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2d.) Forum Gangs: You will not engaged in an organized collaboration with other members to disrupt thread topics or interrupt the flow of normal collaborative discussion. Doing so will result in removal of your post(s) and immediate termination of your account.
Originally posted by Gemwolf
For the record - "Cliques" are not allowed on ATS. Anything that looks like "ganging up" should be alert to the staff:
2d.) Forum Gangs: You will not engaged in an organized collaboration with other members to disrupt thread topics or interrupt the flow of normal collaborative discussion. Doing so will result in removal of your post(s) and immediate termination of your account.
Terms & Conditions Of Use.
Originally posted by jkrog08
While I applaud the OP and other members for not mentioning specific names (which I know there are some that sparked this thread ) I must say that I personally see nothing wrong with certain ATS members being "popular"--for the most part it is well deserved, meaning that member usually posts topics in a well written manner and usually has something of substance to say. I also think that one must be careful in how much "faith" they put in any one member, regardless of their history. Is there anything wrong with 'following' certain members? NO... But one always must keep in mind that these other members (which everyone is calling 'popular') are human themselves, so let us not place them on too high a pedestal.
It is only human to respect and follow others that seem to take a leadership or 'iconic' role. This is a social discussion board so I do not think certain individuals reaching a "celebrity status" is to be unexpected--again most deserve it, as many members devote HOURS a day to helping the various topics on this epic site. In summary I am saying that most of these so called "ATS celebs" deserve whatever 'following' they get, but it is always important to keep in mind that EVERYONE is human here, no one is better than the other.
I am not a old member, but I am not a new member either. I joined on December 27th, 2007 (but was away from ATS from July 9th 2008 to April 2nd 2009)--but in that time I have learned a GREAT deal of things. I have already been through this and many other things that come with active participation in such a large and populated social site.
I am not trying to 'tell' anyone anything, only offer my own opinion based on experience so far. What I have seen is that (in regards to this popularity issue) whatever recognition members get is WELL deserved for the most part. However it is also important to not focus on such petty issues, as we all came to ATS for the reason of "denying ignorance" right? Well is it not time to get past all this common crap? I mean we are all intelligent on here (since we all found this site and joined) so let us not worry about petty things like this, let us all focus on the whole point that each of us joined this site for--To DENY IGNORANCE. What does that translate to? Well I think we all know, but I will be redundant anyways ( )....We all joined this site to break the current paradigm we face everyday in the mainstream world, we did not join this site to stay with the same "facebook, myspace, popular culture, etc.." ideologies did we? Well I didn't and I doubt anyone else did, or they would spend most of their time on the aforementioned sites.
In conclusion I want to say that it is an innate trait for individuals to "click up" with others who maintain a more active role in life (either virtual or real), this is nothing new. We should not worry about such things, it is best to concentrate on the main topics of this site, I mean after all that is why you joined right? ATS is a place that was made so we can all break away from the common world fallacies of envy, ignorance, and mainstream ideology. Even in saying that we all can not expect some human traits to change. Basically I am trying to say that we shouldn't worry about this or other nominal issues, if I have learned anything (personally) from my relatively short tenure on ATS it is this:
There is so much this site has to offer, why waste the time worrying about the very things we face everyday outside of ATS???