The NWO culture is extremely fucking depressing. It's nothing but bash, bash, bash, bash, bash: Bash those evil intolerant Christians. Bash those weekend Satanists who steal legitimate pagan practices and use them for ill ends. Bash those Inquisitors for killing nine million witches *snicker*. Bash those who would use magic for ill ends. Bash those who damn others to Hell. Bash those who prefer the culture up the I-95 corridor over the culture on the I-5.
Of course, you could join the Wiccan counterculture, in which the answer to all this lameass bashing is more bashing! Bash those fucking fluffbunnies. Bash those closed-minded dimwits who adhere to the Threefold Law and the Wiccan Rede. Bash those who bash people without just cause. Bash those who won't bash when bashing is due. Now, of course, I am proud to be a member of the second camp of bashers. I bash fluffy numbskulls who won't think for themselves and pretend we all live in Happy World. I bash those whose arguments are thinner than restaurant-grade toilet paper.
My own choices aside, the fact remains that both the Wiccan culture and the counterculture are locked in a perpetual cycle of negativity and bashing. It seems compliments are extremely scarce.
It pisses me off that I can write four pages bashing some stupid fucking fluffy, but if I write one paragraph describing in detail my gratitude or admiration for something, I'm nailed for fucking brown-nosing. Well, fuck you if you won't let me contribute something positive to our desparately fucking negative culture.
See, this morning I was accused of sucking up by a couple of people when I expressed my admiration for a certain group's wisdom. I won't relay the details here, but I'll give you a synopsis of the situation: I was introduced to this group by someone I esteem very highly. When the group proved itself a gold mine of wisdom and information, I expressed my gratitude and admiration quite verbosely. I'll admit to being excessively sappy, but I wouldn't have called it brown-nosing. (If I had to call it, I'd say it's just that negative people can't stand anything but negativity, and any spurt of sunshine that might threaten their dreary, bleak little shop of horrors they call their world they feel they must quell with haste. Well, fuck you, go listen to some Staind and kill yourself.) But see, there is a lot of knowledge, a lot of wisdom, and a lot of other talents to commend in the pagan world. But be careful - you might just get called for a brown nose and be shamed.
So my advice? Moderation. Keep your compliments short and to the point. Don't oversaturate your props with the glitz and glitter you think it might deserve. You won't be taken seriously, and might even be accused of being fluffy, if you do. Remember that compliments and insults are exact opposites: insults need to be pithy in order to be noteworthy; conversely, complimentary words must be succinct, or your motives might be questioned.
I didn't mean for this rant to become a lesson in Wiccan counterculture etiquette, but think about this. This site and those like it say the very things you've been feeling for a long time. Indeed, sites like Why Wiccans Suck are wonderful. When I first read what the author of that site wrote, I wanted to hump her leg (and to be honest I still do). That site nails it right on the head. However, I siphoned my ecstacy of having the very words I'd been trying to formulate for months sitting right in front of me, and bit my tongue. I'm all the better for it.
I do think we need to accept a little more positivity in the counterculture - surely not enough to be fluffy, because that's just unacceptable by my standards (LOL), but enough to where I can make an honest compliment without being thought of as a suck up. Remember: moderation is the key. Keep your compliments to the point. Keep your ecstacy to yourself, or let your joyful zeal out on your teddy bear, or maybe even your girlfriend's kneecap. But keep it off of message boards, mailing lists and webpages. It can get extremely annoying if you do. I fucked up, and I ain't doing it again. Hopefully, you take this advice to heart from someone who just burned himself: USE COMPLIMENTS IN EXTREME MODERATION.
Thank you and goodnight.
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