May I have a word with you, Jonathan Holmes?

I didn't want to bring back my blog this way.

I’m not the type of person who likes to swear. Not because I want to come off as some sort of innocent, goody two-shoes type of character, but simply because the  sound of some of these words don’t feel too pleasant for me when I insert it in most sentences.

But I think this one American expression serves as a good summary of some things I’ve been pondering on as of late:

“I’m getting real tired of your shit", Holmes.

And don’t think I wrote this just because I got upset over a single article. You’ve been getting yourself into these kinds of situations every week now that it’s almost like your weekly scheduled feature along with Sup Holmes. I know I’m not the only one who feels this. Just look at the comments section of your articles. Sometimes, I get this feeling that you don’t do that.

It seems like you have developed quite a habit for writing and saying things that result to a rather… unpleasant response from plenty of people, to say the least. Now, whether or not you write these things or parts of it specifically to annoy or aggravate certain (groups of) people is highly debatable, and I seriously want to believe that that is not your intention at all. However, it is the way you respond when people do get upset over your work is what really gets on my nerves.

“Passive-aggressive” has been a phrase that has been thrown often in terms of describing you. You don’t think so? Well let’s use the most recent thing you wrote as an example.

Now I also thought that people overacted a bit by a simple name-drop of a person they don’t like, plenty have focused their attention on that one thing, as we see on the comments. It looks like this time around, you actually saw the comments and when there was need to update the article with more info. So what did you do in response to those people? You taunt them even more.

 “Oh you don’t like it when I say that? You mean like *THIS*? Does that upset you too?” This is basically what you did.

I’m pretty sure someone recently got banned for repeatedly having that kind of behavior. And that was just a regular community member. You are a writer for the site and editor in chief.

What did you even expect out of doing that? I don’t know about you, but if someone disagrees with me, I don’t want to try to make them angrier. You’re just making things worse for yourself and everyone affected.

I finally started using Twitter not too long ago, so I sometimes get around to seeing the things you post there. I see this from other writers too and I’ve always wondered why you chose to voice out your feelings towards people’s negative reaction to your stuff over there rather than directly to those detractors.

You’re seeking approval from a different group of people to pretend that the negative things another group finds in you do not exist or do not matter. You’re also making fun of your detractors behind their back in doing so. Prove me wrong but without explanation, that’s how that behavior comes off to me.

And replying to a negative comment with something like “Oh, how interesting of you to think that.” or “Hi! How was your day?” or “<3” ain’t helping either.

You might be wondering “Why are you so critical of me? Other people out there are much worse at this sort of thing you’re complaining about than I am.”

That’s because you used to be one of my favourite people in this entire site. You could even say that you played a good part in convincing me to join and be involved in the community. While (as you can see from my “about me” section alone), I do admit that a good part of my enjoyment of you comes from making fun of you, specifically during your Podtoid days, but at the same time, I admired you a lot for being willing to put up with that. It takes a lot of courage and, ironically, self-respect to (allow your friend to) bring humor at your own expense. You yourself had a weird and offbeat sense of humor that I really enjoy and some of the funniest things I remember from Dtoid came from you.

And now with your current position, you are even more important to this site than you were before. So it pains me to see more people going against you, and to see that I’m starting to agree with said people.

Since late January, I began to recap community blogs to fill in for the Monday slot that has been vacant for a couple months back. I convinced the other recappers to start using that Twitter account we apparently have so that more people can be aware that the cblogs is a thing you can post stuff on. I decided to revive the frankly boring, mind-numbing and really-should-be-found-a way-to-automate task of counting every single post, comment and upvote so that users can be known of the status of the cblogs for that month. I joined in trying to revise the forum structure to help make it less confusing and more accessible to new users, and hopefully to get more new members in the first place. Since the redesign, I played wannabe bug tester and made several posts on the uservoice and posted other site issues whenever Niero would bring it up (by the way, special characters like the "é" in "Pokémon" still don't work. I almost became a mod just for the single purpose of deleting spam comments on the frontpage and blogs. I even tried to apply for a staff/contributor position back in February (which you never got back to), even when I know that the only skill I can bring to the table is “I can paraphrase news articles from other sites and post them while you’re all asleep since I’m on the opposite side of the world.”

The point I’m trying to bring home is, anything, no matter how little, unremarkable or of questionable effectiveness. I wanted to do it to help Destructoid, the very first online community I became part of (and the only one I've managed to stick with so far), the place where I met a good number of people which I now consider as friends.

However, it seems like that drive is slowly fading away. I have ideas and concepts for things to write about, but I can hardly bring myself to complete, nor do significant progress on, a single blog or recap post for the past three months. Some have told me that this phenomenon might be what they call “writer’s block”. There may be several things that caused it, but now I realized that you are one of them. As much as I want to help bring this place up, as much as I want to help make people love and contribute to this site and meet new people through it the same way I did, it’s hard. It’s hard to convince oneself to continue doing so when the very people in charge doesn’t seem to show much concern for the thing that made them popular in the first place and the reason why they’re still afloat to this day: the community.

In just two years since I signed up, I’ve already seen many friends and good acquaintances leave this place or certain parts of it (almost always the frontpage) out of frustration or disappointment on how things are currently being handled. I also got way too upset and affected when they decide to stop contributing things for the sake of the community when their issues with the site had less to do with the community members. But now I think I’m beginning to understand where they’re coming from. Why go through all the time and effort to contribute something positive when it takes so little time and effort for it to be negated by someone who holds a much higher level of importance and influence over the site? It’s discouraging. You’re better off contributing someplace else. Or just playing video games instead. It’s also insulting. To those who are still making an effort. To your fellow writers. To those who post and recap blogs. To those who curate and edit blogs to promote on the frontpage. To those who try to set up game nights every Friday. To those who post witty comments and bad puns on your articles.

This is not a call for you to change your opinion on certain issues or controversies, nor is it a call for you to completely bend over to others’ view on things. All I ask is for you to look at how you respond to criticism or even just straight-up bashing, and know that you can do much, much better on how you deal with those sort of things directed at you. We can’t please everybody or agree on everything. But that doesn’t mean we have to make enemies of those people. Didn’t you once work with people who had mental illnesses? I figure you should know all about how to deal with people’s behavior in a helpful way. You should at least be way better at it than me.

I’m not in top form right now when it comes to writing and expressing my thoughts, so I apologize if this may be one of the worst set of paragraphs you have recently seen written on your computer screen. But I hope it was enough for you understand what I mean and what I wish of you. I know no one wants the cblogs to be a place for drama, but I’m also hoping that this blog can incite other, more well-articulated people to voice out their concerns in a helpful manner. Right now, Dtoid can do well to improve on a lot of things. But it’s hard to improve on things when you’re not clear on what is wrong, or you can't acknowledge that something is wrong in the first place.

I believe that we both wish the best for this place. And I believe that there are still plenty of people who share that feeling as well. So please, help us out so we can help you too.

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