Yet there are two people who have taken out time and journal entries to convince each other that I must be unimportant and unfunny (hmm.. I don't recall claiming I was either funny or important).

Apparently some people's egos get bruised when I use simple rudimentary tactics to induce anger and annoyance to the point where they have to blog about the incident to appeal to other similarly emotionally insecure individuals in hoping they can form some sort of united group to convince themselves they are "right" and I am "wrong".

Hmm.. I don't recall ever making any sort of statements that I was right, that I was elite, that I was better, that I am king of anything, or anything else of the sort. So thus, I proclaim that that certian people out there who were so incensed by my insignificant presence have obvious self-esteem insecurities because they saw an attack on their own very being that didn't really exist.

You're a retard if you believe groupthink on Slashdot does not exist and that all moderations, opinions, etc. represent genuine objective analysis and thought.

This counterargument is really hilarious, given that it is this same crowd who accuses anyone who doesn't have the most shining praise for Linux of being "M$ apologists" or whatever. The hilarity reaches a climax when you, amongst all the bickering about Microsoft's security holes, point out that OpenBSD is hell of alot more secure than Linux. This is where you see the zealots come out and use the very arguments they used to defend Linux against to try to slam BSD - that its "not userfriendly enough", that it doesnt have enough market share, or that its spokesmen are too mean/bad people/etc.

Democracy has proven time and time again to be a collosal failure. It allows people's own personal immediate whims to be satisfied while ignoring the total overall health of humanity. Since that all non-democratic governments in recent history have been bad evil ones, it must be logical to follow that democracy is the pinnacle of human organization. Unfortunately this attitude has percolated into Slashdot groupthink. Moderation is seen as a legimate and fair way to judge posts because if its not one person deciding, but instead several of those "one persons" , then it must be Truth that has been obtained!

Of course, groupthink goes beyond just Linux on Slashdot.

There are Apple zealots, BSD zealots, Google zealots, and various political zealots all here on Slashdot. The common thread between these people is that they are all emotionally attached to their camps. If you diss Apple, you'll get hissed at and modded down. Same with Google. You can post some of the most dry and boring statements about Google being cool or revolutionizing whatever inane thing that you think will happen and get moderated up because Google is the in-thing on Slashdot.

Slashdot is not like 1984 - there is enough dissent to go around and a few sane users who are able to right some of the wrongs that go on in the system. However, the groupthink represents a rather large percentage of the user population here.