Re: puzzle



blmblm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> In article <1121153778.670218.189680@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> <spinoza1111@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> >
> >CBFalconer wrote:
>
> [ snip ]
>
> >> I.E. you consider his output a hedonic experience? You will be
> >> pleased to know that we have a poster in alt.folklore.computer who
> >> can easily exceed the Nilgean volume. She tends to be somewhat
> >> repetitious, but at least makes some sense.
>
> Word -- though she has her own irritating quirks (the "quotation
> marks" ... the ellipses ... the SHOUTING!).
>
> >Oooh, lesgo bully her ass until she leaves in tears! Let's fucking rape
> >her online (as has happened on usenet)!
>
> Two questions for Mr. Nilges:
>
> (1) Do you follow alt.folklore.computers enough to recognize the person
> and/or discussion CBFalconer is talking about?

No. However, I've been posting and reading in all probability far
longer than you punks, and I have seen, repeatedly, female and male
posters (perceived as subdominant) treated in a fashion that can be
described as metaphorical rape, therefore I conclude that that is what
is happening to this poster.

In fact, if the only other alternative is that she is genuinely an
"irritating person" who is worthy of abuse, I conclude that she
is...not.

Here is why.

Despite the repeated characterization of people on usenet as
"irritating", "verbose", and similar defects, these labels literally
don't apply in most situations.

This is because a truly irritating, verbose, etc. person monopolizes
your time in an oral encounter where the ordinary rules of courtesy
compel you to listen and not punch him in the mouth. He exploits your
courtesy and in Kant's terms lowers the supply of courtesy by not
following the categorical imperative. If everybody was irritating or
verbose in classrooms and ***-tail parties, then we would all be
discourteous and we would all carry guns to shoot irritating and
verbose people on sight.

However, on usenet: (1) the ordinary rules of courtesy have never
applied and (2) usenet is writing where you have been long able to
ignore or shitcan people who you find irritating or verbose.

The exception is where the person communicates in the header, in a
spamming fashion, but this behavior is relatively rare.

Nonetheless, the charge seems useful as a way of not having to deal
with unpopular views and in fact, on usenet, it is part, all too often,
of a campaign of metaphorical rape.
>
> (2) Would you have described what you think is happening in the same
> terms if this voluminous poster had been referred to as "he"?

Yes. Feminist theorists know, even if nobody else seems to, that
heterosexual rape is continuous with, a subphenomena, of a general
arche-rape which appears ALSO in prison between men and here on the
internet between geeks. However, geeks are unable to narrate the
process because as geeks they haven't dealt with its actuality or its
possibility in their own lives.

Psychological health would conclude that you need not fear butt*** if
you don't butt*** except of course between consenting adults. But
geeks can't seem to get to this point.

See? It's easy. It's easy to use this network as intended and not to
shore up damaged egos. It's easy to get what appear to be in my case a
vast Silent Majority of lurkers who like my stuff: I'll just go ahead
and assume that the above poster is the tip of the iceberg. And I will
do so because to be read with appreciation by ONE person is the key,
not having troops of fans.

A REAL writer knows the recursive rule: it is from no readers that one
reader comes, and from one understanding there comes myriad
understanding.

Henry James knew this, in his story of the dying author who meets a
woman who is reading his last book.

I've sent articles, and book drafts, to editors, and been rejected:
I've sent articles and book drafts to editors and been accepted. In
both cases I get satisfaction from being read.

Basically, and as I have said before, the most frequent posters to this
and many other newsgroups are damaged trolls who represent nothing but
the state of their own damaged souls, with certain exceptions. They
construct a damaged virtual world.

I write from an island not in America in a health food store with
wireless and Putumayo on the sound system. On this island, on which I
live and am not a tourist, people primarily from Australia and England
disport themselves as we used to disport themselves in the 1960s, in a
manner in which sex, drugs and rock and roll took for me second place
to the ability to live unharassed and to relate to each other in what,
I think, is the default human style, that of the Golden Rule.

(Oh? So strange? Well, Mencius believed this as did Rousseau.)

I have lived long enough to realize that sure, there are probably human
sacrifices on the mountain at certain times of the year: et ego in
Arcadia, and all that. But I don't have to put myself on the menu and I
don't have to participate.

>>From this vantage, America seems increasingly strange, in which
transactions are so structured for an advantage which for most never
comes, and in which a suspicion fills the air like toxic gas, and in
which people labour with no success not to get fucked in the ass.
>
> [ snip ]
>
> --
> | B. L. Massingill
> | ObDisclaimer: I don't speak for my employers; they return the favor.

.