Here's my take on it. I thought this all out, then realized it all doesn't matter. But I'll get to that in a minute.

The lamers don't *know* they're lame. Therefore, they think it's cool to do things that nobody else finds funny. Or do things that were funny *once*. Or just simply exist.

And when you get enough lamers together, they become the majority. If they're the majority, then they ought to be able to do what *they* want in chat, right? Which probably includes such lamer classics as "Repeating the jokes of some non-lamer because they think it's funny the tenth and twentieth time around" and "Talking incoherently about nothing at all."

This is the way I thought until just recently. I thought it was only fair that the lamers, if they're the majority, get to do what they want and it's unfair for us "non-lamers" to kick them out when they decide to be lame.

Then tonight, I realized that chat isn't a friggin democracy. It's a dictatorship, and Sam is the Pharoah. So if there are 500 lamers in chat and only six non-lamers, and Sam decrees that the lamers must go, they MUST GO. End of friggin story. You don't like it, go to http://www.imadamnlamer.com

And, as BG says, as ops and admins, we have the responsibility to uphold what SAM wants, not what we want or what we might think is right. So if what Elly was doing was something she felt Sam would have done, she's absolutely in the right, by definition. End of story.

Anyway, I just find it easier not to go to chat. I have AIM, so all the people I actually *want* to talk to can get in touch with me, and vice-versa. It's nice that way.

-- Dave