"Hocus Is Loved"
Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2005 2:31 am
Here's a link to a post that Ariechert put to the Motley Fool board last night.
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid= ... t=postdate
Ariechert: "Every human endeavor soon "splits" into "factions" and then there is "conflict". It's part of human nature. In this sense, hocus is loved. He is needed to provide the "duality" that keeps this board interesting. If there wasn't an antagonist one would have to be invented. Every country needs a common enemy in order to keep it from tearing itself apart from within."
I think that Ariechert is hitting on an important truth with this comment. Ask someone from the Motley Fool board why there is so little on-topic posting at that board, and the answer you will get is: "It's all been said, discussions of early retirement have become boring to us." Yet you see exciting new threads on early retirement at the Early Retirement Forum on a daily basis. Why is it that one community can still find new things to say on a topic and another cannot?
The reason is that, at the Motley Fool board, the phrase "Retire Early" has a special meaning. What it means to people who populate that board community today is "Retire Early the Intercst Way." That topic has indeed been talked to death at the Motley Fool board and it would indeed be boring as heck to revisit it over and over and over again. But there are hundreds of exciting strategies for early retirement that have never seen a single mention there. If the board were open to the consideration of alternative approaches, as the Early Retirement Forum generally (not but entirely) is, there would be exciting new threads at the Motley Fool board too.
We have experienced a lot of friction at all of our boards over the course of the past 33 months. It's called "growing pains." Intercst is the guy who started the first board, and there are lots of people who love our movement and, having learning about it from going to his web site, got the idea in their heads that it was all about intercst. That was never really so, but in the early days we were able to fool ourselves into thinking that it was more or less so because there were still people with an active interest in discussing intercst's ideas. After those ideas had been picked over too many times for them to be able to provide any further nourishment, we were faced with a dilemma--let on-topic discussions die or permit some new voices to take the spotlight away from intercst.
I voted for hearing new voices. That's what all the noise is about. I made clear that, while I learned a good bit from the intercst web site (one of those 40 black binders is devoted to print-outs I made of every article posted at the REHP site), I wanted to hear from other people with other sorts of strategies. I wanted to hear from Wanderer, I wanted to hear from FoolMeOnce, I wanted to head from Raddr, I wanted to hear from JWR1945, I wanted to hear from JammerH, and on and on. That's the conflict. I wanted to hear from those people, intercst didn't want people to hear from those people, and the community was left facing the dilemma of which leader to follow.
There's a sense in which the community has elected to follow intercst and there is a sense in which the community has elected to follow me. When you look at the board bannings and the tolerance for abusive disruptive posting and stuff like that, you could say "the community has elected to follow intercst." It's not so simple, however. We have the counter phenomenon of the community never getting enough of this, of the community showing its support for having the discussions go on and on and on (for over 33 months now). People know how not to post, and when they don't like a discussion, that's just what they do. You never see that happen re the SWR matter.
I don't think you ever will. I think the community is torn. It feels bad about the intercst aspect of all this, that much is clear. But the community does not want on-topic posting to die at our boards. The community is seeking some middle ground, some place where intercst can remain with us and yet we can have on-topic posting continue at our boards too. I personally don't think that's possible, but I also think that sometimes communities are smarter than individuals and that eventually the community might work out some way of getting most of what it wants.
Ariechert is right that we sooner or later had to split. Any movement that wants to live for an extended period of time needs to permit the expression of more than a single viewpoint. We had our intercst era, and my guess is that there will always be members of our community who will support the REHP study approach to investing for early retirement. Never again, though, will that view be the only view considered acceptable. I think those days are over for good. I think we are in the process of growing up. It's hard, but the alternative to growing up is dying. That sounds even worse to me than enduring the rough patch we are going through now.
http://boards.fool.com/Message.asp?mid= ... t=postdate
Ariechert: "Every human endeavor soon "splits" into "factions" and then there is "conflict". It's part of human nature. In this sense, hocus is loved. He is needed to provide the "duality" that keeps this board interesting. If there wasn't an antagonist one would have to be invented. Every country needs a common enemy in order to keep it from tearing itself apart from within."
I think that Ariechert is hitting on an important truth with this comment. Ask someone from the Motley Fool board why there is so little on-topic posting at that board, and the answer you will get is: "It's all been said, discussions of early retirement have become boring to us." Yet you see exciting new threads on early retirement at the Early Retirement Forum on a daily basis. Why is it that one community can still find new things to say on a topic and another cannot?
The reason is that, at the Motley Fool board, the phrase "Retire Early" has a special meaning. What it means to people who populate that board community today is "Retire Early the Intercst Way." That topic has indeed been talked to death at the Motley Fool board and it would indeed be boring as heck to revisit it over and over and over again. But there are hundreds of exciting strategies for early retirement that have never seen a single mention there. If the board were open to the consideration of alternative approaches, as the Early Retirement Forum generally (not but entirely) is, there would be exciting new threads at the Motley Fool board too.
We have experienced a lot of friction at all of our boards over the course of the past 33 months. It's called "growing pains." Intercst is the guy who started the first board, and there are lots of people who love our movement and, having learning about it from going to his web site, got the idea in their heads that it was all about intercst. That was never really so, but in the early days we were able to fool ourselves into thinking that it was more or less so because there were still people with an active interest in discussing intercst's ideas. After those ideas had been picked over too many times for them to be able to provide any further nourishment, we were faced with a dilemma--let on-topic discussions die or permit some new voices to take the spotlight away from intercst.
I voted for hearing new voices. That's what all the noise is about. I made clear that, while I learned a good bit from the intercst web site (one of those 40 black binders is devoted to print-outs I made of every article posted at the REHP site), I wanted to hear from other people with other sorts of strategies. I wanted to hear from Wanderer, I wanted to hear from FoolMeOnce, I wanted to head from Raddr, I wanted to hear from JWR1945, I wanted to hear from JammerH, and on and on. That's the conflict. I wanted to hear from those people, intercst didn't want people to hear from those people, and the community was left facing the dilemma of which leader to follow.
There's a sense in which the community has elected to follow intercst and there is a sense in which the community has elected to follow me. When you look at the board bannings and the tolerance for abusive disruptive posting and stuff like that, you could say "the community has elected to follow intercst." It's not so simple, however. We have the counter phenomenon of the community never getting enough of this, of the community showing its support for having the discussions go on and on and on (for over 33 months now). People know how not to post, and when they don't like a discussion, that's just what they do. You never see that happen re the SWR matter.
I don't think you ever will. I think the community is torn. It feels bad about the intercst aspect of all this, that much is clear. But the community does not want on-topic posting to die at our boards. The community is seeking some middle ground, some place where intercst can remain with us and yet we can have on-topic posting continue at our boards too. I personally don't think that's possible, but I also think that sometimes communities are smarter than individuals and that eventually the community might work out some way of getting most of what it wants.
Ariechert is right that we sooner or later had to split. Any movement that wants to live for an extended period of time needs to permit the expression of more than a single viewpoint. We had our intercst era, and my guess is that there will always be members of our community who will support the REHP study approach to investing for early retirement. Never again, though, will that view be the only view considered acceptable. I think those days are over for good. I think we are in the process of growing up. It's hard, but the alternative to growing up is dying. That sounds even worse to me than enduring the rough patch we are going through now.