Shame on us! For what? For calling this a community.

Communities consist of laws, leaders, and structure. What does the BE community have? Flame wars, hackers and disorganization. Whether it be the handful of BE-related websites around here or the two BE zines that we all read, only one thing is for sure: we really must hate each other. You can't tell your friends from your enemies. Any one of your friends could be your enemy. A good gesture gets mistaken for a bad one and vice-versa. It's one fine mess we have here.

Now before I begin ranting about this, let's get something straight. I am as guilty as anyone else is for many of the common problems we have in the "community". The difference may be that I took it upon myself to actually begin participating in more things. This article is an example of this participation.

We are slowly killing ourselves off with all of this bickering: the lack of communication, the lack of help, and most of all, the lack of good will. We are assuring that the BE fans get driven away from the very thing they love.

I find this extremely sad. I spent two years lurking before I got involved at all. And believe me, I'm sure there are others who have lurked longer than I. And many of them will never participate in the "community" because they must see us as self-centered, erratic assholes who think they know everything. I guess this is my way of openly inviting them all to start participating.

We seem to forget that every word we type is read by a lot more people than we think. When we act like assholes to each other, we do nothing but give a green light for others to display the same conduct. We are basically encouraging the "community" to burn itself to the ground.

I think we all could pay more attention to each other, give more feedback and less criticism. I think we could do more things together as a group than we could ever do individually. But why doesn't it ever happen? Because we are filled with too much pride in our own work and everyone wants a piece of pie for themselves.

If the best artists and writers would spread the knowledge they have to those who crave it, we would have more and higher-quality products to look forward to when we get online. So the next time someone wants to rip a morphing newcomer, offer some ideas as to how they could improve instead of making them feel small.

Now I am a gentleman, so I will not sit here and name names, call people out and so on. And it is also important for me to mention that there are some really great people around that do not fall into this category. Just recently at the BEA, a new morph artist had asked for an opinion on his work. He received about 7 replies that were all encouraging. During this time, the artist put up another morph that was twice as good as the previous one. This was positive feedback, with positive results. This is the type of behavior that makes me want to spend more time on my own work. And at the moment I am writing this, the bickering appears to have stopped. But we all know it's only temporary.

It never fails to put a smile on my face when I get a nice comment, and I try to do the same thing for others. Now, it's perfectly true that some morphs I've seen are, without a doubt, horrible. And many times I have been forced to bite my own tongue, so I wouldn't hurt someone's feelings. But you know what? That's exactly what I did.

The size of the BE world in comparison to the people who actually take the time to contribute to it is very uneven, and it doesn't have to be that way.

This article is not meant to be a massive scolding of all of the people I have so much respect for, but merely a notice to all that we really underappreciate each other far too often. If I have in any way angered or offended anyone, my sincere apologies are given. That is not the focus of this article.

I know this is a story that many of you know well, and most are sick of hearing about. But I would like to at least make it a point to thank places like the Breast Expansion Archive, hooters.dk, R&D, and of course BEhavior, for all of the hard work they do to make my browsing more enjoyable.

I hate to sound like the BE world's referee, but it's about time somebody had something nice to say around here.