posted
I really can't imagine why you would want to do this. If you are tired of the group, then just go away and ignore it.
You've made over 1600 comments and more importantly many people have responded to your comments. When, if, you delete your post, you throw all those comments by other people out of context. That doesn't really seem fair to them.
Further, of course, your ideas and opinions are going to change over time...it's called 'life'. But that doesn't mean whatever you said wasn't valid when you said it.
More importantly, if you just wait a few weeks, any comments you did make will have fallen into deep obscure history. Those comments will be buried so deep that know one will ever know they existed. And if you are worried about your opinions changing in 5 years, I must say that in 5 years your comments will be buried under many thousands of posts, and essentially, and for all intent and purpose, lost.
I think you are attaching far and away to much importance on the existence of post make in what is essentially casual conversation. Do you also want to go down the the local bar or coffee shop and erase the memories of every person who has ever heard you speak. Sorry, but in my mind that makes as much sense as what you are trying to do here.
I say, if you choose, just go away and let you comments fall into the deep and dusty annals of history.
Plus, who is to say in a few months or years, you won't want to come back?
posted
Everytime I see something like this I read it as "I'm going to leave, so pay attention to me!" And yes, I am a hypocrite since I posted a "goodbye" thread myself once. But I feel differently now, and guess what - I didn't go back and delete all my old threads from when I used to feel that way and yet I live.
If you want to go, just go. Deleting posts on your way out seems petty and designed to irk people, especially since anyone who has read Hatrack recently knows that a large portion of the community finds it reprehensible behavior. This feels stuntish to me, like you're just trying to get attention. If so then congratulations, it worked - you have a two page thread so far, hope you're pleased with your results.
Everything Steve/Blue Wizard said above is true - there's no reason to worry about your comments still hanging around five years from now because most likely they won't be accessible. And destroying ideas because you think you won't agree with them in five years is silly, most people change and grow and their opinions morph, it's called growing up and maturing and gaining life experience. I think it's better, in fact, to be able to look back with perspective and see how you've matured, hopefully you'll be proud of where you are then and looking back will be a pleasant experience.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
friends at school once passed around a petition stating that I do not exist.
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posted
Until you can invent a time machine, and find a way to overcome all the paradoxes involved in changing history, you will never be able to delete your past completely, as much as you may wish to. Just ask anybody who has run for (and even been elected) President in the past few decades, or any of the corporate executives who thought their emails were "deleted."
Posts: 241 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
*hugs Kama* How can you hug a person who doesn't exist?
It's a shame to see a member leave, especially when said member contributes a lot to board discussions.
I left Hatrack for 2 years myself, I posted a goodbye thread, and thought I would never look back. Then a tragedy in my life occurred. Hatrack was a wonderful distraction to keep my mind away from grief.
I wouldn't delete your account, who knows when you decide you might want to come back? I never thought I would, yet here I am 3 of 4 times a week. Posts: 4229 | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Zeugma, I will miss you. I hope you do whatever you need to to find peace and comfort, and I wish you the very best of that, always.
quote:Originally posted by hugh57: Until you can invent a time machine, and find a way to overcome all the paradoxes involved in changing history, you will never be able to delete your past completely, as much as you may wish to. Just ask anybody who has run for (and even been elected) President in the past few decades, or any of the corporate executives who thought their emails were "deleted."
I don't think she wants to delete her past completely. I think she just wants to remove that part of what is tied to her name over which she has some control from this site.
The fact that she can't delete everything quoted, or that it doesn't mean it didn't happen, etc., is irrelevant. I'm pretty sure she just wants to remove what she can, and then the fact that she could have (but didn't) won't tug on her mentally.
I sympathize with the desire. When we were first told that threads would be pruned after ~6 months of disuse, I felt free (and happy! so happy ) to delete my old posts. Then the pruning never really happened, and I came to understand that leaving these holes in the record really bothers people here -- which I get intellectually now, even if it doesn't make sense to me on a visceral level -- I stopped doing it.
However, if I ever do something amazingly awesome for this site -- like, I don't know, save kacard from being hit by one of Tatiana's screamin' incoming asteroids, which would Earn Me A Zillion Awesome Points, because the world would fall apart without kacard -- and y'all want to reward me, well ... let the deleting begin. *grin
---
For me at least, it's not about you. It's not about wanting to be dead to you guys, or wanting not to have been here. It's just that I feel the ties to everything so much. It aches to be tugged constantly by things out in the world -- pictures of me, written records of me, everything. I find it so hard not to brood and brood on what has been and gone that the relief of [deleting it]*** is blissful.
I don't know why it helped to delete my own posts, but it sure did. I don't know why it helps to avoid pictures, but it sure does. I don't think it's rational, but it is viscerally compelling, and -- oddly enough -- it doesn't get bigger and bigger when I do it. It just goes away. Mmmmmm. Go away.
And I don't have a death wish, nor do I have any desire not to be in the moment now. Actually, that's all I want -- to write to and speak with my friends, now, to tickle my love and feed him berries, now, to love and laugh and create and savour, now. It's just that much harder for me to be in the now when I feel so strapped to other things in the past. (Yes, I know, one can argue that this doesn't make sense, but then that's what makes this "irrational.")
Good Heavens, when I got rid of almost everything I owned as we moved to Canada, it was like being reborn. Now that we are moving again, I'm high on the paring down yet again. It distracts me from other things (like old posts still hunkering down like bricks all around me). And, yes, I don't want to cause pain, so I will make the choice (each day, again and again) not to delete.
It's my gift to y'all. But if you hear that kacard has taken up astromony and that a teensy beaner of a rock is heading for the area, just let me know. I'll be right there.
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*** a concession and gift to Tom (see a few posts below) -- was originally "letting go," but I believe he finds this characterization to be more accurate, and I am happy to oblige
quote:I find it so hard not to brood and brood on what has been and gone that the relief of letting go is blissful.
I don't think that deletion counts as letting go. Not caring that they're still around is letting go. Deleting them is like "letting go" of your envy of your neighbor by killing your neighbor.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I could happily rewrite that as "I find it so hard not to brood and brood on what has been and gone that the relief of [deleting it] is blissful."
Would you prefer this?
And I do accept that the deleting of posts strikes you as a brutal process. I hope you can accept that to me, it does not. I still do [and will continue to do] you the respect and courtesy of not deleting any more, you know, even though your emotional response to it is quite different than mine.
Posts: 14017 | Registered: May 2000
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posted
I'm not actually criticizing you when I post stuff like that. I'm honestly trying to understand the feeling and logic behind the mental process. It's as foreign to me as religious faith, in a lot of ways, so the questions I ask are no doubt as annoying.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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) to delete my old posts. Then the pruning never really happened, and I came to understand that leaving these holes in the record really bothers people here -- which I get intellectually now, even if it doesn't make sense to me on a visceral level -- I stopped doing it.
