Magic 111 high-flame-lights

[jorn@chinet.chi.il.us (Jorn Barger)]

Steve Williams winces "So shoot me":
> About a year ago, give or take 6 months, Jorn became tired of
> what he saw as the then-ubiquitous tendency amongst Love-Hounds
> for constant knee-jerk flaming, personal attacks, and
> unresponsiveness toward submissions that expressed "feeling".
> He wrote a few emotional, but generally accepted articles
> deploring that state of affairs (which didn't necessarily bother
> all of us), and then he started the "WarmRoom" mailing list and
> more or less withdrew from everyday Love-Hounds participation.

It was a lot more complicated than that, Steve, because I was *intensely* 
abused for declaring that *if anyone on Warmroom insisted on being rude, I'd 
kick them out*.  (I don't have these posts, but welcome anyone to dig them 
out.)

The situation then was that Stev0 Berlin, who doesn't really seem like a bad 
guy, made a joke about people who type in old interviews needing to "get a 
life", and I objected that wasn't very nice, and the very same halfdozen 
voices we're hearing again (in many cases) piped up that ***they thought 
hurting peoples' feelings was okay***.   This seemed so blatantly insane 
that I proposed we kick them off r.m.g. with a filter, so that people could 
say warm cuddly things in relative safety.  This was taken, by new voices 
now, too, as meaning I wanted to be r.m.g. Hitler ("I wanna decide who lives 
and who dies!" as Crow Robot puts it ;^).  I wrote then:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Free and Cruel and Proud

What I'm hearing, so far, is that people think rudeness is relative and 
nobody can ever draw any line, anywhere (on the Net, anyway).
[...]
I don't claim I've never hurt anyone's feelings, nor that I never will 
again, but I have no qualms about standing up and saying I find rudeness 
unacceptable, maybe because I also have no problem apologizing for my 
misjudgments in that area when I'm told about them.

I can easily imagine that Stev0 didn't really think what he was saying, that 
Ron is just a name on a CRT to him, that Ron's feelings are difficult for 
Stev0 even to *imagine*, but I can't rationalize half a dozen people saying 
they think that shit is *funny*, calling our outrage "humorlessness".
[...]
I think the London Konvention in 1990 was a turning point for many of us, 
meeting face to face and finding this huge band of friends who were utterly 
trustworthy and true.  And we carried that back with us, and managed to keep 
it going for most of a year before the locusts hit.

It's miraculous how much *heart* you can transmit over a digital line.  You 
get a bubble going and everybody feels it and rushes to work just to get 
another fix off it.  When Kate talks about her music feeling to her like a 
mission.... **what else do you think she's referring to????**

Nobody doubts, right, that mailing lists have the right to kick out 
assholes?  So why are moderated newsgroups any different?

I'd like to see an agreement where if someone is rude, everybody notices, 
nobody clogs the airwaves arguing that they have a right to do that, 
somebody (anybody!) clues them in and if they keep it up, you figure they're 
emotionally retarded and leave them high and dry to work it out with the 
folks who can eyeball them face to face... YOU DON'T KISS YOUR COMMUNITY 
GOODBYE AND HIDE OUT FOR THE REST OF FOREVER.

You kick em off.  *Until they come clean*, is all.

If people are hoplessly uncomfortable with that, I guess I want to hear from 
people who'd subscribe to a new private Kate mailing list (I'd like to call 
it Homeground, if Krys and Peter and Dave don't mind), along the lines of 
Ecto-- warm and fuzzy-- but with the upfront agreement that we won't suffer 
fools, if any should try to subscribe.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

This may not have been obvious, but what really shocked me at this point 
(Warmroom began at "Halfmas", Jan 30 1992) was that several of the main 
contributors to *Ecto* united against me, and against Warmroom, and assumed 
this intensely judgmental attitude, re-exemplified vividly by Angelos just 
the other day:

> don't try to *impose* your thoughts on others and flame them when they 
disagree

> you better read your own words then, and re-assert others' freedom to 
disagree with you

> So your freedom and rights involve winning general agreement?

Fiona summed it up simply, this time around:
> P.S. Since when did "respect" mean "agree with me or else"?

which I understand to have meant (correct me, Fiona, if I'm wrong), "Why are 
Angelos, etc, saying Jorn is *demanding that people agree with him*?  If 
he's making a demand, it's that people show each other respect."

Which is certainly how it's seemed to me all along, last year, and this last 
week.

But the flamage then was *way* more intense against me than now (believe it 
or not).  Meredith Tarr, especially (who never apologised, btw), but also 
Jeffy and Angelos.  And I was devastated that supposedly warm-fuzzy folk 
were so violent in their misjudgments, and that Ecto in general refused to 
stand up and defend me.

> Now here comes good old Jorn back to Love-Hounds, and many
> (most?) of us long-timers were probably glad to see him back.
> Glad that he'd be contributing; glad that he hadn't completely
> written the group off; glad that he'd be providing his
> perspective; even glad that he'd be there to prickle the
> stalwart Drukman...
> [...]  here's Jorn back in L-H, making a mildly goofy but
> intriguing proposal about emotional state being preserved on
> certain material objects.  [...]   His article
> provoked the typical range of responses, most of them by
> doubters and a few of those exhibiting the usual *moderate*
> flamage and/or baiting.

(*All* from doubters, actually, and not all moderate at all, at the 
receiving end.)

> Suddenly, Jorn shifts into TERMINATOR mode, brutally slamming
> anyone and everyone.  Mean, crude, calculated personal attacks
> blatantly designed -- begging -- to incite others to slip into
> the same ugly mode.

It puzzles me why you see *their* attacks as mild compared to my responses, 
and how you can paint me as undiscriminating in my attacks, and in my choice 
of targets...?

Here's a precis of the flamage.  Jeffy, first was only tepidly snide,
> you're missing one obvious possibility:  that your inability to 
experience,
> to *sense* those feelings from a CD is a shortcoming of your own

and my response was *sunny* (I *believe*), except for my answer to that 
snip:
> What, like an allergy to penicillin?  I'm "CD-deaf"?

And then Drukman jumped in with a long sequence of parodies that could only 
be described as vastly abusive, utterly rubbing my credibility thru the 
muck, for a laugh, and ending with the intensely dismissive:

> Really, Jorn, I'd have thought that someone of your reputation would
> read up on the subject before posting such nonsense.

I think, Steve, you write this off as "But that's just Drukman, we don't 
take him seriously," but I think his behavior is intolerable.  So I came 
back:
> jondr@sco.COM (Castrated Art-rapist) slags:

(I'd been sitting on that one for more than a year, smoldering about JD's 
calling his dance-mix "Kate Rape".)

>Jonni, I'm sure *your* thoughtforms instantly glomp up everything you 
>touch!  (It's called karma ;^)  I never expected *you'd*  have noticed 
>the subtle sort of thing I'm talking about.

>Jonni, I'm impressed!  You set us a fine example of frankness about your 
>sexual dysfunction!

>Jonni, even if you've never experienced a *tender* emotion, still you 
>ought to have experienced *contagious bad vibes*

Steve W, do you find this hateful?  Is it more shocking than Drukman's 
disparagements, because in this case what *I* was saying was *true*?  (What 
kind of society do you get, if the only personal attacks you allow are the 
ones that are untrue? :^)

Larry Spence, next, was *way* more restrained, but made effectively the same 
claim: that I was seriously deluded in my thinking.

> Keywords: sandstorm scene, deep hurting
> Hmm, it's not the 1st yet... 
> (stuff about communing with oxides of iron deleted)

My response grew a bit more heated:
> ... the sort of Asimov-Drukman-Trump scornful-materialism that argues, 
> more-or-less, "My bad vibes are unassailable because science disproves 
> vibes." 

> My, you found Psych 101 *intellectually satisfying*???  How embarrassing 
for 
> you!  Didn't you ever try using their vocabulary to, say, describe why you 
> value Kate's art???  It's coarse to the point of *counterproductive*, if 
you 
> take it seriously.  Psych 101 is the clearest demonstration of ignorance!

> The kneejerk 'scientism' that pretends they're proven 
> impossible is *pure* egotism.

> > Keywords: sandstorm scene, deep hurting
> 
> oh, sorry to pry open your feeble intellectual capabilities ;^)
> you can go back to sleep now...

But this in a long post that was otherwise entirely friendly (I *believe*).

Drukman cut loose, with less 'humor':
> MY experience, though, is that you are a complete and raving LOON.

> This whole "hard/soft" thing is so utterly ludicrous and infuriatingly
> devoid of even the tiniest smidgen of common sense that it makes me
> want to take an AK-47 and deliver some ruff justice, drukman-style, to
> the entire state of illinois.

> to sum up all these question in a simpler, more compact form: do you
> have even a micro-clue as to what you are talking about?  (a
> nano-clue?  a PICO-CLUE?)

I responded:
> (In the case of your art, the negativity is bred in the bone,
> I fear ;^)

> Your rage is a symptom of your neurotic 
> denial, which is an aspect of your personality that's immediately obvious 
> to anyone who reads your writings or (especially!) hears your aural 
> butcheries...  You deny vibes because your personal style is centered on 
> preying on others' good vibes, so a blanket denial serves to mask your 
> malignancy.

> And you, my little friend, are part of the problem, just now...

Again with plenty of intervening reasonableness and smilies.  

Lazlo Nibble had joined in already, totally gone overboard:
> No they're not.  They are completely *im*plausible.  They are an
> abstraction, based upon your own individual reaction to music, that
> you've blown up into an utterly-unsupportable-outside-of-your-own-
personal-
> experience series of assumptions and suppositions which you're attempting
> to map onto the rest of the world.
> 
> As opposed to the egotism that presumes that your personal experiences and
> perceptions are necessarily universal and that we're just disparaging you
> because we're bullheaded "scientismists" who refuse to see Pure Cosmic
> Truth As You Understand It?  Sheesh.

With Lazlo I let loose a lot more, because his post was pure, unjustifiable 
negativity:
> Oh, I remember now: "I am a Fluke of the Universe, my experiences are 
> meaningless next to the pronouncements of the last few generations of PhD-
> egos, I don't deserve any respect for anything I might say, but should be 
> immediately bashed into silence for the good of all.  Ah, men..."  Was 
> *that* the mantra the great Maharishi assigned?

> Huhm, locked mind^H^H^H^Hdoor.  Oh well...

>  Notice, all, how these self-appointed enforcers are all 
> roused to venomous defense of their denial-systems, and show *no* sign of 
> giving the tiniest thought to my arguments, or even reading them 
> carefully...)

(This was an exaggeration, though it *felt* true at the time.)

>  I'm not inclined in the least to let myself be backed down by a 
> handful of tyrannical boors.

> You t.b.s are a blight on human reason, and your fury is sheer territorial 
> ego, pompously imagining that you have a right to decide what experiences 
are 
> granted respect, and which are drenched with contempt.  Well, piss on you 
> back!  This is an *arts* forum, your preconceptions carry no weight here, 
> please shove your scientism up your bloody butts.  I assert my freedom and
> my rights!

> Yours in love and anger, j

("Bloody butts" is *vivid*, isn't it?  You should see how they talk on 
rec.arts.books, though ;^)

Chris added:
> I was the original target of this nonsensical series of posts
> 
> Jorn's entire thesis is far too silly to even consider discussing.

Then Steve VanD joined in, quite calmly, and my response was mixed:
> (Jeez, you sound like a lawyer!  But I appreciate that you're talking 
> content rather than spewing denial!)

> (Don't bother squawking over the title ["The Mind Parasites"], you 
> hyenas.  He was speaking metaphorically of *you*.)

> Thank you, Mr Psych 101.

The following may have been more-subtly hurtful:

> >   [...] But our
> > communications and relationships with other people depend on
> > shared, objective experience. 
> 
> Like Star Trek, or something?
> 
> (She sulks.)
> He: "Honey, relationships with other people depend on shared, 
> objective experience!"
> (Still she sulks.)

Somewhere in here David R. Koehler added:
> Good grief!  Is this serious?  Tell me you're joking.

> AAARRRGGGHHH!

> Jon, pass me one of those AK-47s...

Daniel S. Riley was a complete gentleman, and I was outspoken in my 
gratitude for that.  Mike Mendelson offered reassurances that *he* thought 
the temperature was delightful.  Drukman spewed more of his same, and then 
Angelos unwisely added his two cents:

> don't try to *impose* your thoughts on others and flame them when they 
disagree

> you better read your own words then, and re-assert others' freedom to 
disagree with you

> So your freedom and rights involve winning general agreement?

> Ah, so science is just an ego-boosting experience... Let me write this 
> down. 

> I am sure if KaTe read the previous posts, she would hide away and
> never release *anything* in fear of being considered an accomplice.

> Sorry Jorn, but I think you have to change your attitude if you want 
> to be taken seriously, and think a bit about how the recordings you
> are talking about were made, based on what priciples this technology
> exists, before you start ranting about ego-driven PhDs and dismiss
> all science for an 'empathic' obsession of yours. 

And I have to guess it's *here* you think I most overstepped the level of 
provocation:

> Angelos Kyrlidis, way out of his depth, flounders:

>  You've got *zero* perspective, kid.

> Angelos, why do I sense the same old ecto-warmroom prejudgments, still 
> lingering a year later?  You were full of it then, and failed to read my 
> positions with any degree of respect, and you're at it again now...

> (Uncross your eyes, Angelos, and read that again, please.  It does *not* 
> defend flaming kind folks, or knuckling under to unkind flamers.)

> > So your freedom and rights involve winning general agreement?
> 
> No, you d*mb f*ck, my freedom and rights involve presenting an argument 
and 
> being treated with respect.  You're engaging in a hallucinated-witch hunt, 
> for some Jorn-Hitler that never remotely existed.  Getcho' head outcho' 
ass.

> > Ah, so science is just an ego-boosting experience... Let me write this
> > down.
> 
> Angelos, go back to gradeschool.  You're hallucinating.  It's insincere 
> and embarrassing.  I'd respond further, if you'd said anything coherent.

Yesterday I responded to Larry's longlonglong piece by calling him a worm, a 
disease, a Siberian concentration-camp psychiatrist, and *distilled, 
malevolent, unconscious evil*. Today Lazlo's back with more vileness.


Steve Williams continues:
> I think it's all intentional, and sad.  By definition, the Jorn
> of old could never have written the things we've seen lately,
> and he wouldn't have endured the things written back.  For
> whatever reason, Jorn has (this is only my weak theory), come
> back into L-H determined to overdo the very things that he
> decried before when he partially withdrew.  How far can he push
> people?  Pretty far apparently, without even trying very hard.
> How long will he continue?  As long as others keep it going.

On the one hand, Steve, you have me enduring unendurable attacks, and on the 
other you see *me* doing the pushing.  This needs reconciling.

> He's making a point, and the point has nothing to do with
> emotional imprinting of magnetic media or anything else.
> Jorn:  If I'm completely off the mark here -- and I sure could
> be, because I'm struggling to understand the most vicious,
> hateful behavior I've seen in this group in years, coming from
> the most unlikely source I can imagine -- then you can correct
> me once (nicely, please) and I'll stand corrected.  But if I'm
> even partially right, then why don't you consider your point
> made and let it go?  If you can't let it go, then why don't all
> parties wrap it up here in this particular public forum and move
> the hate into private mail or some other more appropriate
> newsgroup or mailing list?

Steve, "letting it go" means giving up having a forum to talk to 'Hounds in!  
Who are you bleeding for, anyway?  If they can't take it, *they* can let it 
go.  They're the ones heaping ridicule on openhearted postings.

> Jon, Larry S., Angelos, Lazlo, others:  Drop it.  Let it go.
> Either you're being baited by a pro or you're dealing with
> someone whose smoke-addled fanaticism has a much longer
> half-life than any of us can survive.

OUCH.  (Take that ****back**** ;^)

Seriously, who else is sharing Steve's distress?