Tribes
Primates are tribal. Drop a bunch of us on the savannah, and we promptly coagulate into angry screaming monkeyclumps and start a war.
It’s been fun watching this play out online. I’ve been here since the mid eighties, from local bulletin boards, Fidonet and PCPursuit, to Prodigy, GEnie, Compu$erve and Arbornet, from USENET to IRC to online games to Web bulletin boards to blogs. I sat down a decade ago and started to write down all the groups I’d been a part of and handles I’d posted under and I got well over 50 of the one and 100 of the other before I lost interest in the question.
The internet is particularly well suited to tribal warfare. It is a slippery place; only a “place” at all in the most metaphorical way. It’s a suitable place for anonymity, intrigue and imposture. It’s a billion timbreless voices whispering to each other in the dark.
The thing I most loved to read on USENET was the sputtering indignation of a newbie who suddenly realizes that, yes, that other guy damn well can talk to you that way and no, there’s not a thing you can do about it. But, of course, this is why internet arguments never die: they don’t have to. There is no mechanism to declare a winner and go home.
Except when there is. And moderated groups and bulletin boards tend to generate the hardest feelings of all. Moderation is a job almost impossible to do gracefully. Most places it’s like romping through a toe factory with a hammer.
I have hung out in happy places and cranky places and contributed as lavishly as I was able to the happiness and the crankiness thereof, if not always the right way around. I’ve been so busy identifying and supporting my online tribe, it totally snuck up on me, that point where I came to identify more with the online tribe than the meat tribe.
Oh, I trim my hedges and say hi to my neighbors. I vote. I shop. If the Redcoats ever come back, I’ll run to the barricades with my carbine (getting tired of keeping up my marksmanship skill in preparation for that glorious day, in fact). But if you ask me where I live, work and play, the answer to all three is on the computer. And, pretty much, online. I blame broadband. What’s satellite wifi going to do?
Leave a mark on the genome, is my guess.
June 12, 2007 — 1:52 pm
Comments: 14
Almost enough to buy the book
Fun website flogging a book of short stories. I almost hit the button on it, then I realized, “hey, wait…I don’t read any more.”
Anyhow, it’s sounds quirky and eccentric. I’m getting tired of quirky and eccentric. I don’t think quirky and eccentric should be the gold standard of meritorious fiction. More straight cowboys and moms who knit colorful hats, I say. And pirate stories. And bacon. I could really go for some bacon and eggs this morning.
Found at Aphra Behn.
June 11, 2007 — 9:34 am
Comments: 12
ewwww…Weasel’s shorts
are not the droids you are looking for.
I’m trying to add a class to my CSS and, for some reason, changes in the style sheet don’t “take” right away in the preview mode, so I have to publish to tinker with it. Whatever.
June 10, 2007 — 9:16 am
Comments: 20
Friday, June 8
Yeah, I had a proper Friday post in mind, but I spent my blogging time today discussing theology with my imaginary playmates.
Okay, okay…the truth? The dog ate it. And that was pretty traumatic for me because my dog died 30 years ago.
Stupid Puppydog Heaven.
June 8, 2007 — 5:09 pm
Comments: 16
For posterity: the taxonomy of crystal-sucking twats
Religion. It’s one of the things I started this blog to vent about. Then it turns out my thoughts on the topic are conflicted. And boring. And — this is a little brain-hurty for an obnoxious atheist such as moi — more often than not I find myself sticking up for religious people online. There are so many excellent reasons to criticize a religion (starting with the core beliefs) that it gets up my nose when the religious are criticized for bogus reasons (the MSM’s shock and disappointment every time an actual Catholic is elected Pope, for example).
I have no such mixed feelings about the religions of the New Age. It’s one thing to believe the junk you were raised with; it’s lazy, but they get to you when you’re young and especially vulnerable to fantastical shit. It’s quite another thing to turn your back on the faith of your fathers in adulthood and embrace some wild-ass foreign cult or, worse, a bunch of stupid hippie crap made up in the 20th Century by a clown-carful of be-toga’d con artists.
Today — I forget why — I was looking for my favorite Usenet post, ever, and I was shocked to discover a Google search of “crystal-sucking twats” didn’t turn it up. Instead, it turned up me, stealing the phrase without attribution in a lowly blog comment. That ain’t right, so I went to Google Groups (formerly Deja News) and scared it up. Reproduced here for posterity.
This is an exchange between Matthew M Mckeon, who originated the phrase, and Ian Sturrock, who expounds upon it at some length. The newsgroup is alt.gothic.
Subject: Re: Praying Students Killed By Classmate From: a...@califia.sub-rosa.com Newsgroups: alt.gothic Matthew M Mckeon <m...@andrew.cmu.edu> writes <snip some interesting points> > There are also hordes of fluff-brained, emotionally unstable > crystal-sucking twats who involve themselves in paganism > in the hopes that they can learn spells to hurt their enemies > and that they will get ritual sex. Just to correct you on this one- the fluff-brained, emotionally unstable crystal-sucking twats are unlikely to want to hurt their enemies & get ritual sex. Rather, they want to 'heal' their enemies with 'glowing dolphin lurve energy' or something, and have meaningful tantric experiences. The ones who want to *hurt* their enemies are more commonly malice- brained emotionally unstable inverted-pentacle-sucking twats. The ones that want ritual sex are the cock-brained emotionally unstable middle-aged science fiction fan twats for the most part. These distinctions are very important if, like me, you have chosen to work in an occult bookshop-cafe & must know precisely which kind of emotionally unstable twat your customer is. So please get your facts straight in future. I did get to overhear the tail end of a fascinating discussion in the cafe recently between a bloke who thinks he's Satan (aging heavy metaller with bad tattoos & a penchant for hiring the plastic vampire cape from the fancy dress shop across the road) and a bloke who claims he's a Navaho Indian Shaman- from Ontario (geographically-challenged terminal bullshitter who was a martial arts expert last week- I guess he'll have graduated to Traditional Witch status by next week). -- Deadly Ernest
June 7, 2007 — 1:55 pm
Comments: 54
Friday, June the Onest
June 1, 2007 — 7:31 pm
Comments: 23
Weasel has piles
Piles of emails. Piles of bills. Piles of phone messages. Sad, disconsolate piles of soiled and crumpled socks and shirts and underpants, waiting to be laundered. It’s heartbreaking.
I made a bunch of stupid promises to clients today, just to make them shut up and go away. “Be off, little man! Your foolish ‘job’ and ‘deadlines’ do not concern Weasel.” S’okay. My mouth has been writing checks my work ethic can’t cash for nigh on half a century now.
All this could have been avoided if only one of my rich old aunties had left me a little something on her way out the door. But no. I’m all out of rich old aunties now, and it turns out I wasn’t nearly as popular as I thought.
Oh, well. I’m tired of posting about me and my travels. Tomorrow, I’ll post about…me and some other thing. Enjoy!
May 30, 2007 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 6
Friday, May 25
May 25, 2007 — 11:32 pm
Comments: 2
Friday, May 18
May 18, 2007 — 8:10 pm
Comments: 4
Incoming!
Hi! It’s me! Unless things have changed, Logan airport charges for wifi access, so I wrote this Saturday and I’m timeshifting it forward. WordPress software has this neat feature where you can publish a post with a future date and it won’t appear until the timestamp is good. I don’t use it much; it isn’t often I have anything prepared ahead of time.
I’ve thought about using this function to play a cruel trick on myself. Like future post, “you people suck and my phone number is 401-331-XXXX!!!” to go live at, say, three in the morning. Then stumble off to bed drunkenly and see if my paranoia is sufficient to wake me out of a comfortable stupor in time to stop it. I guess this is what happens when you have sadistic and masochistic tendencies: you are amused at the idea of pwning yourself.
Anyhoo, I thought it would be cool to date this for 9am Tuesday, when my plane is supposed to take off. Then if we have engine trouble and go down in Boston Harbor, y’all can be, like, “oh my god! Stoaty’s last post ever appeared at the very moment the plane went down!”
If I survive, catch you tomorrow from Londinium. If not, feel free to phone in to the networks and claim to be my best friends ever. Somebody might as well enjoy my screaming arc of death.
May 15, 2007 — 9:00 am
Comments: 22