Evening blogsters:

Cold evening tuning up here.  Sort of snowy looking clouds off to the west and north.

I've been reading through the thread LottoMike created about member popularity, occasionally having to stop and readjust my knobs and dials, as I discover what people think about themselves, about other people on LP, and about the entire issue of whether well-liked is one of the ways someone might be described.

A person tends to assume the world looks at the world the same way he does.  Which certainly isn't true for any of us, but we assume it in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

I can't honestly say I know anyone on LP, though I've been here a year.  I've had some somewhat personal communications with Todd, whom I consider likeable, but I don't know much about him, nothing at all outside his input and function on this site.  I admire him in that context because I like the site and appreciate what a job of work it must have been to create and maintain it.

But do I 'like' Todd?  Heck, I don't know.  I don't dislike him, but there's a dividing line between 'like' and the absense of dislike.  I assume he is a nice person who is liked by the people who know him.  Worthy of being liked, provided a person knows him.  Which I don't.

In fact, I only know a few people on LP well enough to 'like' them.  That 'knowing' generally hasn't come from personal exchanges, but rather from reading their posts when they've revealed information about themselves that I find worthy of my respect, admiration, whatnot. 

It's a good deal easier to know which LP members I don't want to know well enough to dislike.  Those tend to show themselves in ways that come across strongly.  And I use the BLOCK feature Todd's provided so I don't have to know them well enough to dislike them.  I have a philosophical objection to exposing myself to negativity when I can manage to avoid it, and I see the BLOCK feature as one of those features on this site that I count as a blessing.

Anyway, I think I could say to you blogsters, if I read your posts I might like you, don't dislike you.  But I don't want to go to bed with you.  So don't ask.

And don't vote for me for prom queen or drag queen.

Jack