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mbarker.livejournal.comOriginal posting: Wed, 13 May 1998 09:41:35 EDT
FILLER: ESSAY: The Anti's (a piece from the past)
[a little piece from when I spent too much time with USENET...it seems appropriate to resurrect this now. I've also included a little sketch of the edge of the information highway, with punctuation weeds discarded by poets everywhere...tink]
:) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 18:35:02 JST
:) From: Mike Barker
:) Subject: ESSAY: The Anti's
deviled eggs...ham...and a soda...beside the jalopy...
ah, green grass for a picnic site!
[from the American Rubiyat by Omor Satire]
probably upsetting... punish, at least...
tink
The Anti's
[who cares?]
One of the problems in the virtual picniclands along the information highway is the anti's.
They are everywhere.
You may have noticed them around the networks. The somewhat noisy small life buzzing around and wasting bandwidth? The denizens of killfiles and other wastelands?
Occasionally annoying and irritating in minor ways, they are likely to appear at any of the virtual picnics, begging for crumbs. Sometimes it seems as if they are trying to be swatted as they crawl around, waving their legs and trying to spoil the feast.
Anti's are fairly easy to recognize. They like to sneer about how successful they are at insulting, provoking, threatening, challenging, offending, and undermining (among other attacks and tantrums). The goal may not be worth the effort, and is more often missed than attained, but they do claim it, apparently never having considered what success at brutalizing other humans means...
Anti's often seem to delight in attempted personal attacks, namecalling, smearing, and other pitiful pleas for attention. All too often poorly written, without much understanding of the tactics and forms of the verbal violence they are trying to use, their ill-considered chattering is usually easy to identify.
I know, ignore them and in time they do go away. Swatting them isn't worth wasting bandwidth, and often encourages more childish outbursts from them.
But I have a question for the anti's. Not that I expect them to answer, as it requires thought, but...
I've heard anti's make claims of being offensive. True offense requires depth, so the claim is prima facie implausible.
I can believe that they are lacking in self-assurance, without the confidence and pride in self needed to try to explain and help, and too impatient to try to understand another person--leaping to conclusions is so much easier and the intuitive results, while disastrously wrong, can be rationalized quite easily.
But while the anti's are undermining whatever poor sense of self they have left in pursuit of the faint feeling of relief incurred when someone strikes back, the slight sense of self that such agony may temporarily imbue them with, doesn't it hurt?
I wonder if they have ever thought about what their writing reveals about themself--their fears, their insecurities, their personal agonies?
I know that building is hard--but it is the only worthwhile challenge.
Working with people, helping them to understand and grow, increasing the possibilities and alternatives for human success, oiling the machinery of human and small group interaction, making friends and influencing strangers...no matter what terms you cast it in, doing something positive is much more difficult than tearing things down, but also much more satisfying. Dare to excel, little anti's, and learn your own strength.
Are the anti's up to facing that challenge? Or would they prefer to continue at their present level of minor irritant, buzzing and fussing without effect?
So, anti's, let me ask it simply--did you ever think about turning pro?
[oh. I do.]
FILLER: ESSAY: The Anti's (a piece from the past)
[a little piece from when I spent too much time with USENET...it seems appropriate to resurrect this now. I've also included a little sketch of the edge of the information highway, with punctuation weeds discarded by poets everywhere...tink]
:) Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 18:35:02 JST
:) From: Mike Barker
:) Subject: ESSAY: The Anti's
deviled eggs...ham...and a soda...beside the jalopy...
ah, green grass for a picnic site!
[from the American Rubiyat by Omor Satire]
probably upsetting... punish, at least...
tink
The Anti's
[who cares?]
One of the problems in the virtual picniclands along the information highway is the anti's.
They are everywhere.
You may have noticed them around the networks. The somewhat noisy small life buzzing around and wasting bandwidth? The denizens of killfiles and other wastelands?
Occasionally annoying and irritating in minor ways, they are likely to appear at any of the virtual picnics, begging for crumbs. Sometimes it seems as if they are trying to be swatted as they crawl around, waving their legs and trying to spoil the feast.
Anti's are fairly easy to recognize. They like to sneer about how successful they are at insulting, provoking, threatening, challenging, offending, and undermining (among other attacks and tantrums). The goal may not be worth the effort, and is more often missed than attained, but they do claim it, apparently never having considered what success at brutalizing other humans means...
Anti's often seem to delight in attempted personal attacks, namecalling, smearing, and other pitiful pleas for attention. All too often poorly written, without much understanding of the tactics and forms of the verbal violence they are trying to use, their ill-considered chattering is usually easy to identify.
I know, ignore them and in time they do go away. Swatting them isn't worth wasting bandwidth, and often encourages more childish outbursts from them.
But I have a question for the anti's. Not that I expect them to answer, as it requires thought, but...
Why?Are anti's really so insecure in self, so undecided and fearful of their own thoughts, that the only way to reassure themself that they are alive is to be a noisy nuisance, trying to strike out at others without thinking of their hurt? Is tearing down others the only way they have ever learned to make themself look fractionally larger?
I've heard anti's make claims of being offensive. True offense requires depth, so the claim is prima facie implausible.
I can believe that they are lacking in self-assurance, without the confidence and pride in self needed to try to explain and help, and too impatient to try to understand another person--leaping to conclusions is so much easier and the intuitive results, while disastrously wrong, can be rationalized quite easily.
But while the anti's are undermining whatever poor sense of self they have left in pursuit of the faint feeling of relief incurred when someone strikes back, the slight sense of self that such agony may temporarily imbue them with, doesn't it hurt?
I wonder if they have ever thought about what their writing reveals about themself--their fears, their insecurities, their personal agonies?
I know that building is hard--but it is the only worthwhile challenge.
Working with people, helping them to understand and grow, increasing the possibilities and alternatives for human success, oiling the machinery of human and small group interaction, making friends and influencing strangers...no matter what terms you cast it in, doing something positive is much more difficult than tearing things down, but also much more satisfying. Dare to excel, little anti's, and learn your own strength.
Are the anti's up to facing that challenge? Or would they prefer to continue at their present level of minor irritant, buzzing and fussing without effect?
So, anti's, let me ask it simply--did you ever think about turning pro?
[oh. I do.]
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