
Re: Personal Rant (don't read)
Rivernole~
I couch toured some of Lockn last weekend too. And as I did, I occasionally clicked on the chat, just to see if there was any interesting tidbits being chatted about... and mostly, there wasn't. I saw all the same BS you saw. So I'd close it, and fifteen minutes later I'd get curious, and open the chat back up... only to be disappointed again by the immature & idiotic comments. I'm a slow learner.
There's a down side to popularity. EVERYONE who is into jambands, even if they're twelve years old, knows who the Grateful Dead are... they are popular beyond all reason, frankly, since about 1987. And with that level of awareness, the cretins who like to be keyboard warriors come up out of the ground. It doesn't matter that there is *no need* for any of the vitriol. Certain people live for conflict and chat wars. I don't get it, but I know it's out there. And I do try to avoid it, cuz it's just not good for my blood pressure, since I can get caught up in that stuff.
EG: Back in 2015, I couch toured the two warmup Fare Thee Well shows that were in Santa Clara. My pirate video feed quality sucked, so I just did audio via one of the audio pirate feeds ... the chat there was FULL of the same vindictive crap that Rivernole mentions above. I chalk that up to what I mentioned above: popularity... there's just so many goons out there, that know the show is going on, and live to stir the poop around. For those FTW shows, I turned the stream chat off, and went and hung out on one of my private Facebook Deadhead pages, where a bunch of us 'real time' posted during the show. THAT was fun!
Know your tribe, I guess. 90% of chat rooms, suck. As do comments under lots of YouTube videos. Most of it just ain't worth bothering with...
All the successful, enjoyable message boards I've ever used, had a relatively small group of like-minded people. If they get big, they get unwieldy, and can be trouble. It takes only one troll, to string along dozens of decent people, and make the fur fly.
I guess the moral is: choose your hangout places carefully
