It’s hot. It’s too hot to do anything, so I’m bored. I’m cranky because I’m bored.  I take no responsibility for anything that follows. Or I take full responsibility.  Same difference.

There are a lot of things about OS that mystify me.  One continuing puzzle is the people who use it as some sort of adjunct to Twitter, like the irritating Claudia Corrigan Darcy.  Every time Claudia Corrigan Darcy tells me where she’s currently having coffee in NYC, I want to call in my airborne precision-bombing strike force to take her out, but the collateral damage would be too great, so for that reason, and the fact that I don’t really have  an airborne precision-bombing strike force, she gets to live.  Similarly, I’d like to eject Planet Russell from this solar system, but I am waiting on Nibiru to do that for me. I have nothing against these people personally, but I don’t see why they get to have post titles way in excess of the 60 characters doled out to the rest of us peasants, when they’re not even posting content. Pft.

Not to start anything up again (although if you do – I’ll be happy to watch, because I’m  bored), but what I have been thinking about mostly of late is the persistent formation of  new and longevity of old posses. I think there’s a misunderstanding by many that various corners of OS are ruled by cliques.  There are no cliques, people.  We are all much too disagreeable to form cliques.  Cliques like each other, or they pretend they do.  Cliques require a much more formal society, where people agree to behave by certain rules.  OS is the internet, and the internet is the Wild West.  So I like to think of OS as Dodge City, with a lot of people fighting over who gets to be Marshal Dillon, and who isn't speaking to Miss Kitty, and whether Chester should be fired.  This is where the posses come in.

These days forming posses in the real world seems a mite too close to vigilante stuff, and/or idiotic, and as such, is not looked on with favor by people of couth.  But you can become a member of a posse on OS, easy.  You can even create your own personal posse, if you are willing to dedicate significant time and effort to rounding up people who may or may not respond the way you want them to, and that’s the trick.  OS posses are mostly (not all, but mostly) self-forming, like that skin on milk that shows up if you bring it to a boil, or maybe the way iron filings clump up around magnets.  There are few internal connections.  As such, they are changeable, but there’s usually a core of filings that sticks tight to the magnet through the OS equivalent of  hell and high water.

Posses form for one simple reason.  The members of posses aspire to have posses themselves, and the quid pro quo system reigns here.  It doesn’t actually work, but it reigns anyway, because hope springs eternal in the human breast (Alexander Pope).

!.  Posses give you unconditional love.  No one in the real world will love you as unconditionally as your posse, except for your dog.  Your therapist, your parents, your kids, your siblings, your various spouses – all of them know you too well.  But posses don’t have to know the creepy stuff like that you’re estranged from your family not because they’re all raving lunatics but because you are, and you left town after you stole your mother-in-law’s heirloom pearls to fund your meth lab start-up. Oh, heck.  Even if your posse knew that about you, they’d say that bitch put too much value on those lousy pearls anyway, and they’re so proud of you for following your business dream.

2.  Posses will receive any posts as genius.  You can slap up a youtube video of paint drying, and say “I like paint,” and your posse will drop by to say cheering things like “Great post!” or  “Brilliant choice!” or “I know what you mean.  Keep up the good work.”  If you put up a slight different video of paint drying the next day, your posse will be just as enthusiastic! It’s a big time-saver.  But if you actually manage to get yourself to tap out a couple of paragraphs, your posse will have conniption fits, weeping or laughing hysterically, depending on what you’ve specified in your tags.  Your mom would never be half as obliging.

3.  Posses will go out on their own looking for varmints who disrespect you, defending your name even while you are holed up in a cave in a read-only mode after making a complete fool of yourself about Darwinism or the New World Order or Joan Walsh being  a Russian spy.  They will say things like “Anyone fucking with my girl/boy is going to have to go through me first!” which – okay, I don’t really know what this means on-line, but it sounds good.  This has to be very gratifying.  Especially if they threaten to kill people for you.  They won’t, of course, but it’s fun to pretend you’re the Sopranos. 

4.  Posses are a renewable resource.  Even if your old posse gets disenchanted with you, a new one will come along soon.  They won’t know about the meth lab and Joan Walsh’s restraining order, and you can start all over again.  Although you need to find the ones who will stay amiable, i.e. the nice ones, or at least the ones who think of themselves as nice.  Because otherwise they may drop out of your posse and join the anti-posse, if you do something stupid like calling them the spawn of Satan one time too many.  But these are  the not-nice people, so who cares?

The Drawbacks of Posses

For every posse that exists, there is an anti-posse, which by default is made up of the spawn of Satan.  The anti-posse often riles up the posse so much they self-combust.  This is what causes flame wars.   Dust-ups if you will.  What posses never understand is that the anti-posses are completely unregulated – just as unregulated as posses themselves!  They are constantly shifting, depending on who dislikes whom more that particular day.  Anti-posses are those people who can’t stay away from reading the posse’s magnet’s blog, but who would rather be eaten alive by weasels than rate or comment, unless the posse’s magnet posts something so egregiously crazy/dopey/offensive/ignorant/whatever they cannot resist taking a whack. Often people in an antiposse can’t stand each other, either, so they rarely present a united front.  It just looks like it to the posse, which is the beauty of it all.

Posses and anti-posses act like the ions in an atom, repelling each other so they are in constant motion, until the nucleus can’t take it anymore and flounces or goes into hiding. And thus the phrase “getting out of Dodge.”   Then everyone settles down again.  It’s the mysterious circle of life.