Opine at me, web ladies

[susie_flo]

Good afternoon, fiends! 
 
I'm popping in for a blether while G succumbs to the rare manly pursuits of watching the football while eating fruit cake.  (Actually he has been super-manly today because he also did some drilling so that I could change the handles on my bedside drawers for some lovely glass ones that had winged their way over from the People's Republic of China.)
 
Thank you for the replies to my poll yesterday.  I'm delighted to see that "Ruprecht" is getting almost as many votes as the leading option!   I have come to accept that, whatever his official name ends up being, he will always be Ruprecht to me.  I've developed such a fond attachment to it that all other names now sound like strangers.  (Last night we attended a family dinner for G's brother and received several new suggestions from nephews & neices, including Zebulon, Jesus and Timothy.  Hmmm...)
  
On an unrelated matter, I've been noticing something about women who use the interwebz and wonder what you webby chapettes think.   Do you think there is a 'type'?  And if so, is there a whole nother type sitting quetly out there whose voices are not being heard online?
  
Being incurably plugged into the matrix, I am what you might call "active" on the webz.  Admittedly a lot of my hangouts lean towards the thoroughly shallow, but at least two of them are big and mainstream.  One of my fav haunts is www.ravelry.com, a social community for people who mess about with string.  (Against all expectations, this site has won a ton of web awards and has become freakishly popular, with millions of members and never fewer than 3,000 logged in at any time.)   Another - probably larger - community that I joined very recently is mumsnet (which again seems to have thousands logged in at any time).
 
The raison d'etre for both of these sites is to be a gathering place for people with one very specific thing on common - i.e. they are either string-fetishists or sproggers.  Other than that, these places are free-for-alls which ought to represent the full politicial and social gamut.  However, what I have started to notice in both camps is a dominant 'type' - this being ladies who are liberal/left wing, blunt, iconoclastic, tongue-in-cheek, irreverent, eloquent and a tad sweary.  Humour tends to dominate most threads, and the rare voice that pops up to express something smacking of conservatism or easily-taken-offence tends to be drowned out pretty quickly by a combination of tutters, arguers and piss takers*.  It's led me to wonder what it would look like if someone drew a Venn diagram of women who read the Daily Fail and women who are heavily active on internet forums.  Would the two overlap at all?  (And if so, where on earth are the Daily Fail readers all hanging out?)
  
Well I suppose that's enough witter from me.  I think it's time to do a few lines...

Hope you're all having lovely, relaxing Sunday PMs.  I wish it would not slip by so quickly....


* e.g. last week someone dared to complain about how offensive she finds "the C word" and asked if other mumsnetters would please stop using it so liberally - which has generated a huge thread dominated by love-your-vagina feminists and enthusiastic language geeks, extolling its worth and quoting Shakespeare, Chaucer and other etymological nerdery.
 

Comments

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I guess the Daily Fail readers hang out on the Daily Fail message board / comment threads. Because there is definitely a screaming dearth of liberal/left wing, blunt, iconoclastic, tongue-in-cheek, irreverent, eloquent and sweary women there. Mostly it's men, saying how there ought to be a lot more rape, and the odd woman agreeing with them.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

*Chuckle*

Have to confess I have not checked out the Daily Fail message board. But surely people who read it must have other interests too.

If I remember rightly, the mail on sunday used to be full of alternative health and beauty supplements and similar woman-bait. (I wonder if Holland & Barrett have online forums, and if so - are the they plagued by a daily dose of outraged contributors?)

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I must admit I flick through the DF online occasionally, mostly to remind myself how astoundingly great all the people I know, are. I've never dared even look for their message boards, but I know they exist. The comments on the articles are enough to induce despair, and that's just based on the grammar, without even considering the content.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I've never dared look at the message boards and am completely with you on the poor spelling and punctuation but occasionally there are gems which make me laugh out loud and cogent reasoned arguments which dispel the rubbish in the main articles.

Plus my friend Richard often writes fake comments and I have to try and guess which one was his.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I would laugh long and loud if it ever turned out that ALL of the comments on the DF that generate such liberal outrage were written by piss-taking Guardian readers.

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I have long harboured a suspicion that the "red arrows" are applied from head office, to support the comments they want (ie: comedy "Incoherently Angry of Basingstoke" stuff).

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I am terribly guilty of existing in a bubble of like-minded people - to the extent that I forget how scary the big wide world is out there...

[chiller.livejournal.com]

I think it's good to burrow out of the bubble fairly regularly, if only to avoid becoming Cameron-esque in one's conviction that one is right.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Me too - it is such a shock when you meet someone who is proper old school racist, sexist or homophobic. Makes you realise the world isn't the lovely cosy place you want to think it is. Even though a quick glance at the news headlines (from a more reputable source than the DF)shows this to be blantant wishful thinking.

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I did a few lines before breakfast.....I'm doing another skull but this time in pale purple aran and I'm going to put this with my pale purple aran bat to make a cushion cover.

I've used the patterns section of ravelry but have yet to venture into the forum sections, and I do read the Daily Mail (for I have no shame and their showbiz pages are truly addictively brilliantly awful, I do occasionally click on the news stories but these invariably make me tut and occasionally shout)but I'd also like to think I fall into your description of liberal,irreverent and a tad sweary.

Think I'll do some lines after dinner as well.

Where does the name Zebulon come from? I kinda like it but in a Douglas Adams kind of way....though a quick look on the tinterweb reveals it was very popular in America in the 1700 and 1800's.

[inbetween-girl.livejournal.com]

Where does the name Zebulon come from? I kinda like it but in a Douglas Adams kind of way....though a quick look on the tinterweb reveals it was very popular in America in the 1700 and 1800's.

See, now you've said that, I think Ruprecht's middle name should be Zaphod.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

If G reads this, Ruprecht is doomed!

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

I would def consider you in the irrevent sweary liberal bucket :-)

G (the fountain of all wisdom on things OT) says that Zebulon was one of Joseph's brothers in Genesis.

Yay for doing lines!

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Aah I never was a big fan of the Old Testament - though I have read some of the New Testament. In spite of my avowed atheism I have an 'O' level (showing my age there) in Religious Studies don't you know.

I did about 20 lines in total yesterday evening and this morning - it's a bit difficult to get into a rhythm on it as each line is different and involves a bit of counting and me and counting aren't necessarily very good together.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

The OT has better stories though. (I remember loving my illustrated children's bible as a kid, which was full of images of the plague of frogs and similar fun stuff).

[ms-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I absolutely love the old hollywood movies of old testament stories, and should give it a proper go as I quite like an angry vengeful plague dispensing and generally miserable God. In spite of the fact that there were lots of pictures of sacred bleeding hearts, virgins and what have you when I was growing up illustrated bibles were somehow frowned upon as being vaguely insulting to the word of God. I'm not quite sure why as if I was God I think I'd find an illustrated page more respectful and worshipful than a glow in the dark Mary.....though also slightly less fun.

Also Tim Rice...

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

Zebulon and Gad brings the total to nine

Re: Also Tim Rice...

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Ah, I wish there was more Tim Rice. (His lyrics for Evita, in particular, are a thing of magnificence).

[lazy-hoor.livejournal.com]

I like to use the word cunt as an insult. It's too hard-sounding to describe my lovely lady-bits.

What were the theories on the origin of the word? I only know it must be Germanic/Scandinavian because post-1066 the English adopted all the French aristocratic titles, with the noticable absence of 'Comte' - which was replaced with 'Baron'.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

There seem to be several not-quite aligned theories of its roots, with some saying Anglo Saxon/Germanic and others saying its meaning came more from Latin. But either way its current form appears to have become most widely used in English from the middle ages.

(If rosamicula happens to read this, she might be good enough to pop in and give you a proper answer, as she has used this exact question as classroom teaching material!)

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

There's no definite origin and it certainly never crops up in any of the Anglo Saxon texts I have studied - but they were mainly about boats and wandering - no pussy in them. But it was certainly more of a plain-speaking anatomical word rather than an insult until the 18th C. Restoration Comedy is full of em - the word is not censored until after the major plays of that period.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

I mean - no one you really want to hang out with ever goes 'Whoooo! My vagina!'

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

Indeed. (Unless they are expressing horror at having just been 'vagazzled' to an extreme level.)

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

And who but a fool would countenance such a thing? One would hope she keeps quiet and just squirms a bit.

[perfectlyvague.livejournal.com]

There's a major weightloss website - very VERY different demographic there. If you write in sentences that don't have sparkly animations and huggggzzzz xxxxxxx hun everywhere, you are revered as a kind of god.

[the-meanest-cat.livejournal.com]

A god amongst care bears! This idea makes me chuckle.

[phonemonkey.livejournal.com]

I used to be on an etiquette side which was very similar.

Before I ended up getting banned.