Warning: There is gratuitous use of the word “douchebag” in this post, but there is a lot of love, too. So bear with me.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the Ravelry boards this week…and I mean a lot. I mostly stick with the Lazy, Stupid & Godless boards but I do tend to venture into the “main six” boards from time to time. There have been a few threads and posters recently and in rhw past that really got me thinking. I’m doing my final paper in Sociology this semester on knitters as a sub-culture; how we think, act, our lingo, folkways, hierarchies, and our “celebrities”…so I’ve been paying extra attention to the back and forths going on lately in preparation for that paper.
The following are some things I noticed, some things that pissed me off, and some things that made me proud.
1.) Just because someone is a knitter, does not mean I will like them. I have come across some really miserable people on Ravelry. People that go out of their way to make snippy comments about other bloggers, someone’s preference to acrylic or “throwing” method of knitting, etc. I know, I know…knitters are just people, and well…a lot of people are assholes, but I tend to bury my head in the sand and go on thinking we’re all sort of in this together. I tend to think that we would celebrate each other’s accomplishments and mourn together when we accidentally felt that beautiful cabled sweater. But I have, more often that once, seen this branded as “pathetic” and most recently as “treating knitting like a disease”. What?
I imagine being a perfect knitter who never stresses over a technique must be nice, but if I may speak for the rest of us for a moment…fuck you!
Now I’m not some pussy-footing kiss-everyone’s-ass kind of person, I think you all know that. But when I see such outright bitchery (and I don’t mean the cool “yeah I’m a bitch, so what” kind…I mean a shitty person with a shitty attitude kind) going on, I get really upset.
2.) Having a popular blog/book/design apparently means you forfeit your right to hurt feelings. I see this a lot too, usually pertaining to Stephanie the Yarn Harlot. Any objection I’ve made to others calling her a “bad writer”, “neurotic”, and even “pathetic” was met with I DON’T HAVE TO LIKE HER’s. Despite my NEVER having said one has to like Stephanie (or anyone), this retort was thrown at me about ten or fifteen times as if repeating it would make my saying it true. But I digress…
When you publish a blog, books, articles, podcasts, or anything like that you are essentially throwing a piece of yourself into the ethos for mass consumption. I understand that. I understand that often times you may receive negative criticism about your work. Fine. But what I don’t understand is why someone would go out of their way to plaster this negativity, which often spills over into just plain cattiness, all over a venue that the writer/designer/podcaster will most certainly see. I have never had one nasty comment on my blog, I imagine because if someone doesn’t like my blog- they’d fuck right off and not read it. So where is the line? When do you cease being a person with fucking feelings and become some fair-game target to be judged incessantly by catty douchebags on the internet?
Just because you CAN talk shit, does it really mean you need to?
Apparently these sorts of knitters are fine with who they are and how they conduct themselves, but I hate to think that they represent me in any way as a knitter. We’re mocked, blown off, patronized and belittled in day-to-day life by non-knitters…so why the hell do we turn on each other, too?
There are plenty of “celebrity” blogs that I can’t stand to read. I sit and read and think “I don’t get why people love this person’s blog”, but I don’t feel compelled to make these feelings public domain without a care of what that blogger will feel when they read it. But I guess I don’t understand the need to do that because I’m not a miserable douchebag.
I think you have to be in the miserable douchebag club to understand why people shit on the Yarn Harlot and call her tales of knitting crises “pathetic”, or why Ravelers bitch out Casey because they don’t like the “favorite curse word” on HIS AND JESS’ site, or why listeners of Brenda Dayne’s Cast On podcast think they are entitled somehow to complain about the way she does her show or the music she plays.
It makes me wonder when knitting became like high school…because when I hear this shit, I just feel like I’m in the bathroom stall after second period listening to “like OH MY GOD I just can’t staaaand her, don’t you just hate the way she talks, and gag me with those awful shoes!”
Everyone is entitled to a voice and an opinion, but the way you state it and when and where you chose to state it says a lot about you as a person.
3.) HOWEVER, in the end…there’s always the good. This week’s lurking and observations haven’t been all bad- not by a long shot. I had a dozen or more well-wishes on my anniversary from people I’ve never really met. I’ve laughed hysterically with my fellow LSG girls, often at the expense of said miserable douchebags as well as the crybabies on Ravelry that freak out when they see a knitted pastie show-and-tell or the hilarious Beanis. I planned this year’s Christmas in the City drive with the wonderful Linda-which is shaping up to be way bigger this year thanks to her help. And best of all, I sat and watched Ravelry hit 100,000 members and didn’t even let the fact that 20,000 of them are probably M.D.K.’s (“miserable douchebag knitter” from here on out) bother me because I’m so damn proud to be a part of this giant thing that 2 fellow Bostonians created from the ground up just last year.
There is so much good among knitters that even though it can piss me off, there’s not much room to let M.D.K.’s and bullshit ruin it for me. I’m not really sure what the point of posting this entire entry was, but I feel better. I imagine I might get some flack for it, but it needs to be said. I guess I just want to put this out there:
We ARE all in this for the same reason.
We are all in this because we long for company of our own.
We are all in this because regular people just don’t understand.
We’re creative and tenatious.
We seek to challenge ourselves and take a lot of comfort in knowing we’re not the only ones who totally butchered that steek/cable/seam/lace pattern.
We’re all knitters…so don’t be such a douchebag, eh?
