Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology Path: news.cinenet.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!192.48.96.126!in2.uu.net!uucp6.uu.net!world!mmcirvin From: mmcirvin@world.std.com (Matt McIrvin) Subject: Re: My thoughts on the Jaffo/Watson incident Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: <199709151323474138130N@ppp0a016.std.com> Date: Mon, 15 Sep 1997 19:22:59 GMT References: <34107e85.1074933@news.onramp.net> <342a7d79.106405777@news.visi.net> <199709081842.CAA13960@bajoran.upnaway.com> <341c58bc.162545936@news.visi.net> <199709100700.PAA01776@bajoran.upnaway.com> <34237cf3.21053401@news.visi.net> <5v93bq$kec@epx.cis.umn.edu> <34405f8d.144618615@news.visi.net> <5v9q9l$p4d@nntp02.primenet.com> <344bb04c.165291858@news.visi.net> <5vbi43$1u6$1@usenet87.supernews.com> <34359640.420806810@news.visi.net> Nntp-Posting-Host: ppp0a016.std.com Organization: Software Tool & Die, Brookline MA X-Newsreader: MacSOUP 2.3b2 Lines: 90 Xref: news.cinenet.net alt.religion.kibology:39585 X-Cache: nntpcache 1.0.6 (see ftp://suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache) Watson Aname wrote: > Jaffo could have communicated his private craziness to me initially by > email or he could have limited his public craziness to apj or aft-b. I > had nothing to do with HIS inability to hold his water on the ark. You > got problems with this subject on ark, you talk to your tin-plate hero. OK, I've *tried* to comment on this whole disaster via satire and lampoonery all 'round, to try to get the participants to realize for one second how absurd it all is. It isn't working. So please read the following deadly-serious post: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do yourself a favor and stop posting to Usenet. Stop *reading* Usenet. Take a long break, a permanent one if necessary. Take a deep breath. Stop and smell the flowers. You don't even use your actual name here, and I'm not criticizing you for that, but it isn't as if 99.9% of readers have made any connection with your actual identity, so who gives a rat's ass if you've been defamed? (For all I know, maybe Jaffo mentioned your real name somewhere on page 23 of one of his tedious journal entries, but *I* certainly never heard what it was.) Abstain from Usenet for a week, a month, a year or forever if it helps. Count to one million before allowing yourself to think about it again. Maybe you'll end up with a little perspective. Consider the alternative. It may help if you imagine the following read in a Jack Webb voice, as voiceover for a horrifying film depiction of a waking nightmare of the day after tomorrow, with creepy music. Full-bore kooks like the Grewboid and his friends all come about in the same way. They start out as single-issue advocates. It really doesn't matter whether their crusades are justified or not. What makes them candidates for nascent kookdom is that they consider the crusade *so incredibly important* that it takes precedence over any other considerations. They can post anywhere, scream anything at anybody in any way they like. Anyone who opposes their behavior for any reason is obviously a puppet of the dreaded Other Side. Any argument that their posts might be inappropriate is voided by the presence of alleged worse violations by others (see our pals' fetish for labeling their opponents as pedophiles, and their rants about the evils of cancel messages). At this point, "larger" meta-issues take over. The proto-kooks become convinced that they are crusading not just for the original single issue, but for some sort of vision of what Usenet and the Internet should be, one which is incomprehensibly opposed by just about everybody else in the world. So they end up making enemies out of everybody, stooping to all manner of harassing tactics, and becoming global pariahs to the Internet-connected. I've peeked in at this screaming match from time to time, a fact of which I am not proud. I put no particular credence in Jaffo's statements. I think, however, that he recognizes, *intermittently*, the need to calm down and take some time out. For now, he seems to have taken the offending material off of his Web page, and stopped posting it to Usenet; with some luck it may never return. The question is just whether he has enough self-control not to re-open the issue again, no matter what happens and no matter how fervently he wants the last word. But I am dreadfully worried about *you*, Watson, especially given your recent willingness to paint everyone objecting to your behavior as lacking "ethics." I see signs of a new outcast-loon in the making if you don't cut it out immediately. It is *not* too late; you're basically a sane guy, but you've got to catch yourself and recognize that, regardless of what bad things have been done to you, you're behaving in a silly manner, and it's not the good kind of silly. The first step is just to *get off of Usenet*, maybe just for a while. Sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over. Please stop, Watson. Will you stop, Watson? [NB to Jaffo: Never, never, never post those anywhere ever again, please. I do not like them on the ARK. I do not like them in the park. I do not like them on your site. Do not bait Watson day or night. Not with a spouse. Not with a mouse. Not if provoked. Keep them revoked. Thank you.] This has been a public service announcement. -- Font-o-Meter! Proportional Monospaced ^ Physics, humor, Stanislaw Lem reviews: http://world.std.com/~mmcirvin/