RIP Meta-discussion (6th Dec 2011 - 7th Mar 2013) [View all]

[muriel_volestrangler]

The demise of the online forum Meta-discussion was announced today. A meeting place for discontent, suggestions for improvements, and dead horses flogged ceaselessly, it was known as 'The Whine Cellar' to its acquaintances (when pressed, no-one ever actually admitted to being a friend, even those for whom it was listed as 'Favorite forum').

Meta-discussion was conceived sometime in early 2011, probably in an alcohol-fuelled night of confusion. One of its parents was Ask The Administrators, but which administrator was the father is one question still unsolved (rumours continue to circulate that Hollywood is interested in making "Three Men and an Unwieldy Bearpit" next year; negotiations about which administrator will have to grow the Tom Selleck moustache are apparently the sticking point). It was born on 6th Dec 2011, to cries of "it's alive!", "WTF?" and "heh, now I can really get even with ...".

It passed preternaturally fast through infancy and childhood, before getting stuck in a snarky adolescence (in behaviour, if not in physical age), like the most objectionable character in a soap opera. "You don't understand me", "it's not fair" and "he started it first" were its constant refrains, with the occasional burst of creativity taking the form of "if I ruled this place, then I'd ban the phonies, and this place would be rad. Err, cool. Err, what are the kids saying these days?"

Some observers thought that its capacity for introspection, self-obsession, and belly-button lint contemplation were unrivalled on the Internet. Others thought that its use as a storm drain, or perhaps soil stack, justified its existence along the lines of "at least it keeps that shit out of the rest of the place".

Eventually, it made its way into theatre. Unable to decide on a genre, it experimented in comedy, drama, farce, kabuki and the absurd, often in the same thread. At length, it degenerated into performance art that many mistook for primal scream therapy. With the administrators getting tired of having to apologise for its behaviour in public, like that uncle convinced that the masons were responsible for his inability to hold down a steady job, they finally decided to lock it up in one of the 'unreachable' rooms they had wisely designed into DU3. After one last outburst that took down the site a few hours after its banishment, nothing more was heard from it, though a few DUers claimed to hear the occasional muffled cry of "trolls have infiltrated the jury system, I tell you!!!".

In its place, people found Ask The Administrators, with a fresh lick of blue paint, and an unconvincing story of how it had been on an extended vacation in the Tora Bora Mountains for 15 months, and a tendency to flinch when the word "parole" was mentioned.

In lieu of flowers, which were a perennial controversy for Meta-discussion (possibly being an bigoted attack on one of several DU groups, or possibly being just a way for plants to reproduce), donations to the Institute for the Perpetually Teed-Off are requested. Meta-discussion is survived by a ragged band of disputants, blinking in the light of day, and rummaging through forums looking for one without "no whining about DU" in its Statement of Purpose.