Mirror Games

[akirlu]

So, I spent some time reading old threads in rassef today.

My main conclusion: I don't know why anyone from then and there likes me, really. At the moment, I don't believe I do. There is something about the Usenet form, or rather, my reaction to it, that all too frequently has led me into breathtaking incivility, seemingly random spite, and apalling abrasiveness. Ugly, ugly, ugly. I get irrascible, and then I get mean. Yes, that is something of a norm within the forum. And it gets attention. One learns to do what gets attention. Someone recently observed, euphemistically, that I have a "large personality." Quite. I like to fill a room. I like the limelight. But sweet weeping baby Jesus, what was I thinking? Mean spirit is, in the end, just that. No matter how deftly turned the phrase that bears it. No matter how deserving the irritant inspiring it, and no matter how sweet the fizz of feeling the point go home. Never mind all the times it was just some poor bastard collecting collateral snipage.

Which makes this next thing trickier. Because I'm going back to rassef after all. I've started already, in fact. I think Kate is right: the cure for bad speech is more speech. I think enough people agree that it's worthwhile to reclaim the playground. But I need to remember that's what it's for: play. I think it's important that if one takes a martial metaphor at all, it be the war of inflated pig bladders, swirling chicken feathers, and the raucous laughter of Capture the Castle. I need to steer away from my own anger. I need remember how close my uglier self walks to the line, and have a care with it. Because experience suggests that self isn't going away. And that I'm not nice enough a person to wish it away, anyhow.

So I'll try to carry this uncomfortable self-scrutiny as a reminder. But I'll need your help, too. If I look to be going off on a bender, somebody slap me please? Or say the word. "The word is halogens. Then you have to name them." Or "Jasper." Or, "You can have anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant." Whatever. I'll try to take correction in good part, and hope to do the same for you some day.

So I'm going over to RASFF. Who's coming? As Antonio Banderas said in Desperado, let's play.

Comments

[liveavatar.livejournal.com]

Clearly I have to go, after egging you on, so I'll join you there in a minute. Uh, rather, as soon as I find something to say. In the past I've almost always lurked on RASSF, generally peeping my head out to post only when someone said something particularly bigoted or apparently deliberately ignorant. Not much opening for conversations there, except from backbenchers saying "Hear, hear!" and co-opponents correcting my intellectual grammar.

And then there's the problem of my not feeling very connected to mainstream fandom anyway. But as long as I can keep my rocket launcher packed in my instrument case for emergencies, I'm in. Feel free to use any of the above safewords for me as well.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Well I'm already there, but largely invisible due to not having time to read much and not finding much in what I do to respond to.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

So I'm going over to RASFF. Who's coming?

As Neil Gaiman once said to me in an entirely different context, "I'll meet you by the pool."

I've been going easy on RASFF recently, maybe Randy got to me about it. But I do still lurk.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

You mean Randy was able to get under your skin about it, and I wasn't? I must be slipping :-)

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

Well, I was going to post, but I'm calling from a pay phone in Albuquerque right now on account of I was kidnapped.

[daystreet.livejournal.com]

OK, sorry, I'm not really in Albuquerque. I was just making a Current Events related joke. You're in Canada where the news media reports on things that actually matter, so you probably didn't catch the reference. Or, perhaps you caught the reference and politely averted your eyes from a joke that wasn't particularly amusing.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

Cold Stone is a chain; there are several here on LI.

Weird place, at times; the counter crew is like as not to break into song.

[redbird]

Um. I should try, but given that my girlfriend recently observed that I seem to enjoy the sort of argument in which I can point out that some random person (naming no names here) is being an idiot, I may need the occasional observation of "Finchley Central" or "how are the woodpeckers doing?" myself.

[filkerdave.livejournal.com]

How ARE the woodpeckers doing?

[redbird]

Well, cattitude saw a flicker a couple of days ago; I've heard woodpeckers but not seen them.

If you mean the ivory-billed woodpeckers, I have no further news to share.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, well. The enjoyment is part of my problem, too. Sometimes I get on jags that feel like they're related to "outrage addiction." It's a major rush, doing surgical fileting of someone who most sincerely deserves it. And sometimes it's a useful skill. But it's easy to get carried away, well over the line of moderate or appropriate application. The trick is having the judment to know when to apply it; that always was the trick. Anyway, I'll happily watch your back if you'll watch mine.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

The speed of the net tends to magnify fannish proclivities, both good and bad. While discussions/arguments in rasff were remarkably similar to those in apas or even lettercols, at least with the printed word you had more time to think, and more time to regret a hasty comment before it was run off and mailed. This didn't stop most people most of the time (including me) who feverishly dashed off a quick comment then spent the next several hours/days mimeoing, collating, mailing, etc. But there was time for second thoughts. The process was half the fun.

In rasff you had the same dynamic, only it was a great deal easier to click on the bunny. The process geeks were about computers and the net, not publishing. Your words weren't in front of you for long. And the feedback, as you point out, came much faster. This was often for the good of the group. But...it encouraged some bad behavior; not just from posters who wanted to get responses, but from respondents who felt they had to say more than "me too" so got even more huffy than the previous respondent.

I don't particularly regret any post I made (with a few exceptions, I suspect), but almost certainly I wouldn't make the same post today. I don't want to look back; it's no fun. Certainly I felt that many responses to me should have been rethought, but that's not my call. And that's why I'm not going back: I can't imagine it will be fun.

For the record: I never felt you were incivil, at least to me, or even notably abrasive. Of course, I ducked out a long time ago. We had our disagreements, which were politely hashed out iirc, and you seem to have come to my side of the Libertarian issue so I feel absolved.

Now if only I can get you to play weirder dance music, or you can convince me of terrific dance music that works for fans... but that's more like a mix CD exchange than an argument.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Well sometimes people do need stomping on of course, and I have admired and envied the way you can do it. We all get a little carried away sometimes.

I guess I have to find a newsreader now...

MKK

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well sometimes people do need stomping on of course, and I have admired and envied the way you can do it.

Thank you. The trouble is, I think I've admired it a little too much myself, at times. One of the lessons I keep having to learn again and again is to beware of the feeling of self-righteous outrage. It hardly ever leads me somewhere I really wind up wanting to be.

I guess I have to find a newsreader now...

Yes, please. That would be nice.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

Hrr...I don't think I'm net.capable with enough frequency to have me declaring a return.

And I'm wondering if I constitute too much of a firestorm to return, anyway.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

And I'm wondering if I constitute too much of a firestorm to return, anyway.

Worse than me?!? Not likely. IMCO, anyhow.

[trinker.livejournal.com]

*grin* I think I'll refrain from putting it up to a vote, or creating an lj poll on that, eh?

Step 1

[redbird]

I just told my newsreader to get all headers from rassef, skimmed the last few, wondered briefly what I'd said 5 years ago that Geri was forwarding to you, and marked all read. Now, I can spend a few days dipping into threads that aren't 6 weeks old and 300 messages long.

Re: Step 1

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Actually, there was a fairly interesting discussion on polyamory about three weeks ago that might be worth your time. Thread title something like "relationship structures" or "relationship nomenclature" which, naturally, spawned off something else. There's a woman in it, unfamiliar to me, named Sue something (her e-mail address starts with smg@ and her .sig isn't so informative) who kicks pretty major booty in the discussion. And then there was the point where I realized that Mark Atwood* had said several things in the same thread that seemed not merely unobjectionable but entirely sensible contributions to the discussion. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I'm on the verge of inviting him along to the next Seattle Tun.

*I think know who I'm speaking of here. I know I've sometimes unintentionally maligned Matt Austern by conflating him with Mark, but I don't think I'm engaging in that sort of error at the moment.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

I never stopped reading the damn group, and once in a while I had to post. Today I posted twice, due to your influence. I hope you're happy now. (Actually, that's not irony or anything like it.)