WordPress Frustrations

Yesterday I decided to go ahead and dive into some WordPress. I use this “favorite” piece of software (that’s called an “app,” now, for some reason) and I’ve been reasonably happy with it.

Okay, that’s a big lie. I’m not really happy with WordPress. It’s a big steaming pile of bizarre ideas that are entangled because open-source programs (I think WordPress is open, more or less) require that we all work together or hang separately.

The professor will now expound.

I did a big rant on why Microsoft Flight Simulator was such a dumpster fire when it came to copyright. To summarize, most of the energy went into bitching about how Timmy used my model of a nacelle or something, and didn’t ask permisso, and didn’t credit me. Hell, I could even see where I corrected my mistakes!

This whining about ownership is supposed to cause a feeling of righteous indignation in the reader, but I can see this happening ONLY with die-hard Ayn Rand types– and even though I WAS one in my youth, I can tell you now that the idea of getting all moist about some basement-dweller not getting the proper respect turns my stomach. I mean, come on, man. Have some dignity, if that’s possible. Don’t cry over your lack of recognition. Your life is a vast tapestry of recognition-lack. The least you can do is not squeal loudly when yet anther tiny bit of your creativity is looted.

Take it like a man, you disgusting whiner.

So this brings us happily back to WordPress. With all the dirty fingers in the pot, it’s no surprise that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet has joined in to add some confusion to the tangled mass of unholy noise.

WordPress is yet another example of “The Tragedy of the Commons.” They gave them a playpen and they gave back a burned-out hulk. “Sorry man– shit got real.” It’s impossible to really understand whatever-it-is that WordPress is trying to be. It’s just an amalgamation of different visions, actions, desires and dreams all piled up in a huge ziggurat of Babel. You have to start by picking a side, then root for your team as you strain out the “rebel scum” and reinforce your particular choice of WordPress “flavor.”

This is nuts. But it’s how humans operate. We can’t work together. In fact, we even imagine that a few heroes are laboring in splendid isolation, while an army of parasites suck the life’s blood out of them. Whole populations of “welfare moms” and “illegal aliens” drain the vitality from our lonely heroes– who press on, following the example of Ayn Rand, to die in isolation on a hill marked “self interest.”

But this is crap. If only ONE person with any sense showed up to make a movie, then no movie would be made. There is no such thing as a business where only one person knows anything, and everyone else is a parasite or something. This is a political position and it’s stupid. It takes a group of smart, productive people to make movie, or build a business, or do anything. It takes an village to make a WordPress that works, dammit, and as long as every basement-dweller is determined to do it “his/her own way” we’re in trouble.