akirlu | Bring Me the Head of Pete McCutcheon

Bring Me the Head of Pete McCutcheon

...with a side order of Joel Rosenberg tartare.

liveavatar suggests in the comments thread to this post that those who loved Rasseff That Was might be well served by storming the Bastille and taking the fucker back by sheer numbers. I think that might work, if enough people went at once, and stuck it out long enough, and generated enough group policing fu. But I have no idea how much pent up demand there really is for such an assault. And I'm pretty sure I'm not, just now, the girl to tackle the project if it's going to require a lot of pep rallies and support wrangling. I am just a wee bit overcommitted at the moment, even as things stand. So I am starting a new post to see who all else out there is interested in such a project. Organizational volunteers especially welcome, but a gauge of enthusiasm (depth and breadth) would be good, too.

So, where are y'all at?

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I have little idea what the "old RASSF" is, but I dip in and out of the current RASSF as I have time. So throw me a bone here -- what are approximate dates between which the Google archive might best represent the spirit of old RASSF?

I'd say that for me the peak of rasff as a community was in the range of 1998-2001, culminating in my first trip to Minicon. You might also look for individual people; I'd suggest Jo Walton, Graydon Saunders, and Ray Radlein as places to start.

I think 911 did a lot for the downfall of rassf. I don't think it was nearly as political beforehand.

Yes, I think several people mark the fall as dating to 9/11. Being on the group then made the events of that day much more intimate, somehow. The first I knew that something was happening was when I fired up my newsreader that morning and started seeing similar reports of flame and explosions from people in both New York and DC area. PNH and Keith Lynch, I think, or maybe Marilee. And even once I'd turned on the radio, most of the news that intimately mattered to me of the events of that day, I got on or because of RASFF. I'm not sure that feeling of shared crisis contributed to the way things spun apart afterwards, but sometimes it seems like it.

More than 911, I think it was the runup to and the early days of the Iraq invasion that did damage. That was very polarizing for a very long time.

That makes sense, though I'm not sure how much I was there for that part. As I have just been reminder, my activity fell off a lot in July of 1999, when we got the dog, and again when pnh wandered off to the world of blogging. Patrick was long my primary filter for what threads I wanted to read.

As I remember it on the day itself it was a good source of news both good and bad and the community spirit was there. But then the community became less important because people had Things To Say about the situation and there were more political angst and political policy posts in general and it seemed to get more and more concentrated on US politics - many, many threads gravitated in that direction and the world community was discussed much more than the local (fannish) one. I don't think it's ever quite recovered the balance. The Iraq war just fuelled that situation. But how do you work against that? It's a place for fans to say what they want, and a whole lot of them want to say things about politics.

I re-discovered RASFF around 1995 (I say rediscovered, because back in '87 or so I was reading its parent group, rec.arts.sf-lovers), and I would say it was good then but maybe picked up in tone and group ethos over the next couple of years. David's suggested range of 1998-2001 is a good one, imho.

But much as I like and admire Graydon, he has a writing style that is sufficiently compressed and idiosynchratic that he takes some getting used to, and may be a bit opaque to the uninitiated. Ray Radlein was always good for taking a thread funny. So, was Kip Williams. Patrick Neilsen Hayden was usually a very good filter for interesting conversations, though threads which develop a dynamic of posts ping-ponging back and forth between Patrick and Gary Farber are probably not so worth your time.

While I miss Graydon a lot, on consideration I think you're exactly right about why he's not a good starting point. As substitutes, perhaps Patrick Nielsen Hayden and you -- with the caveat that PNH had a distinct tendency to go political and if you don't want politics you can abandon his threads when they do.

oooh. I'll just go off and be flattered now, thanks.

Part of the problem is that politics is one of the most interesting things there is for human beings to discuss, and one of the most dull. What could be more important than the principles upon which people organize themselves for work, play, reproduction, food, and housing? What could be less interesting than having one's attention snagged unrelentingly upon some minor detail of those principles? Worse, what could be more dull than to argue about some minor detail of those principles with someone whose own principles or intelligence one does not greatly respect?

I like discussing politics with those with whom I also like discussing books, food, music, childraising, gardening, and what-not. It's difficult for me to discuss politics -- or anything else -- with those who don't charm me in some way. I'm willing to accept that this is a flaw in my character, but not a large flaw, nor an uncommon flaw. In person, I am able to converse for a while with those who don't charm me, and then be done with the interaction without being rude; on line, there is no particular reason for any conversation to end, even if it has long since ceased to have content.

I liked using Alison as a filter, since she never bothers with anyone she finds boring. During my busiest periods as a student, I used anyone I'd known 20 years or more as a filter, since Alison was off being a civil servant and eccentric mother.

On the one hand, I don't think this will work. On the other hand, I've always maintained that the answer to bad speech is more speech. Now, I suppose, the answer is more speech, and build thee more stately killfiles, o my soul.

Or, perhaps more directly useful, here's a link to a thread (title:RASFF Etiquette) from mid-2000 that gives perhaps some sense of it, though possibly it's too dependent on familiarity with in-jokes and backstory to be accessible. But it's the thread where I got off my Chinatown/Hamster joke, which I'm still rather pleased with, and does certainly have that cascade-of-wit-and-banter quality which is part of what I'm trying to point at when I gesture wildly at Rassef-that-was.

Wow, there's a lot of people on that thread whom I miss. Mary Kay and Jordin Kare; Loren MacGregor; Vlatko Juric-Kokic; Ray Radlein; Rob Hansen; Avedon Carol; Kip Williams (who still lurks, but....); PNH; Lydy Nickerson; Vicki Rosenzweig; D. Potter; even Gary Farber. Sigh.

(That was in no particular order, btw, except as I noticed their names scrolling down the thread list from the top.)

Well that was a lovely little trip down memory lane. You're really working hard to suck me into this aren't you?

MKK

Not yet, but if you think it would help...

(Actually, I just went back and read a different segment of that thread. As a holographic representation of what I miss about rasseff, it's not at all bad.)

So I was just cruising through RASFF to get a feel of its recent feel and I could not resist looking at a thread named "Rasff is no fun any more", where I find this from Bilek on April 12:

"RASFF was always pretty partisan and mean spirited. Not as petty,
though. Nor as bloody mindedly dedicated to politics as often. But
if you don't remember a lot of vicious partisanship you haven't been
reading long enough.

Patrick, Avedon, Ulrika, etc could get downright NASTY."

It All Comes Back To Me Now... The "vicious partisanship" of this remark is pretty astonishing.

Right. Well. There's some of my renewed interest drained away.

Um, do, please, consider the source. Mr. Bilek is likely to be one of the folks who will hit my killfile immediately if I do this. If you do likewise, you won't be missing much, I swan. This project will absolutely require some selectivity, some editing, of whom we interact with and how. That's always been the case, but especially if we're going to re-grow the fun and playful parts of rasseff, there will need to be a certain amount of disciplined taking ourselves in hand.

Apropos of which, National Masturbation Month starts on Sunday. I saw a poster in Fremont, and thought of you. :)

Did the poster mention if May is the month when we can or we can't? I always get it mixed up.

Oh, is THAT who you are?

If so, I've missed you for years, I hope you're getting lots of fiction written, and I've retained your 9/11 posts in hard copy for my grandchildren to throw away after I die.

If not, well, I am clearly no good at penetrating pseudonyms and will need to have Akirlu (whose pseudonym would undoubtedly have fooled me, as I have a hard time with Ipswitch and Notlob, had I not already known who she was) explain it all to me in words of few syllables in the privacy of a noisy bar tomorrow.

Yes, THAT is who I are. :)

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Bring Me the Head of Pete McCutcheon

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Okay, not Graydon

Re: Okay, not Graydon

Re: Okay, not Graydon

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