Maybe you haven't noticed lately, in your state of collective complacency, but Newgrounds has become rather ill.
From one end of the metaphorical body to the other, parasites invade it via orifices and pores previously unknown, bringing their malicious nucleic instructions to tear down the infrastructure of the host, and in doing so allow themselves to procreate in the dead tissues, and eventually to move on to the adjacent organs.
Consider this a first attempt to quell the spread. Consider the following a saw by which one of the infected limbs might be sawed off to a bloody stump, and thus be salvaged from the gangrenous state that surely awaits:
Perhaps the single most divisive issue on the General Forum of the last year has been that of the ad nauseum debate between COMPUTER PARTISANS of the fundamental differences between brands of computer, and most often of all, which operating system is the one that, in each's opinion, is the most productive, the most beautiful, the most versatile. The state of this debate has degenerated, over the last twelve or eighteen months, from the stately presentation of facts, to the tense and angry debates, ever-more-impassioned, that tend to characterize the current state of affairs on the forums.
But these debates, upon which now hinge reputations and friendships of the debaters, are tangential distractions, not worthy even to prostrate themselves at the feet of logic, when placed into consideration with one single point that has not once been brought up through the heat of the furnace of argumentation:
What is a computer, anyways, but a means to an end?
The very existence of these debates hinges on the once-infallible premise that the computer itself is the end and not the means, but this is not true; has never been true. The computer is the tool by which tasks are accomplished, not the accomplishment itself. As long as the task is accomplished, what does it matter what means are used to do so?
Each of us uses a particular computer brand, or specific operating system for a reason, and that reason is one that necessarily is only applicable to oneself, be it speed, efficiency, expandability, etc. Computer Partisans are the Jehovah's Witnesses of the Newgrounds community, awkwardly presenting themselves at your front door, and expecting you to convert yourself on the spot to the only religion, in their view, that is legitimate.
The forceful assault of personal opinions unleashed upon each other is perhaps the single most Kafkaesque aspect of this most perverted system, as none of us will ever change our minds on the given issue based on a few heated minutes on the internet; we've already committed to the brand that we own, and we're already entrenched in the minutiae of that particular operating system.
For this reason, these threads are nothing more than a platform by which Computer Partisans, in the same way as political partisans in reality, are given the opportunity to sow the seeds of discord and discontent, of malice and mutually assured destruction, to no concrete end beyond an intangible and evil sense of satisfaction at the taste of the blood of one's fellow.
So end it, Computer Partisans. It really is that simple. Stop forcing your own ideas and opinions on people who will never bend themselves to your will, who will never be swayed by your single obscure opinion, who already have their specific niches filled by the computers that adorns their desks.
End it, and drain the abscess.
