Re: Old and young, no Who content.

[salamander@MADNET.COM]

This is the THIRD time I've had to rewrite this post, due to modem
problems, which is making me rather more irritable than usual. I'll try
to restrain myself.

ANYWAY!

Before I get serious, I want to clear up a petty little detail regarding
my calling the Odds and Sods list new, and my quoting of that word. I
know that the O&S list has been around for a while and is not really
new. However, it is newer than the list that we are all reading right
now, and I know quite a few people who call this the old list and the
O&S list the new list. When I quoted the word new, I merely meant to
indicate that the O&S list was new compared to this list, and often
called new, but that it was not REALLY new. Such usage of quotation
marks is quite common in newspapers, so I see no reason why it should
not be appropriate here. A stupid thing to get upset about, I know, but
it was bothering me.

Now for the important stuff.

For the information of all, I have visited the O&S homepage several
times. In fact, my picture is on it (I still want to know who gave it to
them!). And one day, not so long ago, I experienced a moment of self
doubt regarding the O&S list. "Yellow old girl," I said to myself,
"Perhaps you are being unfair. Now, there may be a lot of people you
don't like on the O&S list, but by avoiding them you could be missing
out on something good. Why not check out today's posts to the O&S list,
conveniently located on the webpage?" I will never second guess myself
like that again. That particular day, a large number of posts to the O&S
list were dedicated to the discussion of the metallic properties of ML's
male reproductive organs. This is not exactly a topic that keeps me up
at night. To be fair, there was also plenty of relevant and interesting
Who discussion going on that day, but I didn't think it was any better
than the relevant and interesting Who discussion that takes place on
this list. I am very fond of this list, and for me the O&S list offers
nothing good that this list doesn't have, and plenty of bad things.
Other people may disagree. Fine. If you don't like this list, read the
O&S one. I don't have a problem with that.

And finally, the matter of young people on this list. Just a few days
ago there was a lot of moaning about how young people today don't
appreciate good music like the Who, and all they listen to is trash,
blah de blah. But to paraphrase my mother, "Don't ask for more young Who
fans until you appreciate the ones you already have." If you care so
much about the young Who fan, then for goodness sakes stand up for them
once in a while! Apparently a lot of you don't notice this, but there
are plenty of people on this list who are very mean to teenaged Who
fans. I'm not just imagining this either. After my initial post on the
subject, I recieved several e-mails from teenagers on this list agreeing
with me and saying that some older Who fans tended to treat them as if
they could not possibly be good fans or know anything about the Who,
just because they happened to be young. You will notice that these
teenagers have not said anything about this on the list. I can hardly
blame them. Just look at the kind of response I've gotten for daring to
take a stand on this issue. The very people who are most bothered by the
age discrimination that goes on here are the people who are afraid to
say anything about it. That's why I have to be the one to speak up. For
anyone who may have forgotten, it isn't easy being a teenager. You get
treated like the scum of the earth everywhere you go. And if you've just
had a horrid day at school and come home hoping for a good discussion on
your favorite band to take your minds off things, and instead you find
people who don't even know you calling you a teenybopper or worse, it's
not going to make you feel any better.

And now I've got to go watch Roger on "Sliders". Talk amongst
yourselves.


                                     -Yellow "Coffee Talk" Ledbetter
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