From: Joe Cosby <joecosby@SPAMBLOCKmindspring.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 13, 2004 2:19 AM
shaft@postmark.net (you) wrote:
>as opposed to you, ...a REAL troll making pathetic
attempts to
>antagonise everybody? this is troll central. the
reason y'all are
>here is cause you think you're smarter than everyone,
and feel heaping
>abuse on people proves your superiority.
Well that's a tired but not illogical guess.
What I really come to usenet for and always have is
those few rare
moments of inspiration. Really, if you really want
to know what
you're talking about just search the Google usenet archives
on my name
and keep going further and further back. The further
back you go the
more you get to where I started, genuinely believing
that usenet, as a
completely open communication medium could serve the
purpose of
allowing the few rare good ideas to propagate and take
hold of people
and lead to powerful grassroots movements that existed
not because the
Right political/social/artistic/whatever group backed
them nor because
they had the Right advertising campaign but simply because
they were
GOOD IDEAS, and people, in the end, do recognize good
ideas as good
ideas and worth propagating.
Why not? The printing press had a similar effect, not
because of some
intrinsic moral value of slapping ink on paper but simply
because it
made it easier to propagate good ideas and good ideas
take root.
At first I was interested in a fairly specific topic
which is now long
since dead, and I gave up on that anyway. Then for
a good couple of
years (or a bad couple of years, depending how you look
at it) I
thought I would do better in the realm of pure idea,
pure change, the
purely transcendental.
However you slice it I really did try to find those
people who were
genuinely inspired and I tried to inspire.
The real hell of it is, I didn't fail. I found what
I was looking
for. I found ideas that spark flames when exposed to
oxygen purely
due to their intense catalytic power. I found people
whose ideas were
capable of shaking the earth. I came into it believing
that in any
generation where history records maybe 2 or 3 seminal
thinkers, there
are dozens or hundreds who we never hear about but who
are not only as
significant, but are vastly more significant in their
thoughts and
ideas but doomed to be forgotten because the social
avenues by which
ideas are preserved are controlled by those whose interests
are served
by mediocrity and trivialization.
And I found, as I had hoped, that a significant number
of people were
infected by good ideas for the sake of good ideas, and
that in this
electronic medium the forces of change could take hold
and take on a
life of their own.
But I completely failed to anticipate how really powerful
the forces
of the dull and mediocre are. At how much of a MAJORITY
they
represent.
It had never occurred to me HOW MANY people there are
whose lives are
dedicated, quite literally, to nothing but the battle
to ensure that
what is mediocre and stupid prevails and what is valuable
and
interesting is crushed.
If that sounds melodramatic, you either haven't been
on usenet long
enough, or you haven't thought about what you've seen
here.
Inevitably, any really great moment I've seen on usenet
has been
shouted out by:
- First, an individual, usually somebody in a position
of petty
authority in their own life, who spends all their time
on usenet doing
nothing but find people trying to express something
inspiring or noble
and fighting to break them down.
Really, if you watch usenet at all, you will find the
people I'm
talking about there. If you follow any group for any
length of time,
you have seen somebody like this on it.
This person is absolutely solid granite when it comes
to ensuring that
EVERY SINGLE PERSON WHO SO MUCH AS GLANCES AT THAT NEWSGROUP
RECOGNIZES AND APPRECIATES THEIR POSITION OF SUPERIORITY
ON IT.
And second, that person is easily identified in that
beyond their
rock-solid proofs of their own UNSHAKEABLE RECTITUDE,
they do
absolutely nothing but attack others for having the
temerity to have
ANY OPINION AT ALL.
- Second, a bleating group of pathetic sheep who trail
after him/her,
nipping at the heels of any interloper who might have
inspired the
leader's ire.
It doesn't matter what kind of group it is. You will
see precisely
the same recipe on every usenet newsgroup. Computer
operating
systems. Programming languages. Politics. Religion.
Art. Science.
You can follow any newsgroup for enough time and apply
the above to
them with the precision of a measuring stick.
So, maybe you're right. Maybe I spend too much time
attacking those I
see as part of the forces of the self-inflicted stupidity
which seems
to be humanity's choice. I think though that I usually
succeed, most
of the time at least, in attacking exactly those kinds
of idiots who
ensure that usenet is never capable of anything but
being the toilet
stall wall of humanity. Those who stand for stupidity
for stupidity's
sake.
Not even STUPIDITY, because I don't really have anything
against
somebody for being STUPID. We all have areas where
we are fucking
stupid.
But it's those who are sincerely fighting for their
own stupidity as
if it were the rightful limit of everybody else.
Those who are ANGERED when somebody transgresses their
particular set
of sacred beliefs, when anybody questions the ABSOLUTE
RIGHTNESS of
their Side which represents Truth.
It represents a whole social class of humanity; those
who believe
that RIGHTNESS is dependant on a kind of ordainment.
Like the college
professor who is infuriated at a student challenging
his opinion on
history or philosophy or politics. Not angered because
the student is
rude or unreasonable, but because the STUDENT has the
TEMERITY to
question a PROFESSOR.
And maybe to some extent alt.slack is a nest of trolls.
To be honest
though, from what I've seen the "trolling"
done from alt.slack is
aimed at exactly that kind of BOARD-CERTIFIED FUCKING
IDIOT; and I
would like to think I limit my own attacks on them.
Nobody's perfect. I don't doubt sometimes I flame the
shit out of
somebody simply because I can.
The thing is though, it isn't a question of whether
that's right or
wrong, to me. It just isn't FUNNY.
The only time a flame fest is really funny is when somebody
IS so
completely WRONG to even the most casual examination
and so completely
CERTAIN that they are right because of WHO THEY ARE
OR WHAT SIDE
THEY'RE ON.
And in those cases, the longer they fight, the funnier it gets.
Imagine that you have a college chemistry professor.
And you set fire
to him, literally. His clothes are on fire.
And he is ARGUING until he's RED IN THE FACE that it's
just NOT
POSSIBLE to catch rayon on fire.
Maybe some part of most people would want to just grab
a fire
extinguisher and put it out.
And I suppose there is some limit where watching a human
being burn to
death alive is just not funny anymore.
But how long? How long can he keep arguing and arguing,
louder and
louder, more and more ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN of his rightness
while his
clothes are crackling up around his ears before it stops
being funny?
For my money, quite a while.
> i hate to break it to y'all,
>but, the shit you fling doesn't stick.
>here, have a banana, you.
>thanks, don't mind if you do.
--
Joe Cosby
http://joecosby.com/
Original file name: JOES RANT.txt - converted on Saturday, 25 September 2004, 02:05
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