Mirror Games
May. 2nd, 2005 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
akirluSo, 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.
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.
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