Welcome to The Pox General – an online meeting place for people who still care about Humanity and the Planet. We got a few different forums set up right now, and seeing how things go, we may add some more.

The Pox Gen is the central square where people can go to chat about anything. People got all types of strong opinions on food, and we at GenPox are no different – we believe that food is meant to be shared, which you can share about food at least in The GenPox Diet. Surprisingly enough, the Music forum is for discussing music.

Clearly someone at Generation Apocalypse has a thing about storytelling, and the forums reflect it. The Stories forum is for general books, movies, tv, discussion, and as of now there are two sub-forums: (1) Contemporary & (2) Classic Science Fiction & Fantasy Short Story Reading Groups.

Pox General Rules & Norms

Just like any meeting place there are some rules (or norms, if that sits better with you. We’re going with it anyway.). They all reflect the core values laid out in our Mission Statement at Generation Apocalypse Webzine, if you’re curious.

The big takeaway is that we are all part of Generation Apocalypse here – we all care about the world and the people in it, so there’s no need to convince anyone why they should care about what’s important – which means that you should assume that anyone you are talking to already cares and they also should assume the same thing about you. We are all broken and doing our best, these days.

Anyway, here’s our version of “no diving in the shallow end”:

The Pox General Rules & Norms

***

Don’t be a dick. But that also means don’t assume everyone is trying to be a dick to you, either. Sometimes jokes just don’t land, especially when they’re just text on a screen.
***
If your jokes consistently “don’t land”, then maybe you are being kind of a dick and need to reassess. It’s okay, we all need to reassess from time to time. Hateful and discriminatory speech is squarely in the “no context makes it ok” – don’t expect exceptions.
***
No dunking or dragging (this obviously doesn’t include punching up at the people who broke the world, but they shouldn’t really be here anyway so that’s a separate issue). Of course they are funny individually but as a whole they give places pretty shitty vibes – let’s leave shitty vibes for the places already full of bots, trolls, and creepy-ass ads.
***
No arguing about politics: ain’t no one with any power to do anything about it cares about your policies & you ain’t convincing anyone who doesn’t already agree with you on an online forum. So just don’t.

***

If you or your content can’t pass the Turing Test, you just ain’t welcome here. Sorry, but there are a million alleys in Cyberspace you can turn down for that kind of crap. [For those who don’t do subtlety: no AI generated crap, not even ironically.)

***