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I have a secret talent. I am able to discover the ratholes of the insanely sensitive small men, the tiny tyrants, the infant terribles. Inevitably, such deformed egoes run online communities, and Fragrantica is yet another example.

If you have never been to Fragrantica, you should visit, but do not stay. The forums are patrolled by overly dramatic females and their masculine mirror images who do nothing but complain about people that do not play the way they wish. Eventually they complain enough so that such people get banned. They are like perverse grandmothers. If you do not spend much time in the forums, you are still on their hit list — you cannot escape the long-burning fire of the haters, for they have no life and occupy themselves with destroying others. In the long run, the haters always dominate such communities, due to being single-minded, having more invested, and being of superior numbers.

Also, beware the illiterate editors. These are delicate, oh-so-delicate wilting little flowers that are crushed if you should point out a typo. And if you demonstrate your skills with English, this arouses enough jealousy that they will forever forbid you from joining their club. People of little talent are often jealous and over-sensitive, and this rule is true in spades here. Read a few articles and notice the mangled English that spawns like a red tide after rain. But any mention that these delicate souls are out of their league — and they obviously are — is a bannable offense! Wearyingly, life at Fragrantica is flashy mediocrity show in which all peasants must praise whatever the editors vomit forth at risk of exile.

And like nearly all online communities, the moderators are illogical and petty tyrants. If you do something a few times, you have done it on a “daily basis”. If you satirize other lame posts, then you are “flaming”. And the drama goes on and on spiraling upward into ever-new heights of ribald levity and unconsciously self-parodying sturm und drang.

Fragrantica is a site that is the victim of its own success. Like many medium-sized companies, it stands on the threshold of becoming big, but it just can’t make the leap. Problems go unsolved for years (up until very recently, enough negative comments on an article caused the article to vanish completely from the site). The mods don’t actually enforce the terms of service, but single out people to apply them to. The site has a backlog of fragrances that it would take years to add, given their staff size. Yet, they will not take steps to grow; they will not bring new people on; they will not hire competent editors; and they will not open up the site to participation by others. So, they flounder in a medium-sized no-man’s-land because they hold too tightly the reins, and there they remain, like a sick patient that neither recovers nor dies.

So while I may utter such poetic denunciations like “may the fires of Topeth consume thee,” the most perfect curse is the one that they are already living. They have engineered their own torment and they think it progress. Not only are they suffering and ineffectual, but they are deluded as well. No more perfect punishment could I dream, and yet even this is one tainted with sorrow. I don’t really wish to see people or sites suffer, but justice reaches all those who refuse wisdom. They will lie in the bed of their own making, tossing and turning, frenzied.