grumpyIn the movie Tootsie, Jessical Lange's character tells "Dorothy Michaels" how she wishes a man would proposition her in thus-and-such a way. Later, "Michael Dorsey" (Dustin Hoffman's character who was dressed as Dorothy in order to get the part in the soap opera in which Lange's character also starred) tries the exact same line on Lange's character, and she throws her drink in his face.
I am reminded of this with the sniping and complaining, particularly from one person, about SMOFCon 28 coming up this weekend. Some of the things at this year's SMOFCon are unusual. They are not the way things have been done in the past. That's in large part because past members have said that they want to try new things and not just run the same things over and over in the exact same structure. So SMOFCon 28 is going to try it, and people are complaining. It's very much like how Lange's character behaved in Tootsie.
I'm not convinced myself that some of the things SMOFCon 28 is attempting to do will actually work out, but I could be wrong, and I also think that the only way to find out whether the requests will work is to try them. If it turns out to not work, future SMOFCons will know what to avoid. (And people who keep saying, "Why not do X" will be met by "We did; it didn't work.") But if the new idea does work, then we'll have also learned something valuable.
The lesson that I suspect future SMOFCons will actually learn is, "Don't do anything out of the ordinary. Do things exactly the way they've always been done, don't rock the boat, don't make waves, and above all, don't try innovating at all, becuase you'll make certain very vocal conservative fans very angry. All Change Is Bad. Compromise means "Do what I tell you to do."
