I'd just like to see things stop being dismissed because of what group of friends you belong to, it's really unfair.
i think just about the whole forum would appreciate this, since it's a really, really poor point of argument all the way around. also, similar to what you said, an entire group of people doesn't function like one person. they're multiple people with some sort of similarity in interests that ties them as a group (that one similarity is used by others as an excuse for why they are all the same, when they are definitely not the same: for example when considering the OP's points, squartleturtle is still just not similar to ikethegeneric). so if one person is an idiot independently but pretends or appears as though their whole group was in on it, everyone in the group gets the same dumb label. "circlejerk" and "whiteknight" are just two dismissive terms in arguments that should hold absolutely no substance, yet end up being used anyways because using them has some unseen "internet cool points" benefit.
there's another point to be made though, about the use of the term "circlejerk" or "clique". it seems like as it gets used more and more often it's less directed at any specific group of people and more towards anyone that acts
a certain way: the whole faking innocence scheme, or the sly sarcastic remarks, or the image mockery, or the passive-aggressive insults are just methods of escalating arguments while still seeming cool and collected. a person like nal became very popular for doing that very often (not to say he's changed much from that), and his friends and those who consider him popular take to doing the same thing. it spreads. a lot.
a
whole lot. obviously, other people on the forums are getting extremely tired of this because now you could actually jot down a list of habitual problematic (fire starter) users that are infamous for that kind of behavior, and then several other lists of people that try to fight fire with fire against the first list as well as among each other. the groups are so defined at this point we've collectively labelled them something that is just as subtly offensive and counterproductive: "cliques".
the real deal here, ike, is that on a forum like this the complete free reign users have over the content in their posts today are manageable only by: the user who posted it, and the administrators. badspot and rotondo aren't doing to waste time on jerk-jurisdiction, trying to clean up peoples' acts over the internet for the sake of others. ultimately, it just wouldn't work. so here we are with the only other option. the user who posted it. as it turns out, that won't work either whereas other forums, with tighter rules, are usually regulated by a combination of the two. here, the reputations of those already on that first list have been set in a way that if they tried to fix their attitude and quit being a richard, they'd seem suddenly out of place and uncool. so that's just never going to happen. the new words that are being thrown around drama and creativity are driving away the individuals that actually produced interesting content, attracting others who love to see a good argument with a ban to follow, and promoting everyone else acting like an starfish. the word is just a consequence of the forums becoming meaner and meaner. if you aren't a jerk, it shouldn't apply to you.
