Well Condomax.....I'm glad I missed whatever it was that went on in the chat room. When I log on it doesn't take me very long to decide whether to stay and chat or not. Lascivious conversation is not why I log onto the NS site. There are plenty of sites available that cater to that genre! For the most part, I do enjoy the chat room. I like the opportunity to share my day, my triumps, my difficult days, my ideas and see how everyone else is doing. I also like to share ideas on new ways to prepare the NS meals (much to your disdain condo....I know ), and new products etc to help on the NS journey. I have gotten many great tips in there and support. As far as self policing, well yes, that will never work! I guess all you can do is visit the asylum and when you are on the same page as those inmates guarding it stay and enjoy!!  Thats what I do!

I agree with you more than you know, Ms. Waters. And, by the way, I don't at all object to discussions of recipes, etc. However, what gets on my nerves is people talking about food for the sake of talking about food, as if "yummy food" was what life is all about. At times like those, I leave, for talk of food is not why I log onto the NS site. I enjoy the cameraderie and I enjoy helping newbies, but I don't think that overemphasizing food while giving exercise a relatively short shrift is helping newbies readapt their lives to a committed weight loss paradigm.

My original point, though, was that setting arbitrary, self-established bounds on chat room behavior cannot work because it is literally the fox guarding the hen house. Furthermore, I am one for well rounded conversation. I believe that sports, sex, politics, and religion are all part of life and provide interesting topics for discussion, as long as we can respect others' points of view, unlike the "my way or the highway" approach some seem to engender.

I summation, I'm all for chatting about food and a variety of other things with people with whom I have something in common, but I'm bored to tears if such conversations are restricted to the same old, hackneyed subjects all the time.

Be well,
Ben

wow yu guys must have had bad experiences.  I never have!  I have only checked in a few times, but it has always been pleasant, mature, and descent.  Maybe i just missed it or maybe just naive.  I hope you have a better experience.  

I've been doing the chat room for eight months. During a period as long as that in such a microcosm of life, one is bound to have seen just about any sort of social and antisocial behavior that exists. Beyond NS, in any chat room scenario, cliquishness is bound to appear. (I'm qualified to make that blanket statement because I have been accessing chat rooms dating back to the early 1980s via IRQ and CompuServe.) If a newbie doesn't behave by certain unwritten rules, the newbie tends to be ganged up on by the established patrons, just as it was in high school when outsiders tried to get into the popular cliques without kowtowing to the head weenies. On the other hand, if a newbie is "properly" deferential toward the inner circle, he or she stands a chance, albeit a small one, of being accepted into that exclusive group. And there you have it--the inmates run the asylum.

I say this all with a tongue-in-cheek smile, because I do not take chat room machinations seriously. I am titillated by the NS chat room, and I've met some very genuine people in there. I am by no mean castigating individuals. I'm merely condemning one aspect of group behavior that tends to run rampant in chat rooms.

Bombastically yours,
Ben