. Soon Darth Vader is going to be make REAL babies with Lord Voldermort, never mind all the fictional Darth ‘morts.
CaliCat
@FlipYrWhig:
Nice false equivalency. Hillary DID pander to a racist element during the ’08 campaign. People, myself included, were rightly appalled.
Cathie from Canada
Hmmm — this comment thread now seems to have become mainly a series of in-group flame wars interspersed with irrelevant if humourous comments about erotic science fiction or something.
Maybe the Daily Kos Disease is catching?
Sarah Proud and Tall
@JC:
Damn right. I should have the same rights as any non-fictional being.
Sarah Proud and Tall
@Cathie from Canada:
Throw in a fat cat reference and you’ve pretty much summed up Balloon Juice.
fhtagn
@Cathie from Canada:
Flame wars and erotica combined… sounds like hot sex all round to me, and you can’t say fairer than that!
williamc
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I love you. I read through the entire comments just to watch you fight these folks who are acting just as crudely as you say they are. I literally lol’d at this.
Keep fighting.
FlipYrWhig
@CaliCat: No, I’m sorry, the whole thing was 100% bullshit, bullshit of an Aravosis level produced by deliberate misreading and presumed malign intentions. Someone upstream cited the Front. Page. Post. about how wicked nasty Hillary obviously doctored an image to blacken Obama’s face. All kinds of stupid shit like that compounded itself and justified itself with reference to itself.
FlipYrWhig
@FlipYrWhig: The post that mentioned the “blackening” was hitchhiker. Credit where due, etc.
Joel
this thread reads like a Jon Lajoie video.
that’s not a bad thing.
hhex65
@Can’t Be Bothered: seconded, good playoff games all round so far.
Robert Waldmann
I like the DailyKos. I don’t go there daily (it’s not on my hotlist) but I visit if I have been to Krugman, DeLong, here,Benen, Drum, Yglesias, Klein, Eschaton, Kleiman et al, and TBogg and still have more time to waste on the web.
I read the list from Chrome. Placing you third isn’t flattery. It is fact.
BruinKid
@Failure, Inc.: So I log on here tonight and find over 300 comments here already. I agree that the sad thing is they’ve run off some good posters. Not to mention BJ front pager Dennis G. (formerly dengre at DailyKos). Yet I still trudge on there, mostly just doing transcripts to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert on clips I think deserve a wider audience. I basically stay out of the pie fights. And if I wade in, I demand facts to back up their opinion.
The front page is still quite good, and as long as it’s not a pie fight, the recommended list usually contains some good information.
piratedan
@BruinKid: appreciate your stuff BK, comment on your threads on occaision. DK is almost a clearing house of all stuff left of center, granted some stuff is buyer beware, but I learn a lot from the native american blogs as well as the elections and stuff happening in my state.
Triassic Sands
Any site that criticizes Obama is going to be hated by a large segment of the BJ crowd, whatever the site’s virtues might be. Even a statement like the previous sentence is enough to set the hounds growling.
Personally, I’ve never cared much for DKos. I don’t find Marcos himself especially thoughtful or insightful. When I’ve seen him in clips from TV he’s mostly just annoyed me. The site is probably a reasonable place to go to find links to what’s happening, but I don’t like orange. I haven’t been there in many months.
Jason
@Triassic Sands:
However, there’s an exemption for the BJ bloggers themselves: John Cole has made numberous posts that would warm the cockles of a firebagger’s heart. Even Obama’s defenders can’t keep up a happy face all the time.
Seriously, does anyone really defend Obama’s handling of Bradly Manning’s incarceration?
Pat
For me, believe it or not, it’s the layout of the place. I find it visually confusing, if that makes any sense. Now I will pour myself some coffee!
Ron
@Kobie: Many of the commentariat are, but then many are definitely not. At least it’s not all purity bs all the time like FDL
IM
@LT:
That is my feeling too. A lot of the comment sections of the smaller lefty blogs like to pat themselves on the shoulder and say: At least we are not Dailykos.
I will admit though, that I tend to read more BalloonJuice nowadays. Dailykos is to boring and perhaps election-centric.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@stuckinred:
Same thing. Many of the more shrill anti-Obat nutjobs who dominate the Rec List are FDL regulars who game the system in order to get their “message” out. Some even have a secret clubhouse facebook group to coordinate things.
roshan
Holier-than-thou mentality interspersed with claims of realism and I-got-this-bravado, nothing else.
roshan
@roshan: BTW, that was my observation about Balloon-Juice, not DKos.
different church-lady
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yeesh… what a grouch.
Lori
Mostly I appreciate their analysis and fact-based reporting, from a progressive viewpoint. However, since the mission is explicitly to support the Dem Party, sometimes the cheerleading is too hard and the points of view too narrow.
lol
@Gus diZerega:
Not my fault the Netroot’s primary campaign issue is “how much attention/money are they paying me?”
Or are you saying they rallied around a conservative DLC Democrat who co-sponsored the Iraq War because of issues?
The Netroots’ dislike of Obama is pretty much all about personality. They’ve hated his style ever since he became a Senator and still hate him despite the fact that his style gets him elected and gets him results.
@FlipYrWhig:
DailyKos was never really ever pro-Obama as anti-Hillary. Once Edwards was gone, Obama was the only choice left for them.
David in NY
Look — if you want to complain about a comment section, just take a look at Atrios’s blog these days.
I’m user no. 5xxx, and I still basically like it. Having Chris Bowers is great. Even some diaries are good, but finding the good ones can be a drag, and the prevailing style is icky by my standards — basically the tale of “How I discovered a wonderful thing, won’t tell you what it is right now, just stay with me for about 750 words and you’ll see!”
fuzed
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Stop It! I have to wipe the screen.
David in NY
I see lots of comments above that there’s no humor in Kos. I think wise-ass, funny comments are fairly common. Bob Johnson does frivolous pieces that at their best are very good satire (I remember his once lampooning Kos’s ridiculous idea on giving up on some big race in favor of a long-shot possibility in another state, re-formulating it as tossing in the towel on Truman in ’48, because of the polling, in favor of concentrating on some obscure Michigan senatorial race; the comment thread sort of time traveled an alternate universe that was hilarious).
Ed: On the other hand, there’s so much there, it’s hard to find anything very consistently except on the front page.
Chrisd
I’m sorry, that’s funny. Iced tea all over the keyboard.
someofparts
I set up a page for myself at Kos to have a blogroll. It gives me a one page jump to the sites I read daily, like this one.
Sometimes at Kos there is something worth checking on the front pages, but mostly not, to my tastes. I just hit the recommended diaries, and generally find something there. One diary this morning was by a person who remembered Hoovervilles, and had interesting things to say about that.
williamc
I don’t read GOS anymore just because it is so fatalist. Over there, it is always ‘the end of the world’ or ‘our allies are abandoning us and not as pure as they should be anyway!” Of course the wingnuts are insane, but whining about it and joining the anarcho-marxist WATB legions and swearing off the Democrats after every letdown is how 1994 and 2010 happened. I like Markos and I think that he is correct in calling the right the American Taliban, but he’s so hands-off now, and the front pagers aren’t snarky enough for my reading pleasure.
Corner Stone
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I only pop by a few general purpose blogs but from what I can tell it mainly only happens here.
For some reason, all the most thin skinned humorless fucks from the other sites decided to land at BJ and try and enforce their brand of purity.
Nemesis
Looks like bj has its compliment of WATB’s.
General Stuck
teehee, firebagger tears pour like sands through the hourglass. They are even sweeter than wingnut ones.
You keyboard warriors fix your faces and get back in the ring.
Beulahmo
I have no experience with Kos, other than following links over to Jed Lewison’s blog.
Kos members reputations aside, the sheer number of posts over there seems overwhelming. Potential for having to wade through too much shit to get to a few really good posts–>not a worthwhile use of time, imo.
4jkb4ia
I guess you saw the NY-26 poll, DougJ….
I dipped my toe in the water the other day to look at the rec list. There was no mindless Obama bashing, and a tribute to exmearden. But there was an assumption of utter stupidity among the readers. I know there are smart people like teacherken and Mimikatz still dragging it out there, but years ago the average IQ was so much higher. DKos used to be the central clearinghouse to get information and analysis and it just isn’t anymore. In fact, this was another episode of “John makes it look easy, and it isn’t.”
4jkb4ia
@Doug Harlan J:
100% yes. Now I will stop wasting time on this thread.
The Other Chuck
I got banned from posting there, and probably even deserved it (no I’m not going into it). Probably worked out for the best; I got tired of the nonstop circle jerk of the reclist.
gypsy howell
If I do 3 posts in a row, I can bring this baby in at 400 comments.
@David in NY:
Someone reads Atrios’ comments section? I stopped doing that in about 2004, when it became NTodd and [someone else who I can’t remember] tossing unrelated wisecracks and in-jokes back and forth.
gypsy howell
If I do 3 posts in a row, I can bring this baby in at 400 comments.
@David in NY:
Someone reads Atrios’ comments section? I stopped doing that in about 2004, when it became NTodd and [someone else who I can’t remember] tossing unrelated wisecracks and in-jokes back and forth.
Poopyman
Ah! Crap! Gypsy beat me to it by a half hour. Ah well, kudos on #400, dude.
I still read DK’s front page, but never delve into the diaries OR comments. And I’ve tried to read Atrios’ comment section, but just couldn’t get past about 4 comments before I had to give up. I still try every couple of months, but nothing there’s worth reading.
David in NY
@gypsy howell: Me too. That was more or less my point. Honored to be the excuse for 400, though.
gypsy howell
Just checking in to see if this went past 400. Sorry to harsh your buzz, poopyman.
@David in NY:
I still love Atrios, though. He’s my first stop of the day, every day. Most of the time, I forget that he even has comments. Out of curiosity, I scrolled through a few threads the other day just to see if it had gotten any better. It hadn’t.
4jkb4ia
This is the first “Why I Hate DKos” thread I have read where I died laughing 3 times. Either everybody needs a place to rest, everybody wants to have a home or I have become completely alienated from the place. (UID 37xxxx)
What happened to C&J? That was the humor outlet.
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I, for one, would like to hear an audiotape of “Rock This Town”.
eemom
@gypsy howell:
do you still hang out at Attaturk’s place? I used to see you over there.
Nice guy, even if he WAS one the first to sign up for a “bottom” gig at Mistress Jane’s Dungeon.
The Tragically Flip
@birthmarker:
I like your point about the professional trolls, but not this. I can’t speak for anyone else, but I found BWD to be a dishonest blogger in the limited commentary she did provide. She would routinely take the pro-Obama position to levels beyond satire, while posting dishonest misrepresentations of the positions of Obama critics.
I commented politely in several of her diaries to point out straight up factual errors and provided links to corrections, and not once did she ever correct her posts, nor reply to me. She often didn’t even engage in the comments, except to thank some of her syncophants for their support in yelling down anyone who objected to their take. Non-responsive to constructive critism is the mark of a shitty blogger.
As an alternate candidate for a decent poster driven away unfairly, I’d suggest Bondad, who struck me as wrong in his too positive read of the economic situation, but sincerely wrong and accused of deceit without grounds.
gypsy howell
@eemom:
Still loves me some fez. For no particular reason, I just don’t comment there as much as I used to.
Now TBogg. That’s just a cryin’ shame to me. I could never make the jump from his old place to FDL. I wish he’d done what Attaturk did – keep them both going. even if he just cross-posted the same stuff. I tried for a while, but I just couldn’t get the hang of the new format and the new commenters, even though I was an old original FDL-er, back when it was just Jane & Christy. I lost interest in FDL after the Fitzmas insanity.
As was mentioned above, somewhere around #175 and counting, I really miss Billmon, where I popped my commenter cherry (I was semper ubi back then)
Just Some Fuckhead
@The Tragically Flip: I thought BWD did an awesome job with the People Magazinesque political celebrity pics.
The Tragically Flip
@Just Some Fuckhead: Yes, photo diaries aren’t usually to my taste, but undoubtedly she had an eye for good photos and I don’t begrudge that to people who enjoyed it. Just objecting to the portrayal of BWD as solely a photo-blogger. Not all the criticism aimed at her was irrational or undeserved.
Malcolm
@Bob:
‘Hippie-punching’ refers to attacks on the more liberal or leftist positions, usually by “centrist Democrats”, or sometimes Obamabots, in order to score political points with the Beltway Washington media or “middle-of-the -road” voters. The “punchers” try to make themselves look more “reasonable and Serious” than the Left.
birthmarker
@The Tragically Flip: Point taken. I mostly scrolled through the pics, while wondering why such images NEVER made it to any other media. The ones with Obama and children were always particularly striking. I never followed the intimate details of the controversy, though I was aware that some vehemently objected.
Frankly I have always assumed at least some of the objectors were the aforementioned professional trolls.
Blue Shark
…Hunter.
…No one writes better in the entire Blog-o-sphere.
birthmarker
@gypsy howell:
I had completely forgotten about this! I had to google.
Gawd it’s hard to keep up with it all…
Bill in Portland Maine
I really like Bill in Portland Maine’s writing.
He’s pithy and such.
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Bill in Portland Maine
I would like to request that you DELETE comment 415. It is nothing but shameless promotion.
I agree with all the comments in this thread.
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birthmarker
@Bill in Portland Maine: I started to mention BinPM as a particularly funny addition to DKos, but unfortunately I couldn’t remember the exact handle and was too lazy to go look…
Bill in Portland Maine
@birthmarker: Not meaning to be too forward, but may I have your baby?
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Just Some Fuckhead
@Bill in Portland Maine: Haha. The man comes around.
birthmarker
Well we officially made 24 hours. Is that a BJ record?
kwAwk
I’m a bit late to this party but I’ll add my 2 cents….
1) There never seems to be any disagreement on the front page, which is a pretty good indication you’re reading propaganda and not analysis…
2) With the exception the aforementioned Bill in Portland Maine the writing on the front page while technically proficient and informative can be wonky, dry, lacking charisma, and has no personal perspective
3) Two many people who go into the diaries they disagree with and try to run off the poster
4) Too many diaries about dead cocker spaniels
birthmarker
@Bill in Portland Maine: Would that require effort on my part?
Bill in Portland Maine
@birthmarker: To coin a phrase, just close your eyes and think of England.
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birthmarker
@Bill in Portland Maine: Ha!!