Not Always Right Gone Preachy

[Ladeeda]

I love the Not Always Right and related sites, but the past few weeks, Right and Working have listed mostly stories pertaining to sexism and homophobia.

Yeah, they exist, but why so many all of a sudden? Where'd the sudden increase come from?

And I can say all this, since I'm female and pro-equality.

[TheHuckster]

It's possible more of the submissions themselves are about bigotry. I've found that both sites tend to have "trends" that probably occur because a published story reminds others of similar stories that they also submit. I remember there was a few weeks of stories that were almost entirely ending with the customer "stomping off" or "running away, red faced."

[HYHYBT]

I tend to find that stories which end with the customer stomping off or similar aren't really over yet, and the sequel will be unpleasant.

[Ladeeda]

Bigotry tends to include a lot of racism, which has been mostly absent in recent entries. I'll agree to trends, but that doesn't improve matters. There are people selecting which stories are accepted to the main site, and the selection is clearly leaning in a certain direction.

It's not a BAD direction, rationally speaking. But for a comedy site, it's gotten well old, and fast.

[TheHuckster]

It's not a BAD direction, rationally speaking. But for a comedy site, it's gotten well old, and fast.

I've found Not Always Right has gotten old for more than just that reason. Its sterile delivery of stories with barely any background or description and just back and forth dialog that looks edited and "embellished for the viewer's entertainment" makes the really good story that makes me genuinely laugh or otherwise leaves me amazed very rare. I still read it, simply because it's part of my "take a break to read something" rotation, but I much more enjoy the stories on CS.com because you know it's being told from their point of view, with no editing, and the first-hand descriptions and explanations of what's going on, in each person's own words, makes it more "human" to me than just a bank of edited dialog and quick quips. And that, in its own way, makes it much more funny and/or amazing.

When you read a story on Not Always Right, you have no idea who the person telling the story is. On CS.com, there's always a sense of identity to the story. "Oh, this is a CRML story, what's going on in that cockney pub today?" or "Oh no, Jester's found another SC in paradise" or "Yay! A very rare GK update! What's the latest trend in polar pants and hats? Have they figured out how to use a phone yet?" and I think that greatly adds to the story. Might some of the stories on CS be embellished or even completely made up? Sure, but not even most of them IMO, and even in those outrageous stories it still feels more "real" than Not Always Right, which is always "second-hand" accounts of customer encounters, since it goes through an editor who probably cuts things out, adds things in, and retells the story to be "more funny."

Sorry, I kinda went off the deep end with my ranting.

[smileyeagle1021]

This is why I always go to the unfiltered site (from the not always right/working home page, in the upper right, there is a link to a site that is unfiltered, unedited).

[EricKei]

TheHuckster -- Their stuff looks edited because it is They openly state it in their FAQ. Then again, this is the internet; I imagine they would have to edit the vast majority of submissions for content. They also explicitly say that they edit out most background info so that readers can get to the meat of the story more quickly. In other words, your suspicions are correct As for embellishments...? No idea. I suspect that many of their user submissions have plenty of embellishment before they ever arrive at NAR.

Sadly, the introduction of Unfiltered could be part of the problem...Now that those stories are public, there are gonna be people who will submit more and more outlandish stories whether they are true or not. It's kinds like how trolls on sites like bash.org seem to take pride in submitting "chatlogs" that are intentionally vile to see how LOW of a score they can get. It's possible that some such stories got through to the main site.

[Ginger Tea]

At the moment most of the newer posts are about geek/gaming culture as they are running a promotion for those kinds of posts