Well, I suppose to those of us who devote a significant portion of our time typing tiles into a grid, it's historic. The Content Collective has just seen its first crapflooding war.

Ostensibly, the war is over now, but I think I'll write in this venue for a while, just the same. No worries about my next attempt at a paragraph being blockaded off when I'm here in vi.

Anyone who feels like piecing together what happened can easily take the time to trace the Content Collective trails. I included several "up to the minute" announce trails while the war was in full swing. Even though it's all pretty self-documenting, I think I'll write a summary here, if for no other reason than because this is my venue (exclusively) to vent.

As far as I can tell, the initial event which instigated the whole thing was my posting of a collective tile at full announce, titled "Closet Britney Spears fans, unite!" In traditional Collective fashion, I then began to type a trail about, well, being a closet Britney Spears fan. :)

Midway through my little discourse, a condition occurred that I have never encountered in real world use of the collective throughought its entire 15 month history (surprisingly enough). When I hit the "in it goes" button, the "someone else has already typed something here" message appeared. This can only happen in the unlikely situation that 1 person loads an unused tile, and before submitting the comment, somebody else comes in and puts something there first.

I chuckled, and thought, "What an odd coincidence. I had no idea this area would be so popular this quickly." I reloaded the tile, and saw that Jaeger had posted a brief message there.

"Wow, that was wierd." I decided to go another direction to comment on this freak occurance. By the time my message was typed, and I hit the button, the same thing happened again. I reloaded, and saw that many of the previously empty surrounding tiles were occupied. A freak occurance perhaps, but not an accident.

The content of Jaeger's brief statements revealed that he was not happy with the subject I was discussing. Hmmm, I was aware that Britney Spears is not universally loved by the geeky masses, but this is getting ridiculous!

But it soon became apparent that it had gone over the top. I burst out laughing upon reading, "Listen only to music that is Holy and Good."

Thanks preacher Jaeger. I'll keep that in mind, and now that you have helped me to see the light, I shall repent from my evil ways next time I'm in the House of the Lord. lol.

Well anyway, with whatever BS it was I was typing about nearly forgotten, the war was underway! Though I don't think I surpassed Jaeger in volume of tiles, I like to think that I won the war of wit. My intention was never to crapflood into oblivion, though I may have been lured in that direction. (Resist the Dark Side!)

The crapflooding war continued for a while, until... it ended. (Woah, that was insightful!)

Post-mortem analysis...

Hasty, reactionaly words would be inadvisable, especially since I'm still not exactly sure what Jaeger's motives were. Initially, I was kind of pissed, because it was pretty clear, even by his own admission, he was trying to stifle my ability to write content in the collective, apparently because he disagreed or didn't like what I was saying.

Official Collective Policy has always been, and always will be that anyone can write about anything. There are no limits to the subject matter. Anyone who doesn't like what is being said is free to disagree, express their own ideas, or if they find something so terribly offensive that their precious little eyes can't handle it, then go somewhere else. That's the spirit of the Internet as I see it, and the spirit of the Collective for sure. Though he did so in a humorous way (I'm still not clear as to what the real intent was), I don't think I am off base to say that Jaeger violated that spirit.

At this point, it's tempting to start throwing around terms like "book burning", "fascist", and everyone's favorite for debates, "Nazi".

Jaeger, you book burning, fascist Nazi! ;)

Going back to being serious for just one more minute. I was initially annoyed (justifiably so, imo), but I decided it would be better to have a sense of humor about it, so I did. Thus, the Content Collective's first ever crapflooding war. It turned out to be quite an entertaining little event. A break from the norm.

That said, it's not something I would want to have happen every day. I can look at this and say, "Hahah, that was unique. Bygones."

What about next time? Is this now the beginning of a precident? Anytime anybody in the collective starts to type something you don't like, crapflood all around them, effectively wiping out whatever the subject was, and then make a big joke out of it? Over a difference in musical taste (<self-effacing humor mode>or lack thereof</self-effacing humor mode>), of all things.

I hope not.

Oh well. That's tonight's great content adventure. Final statement I'll through out for people to ponder:

Without conflict, life would be boring.

Talk amongst yourselves.