Hello, friends. Even though I only stopped browsing the forums for what seems like a day or two, it appears that every blog now is about something called popularity.

Namely, talking about how bad popularity is. They talk like popularity was some kind of ancient evil awakened by some ignorant explorer on the forums wandering into a forsaken temple, triggering the end of the forums as we know it.

Let me disagree with you on popularity being bad for a moment. Just hear me out. Feel free to throw tomatoes at me at the end if you disagree with me enough.

Whether popularity is bad or good is highly irrelevant, it's an opinion. It is in effect neutral as it can have good and bad effects. It is human nature. The desire to be popular and the desire to rank others is part of why society exists.

Let us look at the definition of popularity for a moment, because most of these blogs about it seem to completely ignore it and set up a strawman argument instead:

"The state or condition of being liked, admired, or supported by many people."

Is that the kind of thing that is the ultimate evil, destroyer or worlds, ruiner of lives? I hardly think it is. Popularity is in fact essential. It is motivation. I think that what most people setting up these anti-popularity blogs are saying is not that there is too much popularity, but that there is not enough.

If everybody was liked and supported the world would be a much better place than it is today, wouldn't it?

I think the concept that people are really hating, one that I also hate myself, is exclusion. Let us look at the definition of exclusion for a moment.

"Deny (someone) access to or bar (someone) from a place, group, or privilege."

This is what people are talking about when they mention that people are ignoring them or something. Namely denying them the right to have their opinion/voice heard (Which is ironic, considering the entire point of a forum is to share your opinion), exclusion is a nasty business. Sadly, it is a fact of everyday life.

Exclusion has a similar purpose to popularity, to show whether we agree or disagree with how somebody is behaving. This, while not always pleasant for somebody we disagree with, is one of the most agreeable ways to show our disagreement. While I myself try to avoid excluding anybody, I slip up sometimes, as do we all.

Exclusion on the forums has a close friend however, one that is responsible for how much of it is going on. I'm talking, of course, about corruption.

"Dishonest or fraudulent conduct by those in power."

In this case, the power I'm talking about is the popularity. Popularity itself is not a problem, but it becomes one when it is used as a weapon to keep a select group of people at the top, and the rest at the bottom. I'm not going to lie and say that I myself like everybody, but I also won't go out of my way to hurt said people, and you shouldn't either.

What dishonest conduct by those in power am I talking about? All the negative talk about users behind their backs that has been plaguing the forums lately.

Ultimately my point is that the problem isn't that we like people a lot, that's a ridiculous thing to think. The problem is that we aren't giving anybody who we don't already like a lot a chance, or maybe even are proactively working against them in some cases.

tl;dr: Forums, cut that shit out. Kthx

I just thought this needed to be said, thanks for your time, forums.