The guy with the nasty website is nasty but right. All the news concerning the missing Alabama high school girl who took a trip to Aruba has been blown way out of proportion in relation to the rest of the news over the past two months. While she has been missing, and probably has been dead right from the start, we are involved wars or other military actions in two countries that eat up American and other lives. People, including young, female pretty ones, die routinely -- and some not routinely --every day, and nothing about this gets into the news except in the obituary columns. So why in hell have we turned the disappearance of just one of these people into yet another media circus?
One can feel sympathy for her parents and other relatives. But people disappear by the millions. Some turn up again. Many do not.
As for what to do about not letting anything like this happen in your family: Think long and hard about this before you assist some 18-year-old girl in your family to travel to some exotic place just to celebrate an all but meaningless high school graduation; an exotic place from which, in fact, she may never return, and because of which you may never have any way of determining whether she is alive or dead.
This may sound dreadful, but others drive along the highway at speed, thinking of nothing in particular. Well I do not. I think about the vehicle rolling over at 65 miles per hour. It gives you an entirely different perspective on things you take chances over.
Funny, today I happened to be watching Fox News and heard nothing about Natalee Holloway, but quite a bit of time spent on a pregnant black girl named Latoya.
So when will we see the "Fuck Latoya" messages?
As I already said: I'm not particularly interested in whether the story is overcovered. The news media seems to love to show stories about photogenic people in trouble. That said, attacking her in a way that would horrify her family is just nasty. I'm not interested in reading Kuroshin anymore just because of that.
I can only pray that the authorities rescue Natalee Holloway and Latoya Figueroa from whatever peril they are in.
And ---- the ---- who said "---- her". "....and some are saying it's only getting so much coverage since Natalee Holloway is a pretty blonde white girl. Well that's not necessarily clear to me--I've seen the cable news channels give attention to non-white girls who disappear. But then again, they rarely give attention to anyone who's not photogenic (or who happens to be male as I think of it). In any case...."
And that's exactly the way it should be. Beautiful women are the only human beings on this planet worth saving because they are the only human beings on this planet who make life at all worth living for any of the rest of us. Nobody'd look for a schlub like me, so I have to look out for myself, and that's the way it should be. I am an absolute "looksist" and elitist. Equality is a lie. The only place in the Universe for the rest of us is on our knees, kneeling before such beautiful ladies, the Goddesses on this planet. The eternal hierarchy of the Divine. Up With Beauty!
Well that's not necessarily clear to me--I've seen the cable news channels give attention to non-white girls who disappear. But then again, they rarely give attention to anyone who's not photogenic (or who happens to be male as I think of it).
I think you're generalizing from an extremely small, non-representative sample, Dean. Of the missing children/adults who have disappeared over the past, oh, five years, who have received what one would call "saturation" coverage (i.e., extended coverage over a period of more than a week, including trial and conviction of those found to have done the abducting), I wonder if you could name more than two who weren't white (I'm including Natalie Holloway, Laci Peterson, Amber Smart, and the two black girls from Utah (?) among others).
I think you'd find that the overwhelming majority are white, and attractive. This would be a really good Ph.D. dissertation for someone, if TV news coverage weren't so darned difficult to study.
Well. If it's a black/white thing, it would be wise to remember that blacks make up only about 11% of the population. You would thus expect around 1 in 10 of these cases--if you can only name a half-dozen and one or two were black, then, the charge of race being the big influence doesn't really fly.
My argument is that it's photogenic people they're more interested in than anything.
Well. If it's a black/white thing, it would be wise to remember that blacks make up only about 11% of the population. You would thus expect around 1 in 10 of these cases--if you can only name a half-dozen and one or two were black, then, the charge of race being the big influence doesn't really fly.
But it's not just a black/white thing. ANY RACE is underrepresented, when you consider the enormous amounts of coverage devoted to the few, the pretty, the white girls. Further, who's to say that it's half a dozen? Any Asians? Any Hispanics? Any native Americans?
Photogenic, sure. But I'm sure white has something to do with it. And I hate the race card as much as the next person.
Well, I just don't know. I can only name a handful of cases like this and a disproportionate number were black (two out of six would be disproportionate), and I remember at least one latino girl, vaguely (but may be misremembering).
So... [shrug] I suppose we should look at some hard data on it. We'd also have to leave out cases where there's a clear celebrity or politician connection, which are obviously a different phenomenon (Chandra Levy wouldn't count since she was only famous due to her connection to Gary Condit, for example.)
Excellent. Pulchritudocrat. Pulchritudolator. Pulchritudotheist. Yes, that's me. That's where I stand.
Beauty is the embodiment of the Divine. An attractive woman is intrinsically holy and superior to the rest of us by the mere fact that her very presence on this planet blesses everyone who has the fortune to as much as catch a glimpse of her or even to imagine her, her existence alone gives meaning and joy to the otherwise meaningless and miserable existence of the rest of us, gives color to our eyes and music to our ears, is color and music and all that is of value.
I don't think this story is over-covered because she's young and white and blonde and pretty.
I think it's over-covered because the sharks aren't cooperating in "The Return of Shark Summer". And OJ's trial is over. And Michael's, and Robert Blake's, and Scott Peterson's...
These 24 hour news operations like the template of a BIG STORY so that they can deliver more eyeballs to the advertisers. They like it so much that when they don't have a BIG STORY, they'll hype any story they have into a BIG STORY. And when they're looking for a story to hype, yes, photogenic helps. But Robert Blake and Michael Jackson are proof that you don't have to be photogenic to cause a BIG STORY.
And the Holloway family are shamelessly using the media template for their cause. And ya know what? In their position, I would do the same thing. When your loved one is lost, you don't worry about niceties like media ethics and good taste. You grasp any straw, no matter how slim.
Dean - you would not *believe* how much vitriolic email the kuro5hin editors have gotten about that article. We are *still* getting 2-5 obscenity-laced, violent, threatening emails *a day*.
It was annoying at first. Then it was funny. It's long since crossed the line into self-parody: after being told half a dozen times that someone thinks you should suffer the fate of being raped and killed just like natalle was, there's very little you can do except throw up your hands in amazement.
I too fall in instant if fleeting love with every beautiful woman I meet.
Nevertheless, Stefi is the beautiful woman with whom I share coffee and an almond croissant after we do four miles on the endless walking machine each day. And share the different beauty of the sunset in the western sky, or thrill to the threat of rainclouds blowing up north from the gulf.
It's the perfect news mini-series for the summer.
Pretty girl.
Exotic location.
Girl Disapeers - just before she is to return home.
Various suspects, but no real clues.
Questions regartding the activities of all participants, including the missing girl.
Ongoing investigations.
Did I say exotic, tropical location (which being Aruba and Dutch is actually fairly safe)?
This is a perfect beach read, drugstore/supermarket ficiton at its finest.
Dean - why are the editors of the site a bunch of "fucking assholes"? The policy of the site is that the *readers* get to vote on the stories, and that the admins don't interfere.
That policy has worked for five years; how does adhering to that policy in this case make *the admins* assholes?
The person who wrote the article with that headline is a fucking asshole. The people who voted for it as great are fucking assholes. The admins are a bunch of amoral fucking cretins that they don't at least edit the headline.
They're fucking assholes. They deserve every bit of hate mail they've gotten and a good bit more.
Dean - I'll agree that the person who wrote the article is an asshole, and that the people who voted for it are as well. I didn't vote for it. (I didn't vote against it, either; the whole thing came and went when I was on vacation).
However, I disagree with the claim that the admins are a bunch of cretins. We didn't edit the headline because we don't edit the headlines. This is a policy which has been in place for the entire two-plus years that I've been an admin there.
I'm sorry to hear that you believe I deserve to be told that I should be gang-raped and killed, because I adhere to a well-established policy proscribing admins from interfering with content.
That lowers my opinion of you considerably, as I'm sure the knowledge that I'm an admin at kuro5hin lowers your opinion of me.
I of course don't endorse threats of violence over such a thing, but I also don't endorse lumping all those who strenuously criticize the site with those who threaten violence.
You should be ashamed to be associated with that site. If you don't have the good sense to be, I'll be ashamed for you--and if you don't have the good sense to be embarassed to be associated with a site that proudly runs "Fuck Natalee Holloway" in a way that her family and other loved ones might see, then I'll be embarassed for you. And I won't give a flying fuck what you think of me on any subject.
I don't believe that I lumped all those who strenuously criticize the site with those who threaten violence. There's a lot to criticize.
But you didn't do that; you said that we deserve "every bit of hate mail" we've gotten. That includes the threats of violence - quite literally including death threats. You're the one doing the lumping there, i'm merely pointing out the tenor of the mail that you haven't seen. If you don't like the results, perhaps you shouldn't have been quite as categorical as you were in your original statement.
As for being ashamed? There are things that I am embarrassed by; kuro5hin was based on the precept that people would be responsible and well behaved if they were given the space to be, and all of us who promoted that concept were wrong. I find much of what is posted, especially in the diary sections, to be well beyond what I consider acceptable decorum; many of the denizens of the site as it is today deserve only to be ignored.
But ashamed? I'm hardly that. Kuro5hin is an experiment gone bad, proof positive that when you allow people free reign to be assholes they will be, and that politeness is a social construct which must be socially enforced if it is to endure. It is a disappointing testament to the dark side of human nature ... and yet I am not willing to walk away, because I remember when it was something different, and because I have faith, perhaps, or hope, that it can be that again.
Jeepers, Robert. You guys thought people would be responsible and well-bahaved? Come on, man didn't your own experience give you a heads-up that people will act irresponsibly and poorly? All will some times and a few will nearly all the time. That's why we have police. So the policy is you don't edit or pull content? Time to make an exception, explain it, and ban the violator, otherwise you are going to find people stretching the limits all the time.
(scratches head) Don't you remember junior high/middle school?
Fine. I take it back. The threats of violence are not cool.
Then again, they're not "funny," either.
But the anger and the obscenity? They deserved every fucking bit of it. They get no sympathy from me, none. If they were decent people they'd be embarassed and apologetic. But apparently they aren't decent people.
Robert West: But ashamed? I'm hardly that. Kuro5hin is an experiment gone bad, proof positive that when you allow people free reign to be assholes they will be, and that politeness is a social construct which must be socially enforced if it is to endure. It is a disappointing testament to the dark side of human nature ... and yet I am not willing to walk away, because I remember when it was something different, and because I have faith, perhaps, or hope, that it can be that again.
Why do you have faith/hope that it will improve? Are you trying to change the "well-established policy proscribing admins from interfering with content"?
Dean - thank you for conceding the point about the violent threats. I will also retract my comment about losing respect for you; endorsement of violent threats would do that, but merely maintaining that we're rude a-------s does not.
However, I have to disagree about finding them funny - not any individual piece of mail per se, but the entire group of them. We've received well over a hundred angry responses. About a dozen have been well articulated complaints; I have no problem with those. About fifteen have been in the vein of "you poor soul, I pity you and will pray for you"; I have no problem with those. But close to half have been violent, and three quarters have been incredibly rude. We've had people threaten to have the FCC shut us down. (huh?) We've had people tell us they pray to god that we die a painful death and rot in hell. (Not my understanding of what a loving God would want you to pray for, but what do I know?) And so on. Taken as a whole, the body of messages we've received on the subject seems bizarre and irrational; it's as if the headline - and it's the headline that's doing it, a significant fraction of the letters show clearly that the authors didn't even read the article - triggers a deep emotional reaction similar to that which many people would feel if we'd been responsible for whatever happened to Mrs. Holloway.
I'm not looking for sympathy; i'm trying to share what I find to be a bizarre and somewhat singular experience.
It would never in a million years occur to me to send an email message containing the phrase "f you, you f piece of s" two hundred times to anyone. Not even to someone I was extraordinarily angry at. But a lot of people seem to think that's reasonable behavior; clearly they operate from different assumptions than I do. Yet what is truly bizarre, truly ironic and funny, is that these people are sending messages of that nature, messages which contain *nothing* except rudeness (often without even providing the context of what it is they are responding to!), in response to a post that they thought was indescribably rude. I've been trying to imagine a mindset in which it is not ok to say "f [x]" as a way of exaggerating the point that you're tired of talking about [x], but it *is* ok to say "f you, you f piece of s" to a total stranger that you think has been rude, and I just can't wrap my head around it. It gets even stranger when the message is more along the lines of "there's something wrong with you, you need help, i hope you die soon".
Mike - we thought that people would be responsible and well-behaved, and that the social pressure exerted by other responsible and well-behaved people around them would keep those tempted to stray from that path in line.
We were wrong. We overestimated the power of peer pressure. It worked beautifully for about three years and then sort of gradually fell apart; and we've been in a state for two years or so now of trying to figure out how to restore civility without in the process driving away everyone who is there, and of watching to see what the new social constraints will be (because such constraints always exist in some form).
The policy is that we don't edit content without a request from the author to do so. So we can't change the headline without violating our own policies. We do under some circumstances remove articles and accounts - mostly for doing what we call "c---flooding", eg, posting utterly content-free drivel (as an example, stories consisting of nothing but the s-word over and over and over again) or otherwise posting things that exist solely to annoy other users. We were basically dragged into this against our will by other users complaining.
The story in question isn't either of those things. Four years ago it would not have posted, because people would have voted against it on the grounds that it violated decorum. Today, it clearly did post - and it did not violate what passes for community standards among our denizens. Which means that for any of us to go remove it would be an abuse of power within the rules by which we agreed to operate.
MDP - I have faith and hope that it will improve because I have great faith in human nature, and a suspicion that much of our problem comes from people who will change as they age; and because things are already better than they were, say, nine months ago.
I do not want a policy which would allow admins to remove things because they disagreed with the content of an article. But, within our internal debate, I do push for a much less tolerant policy with respect to anti-social behavior than that favored by certain other admins - or than I would have pushed for three years ago.
Then its time to say the experiment failed and its time to change the policy.
My reference to junior high/middle school is if the teacher had to leave the classroom, the longer the authority figure was away, the more likely something goofy would occur. A short time would reveal good behavior on the teacher's return. A long time gone and chaos would break out.
There's always a subset of humanity that has to spoil it for the rest. Tehy've always been there and always will be, and they need to be sat on by authority darn near 24/7/52.
Dean polices this little corner of the blogiverse, and it stays a nice, sane, rational place to drop comments and talk to people. If he didn't it would just become another troll-fens, and no fun for anyone.
I'm sorry it has to be that way, too, but that's reality, and trying to deny reality will leave you looking silly, dead, or both. Hope you guys can figure out how to fix your people problem.
One can feel sympathy for her parents and other relatives. But people disappear by the millions. Some turn up again. Many do not.
As for what to do about not letting anything like this happen in your family: Think long and hard about this before you assist some 18-year-old girl in your family to travel to some exotic place just to celebrate an all but meaningless high school graduation; an exotic place from which, in fact, she may never return, and because of which you may never have any way of determining whether she is alive or dead.
This may sound dreadful, but others drive along the highway at speed, thinking of nothing in particular. Well I do not. I think about the vehicle rolling over at 65 miles per hour. It gives you an entirely different perspective on things you take chances over.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And thanks - I'd forgotten how much I used to enjoy reading Kuro5hin...
So when will we see the "Fuck Latoya" messages?
As I already said: I'm not particularly interested in whether the story is overcovered. The news media seems to love to show stories about photogenic people in trouble. That said, attacking her in a way that would horrify her family is just nasty. I'm not interested in reading Kuroshin anymore just because of that.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
And ---- the ---- who said "---- her". "....and some are saying it's only getting so much coverage since Natalee Holloway is a pretty blonde white girl. Well that's not necessarily clear to me--I've seen the cable news channels give attention to non-white girls who disappear. But then again, they rarely give attention to anyone who's not photogenic (or who happens to be male as I think of it). In any case...."
And that's exactly the way it should be. Beautiful women are the only human beings on this planet worth saving because they are the only human beings on this planet who make life at all worth living for any of the rest of us. Nobody'd look for a schlub like me, so I have to look out for myself, and that's the way it should be. I am an absolute "looksist" and elitist. Equality is a lie. The only place in the Universe for the rest of us is on our knees, kneeling before such beautiful ladies, the Goddesses on this planet. The eternal hierarchy of the Divine. Up With Beauty!
I think you're generalizing from an extremely small, non-representative sample, Dean. Of the missing children/adults who have disappeared over the past, oh, five years, who have received what one would call "saturation" coverage (i.e., extended coverage over a period of more than a week, including trial and conviction of those found to have done the abducting), I wonder if you could name more than two who weren't white (I'm including Natalie Holloway, Laci Peterson, Amber Smart, and the two black girls from Utah (?) among others).
I think you'd find that the overwhelming majority are white, and attractive. This would be a really good Ph.D. dissertation for someone, if TV news coverage weren't so darned difficult to study.
Pulchritudist? Pulchritudinist? Pulchritudinarian?
My argument is that it's photogenic people they're more interested in than anything.
Bryan: I seem to remember an Elizabeth Smart (UT), and an Amber Frey (CA).
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
But it's not just a black/white thing. ANY RACE is underrepresented, when you consider the enormous amounts of coverage devoted to the few, the pretty, the white girls. Further, who's to say that it's half a dozen? Any Asians? Any Hispanics? Any native Americans?
Photogenic, sure. But I'm sure white has something to do with it. And I hate the race card as much as the next person.
So... [shrug] I suppose we should look at some hard data on it. We'd also have to leave out cases where there's a clear celebrity or politician connection, which are obviously a different phenomenon (Chandra Levy wouldn't count since she was only famous due to her connection to Gary Condit, for example.)
Excellent. Pulchritudocrat. Pulchritudolator. Pulchritudotheist. Yes, that's me. That's where I stand.
Beauty is the embodiment of the Divine. An attractive woman is intrinsically holy and superior to the rest of us by the mere fact that her very presence on this planet blesses everyone who has the fortune to as much as catch a glimpse of her or even to imagine her, her existence alone gives meaning and joy to the otherwise meaningless and miserable existence of the rest of us, gives color to our eyes and music to our ears, is color and music and all that is of value.
I think it's over-covered because the sharks aren't cooperating in "The Return of Shark Summer". And OJ's trial is over. And Michael's, and Robert Blake's, and Scott Peterson's...
These 24 hour news operations like the template of a BIG STORY so that they can deliver more eyeballs to the advertisers. They like it so much that when they don't have a BIG STORY, they'll hype any story they have into a BIG STORY. And when they're looking for a story to hype, yes, photogenic helps. But Robert Blake and Michael Jackson are proof that you don't have to be photogenic to cause a BIG STORY.
And the Holloway family are shamelessly using the media template for their cause. And ya know what? In their position, I would do the same thing. When your loved one is lost, you don't worry about niceties like media ethics and good taste. You grasp any straw, no matter how slim.
It was annoying at first. Then it was funny. It's long since crossed the line into self-parody: after being told half a dozen times that someone thinks you should suffer the fate of being raped and killed just like natalle was, there's very little you can do except throw up your hands in amazement.
I too fall in instant if fleeting love with every beautiful woman I meet.
Nevertheless, Stefi is the beautiful woman with whom I share coffee and an almond croissant after we do four miles on the endless walking machine each day. And share the different beauty of the sunset in the western sky, or thrill to the threat of rainclouds blowing up north from the gulf.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Pretty girl.
Exotic location.
Girl Disapeers - just before she is to return home.
Various suspects, but no real clues.
Questions regartding the activities of all participants, including the missing girl.
Ongoing investigations.
Did I say exotic, tropical location (which being Aruba and Dutch is actually fairly safe)?
This is a perfect beach read, drugstore/supermarket ficiton at its finest.
And you wonder about the coverage?
That is Beauty.
That policy has worked for five years; how does adhering to that policy in this case make *the admins* assholes?
They're fucking assholes. They deserve every bit of hate mail they've gotten and a good bit more.
However, I disagree with the claim that the admins are a bunch of cretins. We didn't edit the headline because we don't edit the headlines. This is a policy which has been in place for the entire two-plus years that I've been an admin there.
I'm sorry to hear that you believe I deserve to be told that I should be gang-raped and killed, because I adhere to a well-established policy proscribing admins from interfering with content.
That lowers my opinion of you considerably, as I'm sure the knowledge that I'm an admin at kuro5hin lowers your opinion of me.
You should be ashamed to be associated with that site. If you don't have the good sense to be, I'll be ashamed for you--and if you don't have the good sense to be embarassed to be associated with a site that proudly runs "Fuck Natalee Holloway" in a way that her family and other loved ones might see, then I'll be embarassed for you. And I won't give a flying fuck what you think of me on any subject.
Shame the fuck on you, Robert.
But you didn't do that; you said that we deserve "every bit of hate mail" we've gotten. That includes the threats of violence - quite literally including death threats. You're the one doing the lumping there, i'm merely pointing out the tenor of the mail that you haven't seen. If you don't like the results, perhaps you shouldn't have been quite as categorical as you were in your original statement.
As for being ashamed? There are things that I am embarrassed by; kuro5hin was based on the precept that people would be responsible and well behaved if they were given the space to be, and all of us who promoted that concept were wrong. I find much of what is posted, especially in the diary sections, to be well beyond what I consider acceptable decorum; many of the denizens of the site as it is today deserve only to be ignored.
But ashamed? I'm hardly that. Kuro5hin is an experiment gone bad, proof positive that when you allow people free reign to be assholes they will be, and that politeness is a social construct which must be socially enforced if it is to endure. It is a disappointing testament to the dark side of human nature ... and yet I am not willing to walk away, because I remember when it was something different, and because I have faith, perhaps, or hope, that it can be that again.
(scratches head) Don't you remember junior high/middle school?
Then again, they're not "funny," either.
But the anger and the obscenity? They deserved every fucking bit of it. They get no sympathy from me, none. If they were decent people they'd be embarassed and apologetic. But apparently they aren't decent people.
Why do you have faith/hope that it will improve? Are you trying to change the "well-established policy proscribing admins from interfering with content"?
However, I have to disagree about finding them funny - not any individual piece of mail per se, but the entire group of them. We've received well over a hundred angry responses. About a dozen have been well articulated complaints; I have no problem with those. About fifteen have been in the vein of "you poor soul, I pity you and will pray for you"; I have no problem with those. But close to half have been violent, and three quarters have been incredibly rude. We've had people threaten to have the FCC shut us down. (huh?) We've had people tell us they pray to god that we die a painful death and rot in hell. (Not my understanding of what a loving God would want you to pray for, but what do I know?) And so on. Taken as a whole, the body of messages we've received on the subject seems bizarre and irrational; it's as if the headline - and it's the headline that's doing it, a significant fraction of the letters show clearly that the authors didn't even read the article - triggers a deep emotional reaction similar to that which many people would feel if we'd been responsible for whatever happened to Mrs. Holloway.
I'm not looking for sympathy; i'm trying to share what I find to be a bizarre and somewhat singular experience.
It would never in a million years occur to me to send an email message containing the phrase "f you, you f piece of s" two hundred times to anyone. Not even to someone I was extraordinarily angry at. But a lot of people seem to think that's reasonable behavior; clearly they operate from different assumptions than I do. Yet what is truly bizarre, truly ironic and funny, is that these people are sending messages of that nature, messages which contain *nothing* except rudeness (often without even providing the context of what it is they are responding to!), in response to a post that they thought was indescribably rude. I've been trying to imagine a mindset in which it is not ok to say "f [x]" as a way of exaggerating the point that you're tired of talking about [x], but it *is* ok to say "f you, you f piece of s" to a total stranger that you think has been rude, and I just can't wrap my head around it. It gets even stranger when the message is more along the lines of "there's something wrong with you, you need help, i hope you die soon".
We were wrong. We overestimated the power of peer pressure. It worked beautifully for about three years and then sort of gradually fell apart; and we've been in a state for two years or so now of trying to figure out how to restore civility without in the process driving away everyone who is there, and of watching to see what the new social constraints will be (because such constraints always exist in some form).
The policy is that we don't edit content without a request from the author to do so. So we can't change the headline without violating our own policies. We do under some circumstances remove articles and accounts - mostly for doing what we call "c---flooding", eg, posting utterly content-free drivel (as an example, stories consisting of nothing but the s-word over and over and over again) or otherwise posting things that exist solely to annoy other users. We were basically dragged into this against our will by other users complaining.
The story in question isn't either of those things. Four years ago it would not have posted, because people would have voted against it on the grounds that it violated decorum. Today, it clearly did post - and it did not violate what passes for community standards among our denizens. Which means that for any of us to go remove it would be an abuse of power within the rules by which we agreed to operate.
I do not want a policy which would allow admins to remove things because they disagreed with the content of an article. But, within our internal debate, I do push for a much less tolerant policy with respect to anti-social behavior than that favored by certain other admins - or than I would have pushed for three years ago.
My reference to junior high/middle school is if the teacher had to leave the classroom, the longer the authority figure was away, the more likely something goofy would occur. A short time would reveal good behavior on the teacher's return. A long time gone and chaos would break out.
There's always a subset of humanity that has to spoil it for the rest. Tehy've always been there and always will be, and they need to be sat on by authority darn near 24/7/52.
Dean polices this little corner of the blogiverse, and it stays a nice, sane, rational place to drop comments and talk to people. If he didn't it would just become another troll-fens, and no fun for anyone.
I'm sorry it has to be that way, too, but that's reality, and trying to deny reality will leave you looking silly, dead, or both. Hope you guys can figure out how to fix your people problem.