Who’s Afraid of the RE.net?
Those of you who are looking for information about real estate in Sacramento, the usual topic of this blog, may find this post to be somewhat irrelevant.
I who am writing it find it completely so.
Something Wicked This Way Comes
Every so often something comes up that reminds me that there’s this giant group of Realtors® aside from me and my cozy little real estate company, and they’re out there calling themselves the RE.net or the real estate blogosphere.
Actually, there are at least two communities, really — there’s the RE.net and then there’s ActiveRain. There’s a little bit of overlap between the two. But there’s a fairly large group of RE.net-ites who don’t do ActiveRain, and there’s a substantial group of ActiveRain members who don’t get out much.
Once in a blue moon someone from the RE.net will happen by here.
I think they like reading Purva.
Some Times Nothing is a Real Cool Hand
Both these groups make me scratch my head a lot. I know: some people think that’s caused by dandruff. But I have insider insight. It’s confusion.
Actually I kind of get the ActiveRain people — and I’m one of them though I don’t spend a lot of time there any more. I disagree with them on technical issues of how business should be developed, and on thematic issues of what one should usually write about, but I pretty much get them.
The RE.net — those guys leave me completely puzzled. No, come to think of it, it’s not puzzlement. I just think we don’t like each other very much, as a rule. There are a few who I find quite pleasant, but overall my odds of finding someone pleasant are better if you take any other population and run it by me. Everyone who works in a bank, let’s say. Or everyone at the Department of Motor Vehicles. Last time I was at the DMV I had a wonderful time.
My inability to find much joy in the RE.net is somewhat unpleasant whenever it comes up, but for the most part it’s a non-issue, because they pretty much stay on their side of this series of tubes, and I stay on mine.
Someday maybe Jesus will fill my heart with gladness and I’ll love them at least as much as I love everyone at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
What Bug Is Up The RE.net Lately
I actually started writing this post about a week ago, when fans of this one RE.net character came buy to sell me on the idea of participating in a charity chain letter the RE.net was having for the tornado victims in the southern United States. I put up a link to the Red Cross, and my saleslady was a little disappointed that “RE.net wouldn’t get the credit”.
I’ve been pretty busy with real work since then, and pretty dumbfounded as to how to respond. If this were the DMV I’d probably make a joke of it. “Heh, heh — looks like I’m in the wrong line again!”
Extra Stupidity to the Rescue
Since then, an RE.net blog war that used to flare up quarterly has now begun to appear monthly. All the usual suspects have pitched their respective marbles on one blog or another by now, or lost them completely.
For those of you who’ve had the good fortune to never have seen a blog war, imagine two sandboxes populated by miscellaneous two-to-four-year-olds, throwing sand and rocks and Tonka trucks at each other. Now imagine it going on with a subtle difference or two. The two-year-olds are all ostensible grown-ups, so there’s really no incentive for any adult supervision, inasmuch as there really isn’t a child at risk of getting beaned with a steel fire engine. So it can get as stupid as it wants to be and everyone else’s inner child can come along and comment on it.
I Know You Are But What Am I?
As I mentioned above, I often wish I got along better with the RE.net, so I could feel at least as at home there as I do at the DMV. So there’s probably a bit of sour grapes in what I’m going to say, but I’ll say it anyway: If you’re going to be an outcast, you could do worse than to be an outcast from the RE.net. Individual exceptions notwithstanding, they’re pretty much insane.
I say Potato, you say Pariah. Let’s call the whole thing off.
