No Content Friday:  What Are We Doing Here?

"What are we doing here?"

The question was asked. I have an answer - although there's no guarantee it will land satisfactorily.

Obviously I haven't been around much lately, but I did have a moment to read through many of the comments from my Knicks Championship story this past Sunday.

Our good friend and occasional content contributor, Tyler McThrawnington, often patrols the Disqus section to make sure none of our editorials escape without some counterargument. I found this:



So, what ARE we doing here?

For me, I'm trying to scrape up the energy to help keep the lights on. Thankfully, CJ has stepped in and has been doing the heavy lifting over the past month or two. I'm around, but as I may have casually mentioned in passing that while my passion for the hobby has weakened recently, it was completely put on the back burner by The Brunson Burner (see what I did there?) and the rest of the Knicks' title run. Now since that has died down, I find myself wondering where I want to go from here.

What I have realized is that the community that we have all built together here is the best one in the hobby, and it would certainly be a shame if it was gone. While I have known this all along, it really hit me hard after my little buddy Santino passed back in September. I wrote:

I wanted to share that having my connection to Banthaskull is one of the things that has kept me sane through all of this. This community and the camaraderie, as well as the arrival of the Cantina and all the discussions and work that goes into the site has helped keep my mind off my sadness. It’s been an enormous help to have everyone reading this be a part of that, even if none of you knew any of this was happening. Except for Chris. It wasn’t too long ago that Chris and his wife went through their own grief with a similar loss, so it was a huge support to be able to share all of this in real time behind the scenes while we continued to do our thing at Banthaskull.

While it had nothing to do with Star Wars, I know that writing about Santino was an outlet for me to share with people that have formed a bit of a bond here on this site. Reading through everyone's supportive and emotional comments drove the point home with me that while Star Wars was the reason we were here, it has been the camaraderie that kept us going. It wasn't too long after Santino that Chris and I started to reduce our workload. Chris may have had different reasons, by I felt a renewed optimism that he and I didn't have to grind out daily content in order to keep the community together. Banthaskull is a site where people can discuss the things they enjoy most, and in many cases share personal stories that have little or nothing to do with Star Wars. The best thing about it all as that we do it with a general positivity and welcomeness that you just can't find in many other places. The discussions very rarely turn sour, and trolling is so rare that it seems to be a statistically negligible occurrence. The trolling that does occur is more of a novelty than anything else, and I take the view that it's okay because they're our trolls.

I occasionally read in other places, Disqus commentary, IG comments, etc., that Banthaskull is none of the above. I used to be confused by this, until it dawned on me that the vast majority of such comments came from people who were just clearly bitter about the hobby. The wider community is filled with venomous and toxic corners where people congregate with other likeminded individuals inside their dreary bubbles of sadness. These are the same people who make personal attacks against the good people at Hasbro. The same people who seem to root for the line to fail, and revel when there are any missteps. I'd have to say that they are certainly welcome to try this place out, but due to the strength of the folks here, there is simply no room for any of that nonsense so they would likely run away pretty quickly.

With regard to Tyler's question which he posed in response to my Knicks celebratory post, my answer specifically is that we are doing what we always do: sharing our stories with each other.

I didn't read anyone wondering why I wrote my story about Santino, but my Knicks post did earn this question. The vast majority of the people that commented seemed overwhelmingly supportive and genuinely happy for me - even though most don't give a crap about sports, let alone the Knicks. Santino's passing was one of the lowest moments of my life, and 9 months later I've just experienced one of the highest highs of my life. And I was happy to share both with you guys, and truly appreciative of the welcoming responses to both moments.

So what ARE we doing here, Tyler? WE'RE HANGING OUT WITH FRIENDS! Jeez, it's really not that complicated.

All that said, I really appreciate everyone staying here at Banthaskull while we find our way forward, navigating how we feel about the current and future state of the hobby. And here's another shout out to CJ for everything he's done.

If all goes according to plan, we'll have an actual figure review on Monday. Amazing!

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