Probably heard the oral sex ones before.....
Ophan
Okay kids I heard this one not too long ago......
Oral sex was owtlawed in Oregon, it is still considered sodomy
Anal sex was also outlawed
But we have no indecent exposure laws.....
Except for the one that says that a man cannot walk around with a visible
erection
The story behind these is that these laws were created to make it illegal
to be gay.... interesting hmmm?
"God was here but he left early"- Irwin shaw
Ophan
>Why is it then if "gay sex" is illegal in Oregon and Massachusetts, that
>there are so many queers living in those states? Northhampton, Ma. is a
>lesbian mecca, as is most of the state of Oregon. Riddle me that!
>
>
>
>
>
That is very true..... But, Oregon has an extremely tremulous history
between the eastern side of the state (think Texas only more religious)
and the laid back west......And. most of the gay community is in the
western part of the state
Colin McElroy
bi...@magpage.com (Bill D) wrote:
>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>In article <19970726200...@ladder01.news.aol.com> in
>newsgroup alt.folklore.urban, Ophan <op...@aol.com> wrote:
>>Okay kids I heard this one not too long ago......
>>Oral sex was owtlawed in Oregon, it is still considered sodomy
>>Anal sex was also outlawed
>Both are illegal in Massachusetts, too, as far as I know, and lots of
>other places too.
How many other places are there?
Colin
Morbidia I
bi...@magpage.com wrote regarding oral and anal sex:
>Both are illegal in Massachusetts, too, as far as I know, and lots of
>other places too.
I remember it once being said that in Massachusetts if you were making
love and accidentally fell out of bed you could be deemed to have
committed at least 4 felonies. In that era, of course, no book could be
considered even mildly racy unless it had already been banned in Boston.
Bob Hiebert
In article <5ref06$t...@mackrel.fishnet.net>, s...@fishnet.net (Colin McElroy) wrote:
>bi...@magpage.com (Bill D) wrote:
>>>Okay kids I heard this one not too long ago......
>>>Oral sex was owtlawed in Oregon, it is still considered sodomy
>>>Anal sex was also outlawed
>
>>Both are illegal in Massachusetts, too, as far as I know, and lots of
>>other places too.
>
>How many other places are there?
That's an eary thought.
Bob "nose a bad thread when he reads it" Hiebert
---
E-mail address is munged. Correct to reply.
For the full story on Urban Legends, don't miss
http://www.urbanlegends.com/
James Geren
Colin McElroy writes:
>>>Okay kids I heard this one not too long ago......
>>>Oral sex was owtlawed in Oregon, it is still considered sodomy
>>>Anal sex was also outlawed
>>Both are illegal in Massachusetts, too, as far as I know, and lots of
>>other places too.
>How many other places are there?
I read the figure sometime recently but don't recall--something like 20-30
states have anti-sodomy laws. Among them: North Carolina (where a man was
supposedly thrown into prison a few years ago after his wife brought up,
during their divorce proceedings, that she'd fellated him during their
marriage; is this UL?) and Georgia, whose anti-sodomy statute was challenged,
and upheld, in the notorious U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick --
perhaps the most distressing, poorly-reasoned, and mean-spirited decision to
be handed down by the Court in many years.
James B. Geren
Columbus, Ohio
ger...@osu.edu
***To reply via e-mail, remove <NO-ADS> from return address.
***Advertisements to this address are forbidden, unwelcome, resented.
Rush Strong
In article <gerenNO-ADS.2...@osu.edu>, gerenN...@osu.edu (James Geren) wrote:
[snip]
>marriage; is this UL?) and Georgia, whose anti-sodomy statute was challenged,
>and upheld, in the notorious U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick --
>perhaps the most distressing, poorly-reasoned, and mean-spirited decision to
>be handed down by the Court in many years.
IIRC, the court ruled that a state had the right to enact its own laws, and
that the Supreme Court had no right to impose its will upon the state - I
thought it was indeed well reasoned. [I also believe that the Georgia law is
absurd, but it's up to Georgia to change it].
- Rush "I'm not a Constitutional scholar, but I saw one on TV" Strong
Please remove [SPAMBLOCK] from my address if replying by e-mail.
Michele Tepper
....by Winston Churchill, no doubt.
People? Once again, may I remind you all, posting anecdotal evidence as
fact is never pretty. Not to pick on our friend Morbidia I here[1], of
course, and my apologies to her, but one has to start somewhere.
Michele "[1] although for future reference, Morbidia, you should
know that Judith Martin, who is most decidedly not Barbara
Mikkelson, says in _Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct
Behavior_ that the first holder of a dynastic name is never
properly styled 'Soandso I' in his or her lifetime. This does
make the current constitutional monarch of Spain incorrect, as Ms.
Martin notes, but what do you expect of some guy who lisps?" Tepper
--
Michele Tepper "I have nothing to add to this thread, but it seems to me
mte...@panix.com like you know an awful lot about what happens when you
keep a slab of beef in your shorts all day." - Bo Bradham
James Geren
Rush Strong writes:
>In article <gerenNO-ADS.2...@osu.edu>, gerenN...@osu.edu (James Geren) wrote:
>[snip]
>>marriage; is this UL?) and Georgia, whose anti-sodomy statute was challenged,
>>and upheld, in the notorious U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick --
>>perhaps the most distressing, poorly-reasoned, and mean-spirited decision to
>>be handed down by the Court in many years.
>IIRC, the court ruled that a state had the right to enact its own laws, and
>that the Supreme Court had no right to impose its will upon the state - I
>thought it was indeed well reasoned. [I also believe that the Georgia law is
>absurd, but it's up to Georgia to change it].
From a states'-rights perspective (which I don't much relate to but which I
won't debate here), this seems logical enough. But, of course, the Supreme
Court does have the right to impose its "will" (i.e., the Constitution, at
least in theory) on the states. It has done so many times, striking down
state laws or upholding federal laws relating to labor relations to school
integration. The real question is and always has been who to include within
the groups of people protected by the Bill of Rights. I stand by my original
point. There might be a good argument for excluding gays from such
protection, but I haven't heard it -- certainly not from Justice Kennedy in
his Bowers v. Hardwick opinion.
Rush Strong
In article <gerenNO-ADS.2...@osu.edu>, gerenN...@osu.edu (James Geren) wrote:
>Rush Strong writes:
>>In article <gerenNO-ADS.2...@osu.edu>, gerenN...@osu.edu (James
> Geren) wrote:
>>[snip]
>>>marriage; is this UL?) and Georgia, whose anti-sodomy statute was challenged,
>
>>>and upheld, in the notorious U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick --
>>>perhaps the most distressing, poorly-reasoned, and mean-spirited decision to
>>>be handed down by the Court in many years.
>
>>IIRC, the court ruled that a state had the right to enact its own laws, and
>>that the Supreme Court had no right to impose its will upon the state - I
>>thought it was indeed well reasoned. [I also believe that the Georgia law is
>>absurd, but it's up to Georgia to change it].
>
>From a states'-rights perspective (which I don't much relate to but which I
>won't debate here), this seems logical enough. But, of course, the Supreme
>Court does have the right to impose its "will" (i.e., the Constitution, at
>least in theory) on the states. It has done so many times, striking down
>state laws or upholding federal laws relating to labor relations to school
>integration. The real question is and always has been who to include within
>the groups of people protected by the Bill of Rights. I stand by my original
>point. There might be a good argument for excluding gays from such
>protection, but I haven't heard it -- certainly not from Justice Kennedy in
>his Bowers v. Hardwick opinion.
If you relate to the Constitution, you have to relate to states' rights - it's
as much a part of the Constitution as is freedom of speech.
The question of 'who to include' was never an issue - the Georgia law was
against sodomy, not against sodomy amongst gays. As such, it wasn't
discriminatory, nor was it unconstitutional. I won't suggest that the law
wasn't selectively applied, but that wasn't an issue that the was being
decided. Would you suggest that the Supreme Court should have ruled that gays
were exempt from the law?
- Rush
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Morbidia I
Michele Tepper wrote:
>Michele "[1] although for future reference, Morbidia, you should
> know that Judith Martin, who is most decidedly not Barbara
> Mikkelson, says in _Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct
> Behavior_ that the first holder of a dynastic name is never
> properly styled 'Soandso I' in his or her lifetime.
Dearest Michele: I have no dynastic pretensions, the screen name Morbidia
had been used previously on my internet server and therefore could not be
reused. If this is not excruciatingly correct, let it merely stand as
being excruciating. Having said this, I will not waste further bandwidth
on explaining or defending my screen name. To clarify my previous post, I
was not posting anecdotal evidence, I was posting an anecdote that I heard
when living in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Anecdotes frequently
become urban legends. - Morbidia I-
Barbara Mikkelson
Morbidia I <morb...@aol.com> wrote:
> Anecdotes frequently become urban legends.
For someone new to these parts, you certainly said a mouthful. Such
insight is always welcome, as is the reminder that urban legends don't
always arrive neatly packaged up in finished form. Them as keep trying
to chase personal reminiscences off this group might well cause all of
us to miss out on either discovering where an already existing UL came
from or even being present at the birth of a new one.
In addition to remembered and misremembered news stories, deliberately
cooked up tales, jokes that over time transform into a "this really
happened" story, there's also the category of personal experiences which
later come back told as happening to someone else in another city. A fine
example is the "Green Stamp UL" -- Brunvand himself is convinced it began
as a personal anecdote of a particular Texas housewife and was such a
great story it radiated out from there.
Barbara "yes, I give stamps with that -- why do you ask?" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | I have no desire to debate you on the premise
bmikkels@fas. | of lemmings on my computer. Besides, they're
harvard.edu | ferrets, not lemmings. - Jim Stewart
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Had your spooning today? --> http://www.snopes.com
Lee Rudolph
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) writes:
>In addition to remembered and misremembered news stories, deliberately
>cooked up tales, jokes that over time transform into a "this really
>happened" story, there's also the category of personal experiences which
>later come back told as happening to someone else in another city. A fine
>example is the "Green Stamp UL" -- Brunvand himself is convinced it began
>as a personal anecdote of a particular Texas housewife and was such a
>great story it radiated out from there.
Well, that's my personal favorite of the ULs I've read in Brunvand's
books, but the most that can honestly be said is that the _detail_
of the green stamps (which is peripheral to the real meat of the UL)
may well have begun with that housewife. The central situation is
classical enough to have an Arne Tale Type attached to it! To quote
the second half of my Legman Report at
http://www.urbanlegends.com/books/legman ,
--begin quotation---
I believe it is in {\it The Mexican Pet} that JHB presents compelling
evidence that the UL of {Green Stamps at the gynecologist's} actually
did happen at least once. Nonetheless (and not withstanding), it's
clearly a UL; we've recently seen a version reported on a.f.u. which
ends with the punchline of the following joke from Legman (p. 831).
``It is the striking trait of the yoking by the toilet-seat (Tale
type 571A) which has become crucial in the most common modern form
of the joke, with various rationalizations. {\it An Italian immigrant
writes a letter (in dialect verse) to `Mr. Kresge,' complaining that
he has painted the toilet-seat with a can of 10-cent-store paint,
and that it never dried, trapping his daughter on the seat. They
go to the doctor to have the seat removed, and when the doctor looks
astonished, the Italian asks if he has never seen one of those things
before. `Sure,' says the doctor, `but this is the first time I saw
one with a frame around it.'} (Printed `novelty' card, circulated
since the 1940's in America.)''
--end quotation--
Lee "IHNJ,IJLS`Tale type 571A'" Rudolph
Barbara Mikkelson
Lee Rudolph <lrud...@panix.com> wrote:
> To quote the second half of my Legman Report at
>
> http://www.urbanlegends.com/books/legman ,
<
> {\it An Italian immigrant writes a letter (in dialect verse) to
> `Mr. Kresge,' complaining that he has painted the toilet-seat with a can
> of 10-cent-store paint, and that it never dried, trapping his daughter
> on the seat. They go to the doctor to have the seat removed, and when
> the doctor looks astonished, the Italian asks if he has never seen one
> of those things before. `Sure,' says the doctor, `but this is the first
> time I saw one with a frame around it.'} (Printed `novelty' card,
> circulated since the 1940's in America.)''
I kept wondering why I'd been squirreling away various tellings of that
joke, because for the life of me I couldn't remember why I wanted to think
it had some connection with ULs. Now it all makes sense -- you'd quoted
this joke from Legman before.
Though I've a later _Playboy_ sighting of this, my earliest so far comes
from a 1951 joke book. In neither case was it told of an Italian and his
daughter -- both the versions I encountered gave it as happening at a
party held in a house with a newly-painted bathroom.
You might have something there, Lee -- there's the pudendum on display
aspect and the wise-cracking doctor. Though the stories aren't nearly
the same, I'd at least be willing to put them in the same bed in that
they appear to be of a type.
> Lee "IHNJ,IJLS`Tale type 571A'" Rudolph
Barbara "no, I use my fingers -- ten digits beats one fanny for speed
every time" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | I hate to see misinformation go by
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu | unpedanted. - Kevin T. Keith
Michele Tepper
Barbara Mikkelson <bmik...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
> Them as keep trying
>to chase personal reminiscences off this group might well cause all of
>us to miss out on either discovering where an already existing UL came
>from or even being present at the birth of a new one.
You are misrepresenting my position. I have no objection to people
posting "personal reminiscences" of encounters with ULs, relevant stories,
or even long-winded discussions of wedding etiquette. I do however fail
to see how "I remember it once being said..." brings any of us closer to
enlightenment on the roots, growth, or even travel vector of a UL without
someone having to follow up and say "really? when? where? what sort of
people said this?" Certainly there are times when it's worth doing so,
but it is also worthwhile to uphold the standards this group has long
maintained of skepticism, scholarship, and rational inquiry. If you
prefer lists of Funny Names for Songs About Sexual Acts Illegal in Many
American States and half-remembered half-baked reminiscences, there's
always misc.misc.
Michele "or the Zima web site" Tepper
--
Michele Tepper "Feel free to provide authoritative references;
mte...@panix.com in the meantime, you won't mind if we conclude
that you're simply making this up." -- Ian York
rmk
In article <01bc9a1d$661ae920$d67c...@tom.cdepot.net>, "Tom Paul"
<t...@cdepot.net> wrote:
:Why is it then if "gay sex" is illegal in Oregon and Massachusetts, that
:there are so many queers living in those states? Northhampton, Ma. is a
:lesbian mecca, as is most of the state of Oregon. Riddle me that!
Just lucky, I guess.
...rmk
--
Hamlet is the tragedy of tackling a family problem
too soon after college.
- Tom Masson (1866-1934)
Barbara Mikkelson
Michele Tepper <mte...@panix.com> wrote:
> You are misrepresenting my position.
No; you are.
> I have no objection to people posting "personal reminiscences" of
> encounters with ULs, relevant stories, or even long-winded discussions
> of wedding etiquette.
I well recall your getting snarky over people posting "ways to chase the
Jehovahs Witnesses away" stories to this newsgroup for you felt the thread
was off-charter despite it being chockful of personal reminiscences and
"this is what a friend told me he did" tales. Rather than seeing those
as encounters with a UL and being relevant stories in support of same,
your arrogant directions then echo those of now:
> If you prefer lists of Funny Names for Songs About Sexual Acts Illegal
> in Many American States and half-remembered half-baked reminiscences,
> there's always misc.misc.
Whatever AFU's problems are, having people post too much folklore to it
isn't one of them.
Barbara " " Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | What? I can't post ULs to AFU? Damn, that's
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu | what I thought it was for. - Chris Butler
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Helge Moulding
Michele Tepper wrote:
> Certainly there are times when it's worth doing so,
I suppose I could carry a notebook around with me from now on, to
satisfy your demands for exacting verisimilitude of reminiscences.
Nah. Sue me.
"I remember hearing" is a perfectly valid qualification, in any
polite conversation, and AFU. So say I, AFU's official arbiter
of good taste. And the particular reminiscence to which you were
referring is hardly of a kind with "Funny Names." I think that is
a very unfair representation.
--
Helge "You, too, will be old and forgetful one day." Moulding
mailto:h...@slc.unisys.com Just another guy
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/1401 with a weird name
Emily Kelly
Helge Moulding <h...@slc.unisys.com> wrote:
>Michele Tepper wrote:
>> Certainly there are times when it's worth doing so,
>
>polite conversation, and AFU. So say I, AFU's official arbiter
>of good taste.
The real dilemma is that the problem doesn't occur with the words "I
remember hearing", et al., but with the sometimes implied message behind
them, "...and that's how I know it's true". Most of us who've been on AFU
for a while have learned to explicitly warn "M*TT*!" or "no proof here,
but..." when we're about to embark on the uncharted terrain of unvorified
memory, just to be unmistakeably clear about the nature of the content
we're relating. I think that kind of carefulness is a good thing, and
something to be instilled in new posters with both the carrot and the stick.
I *don't* think it's productive to rule out all personal observations and
anecdotes out of hand, and as far as I can tell, that's not what Misha was
trying to do. In her first post, she said (emphasis mine): "posting
anecdotal evidence *as fact* is never pretty". That's an important
qualification.
>And the particular reminiscence to which you were
>referring is hardly of a kind with "Funny Names." I think that is
>a very unfair representation.
This is true, and I do think Misha may have spoken a bit strongly. But
the areas around fact, remembrance, rumor, and legend are slippery and
sometimes hard to distinguish from one another, and without the landmarks
of facts and specific sightings that folks like Ian and Barbara and Bo dig
up daily, the discussion can lose all sense of perspective in a hurry.
Without further qualification, "I remember hearing..." becomes a danger
signal, and it's easy to become as oversensitized to it as we are to any
mention, even intelligent mention, of gl*ss fl*w. Not that we shouldn't
guard against it.
> Helge "You, too, will be old and forgetful one day." Moulding
Emily "young and forgetful, but I try not to use it as an excuse" Kelly
--
Emily Harrison Kelly "You know the type - he keeps puffing out his little
eke...@acpub.duke.edu chest and standing up straight for all he's worth, and
he's still only four foot eight." --Madeleine Page
For the AFU and UL Archive: http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Henrik Brameus
But it was this thing with visible erection...
--
All opinions above are mine, but can be yours for a small fee.
(remove crap after email address for correct address)
Unknown
mte...@panix.com (Michele Tepper) cost the Net hundreds, if not
thousands of dollars writing in <5rh4oh$h...@panix2.panix.com>:
>Michele "[1] although for future reference, Morbidia, you should
> know that Judith Martin, who is most decidedly not Barbara
> Mikkelson, says in _Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct
> Behavior_ that the first holder of a dynastic name is never
> properly styled 'Soandso I' in his or her lifetime. This does
> make the current constitutional monarch of Spain incorrect, as Ms.
> Martin notes, but what do you expect of some guy who lisps?" Tepper
Shows just what Miss Manners knows about royal naming, or what
Belgians know about it (I can never decide). The previous king of
Belgium, the first one ever to be named Boudewijn/Baudwin (MOUSE[1]:
Baldwin), was sometimes called Boudewijn I/Baudwin Ier. Not all the
time, but often enough. And all that while he was still alive.
Hansje
[1] MOUSE: Most Of Usenet Speaks English
+--- Hans Derycke ---- hansderycke at mindspring dot com ------------------+
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| * * * Your Ad Here * * * |
| Low Prices - High Impact - E-mail for details |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
Vicki Robinson
In a previous article, bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) said:
>Michele Tepper <mte...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> You are misrepresenting my position.
>
>No; you are.
>
But what am ....... Oh, never mind.
>> I have no objection to people posting "personal reminiscences" of
>> encounters with ULs, relevant stories, or even long-winded discussions
>> of wedding etiquette.
>
>I well recall your getting snarky over people posting "ways to chase the
>Jehovahs Witnesses away" stories to this newsgroup for you felt the thread
>was off-charter despite it being chockful of personal reminiscences and
>"this is what a friend told me he did" tales.
People get snarky for all kinds of reasons on AFU. I remember one
woman who really lit into other female posters because they had
college educations!
>Rather than seeing those
>as encounters with a UL and being relevant stories in support of same,
>your arrogant directions then echo those of now:
>
Arrogant? I'd have to say that I trust you to recognize arrogance.
>> If you prefer lists of Funny Names for Songs About Sexual Acts Illegal
>> in Many American States and half-remembered half-baked reminiscences,
>> there's always misc.misc.
>
However, this doesn't seem any more arrogant than most of the pointers
we've given to new posters who haven't quite got it yet. I'll admit
that it's cutsie-quotient is awfully low, but adorableness never got
too far with me. YMMV, of course.
>Whatever AFU's problems are, having people post too much folklore to it
>isn't one of them.
>
Ahh, but AFU isn't just a story froup. We've landed with many
collective feet on lots of posters who simply restate a story they've
heard. We've chided them, nicey-nicey or with condoms and wolves, to
include some information with the story - where did they hear it?
When? What was the context?
Stories are probably just the thing for alt.folklore.suburban, though;
the ULs from _The Guardian_ are usually pretty good.
Vicki " " Robinson
--
Visit our wedding at <A HREF="http://www.rit.edu/~vjrnts/wedding.html"
</A> and sign our guest book!
The alt.folklore.urban FAQ and archive can be found at
http://www.urbanlegends.com. Take a look, if you have a week to spare.
Phil Edwards
Bracing myself for grapeshot from at least two quarters...
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:
>Michele Tepper <mte...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> You are misrepresenting my position.
>
>No; you are.
Bad call. Michele can rephrase, refine or even revise her position;
she can't *misrepresent* it, unless what you're talking about is a
specific position taken on a specific past occasion - and even then
them's fighting words, which (a) require a high degree of evidential
support and (b) raise the temperature, which itself needs justifying.
>> I have no objection to people posting "personal reminiscences" of
>> encounters with ULs, relevant stories, or even long-winded discussions
>> of wedding etiquette.
Er, Michele... if you *don't* object to the wedding etiquette can we
just leave it out of the discussion? (Mixing serious statements with
sarcasm for polemical purposes is often frowned upon).
>I well recall your getting snarky over people posting "ways to chase the
>Jehovahs Witnesses away" stories to this newsgroup for you felt the thread
>was off-charter despite it being chockful of personal reminiscences and
>"this is what a friend told me he did" tales.
Your interpretation of whatever it was that Michele did on that
occasion, whenever it was, doesn't have to be consistent with what
she's saying now. People don't always think or do the same things;
people don't always interpret what other people do the same way.
People can bury the past; people can agree to differ.
>> If you prefer lists of Funny Names for Songs About Sexual Acts Illegal
>> in Many American States and half-remembered half-baked reminiscences,
>> there's always misc.misc.
>
>Whatever AFU's problems are, having people post too much folklore to it
>isn't one of them.
Did someone mention folklore? I didn't notice.
Phil "let's ALL be *FRIENDLY*, dammit!" Edwards
--
Phil Edwards amroth(at)zetnet.co.uk
"With each and every circumstance
I lose knowledge and gain innocence" - Beth Orton
Barbara Mikkelson
Emily Kelly <eke...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
> I *don't* think it's productive to rule out all personal observations and
> anecdotes out of hand,
Precisely. Anecdotes have a valid place on AFU (not the sum total of it,
of course, but still a place), and I would be very sad to see them chased
off the group. I think they add both to the texture of the place as well
as to our growing knowledge about specific ULs. Let them be, sez I.
They don't harm anything, and they might well be doing a lot of good.
That's not to say that *if an anecdote is presented as fact* it can't be
questioned. But of course we should ask questions then. "Then" is the
keyword in all this -- I advocate waiting until someone has stridently
asserted the story's veracity before taking him to task over it. Reset
the default, sez I. Fire not wildly at anything that moves but rather
only at Them Wot Deserves Killing.
Let's talk about datapoints for a second -- "I heard it said that..."
*isn't* someone claiming <whatever> as fact, it's but the reporting of a
datapoint. Even without knowing when or where this was heard (although
I'll grant that would be better), you now know this particular belief was
circulating in popular culture, that this wasn't something peculiar to but
your own family. In other words, you learned something.
"I heard Carl's Junior is owned by the KKK" does not mean "I *believe*
Carl's Junior is owned by the KKK." Who on this newsgroup would mistake
one for the other if I were the one saying it? Clearly in the first
instance I would be reporting a datapoint by telling the group the rumour
had been presented to me, and in the second I would be taking leave of my
senses.
To jump the gun by assuming newcomers mean they *believe* something when
they but say they *heard* something is doing them a frightful disservice.
Beyond the insult done to the particular poster, this practice also works
to discourage others from posting what might have proved to be extremely
valuable information about particular ULs. Having seen a million too
many other newcomers who tried to do something similar get jumped on, what
kind of fools would they have to be to want to put themselves through
that?
I get notes from lurkers all the time, and the one common theme that runs
through them is a *fear* of posting to AFU. I honestly could not begin
to keep track of the emails I've written back encouraging those people to
share their stories with AFU, to write up their letter to me as a post.
Most of them do but some of them do not, and AFU is the one to lose out.
I know that because I got to see a lot of stuff that *didn't* get posted
here.
I'm not saying everyone has to stop being indiscriminately snarky (hey,
even I have my days), but I am asking people to consider the cumulative
effect this practice has on the newsgroup. In the long-run, is it worth
it? Is AFU truly gaining more than it is losing?
Barbara "choices" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | A number of weasels were spotted on the
bmikkels@fas. | sidewalk after they had walked under a
harvard.edu | painter's ladder. - Don Erickson
Barbara Mikkelson
Vicki Robinson <vjr...@xcski.com> wrote:
> Ahh, but AFU isn't just a story froup.
True enough -- it's not. But it also shouldn't be a story-free group.
There's room for most everything -- why act like there's not?
> We've landed with many collective feet on lots of posters who simply
> restate a story they've heard.
We might well have been wrong to do that too. Does AFU know when the ice
first appeared in the bathtub? The answer is no -- other places on the
Net knew a long time before we did, and that's because no one came here
to tell us the story.
> We've chided them, nicey-nicey or with condoms and wolves, to include
> some information with the story - where did they hear it? When? What
> was the context?
What if we did all that, changing "chided" to "invited"? Would it make
a difference? Is it at least something we should consider?
The more time I spend pondering this question, the more I see I've often
taken the wrong path. In the past I've often told people they should have
read the FAQ instead of posting a UL here. Great plan -- keeps the
newsgroup uncluttered -- well done, Barbara! Unfortunately, long-term
it's a killer. When ULs don't get posted to AFU, AFU misses out on
knowing what's happening to them.
I spent some time recently reading old DejaNews threads, looking for
recountings of the kidney theft UL. Found a handful too. Also found
double handfuls of followups, each telling the poster in their own way
(some gentle, some not so gentle) that he shouldn't have posted his story
to AFU, that if he'd read the FAQ first he would have known not to for
we've already heard it.
Each telling of the kidney theft was markedly different from the previous
yet those following up (including myself) weren't picking up on this.
The bloody thing was evolving in front of our eyes, yet we were trying
to keep people from telling us about it. And indeed, we succeeded --
we missed out on seeing some key shifts.
The kidney theft UL (guy wakes up in a hotel room one) dates back to 1991
-- it's one of the few major ULs born in AFU's time. Should have been our
nurtured and fussed-over child, yet we now know less about it than if we'd
packed it off to a babysitter and just checked in on it every weekend.
AFU doesn't have to turn into a story group. But it does, I think, need
to make more room for the ULs themselves.
Barbara "else UL be sorry" Mikkelson
--
| I, for one, can state that I have never run
Barbara Mikkelson | around aimlessly with a tennis ball stuck in
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu | my mouth and a blissful expression of total
| mindlessness upon my face. - Bill VanHorne
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jeremy W. Burgeson
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:
>I get notes from lurkers all the time, and the one common theme that runs
>through them is a *fear* of posting to AFU. I honestly could not begin
>to keep track of the emails I've written back encouraging those people to
>share their stories with AFU, to write up their letter to me as a post.
>Most of them do but some of them do not, and AFU is the one to lose out.
>I know that because I got to see a lot of stuff that *didn't* get posted
>here.
I'll say that I have suffered from a genuine fear of posting UL sightings
to AFU. During the summer of '94 (I believe, it was pre-Deja News), I had
a marvelous sighting of a current much-discussed legend, complete with
location (of sighting _and_ alleged occurance), and distribution of people
who believed it. Classic example of what Barbara is disturbed by. Old
news now.
Jeremy
Phil Edwards
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:
>The more time I spend pondering this question, the more I see I've often
>taken the wrong path. In the past I've often told people they should have
>read the FAQ instead of posting a UL here.
<snip>
>Each telling of the kidney theft was markedly different from the previous
>yet those following up (including myself) weren't picking up on this.
>The bloody thing was evolving in front of our eyes, yet we were trying
>to keep people from telling us about it.
This is a very good point, which I'm largely going to ignore - the
more I thought about it the more it seemed that what's really at issue
isn't so much whether afu's a folklore-friendly environment as the
group's attitude to newbies and decloaked lurkers. (Any regular
posters hung-up about posting folklore to afu? Shame on you if so -
for feeling hung-up about posting *anything* to afu, I mean, with the
exception of offcharteria, one-line fever and, er, t-word. You're
*here* now, for goodness' sake - relax. After all, if you do put a
foot wrong you'll find out soon enough (heh)).
If we're talking about newbies, though, I think there is some room for
improvement. I must confess I've always thought newbie-flaming in
general an occasional and regrettable necessity rather than a
bloodsport (et ego, etc). It's like the approach I'd hope we'd take in
conversation. If someone posts a UL, you comment on any new features &
point the poster at the FAQ for their further edification (nicely). If
they post a UL as fact, you point out that it's known in other forms
(pointing out that it's implausible is less important), tell them it
looks like a UL to us and proceed as before. If they post a whole
stack of BTWs and IMHOs and sm*l*ys, tell them this isn't entirely
welcome. Nicely. If they make a factual assertion without sources, for
gods' sake give 'em a break and let it go.
Yes, if I ruled afu every week would be nicey-nicey week... Naah - the
point is to offer a clue *before* unleashing the full force of afu's
blistering pendantry, invitations to a TV dinner with Ewan, irritating
in-jokes and general snottiness. Again, conversational rules should
really apply: if the innocent neophyte argues that the singer from
Marilyn Manson really *is* a gerbil, Silly String really *does* flow
and we can't know for *certain* that nobody's ever had their tonsils
removed at Disney World, we can reiterate our reasons for thinking
otherwise. Nicely - oh, all right, not quite so nicely this time.
List threads, Mornington Crescent cascades, etiquette guidelines and
pointless anecdotes about common rodents can be terminated with
extreme prejudice, however.
Phil "but nicely" Edwards
Michael Doelle
Barbara Mikkelson wrote:
> The kidney theft UL (guy wakes up in a hotel room one) dates back to 1991
> -- it's one of the few major ULs born in AFU's time. Should have been our
> nurtured and fussed-over child, yet we now know less about it than if we'd
> packed it off to a babysitter and just checked in on it every weekend.
>
It's been around for a bit longer than that, although maybe not on the
Net. I recall (m*tt* ?) first hearing it of it in 89 or 90, complete
with FOAFOAF who really ('no shit') knew the 1-kidney guy. It was going
around in Germany and the kidneys were stolen in Italy. Moral: be
careful when venturing South, and at a time when Italy received a lot of
negative press because of stolen cars, etc.
The way it was told was that a guy is kidnapped in his own car (see
above) and is later found by police looking for the missing car/guy in
the backseat minus one kidney.
Sorry, no cites.
michael, munich
Helge Moulding
Michael Doelle wrote:
> at a time when Italy received a lot of negative press because of
> stolen cars, etc.
So, do they make The Club(TM) for kidneys?
--
Helge "And can you circumvent it by just sawing off a leg?" Moulding
Bob Hiebert
In article <5rpovg$70c$2...@nntp2.ba.best.com>, bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:
Darn good case for turning down the afterburners deleted.
>AFU doesn't have to turn into a story group. But it does, I think, need
>to make more room for the ULs themselves.
Room is made for ULs though it appears to be somewhat arbitrary to me. I
fully support gang tackling any fool who vigorously defends an indefensible
tale. It's the ones where people come in and ask about a story that seem to
have a coin toss generator attached to the response bots.
I have watched never ending threads that have nothing to do with ULs. Heck,
I've participated in these. I've sorted through 200+ messages on days where
I'd be lucky to find 20 that actually were discussing ULs. This isn't
necessarily bad, though it has been cumbersome since SEPTEMBER(tm) arrived.
So what pushes the launch button when someone posts a question about ULs? Is
it so that we can spend half our time debating word origins?
It seems to me that the negative vibes come from the group memory of
previous idiots. Glass flow had been debated before, but it was only after
this last round that any thread about glass flow is immediately stomped out.
(the fact that it isn't really a UL is not really germane to my theory, and
is almost never used as a reason to call for an end to the thread). The
tragedy is that we punish newcomers for the sins of assholes long gone.
If you compound this problem by the 50+ regular posters, each with their own
past "nightmare thread" it is possible to see an endpoint that resembles
newsgroup entropy.
Bob "and the Furrian gambit failed" Hiebert
---
E-mail address is invalid. Correct to reply.
Mike Holmans
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) treated us to:
>I get notes from lurkers all the time, and the one common theme that runs
>through them is a *fear* of posting to AFU. I honestly could not begin
>to keep track of the emails I've written back encouraging those people to
>share their stories with AFU, to write up their letter to me as a post.
>Most of them do but some of them do not, and AFU is the one to lose out.
>I know that because I got to see a lot of stuff that *didn't* get posted
>here.
>I'm not saying everyone has to stop being indiscriminately snarky (hey,
>even I have my days), but I am asking people to consider the cumulative
>effect this practice has on the newsgroup. In the long-run, is it worth
>it? Is AFU truly gaining more than it is losing?
Yes it is. And what proved it for me was this, from Harry Teasley in a
post having to explain what a m*tt* is:
>one more of those things about afu culture
>that is so rapidly disappearing in the face of the destruction of Usenet.
>Read the faq, at www.urbanlegends.com. Like anyone still takes posting to
>afu seriously enough to read the faq anymore.
What Barbara is pleading for is a kinder, gentler AFU. It's been said
before, and it'll be said again, though it's not usually said to
someone of Barbara's distinction, but it's one against the many, and
you shouldn't even try.
Too right, people are scared to post here. They damn well should be. I
certainly was. I came across this froup a couple of years ago and
realised after reading twenty or so posts, that this was a weird
place. People spell things wrong, they put weirdness in their names,
they think everything costs two-fifty. And if someone posts something
wrong, whatever wrong is in these lunatics' view, they turn on the
flamethrowers.
But I liked this weirdness. It was an endless source of fascination,
trying to puzzle it out. These *people* were so *interesting*. And I
wanted to join in. And after a couple of months' lurking, I wrote to
Barbara and got some advice, and then I went away to a sinking
building or two, and finally came up with a debut post. It went down
quite well (the main substance of it is in the archive, about Nosmo
King). I'd lost my AFU virginity, and the earth sort of moved for me,
and a few people mailed me to say that they'd liked it.
And there were other things I wanted to post now, but I waited until I
had something to say about them; I went to the library to try and find
something else out; I read the FAQ; I read the relevant bits of the
archive to see whether what concerned me was already there. And if it
was already old hat, or Old Hat, I didn't bother to post.
And after a time, I knew what I was doing. It took a while - months,
in fact - putting the odd foot wrong, getting the odd thing right,
getting to know the ropes (with help from those, especially Barbara,
who mailed encouragement, and occasional dressing-downs). Reaching the
point where, as Phil Edwards put it:
> Any regular posters hung-up about posting folklore to afu? Shame on you if so -
> for feeling hung-up about posting *anything* to afu, I mean, with the
> exception of offcharteria, one-line fever and, er, t-word. You're
> *here* now, for goodness' sake - relax.
Barbara's siren call weakens the froup's ethos.
If it wasn't for the fear of flamage, people wouldn't feel the need to
think about what they post. They wouldn't chisel away at a draft until
it read right. Even if they were really only asking a "Have you heard
this?", they'd make sure it was interesting enough to read.
I'm as interested in the stories as Barbara is, but I want more than
stories from AFU. I've had and got more from AFU than stories, as is
well known. I've gained a life partner, as has Lizz - and it's
happened to others too; Dave Hatunen recently recalled movingly the
support the froup gave when Felicia Hatunen died.
Despite appearances, AFU is a very welcoming froup to anyone who can
say interesting things interestingly, or funny things funnily. People
we'd like to meet at a party, which is perhaps why AFUisti seem to
make much more effort to meet each other than most other froups'
denizens do (with the possible exception of soc.man.WLTM.woman and the
like).
This thread's discussion boils down to quality versus quantity.
Barbara's argument, it seems to me, is in essence a version of 'never
mind the quality, feel the width'. Well, I do mind. I'd rather read
one tale told well than ten told badly. I want every post I read to
amuse me, or inform me, puzzle me, challenge me, or entertain me. I
always hope that someone out there will react that way to what I post.
I know that taking this here is to slightly twist the meaning by
wrenching out of context, but I think that Emily Kelly got it right by
saying:
> I think that kind of carefulness is a good thing, and
> something to be instilled in new posters with both the carrot and the stick.
The stick is more obvious to the public. Newbie-flaming is rarely
meant personally (personally-meant flames are earned after
*persistent* excretion on the carpet), but serves secondarily to
instruct others. The carrot is less public, because it *is* personally
meant. It's friendship, ultimately.
Mike "a fine example of personal reminiscence and anecdote posing as
evidence there, I feel" Holmans
El Sig wondered who she was, the one who looked at him so strangely
the other night
Emily Kelly
Barbara Mikkelson <bmik...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>
>Precisely. Anecdotes have a valid place on AFU (not the sum total of it,
>of course, but still a place), and I would be very sad to see them chased
>off the group. I think they add both to the texture of the place as well
>as to our growing knowledge about specific ULs. Let them be, sez I.
>They don't harm anything, and they might well be doing a lot of good.
I wholeheartedly agree with you until your last two sentences, and then I
have a few reservations. The traffic on AFU is such that encouraging
one type of post, useful as it may be, inherently involves a tacit
discouragement of other types of posts with just as much potential value.
I agree that anecdotal posts are one of the life's blood of AFU, but
if we give them a blanket pass they begin to pose a potential danger to
the overall balance of the group. Maybe we differ as to where that balance
should lie, but that's a different question.
The other question I'm brought to ask is whether AFU really is the unique
haven for anecdotal ULs that you describe. We've always had posters who
reprinted classic and nascent UL sightings from other groups, and now with
Deja News we have an impressive, ready-made collection of net- (and
live-)propagated ULs covering the last two years at least, from a much
wider base than merely AFU.
Granted, it's hardly ready for publication (at least not without a whole lot
more thorough fieldwork and processing), but, then, let's face it, neither
is AFU. Usenet is a terrific place for bouncing ideas off one another,
but it's too self-selected a population to represent anything other than its
own tiny sample, and it's too undisciplined to progress much beyond the
brainstorming phase. AFU has the potential for both entertainment and
scholarship, but it's the nature of the medium that entertainment will always
be paramount, and that's as it should be.
>Let's talk about datapoints for a second -- "I heard it said that..."
>*isn't* someone claiming <whatever> as fact, it's but the reporting of a
>datapoint.
Well, that depends a lot on how the story's treated *after* the "I heard...",
doesn't it? A poster's credence in their story is quite often implicit
until after it's been called into question and they've been forced to retract
or defend. We've all seen examples (and I did perceive the post that began
this whole exchange as one) of posts where the poster begins with an "I
heard..." anecdote, without explicitly maintaining its veracity, but then
goes on to make assumptions based on an implicit belief in the anecdote's
truth.
In cases like that it's entirely appropriate to question both the anecdote
and the assumptions that follow it. That's what Misha did, albeit with a
little unnecessary roughness. But, again, that's a different question, one
I think Phil Edwards and Mike Holmans have both addressed well in this
thread.
>Beyond the insult done to the particular poster, this practice also works
>to discourage others from posting what might have proved to be extremely
>valuable information about particular ULs. Having seen a million too
>many other newcomers who tried to do something similar get jumped on, what
>kind of fools would they have to be to want to put themselves through
>that?
Fools like me, you, and all the other former newcomers who have found homes
here in AFU. All of us were thick-skinned or resilient enough to survive
the gantlet (or sensitive enough to avoid it in the first place). As far
as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume they're
so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its character just
for them. It's also not good for AFU.
Emily "glad fool" Kelly
Madeleine Page
I've been musing about this thread, and think there are two separate
issues under discussion, both of which need talking about. To me, the
first question is what afu is about, what its purpose is. The second is a
particular case of style and approach: how we treat newcomers to the
group, and how we should treat them.
Rather than post a 2ktk article [1] encompassing both, I'll just write
about the first.
Barbara Mikkelson wrote:
>Anecdotes have a valid place on AFU....
>they add both to the texture of the place as well
>as to our growing knowledge about specific ULs. ...
>Let's talk about datapoints for a second -- [an anecdote is]
>but the reporting of a datapoint. Even without knowing when or where
>this was heard (although I'll grant that would be better), you now
>know this particular belief was circulating in popular culture...
>
>To jump the gun by assuming newcomers mean they *believe* something when
>they but say they *heard* something is doing them a frightful disservice.
>Beyond the insult done to the particular poster, this practice also works
>to discourage others from posting what might have proved to be extremely
>valuable information about particular ULs. Having seen a million too
>many other newcomers who tried to do something similar get jumped on,
>what kind of fools would they have to be to want to put themselves
>through that?
Underlying the unfortunate hyperbole of terms like "frightful disservice"
and "a million...newcomers" and so on is a fairly key issue for afuisti.
From what she writes, I conclude that Barbara sees afu as the proper place
for an academic study of ULs, their origins and variants. To this end,
each retelling of the Craig Shergold story, for instance, is what she
calls a "datapoint": when he moves from Teignmouth to Toronto to Tokyo,
it's valuable information. when his brain tumour becomes a toe tumour it's
a datum.
By contrast, what seems to be to underlie at least some of the posts that
say, with varying degrees of snarliness, "We've heard that, it's boring,
go away, read the FAQ" is an implicit belief that one of the functions of
posters to afu is to be interesting, amusing, not too damn repetitive,
adequately sceptical and sufficiently informed about what the group has
dealt with in the past not to rehash the JATO story yet again, even if the
variation introduces fingernails embedded in the steering wheel rather
than traces of Darwin Award winner embedded in a rockface.
Given that the above is a fair summary of the two views of afu, here's my
two fifty's worth on the topic.
First of all, while I'm aware that we have the words "urban folklore" in
our title, I don't think that that is *all* that the group is about. It
is, at least to me, about a community of lively-minded, eclectic, broadly
educated, articulate, sceptical people, having a damn good conversation
that ranges all over the place but starts in "urban folklore" (itself a
term somewhat difficult to pin down). It is, for me, the quinessential
community of amateurs. While I'm sure there are themes and intances of
interest to the professional folklorist that crop up in the group, I don't
think this is a professional or academic forum.
What's more, I don't think that *any* open newsgroup is serviceable for
such pursuits. An example from another field. I read and used occasionally
to contribute to rec.arts.books. James Joyce's work was discussed there on
occasion, and a broad-based interesting discussion of Finnegans Wake might
crop up, joined by an equal mix of enthusiasts and wrong-headed obtuse^W^W
people who think the book is maddeningly and pointlessly baffling. Good
stuff. But rab isn't the place to discuss, say, the meanings of the
hundred letter thunder words in FW or Joyce's use of Viconian philosophy.
For that, there's a Finnegans Wake mailing list: to be moved to join it,
you would have to have a fairly academic interest in a highly specific
topic.
In sum, I don't think that afu is the place for academic fieldwork in
urban legendology. First of all, it's not "the field". Second, serious
work in the area requires a level of detail and a degree of theory that,
to me, undercuts the free ranging ridiculousness, warmth, tetchiness and
humour that is afu. Third, participation in any newsgroup is a form of
play for nearly all of us. This does not make what we do as a group either
irresponsible or without core values (scepticism is one we all share, I
think, however different our politics). But it does mean, to me at least,
that the full time study of ULs is best conducted in a mailing list, and
that a playful, sceptical approach to rumours and stories is fine in afu.
Finally, there's probably some middle ground here (Ray Depew often seems
to capture it in what he posts)
Madeleine "next exciting installment: why spanking newbies is a Good Thing
and valuable exercise to boot" Page
[1] In-joke, referring to a tendency to post a megaboss number of words
about anything, due to having A Very Complicated Brane. [2]
[2] This was a 2ktk post anyway. Sorry.
Barbara Mikkelson
Emily Kelly <eke...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
> As far as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to
> assume they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken
> its character just for them. It's also not good for AFU.
I don't see how not jumping on people until they do something wrong is
"assuming they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken
its character."
Barbara "presumption of guilt" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | I'd dearly love to know what parts of the world
bmikkels@fas. | consider getting stuck in a cat door and having
harvard.edu | your bum painted blue a form of sex. - snopes
Barbara Mikkelson
Mike Holmans <mhol...@dircon.co.uk> wrote:
> If it wasn't for the fear of flamage, people wouldn't feel the need to
> think about what they post.
Which works better, punishment or reward? How about instead rewarding
newcomers with positive recognition for doing things well?
I know it's easier to slap than it is to hug -- for one thing, it takes
a lot more effort, both immediately and in followup. Yet think about
this -- which would you rather be on the receiving end of? And which
would better motivate you to put best effort into something? Fear I'm
going to wallop you? Or anticipation of a rosy note from me, mentioning
how you'd again made reading the group that day an especial pleasure?
All of the above speaks to *earned* praise or criticism -- now let's talk
about the gratuitous variety. The message I'm picking up both from Emily
and you is that it was uphill both way to school in your day but you
toughed it out. Fine. Fair enough. The group is far richer from having
both of you around, and I'll forcefeed one of my wooden spoons to anyone
who ever says different. But the mistake I think you're both making is
in not seeing that the hills have gotten steeper since then. No one
smacked either one of you about the ears for *looking* like you were
about to do something wrong -- you were at least extended the courtesy
of earning the punishment before you got it.
Punish the wrongdoers without sparing the spoons, sez I, but equally keep
them holstered when there's any doubt. My dad was a carpenter, and one
of the few lessons he tried to get through to me (didn't always succeed,
natch) was the necessity of measuring twice yet sawing once. What that
means in this sense is you can always smack someone *later* but you can't
equally un-smack them.
> I'm as interested in the stories as Barbara is, but I want more than
> stories from AFU.
So do I, luv. The point I've been trying to make is that there is room
for *all* of it. Having stories on AFU does not mean we won't have space
enough for airplane threads, etymology discussions, grocery tips, social
notes, running wars with rec.org.mensa, or anything else. The presence
of one does not threaten the existence or popularity of anything else.
Think of it as a grocery store -- everybody gets to pick up what they
want, and no two people's choices will be exactly the same.
Barbara "and double coupons too!" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | Don't get angry at the New Agers. Sell them
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu | something. - Stephan Zielinski
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Edwards
eke...@acpub.duke.edu (Emily Kelly) wrote:
>We've all seen examples (and I did perceive the post that began
>this whole exchange as one) of posts where the poster begins with an "I
>heard..." anecdote, without explicitly maintaining its veracity, but then
>goes on to make assumptions based on an implicit belief in the anecdote's
>truth.
>
>In cases like that it's entirely appropriate to question both the anecdote
>and the assumptions that follow it. That's what Misha did, albeit with a
>little unnecessary roughness. But, again, that's a different question, one
>I think Phil Edwards and Mike Holmans have both addressed well in this
>thread.
But I don't think it *is*, fundamentally, a different question.
Barbara's argument was that we've missed seeing ULs develop because
afu has been a hostile environment to anecdotes. Unpack this and you
get a group of people who are intensely interested in how ULs develop
and change, who fail to notice ULs developing and changing before
their very eyes because they're more concerned with enforcing group
norms. Barbara's secondary point - that more UL evidence went unposted
because the potential posters were scared off - is pretty much
unprovable but is, at least, a hypothesis worth considering.
What I'm saying, in other words, is that we risk doing ourselves a
double disservice: not only we may scare off potentially clueful
newbies, we may overlook the intrinsic interest of folkloric material
because we're too busy yelling about the FAQ. I know, I've done it: I
recall giving a particularly vivid example of the mutated Mexican Pet
a severe roasting on the grounds that parts of it were tediously
familiar and the other parts didn't make any sense. *Wrong* answer
(and thanks to Charles for putting me right).
>All of us were thick-skinned or resilient enough to survive
>the gantlet (or sensitive enough to avoid it in the first place). As far
>as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume they're
>so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its character just
>for them.
I almost agree with this. However, I do think it would be possible -
and desirable - to apply the flamethrower more selectively; to assess
where it's really needed, as I was discussing in my last post. This
wouldn't, actually, make afu any 'weaker' an environment. It would
just mean that when we tell people, in effect, that they can't come in
here talking like that, we'd be targetting things which *actually
deserve it* (posting off-charter, arguing badly, responding to
argument with shouting - ignorance, stupidity and arrogance,
basically) rather than not knowing the group's mores (you'll gather
from this that I don't necessarily agree with Barbara regarding
Michele's post). Emily's argument is reminiscent of the arguments
advanced in defence of 'hazing' & suchlike 'initiation' practices: I
got through it, my friends got through it and we're all great guys -
if we stopped doing it we might wind up with a group full of nerds.
In this respect I think Bob Hiebert's point is particularly valuable:
>So what pushes the launch button when someone posts a question about ULs? Is
>it so that we can spend half our time debating word origins?
>
>It seems to me that the negative vibes come from the group memory of
>previous idiots. Glass flow had been debated before, but it was only after
>this last round that any thread about glass flow is immediately stomped out.
>(the fact that it isn't really a UL is not really germane to my theory, and
>is almost never used as a reason to call for an end to the thread). The
>tragedy is that we punish newcomers for the sins of assholes long gone.
I think there's a lot of truth in this - and I don't think 'tragedy'
is too strong a word.
On the other hand I thought Mike Holmans got it rather instructively
bass-ackwards.
>What Barbara is pleading for is a kinder, gentler AFU. It's been said
>before, and it'll be said again, though it's not usually said to
>someone of Barbara's distinction, but it's one against the many, and
>you shouldn't even try.
"You shouldn't even try" - well, OK, I'll see your arguments (and
raise you two-fifty). But "it's one against the many"? Is there a
majority positively in favour of snarkiness? Even if there were, would
that be a good reason for dismissing arguments against?
>Too right, people are scared to post here. They damn well should be. I
>certainly was.
< snip >
>after a couple of months' lurking, I wrote to
>Barbara and got some advice, and then I went away to a sinking
>building or two, and finally came up with a debut post.
< snip>
>And after a time, I knew what I was doing. It took a while - months,
>in fact - putting the odd foot wrong, getting the odd thing right,
>getting to know the ropes (with help from those, especially Barbara,
>who mailed encouragement, and occasional dressing-downs).
Mike felt he had to lurk for two months, then write to someone for
advice *before ever posting to the group*. That's a tough group - and
I don't think it is or should be *that* tough. Eejits like me, who
lurk for a couple of days before leaping in bedecked with acronyms,
could easily be repelled by that kind of immigration policy. (And it's
worth considering, as that quivering newbie Tyler recently pointed
out, that afu's assembled flamepower has very little effect on some
people who we'd actually like to keep out of the group).
>Barbara's siren call weakens the froup's ethos.
>
>If it wasn't for the fear of flamage, people wouldn't feel the need to
>think about what they post. They wouldn't chisel away at a draft until
>it read right. Even if they were really only asking a "Have you heard
>this?", they'd make sure it was interesting enough to read.
I don't think this argument works. For myself, I'm well aware of the
possibility of being called to account for substandard posting, but no
flame would be required - precisely because of this awareness.
(Indeed, if I were flamed I would take it personally and sulk). The
virtues of afu - the value it puts on clear thinking, serious
research, civil debate, good writing, purity of essence and a sense of
humour - can be drawn to the attention of new posters who don't
observe them fairly loudly and demonstratively, but within the group
they can't be enforced or inculcated by flamage. You "get it" because
you want to get it and you're capable of getting it.
>Despite appearances, AFU is a very welcoming froup to anyone who can
>say interesting things interestingly, or funny things funnily. People
>we'd like to meet at a party, which is perhaps why AFUisti seem to
>make much more effort to meet each other than most other froups'
>denizens do
Most other froups? That's an awfully big domain. I passed through
alt.fan.pratchett a while back, and they seemed pretty huggy.
(Besides, personally I'm much better in afu than I am at parties).
Anyway, I don't think afu is *primarily* a group of like-minded
people. Of current regulars alone, I can think of a good dozen people
who I respect for being consistently sensible, interesting and funny -
including <mumble> who I'm personally fond of. But afu isn't the place
I go to see these people, it's the place I go *because it's afu*.
>I think that Emily Kelly got it right by
>saying:
>
>> I think that kind of carefulness is a good thing, and
>> something to be instilled in new posters with both the carrot and the stick.
The question is, what kind of carefulness - what kind of offence?
Posting rumour as fact, arguing without due care and attention? Apply
the ultimate sanction - the Pendantic Rebuttal. But posting twice-told
ULs? A rap on the knuckles at most, surely. Sm*l*ys? A quiet word from
Charles should do the trick. Violating the BOA? BFD.
Phil "in short, I think there's a lot to be said on both sides"
Simon Slavin
In article <5rpmni$70c$1...@nntp2.ba.best.com>,
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu (Barbara Mikkelson) wrote:
> Emily Kelly <eke...@acpub.duke.edu> wrote:
>
> > I *don't* think it's productive to rule out all personal observations and
> > anecdotes out of hand,
>
> Precisely. Anecdotes have a valid place on AFU (not the sum total of it,
> of course, but still a place), and I would be very sad to see them chased
> off the group. I think they add both to the texture of the place as well
> as to our growing knowledge about specific ULs. Let them be, sez I.
> They don't harm anything, and they might well be doing a lot of good.
I have no problem with anecdotes being posted. What I object to is
the simple posting of an anecdote with no attribution, source,
comment or illumination. There's little point in reading another
version of the 'dynamite dog runs under pickup' story if you don't
know where the poster is from, where they heard/read it, whether it
was presented as true, etc.. I don't think we need yet more faxlore
with five levels of indentation.
The one time I flamed someone over a post like this, I was very
careful to state that I welcomed such a post if some sort of
attribution or encounter details were added.
Simon.
--
Simon Slavin -- Computer Contractor. | Oh, sorry, you neglected to
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk | mention above that the child
Check email address for spam-guard. | was the antichrist. -- sharkey@
Junk email not welcome at this site. | ee.mu.OZ.AU (Nicholas MOORE)
Morbidia I
I am posting because I seem to have offered the anecdote that caused this
thread. At the end of my reply to Michele's post about the cultural
inappropriateness of my screen name and the perceived inadequacy of my
posting an anecdote as evidence (in reality I was posting the anecdote as
an anecdote) I said that I would not waste further bandwidth on the
argument (whew what a run-on). I guess that I lied. The anecdote and
resulting fallout seems to have generated a considerable amount of
discussion.
At least let me clarify my status. I have been following this newsgroup
for over a year, I have read the FAQ, I have read both the factual and
fatuous, I have posted before (although I have never generated this much
controversy), and the occasional flame does not deter me from posting. In
fact, as long as you stay out of my mailboxes (virtual and wooden) and off
my front lawn, you can flame away. Being a believer in the saying
(attributed to many sources so I can't give you a definitive cite) that
one should never argue with idiots in public -- bystanders may not be able
to tell the difference -- I rarely respond to flammage.
In my opinion, Barbara and Phil are both right in that attacking posters
for posting urban legends (whether in the FAQ or not), anecdotes that have
potential to become urban legends, and jokes that may eventually be taken
as urban legends can be counterproductive to the purpose of this group (at
least as it claims to be chartered). ULs are flexible entities that
evolve over time. The kidney UL may be the latest example (changed with
each retelling), but did anyone notice that the Scoopa Diver changed
location from California to Capri to several other places? Did anyone try
to correlate these moves to news reports of real fires? Maybe there was an
effect to be observed, than again maybe not.
To me, the adherence of some members of the old-timers of this group to
the FAQ is frighteningly reminiscent of the way that some creationists
adhere to the literal KJ bible. They like established stories cut and
dried and only want to see new things not mentioned before. The main
difference is that the FAQ certainly should not be considered divinely
inspired.
Having written all of the above, I will go back to lurking. Whether
members of the old-timers like it or not, I will post when I feel that I
have something I want to say.
Madeleine Page
> > assume they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken
>
> I don't see how not jumping on people until they do something wrong is
> "assuming they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken
> its character."
>
> Barbara "presumption of guilt" Mikkelson
This is getting sort of circular.
The issue at the heart of this discussion is whether someone posting, say,
the JATO story for the umptieth time is doing something "wrong" in afu
terms or not.
Madeleine "it's not a presumption of guilt so much as a different
definition of it" Page
Emily Kelly
Billy Chambless <bi...@cast.msstate.edu> wrote:
>In article <5rvf1e$e...@news.duke.edu>, eke...@acpub.duke.edu (Emily Kelly) writes:
>
>|> as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume
>|> they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its
>
>
>DON'T VERB NOUNS!!!!!
From my parents' Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged):
gentle: ...-v.t. 12. to tame; render tractable. 13. to mollify; calm;
pacify. 14. to make gentle. 15. to soothe by petting.
Emily "deeply hurt that you could harbor such suspicions against me" Kelly
Bob Hiebert
>Argrhgghgh!!!!
>
>DON'T VERB NOUNS!!!!!
Excuse me, but I think you meant "don't VERBIFY nouns."
Bob "you're welcome" Hiebert
Billy Chambless
[ serious discussion deleted -- there's enough opinions, they don't need
mine ...]
|> as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume they're
|> so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its character just
David Hatunen
In article <33e39034...@news.zetnet.co.uk>,
Phil Edwards <amr...@zetnet.co.uk.NOJUNK> wrote:
[...]
>I almost agree with this. However, I do think it would be possible -
>and desirable - to apply the flamethrower more selectively; to assess
>where it's really needed, as I was discussing in my last post. [...]
I think this whole thread is based on the supposition that somehow we can
keep everyone from getting up on the wrong side of the bed. it is *not* AFU
that flames a clueless newbie, it is one of the posters, and by that we seem
to mean one of the regulars, and we're all going to be bitchy from time to
time. If your think AFU is sometimes unnecessarily flamefulm, try some of
the others.
I have, from time to time, been a trifle more ascerbic than the situation
deserved. I've gotten some kind notes from some of the others that I ought
lighten up, and I've appreciated the gesture.
So I say, lighten up. This collective breast-beating is getting a bit
tiresome.
--
*********** DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@wco.com) ************
* Daly City California: *
* where San Francisco meets The Peninsula *
******* and the San Andreas Fault meets the Sea *******
David Hatunen
In article <19970802231...@ladder02.news.aol.com>,
Morbidia I <morb...@aol.com> wrote:
[...]
>To me, the adherence of some members of the old-timers of this group to
>the FAQ is frighteningly reminiscent of the way that some creationists
>adhere to the literal KJ bible. They like established stories cut and
>dried and only want to see new things not mentioned before. The main
>difference is that the FAQ certainly should not be considered divinely
>inspired.
I was with ya all the way up to here. But now I take exception. The FAQ,
unlike most forms of Holy Writ, is changeable, and is changed from time to
time as *facts* become available. It is not considered Divinely Inspired,
but rather Research Centered. As such it deserves a great deal of deference.
>Having written all of the above, I will go back to lurking. Whether
>members of the old-timers like it or not, I will post when I feel that I
>have something I want to say.
Feel free. You're certainly not a gNat.
David Hatunen
In article <5rvnm5$d...@panix2.panix.com>,
Madeleine Page <mp...@panix.com> wrote:
[...]
>First of all, while I'm aware that we have the words "urban folklore" in
>our title, I don't think that that is *all* that the group is about. It
>is, at least to me, about a community of lively-minded, eclectic, broadly
>educated, articulate, sceptical people, having a damn good conversation
>that ranges all over the place but starts in "urban folklore" (itself a
>term somewhat difficult to pin down). It is, for me, the quinessential
>community of amateurs. While I'm sure there are themes and intances of
>interest to the professional folklorist that crop up in the group, I don't
>think this is a professional or academic forum.
I am reminded of my undergraduate days at the University of Louisville,
where the Language Lab Gang was far wider in scope than Language Lab stuff,
although the lab served as out on-campus lounge and discussion center. When
a real language student wandered in to use the lab for its formally intended
purpose, someone did, in fact, quickly cue up the appropriate tape.
[...]
Billy Chambless
In article <5s0n0i$e...@news.duke.edu>, eke...@acpub.duke.edu (Emily Kelly),
obviously in a dic-waving mood, writes:
|> Billy Chambless <bi...@cast.msstate.edu> wrote:
|> >|> as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume
|> >|> they're so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its
|> >DON'T VERB NOUNS!!!!!
|>From my parents' Random House Dictionary of the English Language (unabridged):
|> gentle: ...-v.t. 12. to tame; render tractable. 13. to mollify; calm;
|> pacify. 14. to make gentle. 15. to soothe by petting.
Okay, fine. I spoke too soon; you got me. You have presented four (4)
reasonable definitions that fit your usage, therefore I am dropping all
charges of noun-verbing.
Would it 13 you if I were to come over and 15 you for a while?
|> Emily "deeply hurt that you could harbor such suspicions against me" Kelly
Billy "Guilty until a cite for innocence is found" Chambless
TZack4
>
>|> >DON'T VERB NOUNS!!!!!
>
>|>From my parents' Random House Dictionary of the English Language
>(unabridged):
>
>
>|> gentle: ...-v.t. 12. to tame; render tractable. 13. to mollify;
calm;
>|> pacify. 14. to make gentle. 15. to soothe by petting.
>
>Okay, fine. I spoke too soon; you got me. You have presented four (4)
>reasonable definitions that fit your usage, therefore I am dropping all
>charges of noun-verbing.
>
>Would it 13 you if I were to come over and 15 you for a while?
>
>|> Emily "deeply hurt that you could harbor such suspicions against me"
Kelly
>
>
>Billy "Guilty until a cite for innocence is found" Chambless
>
>
uhhh...I hate to get nitpicky with you, but.......even if the word
"gentle" was not suited to use as a verb, the grammatical flub could
hardly be called "noun-verbing." The reason is simple...it's not a noun,
but an adjective.
TZack4
Barry Traylor
<snip of previously posted material, thoughtful and engaging though it was>
I came to here after reading several posts in [alt.humor.best-of-usenet]
that came from AFU. After having "signed on" (clicked on, really -- I
don't use rn much any more), I found the general level of discourse to be
much funnier than anything posted on a regular basis to the "humor" froups.
My interest in folklore is not of a general nature (although I now have a
complete set of the Brunvand books), but comes from my experience with
"recovery fellowships", the participation in the service structure of one
of those fellowships, and the frustration that comes from knowing that 95%
of the information passed on as "G-d's honest truth", is at best
apocryphal, and is at worst a perpetuated outright lie. I have made nearly
0% headway in correcting the "heresy" (heresy is a mipsleling of hear-say,
as far as I can tell), and am hence frustrated. As such, I can identify
with the frustration, expressed as flames, leveled at the various and
sundry that insists that flass glows, that some idiot using a JATO smashed
into a mountain in Arizona, etc., etc..
Before reading the FAQ (and the material that the FAQ pointed to), I too
believed that gloss flaws, despite my superficial knowledge of optics and
(admittedly impaired) common sense.
My first posting was to ask if "voracious" was an inside joke. I didn't
know what BOA meant, until I saw the answer to someone else's question
about that.
Since coming to AFU, I have found a (relatively small) group of people who
(usually) express themselves quite well and have a good sense of both logic
and the ridiculous. Much of my time in newsgroups is spent on things like
[comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.nt.kernel-mode], which while technically and
intellectually stimulating, does not provide any sense of bonding with
other members of such groups. The accepting clannishness of AFU provides a
sense of belonging that I have not experience elsewhere, despite my never
having posted more that 20 lines of signal. It's the *attitude* of the
group that provides that identification: I have the same attitude about
permuted junk passed off as truth that many others in this froup have. I
have benefited also from the encouragement I have received from the "hats".
AFU is an interesting social club. The sociological aspects of the
interactions of the regulars in the face of newbies is fascinating. The
rules of engagement have changed since my arrival in February (I think).
After being intrigues by my first exposure to ssalg swolfs, I have shared
the horror of no less than 3 subsequent reappearances, occasionally two or
more at the same time. Rick Tyler's interesting responses to gNat are
becoming a froup norm for dealing with nasty flamebaiting trollers. That
is a new social behavior that has evolved in just the last month or so.
So, what's my point? My point is that for this froup to remain the very
interesting place that it is, everyone needs to continue disagreeing,
digressing and meandering. Be petty. Be nasty. Be kind. Be pendantic.
Be hopelessly non-sequitur. Continue cleverly misquoting Firesign Theater,
Airplane, and gawd knows how many other things. This is a neat place. I'm
glad I'm here.
Barry "I already have my flame retardant suit on, thank-you." @ Tredyffrin
Brian Trosko
Barbara Mikkelson <bmik...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
: Which works better, punishment or reward?
In my experience, punishment. AFU had a much higher S/N ratio back before
all the nicey-nicey stuff started. And, I've noticed other newsgroups
that are merciless to erring newcomers, and while a Nat Turner
occasionally shows up, he never sticks around for long.
: I know it's easier to slap than it is to hug -- for one thing, it takes
: a lot more effort, both immediately and in followup. Yet think about
Ask any parent or pet-owner - positive feedback can not be used to
discourage negative behavior. Rewarding people for reading the FAQ,
posting a new and entertaining take on a UL, providing a reference,
answering a question, or the like is all well and good. But that won't
discourage people who have no interest in the purpose of the group, and
only want to start another G***s f***s thread, or another list of songs
about defenestration.
To properly train your child to behave, you can't just give him ice cream
whenever he does his homework; you've got to ground him for *not*
doing his homework, and teach him that he can't go out and play
basketball in the park until he finishes his schoolwork. In the first
post I ever made to AFU, I got lucky; I hadn't read the FAQ, and I just
jumped into a thread. I just assumed that a group called
"alt.folklore.urban" had to be something more than people just sitting
around and saying "Have you heard the one about Barry Manilow getting a
quart of semen pumped from his stomach?" and "Yeah, I did, it was in
'The Mexican Pet'," and I actually posted concrete information with an
actual reference. My one error was the posting of a smiley, for which I
earned prompt pointers to the FAQ, specifically wherein it contained
regulations regarding emoticons. But I was also complimented for my post.
I went, read the FAQ, and stuck around.
In my mind, AFU has become almost entirely noise over the course of the
past year. I think that if you really want to preserve the useful
content, you've got to discourage bad behavior as well as encourage
good behavior. Simply doing the latter won't make things all nicey-nicey.
Brian "Insert relevant nickname here" Trosko
Bob Church
In article <mpage-02089...@netnews.voicenet.com>,
mp...@panix.com (Madeleine Page) wrote:
>The issue at the heart of this discussion is whether someone posting, say,
>the JATO story for the umptieth time is doing something "wrong" in afu
>terms or not.
>
>Madeleine "it's not a presumption of guilt so much as a different
>definition of it" Page
I had a wierd (and serious) problem when running Word 5.1 (an older
version) with the newer system 7.5. It made no sense at all. So, I posted a
note to the correct Mac group asking for an anwer. I got a terse, somewhat
sarcastic reply which included the faq entry that addressed (and solved)
the problem.I was on topic, and felt that I was treated a little rudely.
But I was being rude for not having checked the faq. The man who aswered my
question didn't really break it off in me, and I have no ill feelings, but
I'll definitely check the faq before posting again.
If someone's pride is hurt, go for revenge. Seriously. Instead of whining
and crying because you were corrected, go to the library and do research
that will make them all cower in shame. Halfway through the project you'll
realize that it feels really good to build on the AFU database and have
something real to contribute. Only then will you really understand. At
least that's when the light came on for me.
Bob Church
George Byrd
Speaking about "Re: Offtopic chatter (Was Re: Probably heard the oral
sex ones before.....)"
In <alt.folklore.urban> On 3 Aug 1997 02:29:00 -0700,
<Brian Trosko <btr...@primenet.com>> said:
>Barbara Mikkelson <bmik...@fas.harvard.edu> wrote:
>: Which works better, punishment or reward?
>In my experience, punishment. AFU had a much higher S/N ratio back before
>all the nicey-nicey stuff started. And, I've noticed other newsgroups
>that are merciless to erring newcomers, and while a Nat Turner
>occasionally shows up, he never sticks around for long.
And AFU has been nicey-nicey to gN*t or J*ffy? Don't mistake style
for substance.
>: I know it's easier to slap than it is to hug -- for one thing, it takes
>: a lot more effort, both immediately and in followup. Yet think about
>Ask any parent or pet-owner - positive feedback can not be used to
>discourage negative behavior. Rewarding people for reading the FAQ,
>posting a new and entertaining take on a UL, providing a reference,
>answering a question, or the like is all well and good. But that won't
>discourage people who have no interest in the purpose of the group, and
>only want to start another G***s f***s thread, or another list of songs
>about defenestration.
But flaming someone for posting a smiley the first time, or for not
finding something in the FAQ, or for being mistaken about some point
of fact, is pure group folly detrimental to the group's purpose.
One longtime poster who has contributed much signal over the years
once voiced in email to me, a newbie, his concern that AFU scares off
newbies bearing signal.
>To properly train your child to behave, you can't just give him ice cream
>whenever he does his homework; you've got to ground him for *not*
>doing his homework, and teach him that he can't go out and play
>basketball in the park until he finishes his schoolwork. In the first
>post I ever made to AFU, I got lucky; I hadn't read the FAQ, and I just
>jumped into a thread. . . .
>> But I was also complimented for my post.
>I went, read the FAQ, and stuck around.
"And beat him when he sneezes.
He only does it to annoy.
Because he knows it teases."
You've just undercut your argument by admitting that you just "got
lucky".
>In my mind, AFU has become almost entirely noise over the course of the
>past year. I think that if you really want to preserve the useful
>content, you've got to discourage bad behavior as well as encourage
>good behavior. Simply doing the latter won't make things all nicey-nicey.
Good judgment is everything. Flaming a signal bearing newbie for a
peccadillo is as foolish as encouraging a gN*t.
George "give 'em a fair trial and then hang 'em"
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc.
Opinions above are NOT legal advice.
"Any fool can make a rule and every fool will mind it."
<<< H. D. Thoreau, _Journal_, 2/3/1860 >>
Ian A. York
>location from California to Capri to several other places?
Well, if I recall correctly (and, since I just checked DejaNews, I do
recall correctly) the fact that the scuba diver has moved from place to
place has been pointed out (often with lists of variants) on AFU in April
1996, May 1996 (twice), June 1996 (twice), Aug 1996 (twice), Oct 1996, Nov
1996, and Jan 1997 (twice). There were probably other mentions of this,
but life is short and DejaNews is long.
Which brings me to my first point. You're absolutely right that new
variants of ULs should be acknowledged as such. When I see something
that's new to me, I do try to point that out. But after a while I run out
of new things to say.
That doesn't mean that it would be a bad thing to point them out, but it
does mean that it isn't going to be me that points it out, because I don't
like to just repeat myself.
>Did anyone try
>to correlate these moves to news reports of real fires? Maybe there was an
>effect to be observed, than again maybe not.
Which brings me to my second point. You say "Did anyone try ...". I
dunno. Did you? Why not?
This is a newsgroup. It's not TV. I'm not here to entertain you. You
get out of a group what you put into it. If *you* didn't do something,
then you don't have the right to complain about other people not doing it.
>To me, the adherence of some members of the old-timers of this group to
>the FAQ is frighteningly reminiscent of the way that some creationists
>adhere to the literal KJ bible. They like established stories cut and
>dried and only want to see new things not mentioned before. The main
Well, this puzzles me. As I say, the new things *do* get pointed out.
But (1) because they're new to to you, doesn't mean they're new; (2) if
you don't point them out, then you're doing exactly what you just
criticized others for doing; and (3) there is a reasonable amount of
criticism of the FAQ. There are several lines in there that I think
should be changed. I'm working on it.
You've pushed two of my peeve buttons with this post. You've claimed that
new things aren't welcomed, but your example is one that contradicts your
point--it's one where new aspects have been constantly pointed out. And
you seem to have the attitude that you're somehow exempt from the things
you criticize others for--that "we" (members of AFU) should be
entertaining "you" (um, other members of AFU?) even though "you" don't
feel you have to do anything for "us".
There is no "we" and "you". We has met the AFUista, and we is they.
I don't think anyone has ever been flamed for pointing out ULish aspects
of a post, even when those ULish aspects have been made before. If
someone *does* flame you, then I for one (and I'm not the only one) will
back you up. When you spot something new, please point it out. I can't
see everything, and neither can Barb or Michele or Helge.
Having said that, I agree with Phil.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Phil Edwards
hatunen@shell. (David Hatunen) wrote:
>it is *not* AFU
>that flames a clueless newbie, it is one of the posters, and by that we seem
>to mean one of the regulars, and we're all going to be bitchy from time to
>time.
Sure - it's whether we feel we're acting in the Spirit of the Group
and smiting the outsider with Righteous Indignation by so doing. My
particular bugbear is megawatt flamage for infractions of group norms,
which is unlikely to be down to individual scratchiness. But I think
I've said all this & will now shaddap.
>I have, from time to time, been a trifle more ascerbic than the situation
>deserved. I've gotten some kind notes from some of the others that I ought
>lighten up, and I've appreciated the gesture.
>
>So I say, lighten up. This collective breast-beating is getting a bit
>tiresome.
As a matter of fact, I appreciate that gesture!
Phil "a soft answer, and all that" Edwards
Drew Lawson
In article <5rum3e$l...@mtinsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Bob.H...@worldnet.REMOVE.att.net (Bob Hiebert) wrote:
> So what pushes the launch button when someone posts a question about ULs?
From what I've seen, many of these come from the way that the question
is presented.
As we all know, Usenet is full of people with a wide range of verbal skill.
Sometimes, a person posts what is (insert benefit of doubt) intended as a
genuine question about a particular UL. Unfortunately, this question is
phrased vaguely enough that it could be taken as a question about the UL
or a question about a presumed real occurance or a host of other things.
An example (unfortunately not far from reality) is:
I saw that you say glass doesn't flow, but my high school shop teacher
says it does. What's the deal?
This person could be reporting a source for the story or arguing that
the story is true. It isn't clear, so the interpretation is up to the
reader.
When these questions come in relating to Undying Threads, the response
goes toward presumption of guilt.
Of course, most of these could be avoided by longer lurking times and less
cross-posting.
Drew "a lesson learned by fire, much of which I deserved" Lawson
--
Drew Lawson | Broke my mind
dr...@furrfu.com | Had no spare
http://www.furrfu.com/ |
Harry MF Teasley
Phil Edwards (amr...@zetnet.co.uk.NOJUNK) wrote:
> Sure - it's whether we feel we're acting in the Spirit of the Group
> and smiting the outsider with Righteous Indignation by so doing. My
> particular bugbear is megawatt flamage for infractions of group norms,
> which is unlikely to be down to individual scratchiness. But I think
> I've said all this & will now shaddap.
Why can't it be put down to individual scratchiness? This *is*
asynchronous, you know. You must be blind to not see many responses in
threads that would not exist if the propogation of articles was
instantaneous. The same holds true for flames.
Once upon a time (is everyone seated comfortably?), AFU prided itself on
being acerbic, troll-loving, and generally tougher than your average
froup. Can't hang with the afu crowd? Fuck off to another group then,
that was the attitude when I first ventured in here, however many years
ago that was. I found that attitude appealing, not because I want to tell
people to fuck off, but because it means that this place is one where
simply existing doesn't mean that folks are just going to roll over for
you.
Since that time, Usenet has become so huge that it is bursting at the
seams, some megafraction of the newsspool at your site is (guess what)
spam and spam cancel messages, and instead of a neighborhood block party,
AFU is now Grand Central Station. Things have changed alot.
What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuck that shit. It's
the sort of uplifting, supportive, hand-holding environment that AFU never
was, and that I find so damned boring. Now wait for the condescending
explanation of how no, that's an overstatement, and some joke about her
wooden spoon. Furrfu.
Dave is right: you can't cure people of posting when in bad moods. Don't
try. Don't try to make AFU alt.folklore.happyfunland, it would be a
crime. If you don't like the flames, such as they are in their current
pathetic incarnation, then post a counter to them, post something
supportive that challenges the flame.
Harry "they call me 'motherfuckin', but they tell my mom that the MF
stands for 'Most Friendly'" Teasley
--
"Your hate would be but a guttering birthday candle to the Martian Death
Ray of my ire." -SC
Visit the AFU archives at www.urbanlegends.com
Phil Edwards
This really will be my last post to this thread (with any luck), for
reasons which will become apparent.
First off, I have to say I agree with Harry.
>What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
>that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
>supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuck that shit. It's
>the sort of uplifting, supportive, hand-holding environment that AFU never
>was, and that I find so damned boring.
Yep. There are plenty of posters out there who are frankly boorish,
ignorant, humourless and logic-deficient; however many variants of
[Your Least Favourite UL Here] they've got to share with us, they need
to be told to shape up or ship out. Repeatedly if necessary.
Having said that, I stand by what I was saying earlier about it being
a Good Thing in general to be civil about pointing people to the FAQ,
to drag out variant details from reposted ULs, etc. (Which is, of
course, precisely what several people who shall remain nameless have
been doing for some time). In this respect I agree with Ian.
I also get cranky when posters who haven't been particularly boorish,
ignorant etc get flamed, snarked or in-joked into submission for
posting sm*l*ys, asserting without cites or writing IMHO when they
mean 'I think' (the fact that this was pretty much my initial
reception on afu might have something to do with it [1]). But this
argument is pretty much a straw man - the Group Norm Border Patrol has
subtler methods these days. I agree with Paraic on this one. (Besides,
I get cranky about plenty of things - smugness, excessive[2]
scratchiness, gratuitous[2] personal references, unfunny[2] one-liners
and all the otherwise insightful and valuable individuals who post
follow-ups to gNat instead of killfiling the blighter, purchasing a
killfile-capable newsreader for the purpose if necessary... sorry,
where was I? Personal cranks, that was it. Subjective judgment[2] and
all that. Disregard them unless you happen to agree with me).
Harry's post also persuaded me that my criticisms of Mike's argument
that afu should be a tough group were a bit overdone. So you could say
(work with me on this one) that I agree with Mike.
Finally, I agree strongly with Madeleine, who mentioned my name in
what appears to be a positive context. Madeleine Page - what a poster!
(See the 'Forensic UL' thread for details).
In short, I agree with just about everybody.
Phil "goodnight, and I love you all!" Edwards
[1] Hi Bo, hi Mike.
[2] Subjective judgment.
JuneClevge
I hope you all won't mind, but I'd like to give a couple of data points
from a fairly new, semi-lurked viewpoint.
1) I have posted here before, and haven't been flamed/harassed/told to go
back and read the faq. Of course, part of the reason for that could be
that I did read the faq before I posted, but then again, I suspect there
are a lot of newbies out there that do. I also harbor a sneaking
suspicion that there really is a sewergator, however, so perhaps I'm just
naive.
2) After my first post, I received a note from someone (who shall remain
nameless) commending my post. Made me feel all warm and fluttery inside
and more determined than ever not to make an ass out of myself. I think
that might be a vote for the nicey-nicey side.
3) The problem I've been having with AFU (and with other groups) has not
been the gNat problem (although I must admit I think the man is a
misogynistic mendacious meddling mouthbreather). It's the crossposts from
hell. While I have been deleting entire threads as soon as I see they are
crossposted to more than 5 groups, I really hate doing that. I have the
curiousity of a cat and am constantly worrying I might be missing the
party. Is there some way to cancel messages based on crossposting (rather
than on content?)
4) One last personal request... I've come in late to the newsgroup
arena. Does anyone have any recommendations as good groups to subscribe
to? I would appreciate any e-mailed suggestions.
Deci (no, not that kind of suggestion) Humphries
Brian Stapleton
Although I live in Oregon, I have never looked up the statute... but I DO
know California's.
Oral Copulation, Anal penetration et al is ALL illegal in Cali...
one catch...
It must be NON-consensual or involving a minor...
I'm apt to believe that most states have the same qualifier...
Brian (was it 288A or 288(a)PC) Stapleton
--
**********************************************
You need only to understand that it is
not necessary to understand, but to enjoy
**********************************************
angie riemersma
>Oral Copulation, Anal penetration et al is ALL illegal in Cali...
>
>one catch...
>
>It must be NON-consensual or involving a minor...
>
>I'm apt to believe that most states have the same qualifier...
That's okay, in the state of Georgia, not only are oral and anal sex
illeagal, but it is also illegal to have sex (of any kind) with the
lights on. Needless to say, I don't think this one get enforced very
much :)
-- Angie <nite...@mindspring.com>
http://www.mindspring.com/~nitehawk/
To replay, take out the .remove from my e-mail address...
![]_eeTPiR8's profile photo](http://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/ALV-UjVxFWTKsexjY1VlLyTJAvorL_u4RYBXh2Ir5sR89QCIo_F_nQ=s40-c)
]_eeTPiR8
In article <5rg0ur$opl$3...@http.pe.net>, r...@pe.net (Rush Strong) wrote:
>In article <gerenNO-ADS.2...@osu.edu>, gerenN...@osu.edu (James
> Geren) wrote:
>
>[snip]
>
>>marriage; is this UL?) and Georgia, whose anti-sodomy statute was challenged,
>>and upheld, in the notorious U.S. Supreme Court case, Bowers v. Hardwick --
>>perhaps the most distressing, poorly-reasoned, and mean-spirited decision to
>>be handed down by the Court in many years.
>
>IIRC, the court ruled that a state had the right to enact its own laws, and
>that the Supreme Court had no right to impose its will upon the state - I
>thought it was indeed well reasoned. [I also believe that the Georgia law is
>absurd, but it's up to Georgia to change it].
No it isn't. If a state violates the Constitution, it is up to the courts to
strike down the offending law. If Georgia legalized slavery, or banned
Judaism, it would not be "up to Georgia", because those are explicitly
unconstitutional actions. Likewise, the "sodomy" laws had no valid secular
purpose and served as an unconstitutional imposition of fundamentalist
Christian beliefs on everyone. Therefore they were unconstitutional under the
1st, 9th, and 14th Amendments.
patrick arink
Harry MF Teasley wrote:
> <<snip>>
>
> Once upon a time (is everyone seated comfortably?), AFU prided itself on
> being acerbic, troll-loving, and generally tougher than your average
> froup. Can't hang with the afu crowd? Fuck off to another group then,
> that was the attitude when I first ventured in here, however many years
> ago that was. I found that attitude appealing, not because I want to tell
> people to fuck off, but because it means that this place is one where
> simply existing doesn't mean that folks are just going to roll over for
> you.
>
> Since that time, Usenet has become so huge that it is bursting at the
> seams, some megafraction of the newsspool at your site is (guess what)
> spam and spam cancel messages, and instead of a neighborhood block party,
> AFU is now Grand Central Station. Things have changed alot.
>
> What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
> that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
> supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuc<<more snip>>
>
> Don't try to make AFU alt.folklore.happyfunland, it would be a
> crime. If you don't like the flames, such as they are in their current
> pathetic incarnation, then post a counter to them, post something
> supportive that challenges the flame.
>
> Harry "<snip> 'motherfuckin' <snip again>" Teasley
>
> Visit the archives at www.urbanlegends.com
>
Once apon a time, not so long ago, I first heard about AFU. Great
newsgroup about urban legends, they said. So I read 300/400 messages and
made my debut posting. I once heard a great story about Rod Stewart and
wanted to know if it was true. WRONG! Poor me. About five people replyed
in the newsgroup but nobody answered my question. They all told me to go
fuck myself and then go to the fucking Archive and read the fucking FAQ.
I was astonished. Was this that great newsgroup they told me about? I
couldn't imagine. This attitude was totally different from other
newsgroups I posted to (for instance: alt.fan.pratchett). What did I do
wrong here? I just wanted an answer to my question. Is that so strange?
And how could I possibly have known there were FAQ? And where?
To avoid irritations by AFUisti and frustration by newbies, I think it
would be a good idea when more people would add the URL of
http://www.urbanlegends.com to their message. I think the Urban Legends
Archive and the FAQ now only appear in flames (what a beautiful sentence
that is!).
A newsgroup where you get flamed when you do something imprudent, like I
did and more newbies do, can expect people like Sheila and Nat Turner to
drop by who love to get this kind of attention. You could say you
invited them. What you give is what you get.
And I think AFU is still that neighbourhood block party. I just think
the neighbourhood is a little bit bigger than it was a few years ago.
For newbies who arrive at this party it is hard enough to feel at home,
even without the flames. Words like m*tt*, sewergator, troll and all the
other words UFUisti use are not understood by newbies. And inside jokes
are only funny when you are inside. It takes thousands of messages to
read when you are new here, to understand most of the jokes. In other
words: you must be very determined to become a regular at AFU. Therefor
I agree with Barbara. I think we should stimulate them, instead of burn
them.
And don't forget: Most of the people who "flame" other people at a party
are thrown out themselfs.
Patrick "Would you please be so kind and read the fucking FAQ?" Arink
Madeleine Page
Harry "Mighty Fine" Teasley wrote:
[a whole load of good stuff about afu -- go back and read it]
I had a feeling of relief when I read this post: instead of being
placating and mealy-mouthed, Harry remembered afu as it was, lived up to
the old way of doing things and told it straight.
Among other things (go back and read the original article), he said:
>Once upon a time (is everyone seated comfortably?), AFU prided itself on
>being acerbic...
>this place is one where simply existing doesn't mean that folks are
>just going to roll over for you....
>What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
>that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
>supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuck that shit. It's
>the sort of uplifting, supportive, hand-holding environment that AFU
>never was, and that I find so damned boring....
You know, he's right. And I'm grateful to Harry for reminding me of how
things were.
What attracted me to this place was that it was robust, feisty, difficult,
challenging, sceptical and bloody-minded. Acceptance wasn't automatic, it
was earned. And a rote retelling of the entire Ronald Opus/ Darwin Awards
story, even with an extra floor for the fall as a Fascinating Variant,
wasn't quite what would cut it. This wasn't
alt.support.holdmyhandwhileImakemyfirstpost, and that's not what we should
become.
I'm not sure what's caused the shift [1], but we seem to be drifting
towards a haze of creamy, self-congratulatory ObNiceness that's much more
of a danger to the culture of afu than are stroppiness, snarkiness, or
snarlitude.
Just to echo what Harry said [2], I too regret afu's increasing tendency
to value the oleaginous over the acerbic. The group will lose its unique,
difficult character if we persist in being syrupy rather than acidulous,
cutesy rather than curmudgeonly.
Madeleine "ObCite: "And if the bland lead the bland, both shall fall into
the ditch" [3]" Page
[1] I think it's as much the loss of posters like Ewan Kirk, Len Berlind,
Andy Wardley et al as the expansion of Usenet: the issue becomes how do we
attract and keep more posters of their calibre. Not by being Nice.
[2] Go back and read the original article.
[3] Matthew 15:14
Rick Tyler
On 4 Aug 1997 00:21:43 GMT, junec...@aol.com (JuneClevge) wrote:
:I hope you all won't mind, but I'd like to give a couple of data points
:from a fairly new, semi-lurked viewpoint.
<snip>
:... I also harbor a sneaking suspicion that there really is a
:sewergator, however, so perhaps I'm just naive. ...
<snip>
:The problem I've been having with AFU (and with other groups) has not
:been the gNat problem (although I must admit I think the man is a
:misogynistic mendacious meddling mouthbreather).
<snip>
:
:Deci (no, not that kind of suggestion) Humphries
Can we keep her(him)? Huh, dad, can we? S/he called gNat a
misogynistic mendacious meddling mouthbreather, Dad, that's good
enough for me.
-- Rick "After the Etienne confusion I'm a little nom shy" Tyler
-------------------------------------------------
"I lied." -- E.G. Land aka Gary Landers aka BARD
aka Nat Turner aka Francis Farmer aka Fanny aka
blondeand14 aka Captain Tripps (and still counting)
Angus Johnston
amr...@zetnet.co.uk.NOJUNK (Phil Edwards) writes:
> eke...@acpub.duke.edu (Emily Kelly) wrote:
>
> >We've all seen examples (and I did perceive the post that began
> >this whole exchange as one) of posts where the poster begins with an "I
> >heard..." anecdote, without explicitly maintaining its veracity, but then
> >goes on to make assumptions based on an implicit belief in the anecdote's
> >truth.
> >
> >In cases like that it's entirely appropriate to question both the anecdote
> >and the assumptions that follow it. That's what Misha did, albeit with a
> >little unnecessary roughness.
>
> Barbara's argument was that we've missed seeing ULs develop because
> afu has been a hostile environment to anecdotes. Unpack this and you
> get a group of people who are intensely interested in how ULs develop
> and change, who fail to notice ULs developing and changing before
> their very eyes because they're more concerned with enforcing group
> norms.
I think this is a good summary, and I'd like to bolster it by pointing
out what Morbidia's contribution _was_. It was not, as Madeleine has
suggested, anything akin to the umpteenth JATO re-enactment. It wasn't
even, as Emily almost concedes, a clear-cut example of credulity. From
memory, Morbidia responded to a post on archaic sex laws by reporting
that it used to be common knowledge that you were committing four
felonies if you fell out of bed during sex in Boston.
Now, this is not a claim I've ever heard before. It wasn't explicitly
presented as gospel, and to my ear it sounded like Morbidia was passing
along some local color, not a data point. I could see myself posting
almost exactly the same thing, with only a few rhetorical flourishes
added to keep everybody off my back.
In short, I thought it was a pretty good rookie post. Nothing a little
Polite Persistent Questioning wouldn't have improved, but pretty good.
Interesting.
> >All of us were thick-skinned or resilient enough to survive
> >the gantlet (or sensitive enough to avoid it in the first place). As far
> >as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume they're
> >so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its character just
> >for them.
>
> I almost agree with this. However, I do think it would be possible -
> and desirable - to apply the flamethrower more selectively; to assess
> where it's really needed, as I was discussing in my last post. This
> wouldn't, actually, make afu any 'weaker' an environment. It would
> just mean that when we tell people, in effect, that they can't come in
> here talking like that, we'd be targetting things which *actually
> deserve it* (posting off-charter, arguing badly, responding to
> argument with shouting - ignorance, stupidity and arrogance,
> basically) rather than not knowing the group's mores
I think Phil makes a very important point here. What drew me to this
group when _I_ got tossed in the deep fryer was that I deserved every
flame I got. I'd just arrived from AOL, where folks flamed for the sake
of flaming, and I was thrilled to find a group where I was cut down for
being unnecessarily obnoxious. If folks had slapped my face for not
knowing the secret handshake, I'd have taken it very differently.
This gets, by the way, at _how_ we flame, as well as when. Too often
recently, I see people framing our mores as hoops folks need to jump
through rather than what they are, which are either reflections of our
values or harmless peccadilloes. The ban on smilies exists for a good
reason---to promote careful writing and discourage weaseling---and
should be defended on those grounds. But "voracity," for instance, has
no such pedigree---it exists because it's funny, it's wordplay, and all
the prattle about newbie detectors when the thousandth person trips the
wire strikes me as ugly and stupid.
--
Angus Johnston
www.mindspring.com/~angusj
Madeleine Page
Patrick Arink wrote:
>To avoid irritations by AFUisti and frustration by newbies, I think it
>would be a good idea when more people would add the URL of
>http://www.urbanlegends.com to their message. I think the Urban Legends
>Archive and the FAQ now only appear in flames (what a beautiful sentence
>that is!).
I like it. FAQ in a burning bush, with a scuba diver on the side.
You're right. We need to publicise the FAQ [1] and TAFKAC [2] more.
>A newsgroup where you get flamed when you do something imprudent... can
>expect people like Sheila and Nat Turner to drop by who love to get this
>kind of attention. You could say you invited them. What you give is what
you >get.
Here I think you're partly right, partly wrong.
We've seen other versions of Sally Samurai and Culex Pipiens come and go.
Mockery and abuse worked to get rid of some, doesn't work so well with
others <shrug>. We're adaptable.
It so happens that both Sheila and gNat love to tweak noses, Sheila for
purposes of politics, gNat for purposes of mischief. They arrived via
crossposting, and stayed. Both have given rise to new ways of dealing with
the irrelevant/ irreverent, felatious regardless post, both have been
taken in stride thanks to humour, inventiveness and the killfile. No big
deal.
However, if you want to blame the accomplished snarlers and snarkers for
Sheila and gNat, then you need also to give them credit for many of the
witty, erudite, signalacious posters around here. There are as many of
them attracted by the articulate free-for-all that is afu as there are
irritants who stay because they get the attention they crave.
>For newbies who arrive at this party it is hard enough to feel at home,
>even without the flames. Words like m*tt*, sewergator, troll and all the
>other words UFUisti use are not understood by newbies. And inside jokes
>are only funny when you are inside.
But afu isn't the Holiday Inn of newsgroups, and our intention is *not* to
make newbies feel instantly at home. In-jokes, flamage, Official Animal
threads and shibboleths have two functions: they amuse regulars and they
serve to warn newcomers that this isn't alt.snuggles, but an environment
where you need to ponder before you post.
If it's a party, it's one that's been going on a long, long time. Many of
the guests who arrived early on are still here. As a result, there are a
number of people who already know each other, a number of themes that have
been talked about, joked about and argued about. And someone who leaps in
as soon as they arrive, yelling "Hey! You heard the one about the rocket,
the driver and the cliff?" is lacking in good guestly manners.
>It takes thousands of messages to
>read when you are new here, to understand most of the jokes. In other
>words: you must be very determined to become a regular at AFU.
Wonderful! It's working!
In short, to stay, you need to like what you see enough to stick around a
while, think before you type, learn the ropes and recognize that what you
value you need to support. I fail to see the problem here, except insofar
as we're insufficiently egalitarian to nurture the mediocre. You want an
automatically extended UL welcome mat, there's an aol group that
specialises in just that.
>And don't forget: Most of the people who "flame" other people at a party
>are thrown out themselfs.
Madeleine "not at *this* party, bub" Page
[1] FAQ is available at www.urbanlegends.com
[2] TAFKAC (the archive formerly known as Cathouse) is at
www.urbanlegends.com
Lee Rudolph
ang...@mindspring.com (Angus Johnston) writes:
>Too often
>recently, I see people framing our mores
There is no truth *whatever* to the suggestion that the Japanese
consider smoldering insectivores a culinary delicacy, much less
that they poach them from "us" (whoever "we" may be, Roundeyes).
Lee "live crawfish, on the other hand..." Rudolph
Lee Rudolph
mp...@panix.com (Madeleine Page) writes:
>But afu isn't the Holiday Inn of newsgroups
Quite right. It's the Motel 666.
Lee "we'll leave the light on for you, Mrs. Baker Eddy" Rudolph
Emily Kelly
Angus Johnston <ang...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>I think this is a good summary, and I'd like to bolster it by pointing
>out what Morbidia's contribution _was_. It was not, as Madeleine has
>suggested, anything akin to the umpteenth JATO re-enactment. It wasn't
>even, as Emily almost concedes, a clear-cut example of credulity. From
>memory, Morbidia responded to a post on archaic sex laws by reporting
>that it used to be common knowledge that you were committing four
>felonies if you fell out of bed during sex in Boston.
>I could see myself posting
>almost exactly the same thing, with only a few rhetorical flourishes
>added to keep everybody off my back.
Having gone back and reread Morbidia's post with her subsequent comments in
mind, I can appreciate this, and my apologies for having misinterpreted her
intent. It would have been nice, though, if it had been less ambiguous
the first time. Your "rhetorical flourishes", Angus, aren't a bad habit
for posters to pick up along the way of their AFU education. Which brings
us back to the underlying subject of the thread.
[Me, then Phil Edwards:]
>> >All of us were thick-skinned or resilient enough to survive
>> >the gantlet (or sensitive enough to avoid it in the first place). As far
>> >as I'm concerned it's a far greater insult to new posters to assume they're
>> >so fragile that we have to gentle the group and weaken its character just
>> >for them.
>>
>> I almost agree with this. However, I do think it would be possible -
>> and desirable - to apply the flamethrower more selectively; to assess
>> where it's really needed, as I was discussing in my last post. This
>> wouldn't, actually, make afu any 'weaker' an environment.
And as far as I'm concerned, that's not gentling the group, and flaming
with discretion goes (or ought to go) without saying. But you're right,
one of the perennial problems in the group is that too often it doesn't.
Thanks for making the distinction.
>I think Phil makes a very important point here. What drew me to this
>group when _I_ got tossed in the deep fryer was that I deserved every
>flame I got.
Well, that's not what you always said then, as I recall...
But this complements what I was already thinking in reaction to Phil's post,
so I'll share some of my thoughts now. It seems to me that a "good flame",
more than anything else, is one that inspires respect in readers who are
open to it [1]--both the recipient and other AFUers who might take a passive
lesson.
For that, it needs to not be automatic, which I think underlies many of the
comments we've seen already in this discussion. It needs to be specifically
aimed and demonstrably deserved (at least arguably so), and it needs to be
entertaining--to add as much positive as negative energy to the group, and
to remind ourselves and the recipient that we're playful even (and
especially) in our discipline.
A final observation is that the AFUers whose flames I admire most--Harry
Teasley and Ewan Kirk to name the two who leap to mind first--tend also to
be among those who fight most fiercely against any version of AFU
group-think, and are most pricklingly aware that the only authority that
allows them to lay down the law is the fact that they can post, just like
anyone else.
>This gets, by the way, at _how_ we flame, as well as when. Too often
>recently, I see people framing our mores as hoops folks need to jump
>through rather than what they are, which are either reflections of our
>values or harmless peccadilloes.
For the most part I agree with you, but I'm not sure I see as clear a
distinction as you do. In a sense I feel like they *are* hoops folks need
to negotiate to be a full part of AFU--otherwise they wouldn't be group mores
and there wouldn't be any meaning when you talk about "our values". Mind
you, folks don't necessarily have to jump through all the hoops and conform
for the sake of conforming, and some of my favorite posters are the ones who
haven't. But to fully join AFU culture, they need to be aware of them and
respect others' observance.
Emily "IHNJ, IJLS peccadillo" Kelly
[1] Of course, there are always a few gNats who aren't interested.
--
Emily Harrison Kelly "You know the type - he keeps puffing out his little
eke...@acpub.duke.edu chest and standing up straight for all he's worth, and
he's still only four foot eight." --Madeleine Page
For the AFU and UL Archive: http://www.urbanlegends.com/
Larry Preuss
In article <01bca139$2c843180$542056d1@extensa>, "Jeff Henkels"
<je...@crusoe.com---> wrote:
> Well, the US Supreme Court disagrees. In their 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick
> decision, they upheld Georgia's sodomy law, which bans all oral-genital and
> anal-genital sex, even between consenting adults.
This may seem a small difference, but is actually central to Bowers: the US
Supreme Court did not uphold Georgia's sodomy law, but refused to find it
unconstitutional. Arguing that the US Constitution did not guarantee a
right to practice sodomy, they found that they could not interfere with the
rights of the State of Georgia to declare it illegal.
Larry
--
Madeleine Page
Angus Johnston wrote:
> I'd like to [point out]
> what Morbidia's contribution _was_. It was not, as Madeleine has
> suggested, anything akin to the umpteenth JATO re-enactment.
This was emphatically *not* my suggestion and, beyond the fact that my
post occurred in a thread originated by Morbidia, it's hard for me to see
how anyone could read what I wrote as a response specifically to her post.
Here's the relevant portion of what I wrote:
> what seems to me to underlie at least some of the posts that
> say, with varying degrees of snarliness, "We've heard that, it's boring,
> go away, read the FAQ" is an implicit belief that one of the functions of
> posters to afu is to be interesting, amusing, not too damn repetitive,
> adequately sceptical and sufficiently informed about what the group has
> dealt with in the past not to rehash the JATO story yet again, even if the
> variation introduces fingernails embedded in the steering wheel rather
> than traces of Darwin Award winner embedded in a rockface.
I keep rereading this, and it still seems to me clear that it was a
response to the general topic of what we think is germane to afu, rather
than a reaction to the content of Morbidia's post. Thread drift happens,
and it had happened here. We had long moved from the specific instance of
her initial post to a more general discussion. And I still think that what
I wrote reflects that more general focus.
If, however, there is another way of interpreting what I wrote, and if
what I said was sufficiently clumsily expressed to read as if it were in
any way aimed at Morbidia's original post, I apologise to her.
Madeleine "Otherwise, to paraphrase a famous .sig quote, "If you want to
ad hominem me to death, you might do better with the ivory-tower
politically-correct fuzzy-liberal geriatric pervert angle. Others have
found it satisfying"." Page
Willis Eschenbach
I hafta confess, the trepidation that I feel each time I post to AFU is a
large part of the joy of being involved. I always feel like I'm doing
something after the guy has said "Now kids, don't try this at home. These
are highly trained professionals."
But I _like_ a froup where people are encouraged to put substance into
their posts, and are roundly discouraged if they don't.
And I have not found, in general, that the punishment is worse than the
crime. If the people who post here have a small modicum of that most
uncommon trait, sense, and if they are just a bit interesting, I have found
that even the Mighty Flamer (whose name cannot be spoken) treats them with
leniency. And Barbara will pardon both sins of omission and sins of
commission, as long as there's a good juicy interesting story involved.And
Ian York will lecture them in an endlessly way, with great cites, and Dave
Hatunen will ... and on and on.
And if not ... somebody will cudgel them mercilessly. What more do we want?
Look, we're not talking about keelhauling miscreants, it's just words. If I
go off the rails ... again ... I reckon someone will say strong words to
me. What I love about AFU is that, unlike other froups, if someone says
strong words to me here ... I probably deserved it.
Willis "but not this time ... I hope" Eschenbach
===========================================================
In article <5s2o71$b...@panix2.panix.com>, he...@panix.com (Harry MF Teasley)
wrote:
> What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
> that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
> supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuck that shit. It's
> the sort of uplifting, supportive, hand-holding environment that AFU never
> was, and that I find so damned boring. Now wait for the condescending
> explanation of how no, that's an overstatement, and some joke about her
> wooden spoon. Furrfu.
>
> Dave is right: you can't cure people of posting when in bad moods. Don't
> try. Don't try to make AFU alt.folklore.happyfunland, it would be a
> crime. If you don't like the flames, such as they are in their current
> pathetic incarnation, then post a counter to them, post something
> supportive that challenges the flame.
>
> Harry "they call me 'motherfuckin', but they tell my mom that the MF
> stands for 'Most Friendly'" Teasley
>
--
E-Mail address, spelled out to block spam, is willis at wco dot com.
Bob Hiebert
>I'm not sure what's caused the shift [1], but we seem to be drifting
>towards a haze of creamy, self-congratulatory ObNiceness that's much more
>of a danger to the culture of afu than are stroppiness, snarkiness, or
>snarlitude.
>Just to echo what Harry said [2], I too regret afu's increasing tendency
>to value the oleaginous over the acerbic. The group will lose its unique,
>difficult character if we persist in being syrupy rather than acidulous,
>cutesy rather than curmudgeonly.
Not to be too pendantic, but what you and Harry are describing ended at
least two years ago. Lost, not "will lose." I agree that it is unfortunate,
but obligatory buggy whip analogies aside, the world does change.
If you are proposing an insurrection to try and resurrect the AFU of old,
that is a different discussion than what I've been reading in this thread.
This place used to be *really* tough. All the wimps that think it is mean
now would have melted in the "good ol' days."
To recreate the past is an interesting thought. When the volume increased
to an unbearable 75 posts per day, increasing the venom only drove the
volume to 100 posts per day with the extra 25 posts going to newbie flame
fests as they went through their hazing. With current volume at 250 per
day, I shudder to think what volume additional flamage might add.
Nevertheless, it is an interesting thought, and might make for a fun
experiment. It might even get Ewan back for a reprise.
I think that what will really happen is that this entire debate will end up
in DejaNews, and that is about as far as it will go. People will post what
they will post, and the social dynamics of the population at any given time
will create the atmosphere that we will all read.
Bob "or not" Hiebert
---
E-mail address is invalid. Correct to reply.
Brett Frankenberger
In article <lpreuss-ya0240800...@news.provide.net>,
Larry Preuss <lpr...@provide.net> wrote:
>
>This may seem a small difference, but is actually central to Bowers: the US
>Supreme Court did not uphold Georgia's sodomy law, but refused to find it
>unconstitutional. Arguing that the US Constitution did not guarantee a
>right to practice sodomy, they found that they could not interfere with the
>rights of the State of Georgia to declare it illegal.
I can't see anything other than a definition being debated here. What
laws has the supreme court actually upheld, by your definition? If I
appealed the local ordinance setting a speed limit, the court wouldn't
really uphold it either, would they? By your definition, they would be
simply noting that the constitution doesn't guarantee the right to
drive fast and thereby finding that they could not interfere with the
right of the city council to make it illegal to drive above a certain
speed.
To put it another way, if the justices wanted to "uphold Georgia's
somody law", what would you have them to different from what they did?
Brett "either confused or trolled" Frankenberger
--
- Brett (bre...@netcom.com)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
... Coming soon to a | Brett Frankenberger
.sig near you ... a Humorous Quote ... | bre...@netcom.com
Justin D. Bukowski
In article <5s547k$1...@panix.com>, Lee Rudolph <lrud...@panix.com> wrote:
>ang...@mindspring.com (Angus Johnston) writes:
>
>>Too often
>>recently, I see people framing our mores
>
>consider smoldering insectivores a culinary delicacy, much less
>that they poach them from "us" (whoever "we" may be, Roundeyes).
I suppose you'll also claim it's a rumor that Chinese restaurants
serve flied lice.
>Lee "live crawfish, on the other hand..." Rudolph
I think someone here (Maddy?) can tell you about the drunken shrimp.
Justin "The cat's out of the bag (and into the little box)." Bukowski
Barbara Mikkelson
David Hatunen <hatunen@shell.> wrote:
> I think this whole thread is based on the supposition that somehow we can
> keep everyone from getting up on the wrong side of the bed.
Push it up against the wall and then let them try it!
Barbara "WallSmart" Mikkelson
--
Barbara Mikkelson | I've been called 'possum' many times when
bmik...@fas.harvard.edu | I've gone Down Under. - Mike Holmans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Had your spooning today? --> http://www.snopes.com
Harry MF Teasley
patrick arink (patric...@pi.net) wrote:
> Once apon a time, not so long ago, I first heard about AFU....
> They all told me to go fuck myself....
Heh.
Hey, you lived. You even stayed. If someone less dedicated got weeded
out by a similar reception, no big deal: there's only six billion more of
them out there.
Harry "guaranteed to offend since 1968" Teasley
Harry MF Teasley
Dave Wilton (dwi...@sprynet.com) wrote:
> I agree that flames are important for the long-term health of the
> newsgroup ("a flame a day keeps gNat away"), and I agree that the
> flames have been pretty pathetic lately--but then gNat and massive
> crossposts aside, there has been little to ignite our furor.
ACtually, *this* I disagree with: flames keep Nat around longer, because
that's what he's here for. Flames used to scare folks off, now they just
attract the attention of even more obnoxious folks. And jeez, look at the
pathetic flames they bring with them: "Jesus is a dick!" "No, you're a
dick!" "No, you are!" Argh.
> But I also believe that our venom should be saved for those that truly
> deserve it.<...>
I agree. Look, if anyone wants to know Harry's Rules of Flaming, here's
the only time I'll ever post them.
1. Never flame anyone in anger. You're not funny or interesting when
you're angry, you're just angry.
2. Make the flame fun to read for everyone, including the flamee,
otherwise use email. If you're going to be an exhibitionist, have
something worth seeing.
3. If you don't find your own flame funny, don't post it.
4. If you break any of the above rules, you're most likely going to
regret the post later.
Harry "this posting will self-destruct in fifteen seconds" Teasley
Mike Holmans
Harry MF Teasley wrote:
> Flames used to scare folks off, now they just
> attract the attention of even more obnoxious folks. And jeez, look at the
> pathetic flames they bring with them: "Jesus is a dick!" "No, you're a
> dick!" "No, you are!" Argh.
I don't know about that, exactly.
Most of those are the religious and anti-religious nutters who either
don't read a.f.u or will regard flames as proof that we need to hear
more from them about their exciting mankind-saving beliefs. The ones who
post mere abuse as flames are (almost) never reading a.f.u anyway. These
are what the thread Ray Depew started off is on about, and the strategy
for dealing with them is much more difficult.
gNits are like the monsters you get in Dr Who or the show about the chap
with the mysterious middle name which grow and become more horrible the
more you pump your usual weapons at them. In such cases, the hero has to
find a new weapon before the end of the episode or the planet is doomed:
Rick Tyler's recent invention of doe snot has certainly saved us for the
present.
> > But I also believe that our venom should be saved for those that truly
> > deserve it.<...>
But then there's the third category, and these are the ones this thread
is about.
I plead guilty to Barbara's comment that because it was uphill both ways
to school and I survived, I think that others should have to run the
gauntlet too.
There seems to be an assumption that every post replying to a newbie or
poor anecdotalist which doesn't shower the poster with encomia is
venomous. Nonsense. I know I post unsugary responses to neophytes,
perhaps a bit too often, but I try and match aggression to the
cluefulness I think the poster has demonstrated. No Clue, no quarter,
but a clip round the ear for someone who can obviously do better.
> I agree. Look, if anyone wants to know Harry's Rules of Flaming, here's
> the only time I'll ever post them.
>
> 1. Never flame anyone in anger. You're not funny or interesting when
> you're angry, you're just angry.
>
> 2. Make the flame fun to read for everyone, including the flamee,
> otherwise use email. If you're going to be an exhibitionist, have
> something worth seeing.
>
> 3. If you don't find your own flame funny, don't post it.
>
> 4. If you break any of the above rules, you're most likely going to
> regret the post later.
>
These are pretty good rules, although there is a place for righteous
anger, which may have to be couched in very unfunny terms. It's
certainly unwise to post in blind fury, but a lot of people have, at one
time or another, been hugely offended by ill-informed comments taking
cheap shots at, usually, the defenceless, and a public beating-up will
ensue: I don't think anyone feels the need to be funny when blasting
someone who posts "AIDS victims are the scum of the earth and deserve
all they get" around here.
But usually trying to be funny when flaming is definitely good. Of
course, what I think is funny isn't necessarily what you think is funny,
but one can but try (and I know *some* people find *some* of my flames
funny). A schoolteacher of mine reckoned that he could teach more with a
joke than twenty minutes of lecturing, because a good joke made people
think. The target of a newbie flame is rarely the newbie: it's a way of
saying "Here's what not to do, kids", so make it funny and instructive,
not just vituperative.
On Angus Johnston's point, I don't think there's much fun either to be
had in jumping on someone solely because they've emoticated, mipsled, or
fallen foul of some other bit of AFUtility: but if they've been boring
and clueless otherwise, then I see nothing wrong in taking the other
offences into consideration before sentencing.
I think it's good that Barbara sparked this discussion: the occasional
"what is AFU for?" thread is useful as a check on things, and we're
never all going to agree because we are lively and eclectic and
opinionated and different and fascinating, and we wouldn't be if we were
all lovely and fluffy and nice.
Oh, and Harry - you're a dick.
Mike "we now return to alt.doe.snot for agNother Positively Final Show"
Holmans
El Sig has discovered her name is Signorina. He is now watching "A Fish
Called Wanda" repeatedly to understand Otto's technique
David Hatunen
In article <33e8752a...@news.sprynet.com>,
Dave Wilton <dwi...@sprynet.com> wrote:
[...]
>I agree that flames are important for the long-term health of the
>newsgroup ("a flame a day keeps gNat away"), and I agree that the
>flames have been pretty pathetic lately--but then gNat and massive
>crossposts aside, there has been little to ignite our furor.
Yeah. And we're getting older.
>But I also believe that our venom should be saved for those that truly
>deserve it. Someone who posts the odd "Here's one I heard..." post
>should be politely but firmly told of what this froup's about. But, if
>it's one of three current threads on the topic, well then it's time to
>start mixing the aluminum soap and gasoline.
I think the flame level is dependent on not just the amount of cluelessness
involved, but also on the arrogance of the poster. We have a lot of newbies
that come in sneering to let us know how wrong we are. And if they have The
Right Stuff, they may even quickly glom onto the specialness of this place
and quickly decide to join in. There are a couple of recent instances of
this. They might not agree, but I think the flames actually helped.
>Civility does not necessarily equate with happyfunland. And a call for
>civility does not necessarily mean that there is not a time and place
>for venom. Let the punishment fit the crime.
--
*********** DAVE HATUNEN (hat...@wco.com) ************
* Daly City California: *
* where San Francisco meets The Peninsula *
******* and the San Andreas Fault meets the Sea *******
David Hatunen
In article <5s6pdo$e...@panix2.panix.com>,
Harry MF Teasley <he...@panix.com> wrote:
>Dave Wilton (dwi...@sprynet.com) wrote:
>
>> I agree that flames are important for the long-term health of the
>> newsgroup ("a flame a day keeps gNat away"), and I agree that the
>> flames have been pretty pathetic lately--but then gNat and massive
>> crossposts aside, there has been little to ignite our furor.
>
>attract the attention of even more obnoxious folks. And jeez, look at the
>pathetic flames they bring with them: "Jesus is a dick!" "No, you're a
>dick!" "No, you are!" Argh.
This does have a good side. With a minor amount of agitation, we can keep
the obnoxious confined to just a few easily recognizable threads, thereby
makingit easy to avoid them even without sophisticated kill software.
[...]
Steve Brecher
dr...@furrfu.com (Drew Lawson) wrote:
> Here here!
Where? Where?
> There's something to be said about a nice, public rap across the
> knuckles with a steel ruler. You don't enjoy it, but it *does*
> get your attention and bring a certain focus to your actions.
Hear! Hear!
<Whap!>
Steve "There, there; that wasn't so bad, was it?" Brecher
--
st...@brecher.reno.nv.us (Steve Brecher)
Harry MF Teasley
Mike Holmans (mhol...@dircon.co.uk) wrote:
> These are pretty good rules, although there is a place for righteous
> anger, which may have to be couched in very unfunny terms. It's
> certainly unwise to post in blind fury, but a lot of people have, at one
> time or another, been hugely offended by ill-informed comments taking
> cheap shots at, usually, the defenceless, and a public beating-up will
> ensue: I don't think anyone feels the need to be funny when blasting
> someone who posts "AIDS victims are the scum of the earth and deserve
> all they get" around here.
What you describe is the time when humorous ridicule is at its most
useful. Rule #1 is all the more improtant here. I promise.
> Oh, and Harry - you're a dick.
And you look like a bucket of shit.
Harry "Erect" Teasley
Rick Tyler
On Mon, 04 Aug 1997 19:17:46 -0700, will...@wcodot.com (Willis
Eschenbach) wrote:
:I hafta confess, the trepidation that I feel each time I post to AFU is a
<snip maudlin whingeing>
:
:Willis "but not this time ... I hope" Eschenbach
:
You're a wimp, Eschenbach, and you write like a girl.
-- Rick "I hope that wasn't too harsh" Tyler
-------------------------------------------------
"I lied." -- E.G. Land aka Gary Landers aka BARD
aka Nat Turner aka Francis Farmer aka Fanny aka
Jeff Henkels
]_eeTPiR8 <sa...@hell.com> wrote in article
<5s3pi3$6s5$2...@news.mco.bellsouth.net>...
> No it isn't. If a state violates the Constitution, it is up to the courts
to
> strike down the offending law. If Georgia legalized slavery, or banned
> Judaism, it would not be "up to Georgia", because those are explicitly
> unconstitutional actions. Likewise, the "sodomy" laws had no valid
secular
> purpose and served as an unconstitutional imposition of fundamentalist
> Christian beliefs on everyone. Therefore they were unconstitutional under
the
> 1st, 9th, and 14th Amendments.
Well, the US Supreme Court disagrees. In their 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick
decision, they upheld Georgia's sodomy law, which bans all oral-genital and
anal-genital sex, even between consenting adults.
Georgia also has an anti-fornication law. Several years ago, I read a
"News of
the Weird" item in which a Georgia state legislator proposed posting signs
in
all motel rooms stating the state's sex laws, using international symbols
for those
not fluent in English. Which raises an interesting question: How do you
draw
a sign for "no fornication" that couldn't be confused for "no sex"?
Jeff Henkels
Dave Wilton
On 3 Aug 1997 16:03:45 -0400, he...@panix.com (Harry MF Teasley) wrote:
>What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not offend,
>that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator ego, and that
>supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell. Fuck that shit. It's
>the sort of uplifting, supportive, hand-holding environment that AFU never
>was, and that I find so damned boring. Now wait for the condescending
>explanation of how no, that's an overstatement, and some joke about her
>wooden spoon. Furrfu.
>
>Dave is right: you can't cure people of posting when in bad moods. Don't
>try. Don't try to make AFU alt.folklore.happyfunland, it would be a
>crime. If you don't like the flames, such as they are in their current
>pathetic incarnation, then post a counter to them, post something
>supportive that challenges the flame.
I agree that flames are important for the long-term health of the
newsgroup ("a flame a day keeps gNat away"), and I agree that the
flames have been pretty pathetic lately--but then gNat and massive
crossposts aside, there has been little to ignite our furor.
But I also believe that our venom should be saved for those that truly
deserve it. Someone who posts the odd "Here's one I heard..." post
should be politely but firmly told of what this froup's about. But, if
it's one of three current threads on the topic, well then it's time to
start mixing the aluminum soap and gasoline.
Civility does not necessarily equate with happyfunland. And a call for
civility does not necessarily mean that there is not a time and place
for venom. Let the punishment fit the crime.
Dave Wilton
dwi...@sprynet.com
http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dwilton/
Angus Johnston
lpr...@provide.net (Larry Preuss) writes:
> "Jeff Henkels" <je...@crusoe.com---> wrote:
>
> > Well, the US Supreme Court disagrees. In their 1986 Bowers v. Hardwick
> > decision, they upheld Georgia's sodomy law, which bans all oral-genital and
> > anal-genital sex, even between consenting adults.
>
> This may seem a small difference, but is actually central to Bowers: the US
> Supreme Court did not uphold Georgia's sodomy law, but refused to find it
> unconstitutional. Arguing that the US Constitution did not guarantee a
> right to practice sodomy...
Close, but not quite. The Supremes upheld/refused to find
unconstitutional the provision of the law which made homosexual sodomy
illegal, but made no ruling on the constitutionality of het sodomy
statutes.
--
Angus Johnston
www.mindspring.com/~angusj
Paul Kunkel
In article <5s4q9a$s...@panix2.panix.com>,
mp...@panix.com (Madeleine Page) wrote:
>
>I'm not sure what's caused the shift [1], but we seem to be drifting
>towards a haze of creamy, self-congratulatory ObNiceness that's much more
>of a danger to the culture of afu than are stroppiness, snarkiness, or
>snarlitude.
>
>Just to echo what Harry said [2], I too regret afu's increasing tendency
>to value the oleaginous over the acerbic. The group will lose its unique,
>difficult character if we persist in being syrupy rather than acidulous,
>cutesy rather than curmudgeonly.
This is starting to sound familiar. Until recently, I got around the
U.S. quite a lot -- a year here, two years there. At every stop, I would
see some of the locals hustling to preserve whatever they imagined to be
the definitive character of the region. This futile exercise is practiced
everywhere. On a few occasions I was even met with hostility because I do
not redefine myself every time I unpack.
Whatever that character is or was, it did not get that way by
following some prescription, and it will not stay that way forever. I
liked AFU better three years ago. Now we have different players. This is
what AFU is today. It is not one of those retro clubs where they play
nothing but Buddy Holly songs. If I lose interest entirely, I will have to
make a decision about my future newsgroup selections. It is not that hard.
Kunkel
Bob Hiebert
In article <drew-05089...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, dr...@furrfu.com (Drew Lawson) wrote:
>Anyway, which proto-AFU should we restore? Pre-AOL? Pre-Cathouse?
>Back to the Age Before Terries?
There was a time before the Age of the Terries? This must have been only a
proto-newsgroup.
Bob "pre-ignitian era" Hiebert
Bob Hiebert
In article <5s6o6g$d...@panix2.panix.com>, he...@panix.com (Harry MF Teasley) wrote:
>Don't I know it. All I'm saying is I'm not posting for a Disney audience.
>
>Harry "NC17" Teasley
>
Fuckin' A, Harry!
Bob Hiebert
Drew Lawson
> Harry "Mighty Fine" Teasley wrote:
> >Once upon a time (is everyone seated comfortably?), AFU prided itself on
> >being acerbic...
> >this place is one where simply existing doesn't mean that folks are
> >just going to roll over for you....
> You know, he's right. And I'm grateful to Harry for reminding me of how
> things were.
>
> What attracted me to this place was that it was robust, feisty, difficult,
> challenging, sceptical and bloody-minded. Acceptance wasn't automatic, it
> was earned.
Here here!
There's something to be said about a nice, public rap across the
knuckles with a steel ruler. You don't enjoy it, but it *does*
get your attention and bring a certain focus to your actions.
Drew "and, most of the time, the fingers survive the ordeal" Lawson
--
Drew Lawson | If you're not part of the solution,
dr...@furrfu.com | you're part of the precipitate
http://www.furrfu.com/ |
Drew Lawson
In article <5s631a$i...@mtinsc04.worldnet.att.net>,
Bob.H...@worldnet.REMOVE.att.net (Bob Hiebert) wrote:
> To recreate the past is an interesting thought. When the volume increased
> to an unbearable 75 posts per day, increasing the venom only drove the
> volume to 100 posts per day with the extra 25 posts going to newbie flame
> fests as they went through their hazing. With current volume at 250 per
> day, I shudder to think what volume additional flamage might add.
> Nevertheless, it is an interesting thought, and might make for a fun
> experiment. It might even get Ewan back for a reprise.
It is when I am following the voice in my head that agrees with you
that I bother trying to reply to gNat-type people and slap some sense
into them (or ridicule it into them).
Unfortunately, the on-line world has a large group of people who make
you question whether free speach was a good thing, momentarily at least.
Way back when, you could get rid of, or educate, the misguided with a
week's flame war. Now? They're just as likely to either ignore you or
forge cancel messages for your flames.
Anyway, which proto-AFU should we restore? Pre-AOL? Pre-Cathouse?
Back to the Age Before Terries?
Drew "the dawning of the age of AFUarius" Lawson
Harry MF Teasley
Bob Hiebert (Bob.H...@worldnet.REMOVE.att.net) wrote:
> Not to be too pendantic, but what you and Harry are describing ended at
> least two years ago. Lost, not "will lose."
Don't I know it. All I'm saying is I'm not posting for a Disney audience.
Harry "NC17" Teasley
--
Michele Tepper
Angus Johnston <ang...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>Close, but not quite. The Supremes upheld/refused to find
>unconstitutional the provision of the law which made homosexual sodomy
>illegal, but made no ruling on the constitutionality of het sodomy
>statutes.
As I've probably noted before, Roy Blount Jr. speculated that this was
because one or more of the justices had someone nice waiting for them in
one of the states around the District of Columbia in which het sodomy is
legal.
M "posing as a somdomite" T
--
Michele Tepper "That thing where you write things down? I hate that."
mte...@panix.com -- Will Wheeler
Visit the scenic AFU archives: www.urbanlegends.com
Michele Tepper
>was, and that I find so damned boring. Now wait for the condescending
>explanation of how no, that's an overstatement, and some joke about her
>wooden spoon. Furrfu.
>Harry "they call me 'motherfuckin', but they tell my mom that the MF
>stands for 'Most Friendly'" Teasley
Well, at your wedding, we insisted it was "Mighty Fine." (He looked
pretty good in that tux, folks.)
Otherwise, I agree wholeheartedly with everything Harry had to say.
Michele "'What Barbara asks for, to my ears, is conversation that does not
offend, that protects and shelters the lowest common denominator
ego, and that supplies applause to anyone with a story to tell.
Fuck that shit.'" Tepper
--
Michele Tepper "Ooh. Damp and cigarettes. Smells like England."
mte...@panix.com -- Angus Johnston
Glen Quarnstrom
patrick arink <patric...@pi.net> wrote:
>Harry MF Teasley wrote:
>> <<snip>>
<even more snip>
>> Since that time, Usenet has become so huge that it is bursting at the
>> seams, some megafraction of the newsspool at your site is (guess what)
>> spam and spam cancel messages, and instead of a neighborhood block party,
>> AFU is now Grand Central Station. Things have changed alot.
[...]
>> Don't try to make AFU alt.folklore.happyfunland, it would be a
>> crime. If you don't like the flames, such as they are in their current
>> pathetic incarnation, then post a counter to them, post something
>> supportive that challenges the flame.
<newbie's intro to afu>
>A newsgroup where you get flamed when you do something imprudent, like I
>did and more newbies do, can expect people like Sheila and Nat Turner to
>drop by who love to get this kind of attention. You could say you
>invited them. What you give is what you get.
People like What's His Name and You Know Who thrive on attention, and
negative attention is just as good as any other kind. About the ONLY
way to rid yourself of this type is to ignore them. And by "ignore" I
do not mean continuing to refer to them in followups, even if the
original post is deleted. Even my own sig here is a violation of this
tactic, although I probably don't post here often enough for it to be
a factor.
>And I think AFU is still that neighbourhood block party. I just think
>the neighbourhood is a little bit bigger than it was a few years ago.
>For newbies who arrive at this party it is hard enough to feel at home,
>even without the flames. Words like m*tt*, sewergator, troll and all the
Oh, please. "Troll" is in common use just about everywhere, and the
other stuff is pretty much self-explanatory if you take the trouble to
think about it. It's always appropriate to lurk a bit before posting
to an unfamiliar group.
Let's say you start lurking in A.F.U. You read dozens, nay, hundreds
of messages by educated, literate, erudite folk who have an excellent
grasp of spelling, grammar, and syntax. You discover that many of
these folks delight in outrageous puns, corny jokes, and complicated
word games. Then you run across a word like "voracity." The first
time you see it, you might wonder if it's a typo. The second and
third time you see it, you should reasonably expect that it's a
deliberate play on words, rather than a misspelling.
I don't think I'm particularly perceptive, but I figured out the
"voracity" joke long before I read more than a few days worth of afu.
The inside jokes here are not nearly so obscure as those in other
groups, and they're part of what makes the place more fun than the
average froup.
>other words UFUisti use are not understood by newbies. And inside jokes
>are only funny when you are inside. It takes thousands of messages to
>read when you are new here, to understand most of the jokes. In other
I've been posting in another group for about four years, and I _still_
haven't figured out all the inside jokes. I guess that's why they're
"inside" jokes, after all. Humor is a very strange and individual
thing. Lot's of inside jokes probably aren't really very funny, but
get to be humorous by long repetition. See most any of Johnny
Carson's routines for some good examples.
One of my own favorite "inside" UseNet jokes is the "Hope This Helps"
routine. HTH.
>words: you must be very determined to become a regular at AFU. Therefor
As well you should be. This is an elite group, and shouldn't be
turned over to the Philistines without a fight.
>I agree with Barbara. I think we should stimulate them, instead of burn
>them.
I find that this group has a pretty good balance between flaming and
encouraging. Let's face it, UseNet is anarchy. The only thing that
keeps a group on topic is peer pressure. Some folks respond to gentle
encouragement, others need more drastic measures. Some, as has been
pointed out, need to be ignored. The bottom line, however, is that
UseNet is not a Gentle Place, and if you don't have what it takes to
handle the buffeting of natural selection, you probably won't make a
good contributor to any group.
--
"Inaccurate/inapplicable; fallacious regardless."
-- Sheila explains her debating style.
Mary Shafer
In article <5s8qbt$a...@mtinsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
Bob Hiebert <Bob.H...@worldnet.REMOVE.att.net> wrote:
>In article <drew-05089...@nntp1.ba.best.com>, dr...@furrfu.com (Drew Lawson) wrote:
>
>>Back to the Age Before Terries?
>
>proto-newsgroup.
Indeed there was and I remember it well. I even remember when the
flodnak appeared. The group was about the same, except that the
general Usenet population was somewhat more literate and spammers had
not yet made a significant appearance (the appearance of the Terries
and Cindy was not related to either trend, of course). People also
tended to sign just their names, with no pithy quotes embedded in
them. Voracity had not yet become widespread, except in discussions
of people setting food consumption records, and cow-orkers didn't
exist.
However, the subject lines and ensuing discussions were just about the
same. The only real difference I've experienced was that the SR-71
Dash 1 was declassified in 1990 and I could finally produce a public
reference to squelch those benighted individuals who had heard from a
friend who had talked to a Blackbird pilot that the SR-71 could go
Mach 10.
Plus ca change, plus ca la meme chose.
--
Mary Shafer DoD #0362 KotFR sha...@ursa-major.spdcc.com
URL http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/People/Shafer/mary.html
Some days it don't come easy/And some days it don't come hard
Some days it don't come at all/And these are the days that never end....
George Byrd
Speaking about "Re: Offtopic chatter"
In <alt.folklore.urban> On Wed, 06 Aug 1997 21:32:34 GMT,
<gl...@NOSPAMcyberhighway.net (Glen Quarnstrom)> said:
> The bottom line, however, is that
>UseNet is not a Gentle Place, and if you don't have what it takes to
>handle the buffeting of natural selection, you probably won't make a
>good contributor to any group.
Sewergator would point out all life is a buffet.
George "but the selections are sometimes unnatural"
--
Opinions above are NOT those of APAN, Inc. & are NOT legal advice.
"Some circumstantial evidence is very strong,
as when you find a trout in the milk."
<< H.D. Thoreau, _Journal_, Nov. 1850 >>
Phil Edwards
ang...@mindspring.com (Angus Johnston) wrote:
>lpr...@provide.net (Larry Preuss) writes:
>
>> This may seem a small difference, but is actually central to Bowers: the US
>> Supreme Court did not uphold Georgia's sodomy law, but refused to find it
>> unconstitutional. Arguing that the US Constitution did not guarantee a
>> right to practice sodomy...
>
>Close, but not quite. The Supremes upheld/refused to find
>unconstitutional the provision of the law which made homosexual sodomy
>illegal, but made no ruling on the constitutionality of het sodomy
>statutes.
Even subtler arguments have been deployed here. In the UK[1], the male
homosexual age of consent was recently reduced from 21 to 18; the het
a.o.c. remains at 16, while lesbians don't legally exist any more than
they did for Queen Victoria (ObUL). It was recently argued[2] that
this does not constitute discrimination against gay men, however: the
law covers homosexual *acts*, which are equally illegal for straight
men under the age of 18.
Male/female sodomy, on the other hand, is just plain illegal.
Phil "as are certain practices involving sandpaper" Edwards
[1] Sic - I wouldn't swear that NI law isn't different
[2] By Anne Atkins - a kind of middle-aged, middle-class Anita Bryant,
if that makes sense
--
Phil Edwards amroth(at)zetnet.co.uk
"With each and every circumstance
I lose knowledge and gain innocence" - Beth Orton
Glen Quarnstrom
Earlier I babbled:
>thing. Lot's of inside jokes probably aren't really very funny, but
^^^^^
I hate when that happen's.
Glenn Dowdy
Barbara Mikkelson wrote:
>
> I've got to tell you, I've been slightly disappointed by the results.
> To my mind, too many talked of how they'd survived their early months of
> AFUhood and not enough took the question outside of themselves to look at
> the larger picture. I asked for discourse; what often showed up were the
> standard justifications for hazing: "I survived it and look how I turned
> out;" "If they can't take it, they shouldn't be here;" "Those who didn't
> choose to stick around were wimps anyway -- no loss;" "It defines the
> group and makes us feel more like brothers." Eeesh.
>
> For those who subscribe to this frat boy view of things, I have to point
> out the following: the pledge who walks *away* from screwing the sheep
> is the one to be admired, not the ones who stick around and drop their
> pants. And certainly those who are holding the sheep tethered are doing
> nothing to feel proud of either.
>
Uh, I missed the sheep thing. I just remember alligators and gerbils,
jackalopes and bunny rabbits. I want in really bad, so send the sheep on
over.
Glenn "Now where is that grizzly I have to kiss?" Dowdy