There is a website called aSmallWorld. It is only for people who are rich and members of the international jet-set. Not for people who like to pretend that they are living in a Martini advert.
Basically, if you are reading this, you will never be invited to join - and you have to be invited, like all exclusive clubs - because your life operates at a level which is too low to be picked up by the radars of the rich and famous. You are a mere civilian.
The problem is that even with such stratospherically exclusive clubs, there have to be rules and sanctions for those who cannot comply with the codes of the blessed.
If you make a faux pas, you are immediately jettisoned to the worst place in the known universe; a type of satellite virtual prison-ship, where there are no PAs and hangers-on and publicists and fawning lackeys: a place with the shudderingly grim name of aBigWorld.
Obviously, the threat of being cast adrift is usually enough to keep the brightest and the best in line because, like everyone else, all they want is to be loved and cuddled.
Perhaps Comment is Free is trying to adopt this approach in order to keep (not the gleaming suns and stars and flickering comets of their stellar writers above the line, of course) the filthy scum who jostle and jeer, whistle and cheer in the areas below the line, to keep them herded and fenced and in their proper place.
The problem is, it simply fails to work.
The threat of not being allowed to attend the party has now worn so thin, the party itself so boring and, er, uninviting that nobody is really bothered whether they go or not.
Groucho Marx said: "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member."
It now seems that once CiF has banned people and then tells them to jump through some hoops in order to have their wonderful privileges of providing free content to the multi-million pound Guardian Media Group restored, people respond slightly more bluntly.
Get fecked.
Jennifera30 says this:
Oh I got an email from someone at Cif saying I would be welcome back after a cooling off period but I am not sure if I want to bother.
Oh, dear. It looks like the glamour of belonging to the CiF gang has finally worn off.
How long will it be before bannings turn into pleading emails asking people to join?
I got an email that said:
ReplyDelete"You can appeal to us via this email address if you'd like us to take another look at your case in the future, at a time when you feel you would be able to more closely adhere to house rules. However, the fact that you maintain you have never contravened our community standards illustrates that perhaps CiF is not the forum for you."