when i was fresh out of 20 years of republican evangelical brainwashing, Shakesville was one of the places that helped me make sense of what had happened to me and how much i didn't know about the world and the experiences of other people. it took me several more years after that to realize that a lot of the people on that website would have me replace one inflexible moral absolutism with another. and as in the church, those with the most influence were the ones most likely to be corrupted by it.