In which I LAMENT unexpected levels of LITERACY
If there are two things I know in this life, they're the internet and this town, and there's a very good reason why I keep the two as
separate as possible. For all our 1982 World's Fair-esque bluster, Knoxville is still more the town of my grandfather than it is the town of his grandson. This place doesn't exactly thrive on forward-thinking adaptation, and attempts to drag it kicking and screaming into the 21st century tend to have results better suited to fish-out-of-water comedies than to future-proofed municipalities. When Knox County announced its go-live date for the newly-created County Commission forums, I could practically feel the crosshairs growing over my eyes. I couldn't help but expect the results to play out like buggy-whip salesmen at the Talladega 500, and I couldn't wait to experience the impending hilarious embarrassments from all involved parties directly.
Was I hoping for material? Damn right I was. My vision of a beautiful bloggy future included a weekly roundup of the gaffes, bloopers, and too hot for TV moments posted online by our illustrious commissioners. Don't get me wrong - I don't ascribe by default the worst in humanity to the Commission, but I do subscribe to certain theories about tendencies in net-based communications.
In retrospect, I'm glad that I didn't start an office betting pool on how long it would take the CC forums to devolve into a scene from the Knoxville Zoo's howler monkey cages. Much to my surprise, the last two months of CC foruming have been bereft of everything but civilized communication.
In practice it's less a forum in the modern sense and more a publicly-viewable version of a mailing list, which apparently was the idea all along:
The Knox County Commission has exercised its option to communicate electronically in accordance with the Amended Public Meetings Act. Knox County has created this on line forum to allow Knox County Commissioners an opportunity to openly and transparently communicate electronically with other Commissioners in compliance with the Act. While only Knox County Commissioners may publish on the web site, the web site is designed so that citizens may read anything posted by any Commissioner at any time.
My dreams, they are crushed. Where are my Greg "Lumpy" Lambert* "make a post, get a gun" threads? Why aren't Cas Walker viruses trying to punch me through my screen? Why hasn't Paul Pinkston started a petition to have Mayor Ragsdale IP-banned? Where are my Victoria DeFreese CILF jokes**?
This isn't what I'm paying for here! I expected a goldmine of unintentional comedy. Thanks a lot, jerks.
----
* Have you ever googled "greg lumpy lambert"? Apparently, white supremacist idiots hate him, so he has to be doing SOMETHING right.
** Okay, I stretched for that one. Shut up.
Leave a comment