barrelomonkeys wrote:I recall one time I was trying to soothe things over with one poster (this was after a thread was going on about how racist Southerners were) and told him I apologize, and was being completely sincere! I immediately felt guilty for all and any offense I had given, sent a goody basket through an online service to my local LDS mission and made sure I tried to make amends!
The poster ridiculed me and told me essentially, "yah, right ." Doubted the sincerity of my apology and continued to be rude. That level of assumed hostility to anyone not LDS was something I felt very often.
One thing that occurs to me is that I certainly don't pay attention to anymore than probably 5% of the threads on either of these boards. I'm drawn to where my interests lie. As a result, I'm certainly not in a position to judge what goes on everywhere on either board. It could very well be that there are some real a**holes on the MAD board of whom I am simply not aware. I accept that as a real possibility. There are also several times more posters there than there are here. I'm sure there are posters there that I have never read, or very rarely read, whereas I'm aware of most of the posters who frequent this board -- even though I only check this board out every once in a while.
So, I accept as true your statement that there are some real jerks on the MAD board. I just haven't run into them in my travels. And I don't believe that they are that common over there, since the board is quite heavily moderated against jerks, and even TBM jerks have been kicked off or censured. In fact, there are a good number of posters on my "ignore" list over there.
The bottom line is that I don't really intend to defend MAD and condemn MDB. They just are what they are. They cater to different audiences, and there is only a slender overlap between the two spheres.