So a couple of weeks back (maybe it’s more, I’ve got far more annoying things in my life at the moment to really remember the time lines for shit like this) Bryan’s girlfriend Jen posted on his website (that was taken offline at the time) that things were not going well with him at the moment and that Avalonstar might continue and it might not, and it was all terribly cryptic and oh so very very O_o.

What many of those outside didn’t see was what went on behind the scenes, on the 9rules member’s message board and obviously in many people’s email boxes. Scrivs is a bit pissed off at Bryan for many reasons and I got to thinking about this very slightly and I think there’s really two sides to this story with some leeway afforded to both parties, all depending on your perspective I guess.

So what’s the deal you ask? In a nutshell, we’ve got Bryan’s girlfriend posted that he (Bryan) was taking the site down for reasons undisclosed. Didn’t really say why or what the actual reasons were but I guess if you always have the worst thing on your mind you might be forgiven to think that there was some SERIOUS shit going down. Subsequently what happened, IMHO was COMPLETELY over the top. When people tried to contact him, they got no response, which perpetuated the worry/curiosity . Presents were discussed, wallpapers, cards, a website was built to make sure he understood that he had support. Does that sound a little overboard to everyone? I thought so too. I’ve got to say though it’s a terribly nice gesture and it shows that a community does exist for those in 9rules and that they are willing to support one another, which is kinda where some of the resentment is coming from I guess. All this support for false pretences of the equivalent of a bad hairday.

The thing is though, Bryan didn’t actually ask for any of this. Bryan didn’t say “Hey guys, see you later, shit has hit the fan, but if you feel the need to ask what’s going on, don’t email me because I’m not going to be discussing it at all, but email Scrivs, Tyme and Mike over at the 9rules network, or Jon Snook while you’re at it, since I’m part of that company, or Matt Mullenweg since I used to work for him.”

He didn’t ask for people to react in the way that they did. He didn’t ask for all of love that was sent his way (some would now argue that he doesn’t deserve that love anymore). I guess he couldn’t really predict what would happen or how things would shape out. Did he mitigate that? He did eventually but I guess based on the original reaction I guess he might have been feeling a bit like people were going to rip him a new asshole for being so melodramatic about the whole thing and therefore thought it best to keep shut and let people try and forget about the whole thing. Yes, he could have been a lot less cryptic in the first place and decided to take the site down and put it on hold and tell everyone that this is what he wanted to do for a little while because the design of the site was giving him some serious issues that he needed to sort out or whatever. He didn’t for whatever reason. It’s his site, he’s free to do whatever he wants. I mean Oxton did something similar a year ago or whatever.

The thing is that if you reacted to the message in any way, you reacted of your own accord. What I mean by that is that you chose to give this your time, effort and energy to whatever this situation. I personally chose to ignore it and I guess that’s why I don’t feel like my emotions have been cheated. I’ve been on the net a while and have read loads of things. Some nice things, some not so nice things. I’ve read about people’s mother dying, their wife having a miscarriage, loosing their jobs, divorcing one another and the list goes on. People sometime write about these things because it helps them get things clearer in their minds. Maybe helps them get over things. That’s part of what blogging is all about. I feel that when people are ready to talk about things on their sites they will do so (or not) in their own time. Once those things are open for discussion by the person that originated them then it’s an incredible boost if there is additional support from strangers on the net.

Having said all that, I can definitely count at least 5 people on the net that I’ve never met, and whom I may never meet (although it would be damn cool if we did in the future) whom I would really go out of my way to help them out if they so much as whispered it in my direction. These people I consider my friends, but I haven’t placed that level of trust with anyone. Like I said I’ve been reading and doing this for a while now that I know it’s a bit of a waste of time and effort to place that emotion for everyone and anyone, it can be misguided at best or make you feel cheated in the worst case.