Re: Miss Manners kicks ass

[stevev@greylady.uoregon.edu (Steve VanDevender)]

Jorn Barger outrageously opines:
>Sheee-it.  Look at the mess this place has gotten into!  Me'n'Ron Hill
>are about to start a long, dweeb'n'girly-boy thread about the songs,
>starting with the demo-tapes.

>But I think before I start we need to get a sense of how people feel
>about this outspoken sub-group that enjoys seeing people's feelings
>hurt.

I think I know who you're talking about, but I don't think we're
all going to agree on their intentions, especially not them.

However, they do seem to love the sort of attention that will
come to them as a result of your proposals below, so now they'll
be wound up for *weeks*.

>Which of these would people prefer?

>1) Put them in a kill file on Spies when they be rude, so they can read
>but not post... at least until they acknowledge that rudeness is not
>acceptable.  (They can have their own newsgroup: rec.music.gaffa.badvibes,
>or mailing list: HellHounds!)

I am completely against having someone censor my mail for me, so
I'm completely against proposal #1.  Besides, how do you want
these people to acknowledge that rudeness is unacceptable?
Grovel at your feet?

>2) Have two versions of Love-Hounds (the mailing list), one with assholes,
>one, via a kill file, without.  Let people choose, but post all messages,
>even the vulnerable ones, for the assholes to sputter over.

I object to this proposal almost as much, just because it tries
to do the same thing as #1.  I betcha most everyone would
subscribe to the uncensored version anyway.  If so, you'll be
better off making your own kill file rather than forcing a global
one upon everyone.

>3) Start a private mailinglist for the tenderfolk, the girlyboys and
>boylygirls, and crosspost or not, as we fucking well choose, you sorryass
>unenlightened parasitic *dicks*. (With a kiss kiss cross cross kiss ;^)
>(That's from Finnegans Wake).

If you want to start your own mailing list that's fine with me.
If a membership condition is passing a test to prove that I'm not
an asshole, I doubt I'd want to join.  You might find that people
who pass the test one day could turn into assholes later.

>We went and let the weirdness in, naively, idealistically, hopefully, but
>we still have the key, we can change our minds and *lock them out* in
>any number of ways.

Who's "we"?  The nature of rec.music.gaffa/Love-Hounds is such
that anyone on the net can read it and post to it.  I have no
interest in changing that, especially because of ethical concerns
I have about freedom of communication and freedom of access to
information.

It's naive to think that you can lock out the opinions of people
you don't like.  It's arrogant of you to think that you know
exactly which people should be locked out for everyone.  Even if
we could somehow convince Bill to implement a global kill file
for Love-Hounds, the people who you want to put in the kill file
are clever and opinionated enough to find any of the easy ways
around such a scheme and use them.

If we were to decide who to put in the Love-Hounds global kill
file by majority opinion, it would never happen, because if we
all can't agree on simpler and more objective matters, we'll
never all agree on which people are assholes and which aren't.

You want to exclude people that you feel are insensitive to the
opinions of others.  You're proposing to show the ultimate
insensitivity towards those people and their opinions by
excluding them.

>Shall we debate for a week and then count heads?

Oh, we'll be debating for *weeks* about this, I'm sure.  But I
can say right now that I don't support any of your proposals,
even before the deluge begins.