@LemonDrop &
@Ereiam
It gave me nausea to use the site, too.
It was also “forced” on me, too.
I also had absolutely no way to turn it off short of scripting something for my own browser.
And I am pretty sure it caused more inconvenience for me than for you. For example, I had to give up probably 90% of the stuff I do when I volunteer here because I simply could not find the buttons I needed and my muscle memory wasn’t getting me through some of the more complex tasks. So I was not just having trouble enjoying the free images that others share here, or the community here, I also was unable to do the very things I had volunteered to help do here.
I personally don’t like April Fools day. My family didn’t celebrate it. It’s not really a part of my life, except when other people are celebrating it.
It’s like Christmas.
Or Easter.
Those are also “forced” on me. And they make my life significantly more inconvenient than any problems a website being unusable for a day and a half has ever caused me.
But it is a part of the society that I live in, so I know it happens and when it happens I participate in a sociable way.
Whining about it for weeks afterwards certainly isn’t sociable. Or, it’s a kind of sociable, but it’s not the kind of sociable that I want to be.
But that’s probably because I don’t have to personally be satisfied by everything everyone else enjoys to be able to enjoy it with them.
I don’t have to have a personal stake or have my personal preferences acknowledged and respected by people having fun doing something I don’t enjoy to be able to allow them to enjoy it, even if it inconveniences me.
I can watch the superbowl with others, even though I have no interest in it. I might periodically poke fun at the intensity that some of my friends show toward the game, but I don’t whine about the problems the Super Bowl caused for me for weeks afterwards.
I don’t go to Super Bowl sites and turn their social media threads celebrating the Super Bowl into ongoing examinations of how disrespectful fans of the Super Bowl are, or how the Super Bowl didn’t give me a way to “opt out” of the traffic or the advertisements or the other interruptions in my life that it caused. I don’t gather together with people who ALSO were inconvenienced by the Super Bowl to hold hands and commiserate about how the Super Bowl and the people who enjoy it didn’t show any consideration for my personal needs.
Instead, I get drinks with my mates and cheer with them when the local team wins the ball tournament even though I find the tournament itself incomprehensibly and offensively boring.
And even though I don’t own any ball tournament swag, I don’t turn their celebration into a discussion of how unfair it is that some people don’t enjoy ball tournament.
It’s like St. Patrick’s day. I’m legitimately Irish. But the holiday is a pain in the ass in just about every possible way.
But I don’t go to my local and sneer at people drinking green beer and wearing “Kiss Me I’m Irish” hats.
Because that seems to me a pretty asshole thing to do when others are having fun.
Admittedly - VERY admittedly - of those events last way the fuck longer than I like.
Christmas I believe would be a lot more fun and tons more sacred for everyone involved if it lasted 3 days. Add a week for the commercial aspects. Then you’ve got 3 holy days spread out around the Solstice so everyone’s religion’s own personal interpretation of “the day” gets respected and they can do what they want with all the joy and splendor the day entails.
But, that’s not how society treats those days. And it really only means that I don’t get to listen to the music I like, or my favorite radio station, or go to my usual stores without being inundated by the reminder that I am a non-Christian living in a Christian majority society, without any option to “opt out” of their holidays.
So, in all honesty, if I had an option to turn off the April Fools event so that I could continue clicking the buttons I normally click here for that day and a half of the event, then I wouldn’t turn it off.
Because that would be like turning off Christmas. Or turning off Easter. Or turning off the Super Bowl.
It meant I could not participate in the site in the way I usually enjoy, so I found a new way to enjoy this community and this site, and I simply didn’t try to do the things that made me physically ill to try to do. Like work on reports or aliasing or helping artists.
For me, I don’t understand why people are so selfish that they can’t just let other people enjoy things that they like, even if they have no “hooks” into the thing that their friends are enjoying. Let everyone have fun, participate in the fun to the best of their ability, or just go do something else for awhile and come back later when the thing is over so you can do whatever the normal is with your friends.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t consider other people enjoying something I don’t understand as any kind of statement about me.
It’s not personal.
It’s like a fan run convention where everyone putting it together tries their hardest to do something that will be fun for everyone, and the least I can do is either try to participate in it and have fun, even if my personal tastes or my physical needs aren’t being “respected” by the event.
MiniCon has a dance? Sure, that sounds fine. I wish they’d do something else but … you know what? As long as people are having fun that means there’s more fun for everyone. And I am not being handcuffed and forced to go to it.
I can opt out.
But maybe I’m ok with people doing things that I don’t enjoy, and can enjoy people enjoying what they enjoy even though I don’t enjoy it, because it’s social. I recognize it’s not personal.
But that’s just my take on it.
So, even though I really found the site damned near impossible to use for the most part, so much so that I felt physically ill when I tried to do some things, I found it funny, and enjoyed it.
It’s not like I need this site to get to work in the morning. So I just opted out of the parts of this site that I found unpleasant to use.
I mean - be fair.
If people break their backs and sacrifice weeks putting something together for my entertainment, at no cost to me and really only a day and a half of no more inconvenience than “Oh, well, ok, I’ll wait until later this week to do that thing”, then I try to enjoy it with a becoming grace.
Because a few people really broke their backs to put this together and … let’s be fair … the site didn’t absolutely completely fucking die. It kept working! After a complete and utter rewrite of the site just a few months ago, a few talented and devoted volunteers managed to put together an actual full blown holy shit they pulled it off and the site didn’t completely break April Fools event!
That’s pretty damned impressive. Even if the result made me physically ill, I am deeply thankful that they went to that effort for this event.
And so I do not continue to bitch about it happening 10 days later.
But, you know, whatever.
You do you.
Just please try to do it with a becoming grace.