Some American lives
Laurie D. T. Mann
> >From "Jay in the Southeast," a high-school student:
> >"I stood up in a social studies class -- the teacher wanted a discussion --
> >and said I could never kill anyone or condone anyone who did kill anyone.
> >But that I could, on some level, understand these kids in Colorado, the
> >killers. Because day after day, slight after slight, exclusion after
> >exclusion, you can learn how to hate, and that hatred grows and takes you
> >over sometimes, especially when you come to see that you're hated only
> >because you're smart and different, or sometimes even because you are
> >online a lot, which is still so uncool to many kids?
> >
> >"After the class, I was called to the principal's office and told that I
> >had to agree to undergo five sessions of counseling or be expelled from
> >school, as I had expressed ?sympathy? with the killers in Colorado, and the
> >school had to be able to explain itself if I ?acted out?. In other words,
> >for speaking freely, and to cover their ass, I was not only branded a weird
> >geek, but a potential killer. That will sure help deal with violence in
> >America."
>There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
>Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers, play D&D,
>hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends, and don't fit in with
>the jocks or the gang types, are under suspicion.
While this attitude is certainly more extreme now,
it's nothing new. In the '80s and '90s when Leslie was in school and an
outcast,
she was usually in more trouble than the people being abusive to her.
Jim and
I saw similar things when we were in school, but the fact that we were
hyper-achievers
rather than slackers meant that our schools didn't see us as "a threat."
I was really worried a few years back when Leslie was obsessive about
Doom, but
she got bored with it after a while. Now she's into a game called
Final Fantasy, which attracts kids who love to role play online and
collaborate
on fanfic. Kind of the Star Trek of the late '90s.
While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
the
boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
frustrations
and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
--
Laurie D. T. Mann ** Geek Feminist ** lm...@city-net.com
Dead People Server ** Trivia Maven ** http://dpsinfo.com
Nebula Awards Weekend http://www.sfwa.org/awards/current.htm
Avram Grumer
<p...@panix.com> quoted Phil Agre:
> : But, just like some of the movies of Sylvester Stallone that
> : feature the cold-blooded killing of dozens of caricatured evil
> : bad guys, they're useful to a person who is looking to organize
> : anger in a certain way.
Ironically, the same can be said of the obsessive media attention focused
on the killings.
--
Avram Grumer | av...@bigfoot.com | http://www.bigfoot.com/~avram/
If music be the food of love, then some of it be the Twinkies of
dysfunctional relationships.
Loren MacGregor
<snip excellent quote>
>
> There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
> Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers,
> play D&D, hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends,
> and don't fit in with the jocks or the gang types, are under
> suspicion. Who are these kids? Fellow SF fans: these kids are
> _us_. Only younger, and with fewer options. Someone needs to
> stand up for them. Not many people are.
Yeah. Lauryn listened to a description of what "these kids"
are "typically like," and said, "They're describing my brother
Andrew." Who is, yes, Goth, dresses in black, obsessed with
sci-fi, has these dark, apocalyptic images on his web page,
etc., etc., etc. ... and who falls to pieces when he sees
a cute child.
Yeah, Goth by night, and system administrator for one of the
major hip-clothing-by-mail yuppie outfitters catalog stores
by day. Being courted by AutoDesk, and offerred a salary
twice my own -- and worth it.
But, like, he's liable to shoot someone any day, like all
the rest of the Goths in the world.
I want to, you know, like, -scream-.
> Check out Jon Katz's excellent coverage on Slashdot:
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/22/2136230&mode=thread&threshold=0
>
> http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
>
> Here's some of what Katz says (but read the rest):
>
> "Minutes after the 'Kids That Kill' column was posted on Slashdot Friday,
> and all through the weekend, I got a steady stream of e-mail from middle
> and high school kids all over the country -- especially from self-described
> oddballs. They were in trouble, or saw themselves that way to one degree or
> another in the hysteria sweeping the country after the shootings in
> Colorado.
Etc. Thanks for posting this, and the links, Patrick.
-- LJM
> >And remember:
> >
> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
> >
> >Wear your blackest clothes.
They're the only ones I've got.
-- LJM
Laurie D. T. Mann
> >Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
> >the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
> >frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
> thrash.
>
> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
> But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
> life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
> week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
conventions?
Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
psychologically
very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
that
you off people.
I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
name-calling,
snideness and just general childish behavior?
So what?
If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
societally-neutral),
that should be all that matters. Why waste any time worrying about what
people
think about you? I think one of the clearest signs that you've emerged
from
adolesence is being extremely choosey about whose opinion matters. Most
people's
opinions shouldn't.
P Nielsen Hayden
"I stood up in a social studies class -- the teacher wanted a discussion --
and said I could never kill anyone or condone anyone who did kill anyone.
But that I could, on some level, understand these kids in Colorado, the
killers. Because day after day, slight after slight, exclusion after
exclusion, you can learn how to hate, and that hatred grows and takes you
over sometimes, especially when you come to see that you're hated only
because you're smart and different, or sometimes even because you are
online a lot, which is still so uncool to many kids?
"After the class, I was called to the principal's office and told that I
had to agree to undergo five sessions of counseling or be expelled from
school, as I had expressed ?sympathy? with the killers in Colorado, and the
school had to be able to explain itself if I ?acted out?. In other words,
for speaking freely, and to cover their ass, I was not only branded a weird
geek, but a potential killer. That will sure help deal with violence in
America."
There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers, play D&D,
hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends, and don't fit in with
the jocks or the gang types, are under suspicion. Who are these kids?
Fellow SF fans: these kids are _us_. Only younger, and with fewer options.
Someone needs to stand up for them. Not many people are.
Check out Jon Katz's excellent coverage on Slashdot:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/22/2136230&mode=thread&threshold=0
http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
Here's some of what Katz says (but read the rest):
"Minutes after the 'Kids That Kill' column was posted on Slashdot Friday,
and all through the weekend, I got a steady stream of e-mail from middle
and high school kids all over the country -- especially from self-described
oddballs. They were in trouble, or saw themselves that way to one degree or
another in the hysteria sweeping the country after the shootings in
Colorado.
"Many of these kids saw themselves as targets of a new hunt for oddballs --
suspects in a bizarre, systematic search for the strange and the alienated.
Suddenly, in this tyranny of the normal, to be different wasn't just to
feel unhappy, it was to be dangerous.
"Schools all over the country openly embraced Geek Profiling. One group
calling itself the National School Safety Center issued a checklist of
'dangerous signs' to watch for in kids: it included mood swings, a fondness
for violent TV or video games, cursing, depression, anti-social behavior
and attitudes. (I don't know about you, but I bat a thousand).
"The panic was fueled by a ceaseless bombardment of powerful, televised
images of mourning and grief in Colorado, images that stir the emotions and
demand some sort of response, even when it isn't clear what the problem is.
"The reliably blockheaded media response didn't help either. 'Sixty
Minutes' devoted a whole hour to a broadcast on screen violence and its
impact on the young, heavily promoted by this tease: 'Are video games
turning your kids into killers?' The already embattled loners were
besieged.
"'This is not a rational world. Can anybody help?' asked Jamie, head of an
intense Dungeons and Dragons club in Minnesota, whose private school
guidance counselor gave him a choice: give up the game or face counseling,
possibly suspension. Suzanne Angelica (her online handle) was told to go
home and leave her black, ankle-length raincoat there.
"On the Web, kids did flock to talk to each other. On Star Wars and X-Files
mailing lists and websites and on AOL chat rooms and ICQ message boards,
teenagers traded countless countless stories of being harassed, beaten,
ostracized and ridiculed by teachers, students and administrators for
dressing and thinking differently from the mainstream. Many said they had
some understanding of why the killers in Littleton went over the edge.
"'We want to be different,' wrote one of the Colorado killers in a diary
found by the police. 'We want to be strange and we don't want jocks or
other people putting us down.' The sentiment, if not the response to it,
was echoed by kids all over the country. The Littleton killings have made
their lives much worse.
Thus Jon Katz. And here's ever-intelligent online commentator Phil Agre,
writing on his "Red Rock Eater" mailing list:
>The Internet is bursting with news of a nationwide crackdown on high
>school students who wear black, disrespect authority, use the Internet,
>or have a problem with being taunted by jocks. For example, check out
>the discussion at <http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml>
>-- that is, if the slashdot Web server isn't completely overwhelmed.
>Media discussion of the matter is of course disappointing. By printing
>the word "Why" with a question mark after it, one can affect concern
>without actually trying to answer the question. My major problem is the
>procedure of considering potential factors one at a time, when clearly
>no single factor will suffice. For example, nobody but nobody gets that
>angry without a formative experience of serious abuse or at least some
>kind of major trauma. But lots of people have such experiences without
>shooting up the school. So we can look at the return of a really harsh
>conformist culture -- it's not the schools in San Francisco and Austin
>that are getting shot up, but the ones in parts of the country where
>it has become fashionable again to embrace intolerance as a good thing.
>But that's not an adequate explanation either. So we can look at the
>kid who's carrying major anger, who is viciously ostracized by jocks,
>discovering that he can alleviate the taunting by projecting a hostile
>and threatening image. Quite a discovery, and one that many oppressed
>groups have made. That strategy can become a whole elaborated identity
>through the resources of popular culture and the Internet. So now the
>anger goes underground and becomes organized. Along come the realistic
>video games that can be used to develop marksmanship while desensitizing
>oneself to killing. Those games are not innately bad -- they don't do
>anything to a player who is basically healthy. But, just like some of
>the movies of Sylvester Stallone that feature the cold-blooded killing
>of dozens of caricatured evil bad guys, they're useful to a person
>who is looking to organize anger in a certain way. And then you have
>the easy access to guns -- not just regular guns, like the ones that
>were commonplace a couple decades ago, but big military guns. In each
>case, a factor taken on its own doesn't nearly explain the phenonema.
>And in each case, an interest group can say "hey, it's not our factor"
>because other factors are required. Civil libertarians such as myself,
>for example, will keep you from censoring music that is plainly evil.
>Others will do the same with the Internet, with guns, with intolerance
>(quoth a media alert from the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, "Two
>filthy fags slaughtered 13 people at Columbine High"), and even with
>violence against children (vigorously promoted on religious radio).
>What's the answer? Well, the first half of the answer is not to stop
>with "hey, it's not me". And the second half of the answer starts with
>listening to the kids, who will happily explain all of this to you.]
Finally, Teresa and I got the following email circular. It's a gimmicky
idea, but hey, many gimmicks are perfectly good ideas, and they sometimes
work. And besides, to repeat myself: self-identified high-school "geeks"
are simply us. Only younger. No more, no less.
>Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>
>Wear black for the loss of the people in Colorado and in protest of the
>unreasonable paranoia gripping the nation.
>
>Because of the tragedy on Tuesday, things are getting out of control.
>Some schools are trying to totally ban black clothing. Innocent,
>wonderful people are having their lives threatened or are being denied
>their right to an education just because of the way they look or dress.
>We must put a STOP to this silly, unnecessary hysteria.
>
>Show your support for those who died in this tragedy, as well as support
>those who have good hearts, but may just not look like the "popular"
>people. If there was ever a time in your life when you didn't feel like
>you were "in with the in crowd" or the most popular person in school,
>show your support for those who are there now.
>
>Let's start a new worldwide policy of showing compassion and love to our
>children and each other, instead of just promoting hysteria.
>
>Pass this information on to all your friends, and to everyone you know.
>And remember:
>
>Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>
>Wear your blackest clothes.
--
Patrick Nielsen Hayden : p...@panix.com : http://www.panix.com/~pnh
Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604
The front page of the Chronicle had a picture of a group of almost
identically dressed attractive young women mourning, which I though
pointed up the issue nicely for me.
I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had books.
73, doug
From: P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Date: 28 Apr 1999 00:16:23 GMT
And besides, to repeat myself: self-identified high-school "geeks"
are simply us. Only younger. No more, no less.
>
>Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>
P Nielsen Hayden
<3726692F...@worldnet.att.net>:
>> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>> >
>> >Wear your blackest clothes.
>
>They're the only ones I've got.
Well, yes. Teresa and I looked at each other when that showed up on our
mailbox. "How would anyone know anything was different?" she said.
P Nielsen Hayden
-net.com>:
>While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
>the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
>frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
Maybe. I would like to say that I hope this thread doesn't become a gun
thrash.
Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
More "stories from the Hellmouth," kid testimonials gathered by Jon Katz:
http://slashdot.org/features/99/04/27/0310247.shtml
We all know these stories, and we don't know these stories. After all,
here in the fairy circle of fandom, we're the ones that got out.
P Nielsen Hayden
<FAUNT.99A...@netcom15.netcom.com>:
>Jon Carroll's column a few days back made the same point.
That it certainly did:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-
bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/04/23/DD11483.DTL
(You'll probably have to paste the two lines of that URL together in your
browser. It's worth the trouble.)
>I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had books.
If you were a high school student in many American schools this week, and
you said that in class, you would at minimum be dragged off for
"counseling." If not suspended immediately.
Randolph Fritz
>...in the past week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole
>range of self-identified outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These
>kids are us.
Patrick, we don't actually know the extent of this crackdown; we hear
about the times it happens, not about the times it doesn't. This may
actually be a quite uncommon response--in a country of 300 million,
even a small number of these events will be large in absolute number.
R.
Randolph Fritz
wrote:
>
>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>conventions? Has never happened as far as I remember. There's
>something psychologically very different from being outcast and angry
>to being so far out of it that you off people.
>
Laurie, most non-fan outcasts don't start shooting either, though
there is enormous provocation and the media provide many models. I
think one very important question--perhaps the important question--is
why do most smart outcast teens choose peace? Salon gives an
account by someone who picked up the gun, thought about it, and put it
down. I know two other people who just decided not to. How 'bout
here? Does anyone else have that experience?
Randolph
Nancy Lebovitz
Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com> wrote:
>
>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>conventions?
>Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
>psychologically
>very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
>that
>you off people.
There's a weird sort of chunking that's going on about those kids who
did the killing--most people (including me, for a while) heard the
"outcast" bit much more loudly than the "neo-Nazi" part.
>I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>name-calling,
>snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
This suggests that you went to a fairly safe high school. In some
cases (though not mine) being low status enough means being physically
attacked.
>So what?
>
>If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
>societally-neutral),
>that should be all that matters. Why waste any time worrying about what
>people
>think about you? I think one of the clearest signs that you've emerged
>from
>adolesence is being extremely choosey about whose opinion matters. Most
>people's
>opinions shouldn't.
It would be nice if I'd grow up, then. I'm still bothered by being
insulted, even by random strangers, and I don't know how to change it.
P Nielsen Hayden
-net.com>:
>>P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
>> >Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
>> >While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
>> >the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
>> >frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
>> Maybe. I would like to say that I hope this thread doesn't become a
>> gun thrash.
>>
>> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to
>> say. But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern
>> high-school life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and
>> in the past week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range
>> of self-identified outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are
>> us.
>
>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>conventions?
Laurie, the "these kids" I was referring to have never shot anyone.
I'm not talking about that sad unhinged pair who killed thirteen people in
Colorado. I'm talking about all the nonconformist kids all over America
who've been peered at and harassed and suspended and dragged off for
"counseling" in the week since.
Mark Dillon
Michael R Weholt (awnb...@panix.com) wrote, in Article #184969:
>Maybe that's part of the difference between those guys in Colorado
>and most other odd-balls. Yer run-of-the-mill odd-ball is sick of
>the taunting and the abuse and so forth, who wouldn't be? But the
>thing that troubles them is not how the world treats them particularly,
>but how the world *is*.
[...]
>But it seems (from this distance anyway) that the Colorado kids
>seemed more bothered by how the world treated them, but didn't
>particularly care all that much about how the world is -- that is,
>how the world treats *everybody*.
This is one of the more thoughtful comments I've read on the subject
of the Colorado murders, and a possible clue in that age-old mystery:
Why do some people emerge from a season in hell with a thirst for
social justice... while others emerge with nothing more than a lust
for revenge?
Mark Dillon
Beth Haddrell
On Tue, 27 Apr 1999, Laurie D. T. Mann wrote:
> >P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
> > >Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
> > >While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
> > >the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
> > >frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
> > Maybe. I would like to say that I hope this thread doesn't become a gun
> > thrash.
> >
> > Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
> > But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
> > life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
> > week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
> > outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>
> But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
> conventions Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
> psychologically very different from being outcast and angry to being so
> far out of it that you off people.
>
I may be entirely wrong here, but I understood Patrick's "[t]hese kids" to
refer primarily to the other kids around the country who are reportedly
suffering because they share certain characteristics (online lives, black
clothing, computer games, disinterest in sports and the jock mentality,
alternative music, etc.) with the kids who did the shooting in Colorado.
The "L'Geek, c'est moi" line (which I think I'm about to appropriate) only
points to the parallels between what these other ("different") kids have
been reported as saying...and the kinds of responses the "fannish accents"
thread was getting over these past few weeks. Obviously, this won't be
true for everybody who reads rasff or posts on rasff, but for a lot of
people, the similarities between these kids' experiences/feelings and our
own are fairly obvious.
The kids who *did* the shooting also had pretty strong and overt racist
(neo-Nazi?) attitudes (*not* a defining characteristic of Geekdom), but
for some reason, *that* is getting far less attention than the fact that
they liked playing Doom and that they had web pages and that they listened
to Marilyn Manson.
> I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
> don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
> you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
> name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
> So what?
>
> If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
> societally-neutral), that should be all that matters. Why waste any
> time worrying about what people think about you? I think one of the
> clearest signs that you've emerged from adolesence is being extremely
> choosey about whose opinion matters. Most people's opinions shouldn't.
>
Well, of course this is true, but the fact is that neither those boys in
Colorado nor the other kids who were quoted in the information Patrick
forwarded to the list *have* "emerged from adolescence" yet. And it can
be absolutely hellish to be in an environment where, rightly or wrongly,
you feel (or are made to feel) as if you are a freak. Some kids are
"cool" enough to wear the freak/geek/whatever label almost as a badge
of honor, but not everyone is able to shrug off the scorn of society...and
being treated like a monster can turn some people into monsters.
[ObSF: Shelley's _Frankenstein_]
I was talking about the alienation/Geek/youth theme the other day with a
friend, and it struck me how lucky I had been to go through high school
surrounded by people who were all relatively disinterested in what other
people thought of them. I went to high school in the mid-seventies at a
magnet school, where at least half the school population was geekish kids
working to graduate early. Most of my senior class was 16 years old.
Needless to say, there wasn't much glamor attached to being on our
too-young and relatively-weak school football team (or cheerleading for
the team), so other things became more important than sports. It was okay
to read books...it was okay to play chess...it was okay to paint...it was
okay to be actively interested in chemistry...it was okay to act or write
or wear "funny" clothes or do volunteer work. Being different was a good
thing in an environment with no obvious heirarchical structure; difference
had *value*.
But to be young and insecure in environments where difference has no
value, where difference becomes something to be scorned, despised, spit
on...and now feared? -- well, it's just not so easy for all these kids
around the country who are being seen (or at least believe they are being
seen) as the "next shooters" to convince themselves that other people's
opinions don't matter.
-Beth
("L'Geek, c'est moi" - pnh)
Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604
>I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had books.
If you were a high school student in many American schools this week, and
you said that in class, you would at minimum be dragged off for
"counseling." If not suspended immediately.
Even as an adult today, I've had one person comment that expressing
that sympathy was "heartless". In my high school days, I'd probably have
been in jail a few days back (to mix the times up thorughly). I did
make bombs, and made no secret of it. It was noisy science.
73, doug
Clive Newall
<snip>
> The kids who *did* the shooting also had pretty strong and overt racist
> (neo-Nazi?) attitudes (*not* a defining characteristic of Geekdom), but
> for some reason, *that* is getting far less attention than the fact that
> they liked playing Doom and that they had web pages and that they listened
> to Marilyn Manson.
Part of the problem is that - to the people in power - having strong
and overt racist attitudes is not a problem, unless you get called on
them. Mainstream politicians in particular seem rather reluctant to
confront these unacceptable attitudes in a forthright manner.
Often they appear to fear alienating their own constituency.
(Rightly or wrongly.)
A fondness for violent computer games (rather than hunting with a real
gun), and listening to that evil rock'n'roll - now that's something
they understand as unbalanced. It's different to _them_.
No, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
But as an Australian polly is (incorrectly) quoted:
Life wasn't meant to be easy.
--
Clive Newall <c...@itga.com.au> / ITG Australia Ltd, Melbourne Australia
"I think Casper is the ghost of Richie Rich. I wonder how Richie died?"
"Perhaps he realized how hollow the pursuit of money is and took his own life"
--Bart and Lisa Simpson
Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604
From: Beth Haddrell <ehad...@hejira.Hunter.CUNY.EDU>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 00:53:41 -0400
The kids who *did* the shooting also had pretty strong and overt racist
(neo-Nazi?) attitudes (*not* a defining characteristic of Geekdom), but
for some reason, *that* is getting far less attention than the fact that
they liked playing Doom and that they had web pages and that they listened
to Marilyn Manson.
I think it's probable that they picked up on the neo-Nazi schtick as a
result of being outcasts, like "I'll give you a REAL reason to dislike
me". It's a defense, I think. I certainly did some equivalents when
I was that age.
73, doug
Randolph Fritz
>even a small number of these events will be large in absolute number.
er, that shd. have been this could be happenning a small percentage of
places and there still be a large number of events.
R.
Seth Breidbart
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> quoted:
>Check out Jon Katz's excellent coverage on Slashdot:
>
>http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/22/2136230&mode=thread&threshold=0
>
>http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
>
>Here's some of what Katz says (but read the rest):
.. . .
>"Many of these kids saw themselves as targets of a new hunt for oddballs --
>suspects in a bizarre, systematic search for the strange and the alienated.
>Suddenly, in this tyranny of the normal, to be different wasn't just to
>feel unhappy, it was to be dangerous.
Some geeky kids were treated badly, cracked, and killed the people who
mistreated them. The "solution" is to torment other geeky kids. Why
do I think this is a suboptimal idea?
I strongly suspect that if they changed the rules to "it's OK to be
different" and "it's good to be very good at something (no matter
what)" (from "nonconformists are there to be tormented" and "only
sports count") then there's be a lot fewer people being pushed past
their breaking points.
Seth
Doug Wickstrom
might as well give the same response to one little part that _really_
troubles me:
On 28 Apr 1999 00:16:23 GMT, P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> caught
my attention by saying:
>Finally, Teresa and I got the following email circular. It's a gimmicky
>idea, but hey, many gimmicks are perfectly good ideas, and they sometimes
>work. And besides, to repeat myself: self-identified high-school "geeks"
>are simply us. Only younger. No more, no less.
>
>
>>Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>>
>>Wear black for the loss of the people in Colorado and in protest of the
>>unreasonable paranoia gripping the nation.
>>
>>Because of the tragedy on Tuesday, things are getting out of control.
>>Some schools are trying to totally ban black clothing. Innocent,
>>wonderful people are having their lives threatened or are being denied
>>their right to an education just because of the way they look or dress.
>>We must put a STOP to this silly, unnecessary hysteria.
>>
>>Show your support for those who died in this tragedy, as well as support
>>those who have good hearts, but may just not look like the "popular"
>>people. If there was ever a time in your life when you didn't feel like
>>you were "in with the in crowd" or the most popular person in school,
>>show your support for those who are there now.
>>
>>Let's start a new worldwide policy of showing compassion and love to our
>>children and each other, instead of just promoting hysteria.
>>
>>Pass this information on to all your friends, and to everyone you know.
>>And remember:
>>
>>Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>>
>>Wear your blackest clothes.
April 29th is a really bad day to wear black in sympathy with outcast
geekdom--it has the same sort of connection that April 20th did to our
young killers, but at the other end of AH's life (well, OK, the night
of April 29-30). I don't think I care to associate myself with that
particular mediocre watercolorist in any way whatsoever, despite once
having had a certain high-school geek fascination of my own with the
SOB.
I now submit the question: What can we do to let these kids know that
there are, indeed, adults who have been there, understand, and can
provide a reasonably safe and accepting social haven _before_ they
decide that the answer is unreasoning violence?
Been there. Got the scars.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions
and have a tremendous impact on history." --Dan Quayle
Doug Wickstrom
my attention by saying:
>Laurie, the "these kids" I was referring to have never shot anyone.
>
>I'm not talking about that sad unhinged pair who killed thirteen people in
>Colorado. I'm talking about all the nonconformist kids all over America
>who've been peered at and harassed and suspended and dragged off for
>"counseling" in the week since.
Or during the last 10-15 years, for that matter.
--
Doug Wickstrom
"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather--not
screaming in terror like his passengers." --Jim Larken
Antony Shepherd
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:8DB5CE4...@news.panix.com...
>
> There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
> Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers, play D&D,
> hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends, and don't fit in with
> the jocks or the gang types, are under suspicion. Who are these kids?
> Fellow SF fans: these kids are _us_. Only younger, and with fewer
options.
> Someone needs to stand up for them. Not many people are.
>
> Check out Jon Katz's excellent coverage on Slashdot:
>
>
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/22/2136230&mode=thread&threshold=0
>
> http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
>
Brilliant, and frightening stuff.
>
> >Pass this information on to all your friends, and to everyone you know.
> >And remember:
> >
> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
> >
> >Wear your blackest clothes.
>
Sure will...
--
Antony J. "Doppelganger" Shepherd - d...@carcosa.demon.co.uk
Editor - Mostly Harmless. The magazine of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha.
The OFFICIAL Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy Appreciation Society,
See http://www.arcfan.demon.co.uk/sf/clubs/zz9/ for a membership form.
David G. Bell
p...@panix.com "P Nielsen Hayden" writes:
> Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
> <3726692F...@worldnet.att.net>:
>
> >> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
> >> >
> >> >Wear your blackest clothes.
> >
> >They're the only ones I've got.
>
> Well, yes. Teresa and I looked at each other when that showed up on our
> mailbox. "How would anyone know anything was different?" she said.
Black out your web-page?
Well, except for a _short_ explanation.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
David G. Bell
rand...@efn.org "Randolph Fritz" writes:
> On 28 Apr 1999 02:32:56 GMT, P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
> >...in the past week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole
> >range of self-identified outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These
> >kids are us.
>
> Patrick, we don't actually know the extent of this crackdown; we hear
> about the times it happens, not about the times it doesn't. This may
> actually be a quite uncommon response--in a country of 300 million,
> even a small number of these events will be large in absolute number.
"First they came for the communists, but _I_ wasn't a communist..."
I don't think that's the exact quote, but does that matter?
Victor Gonzalez
+1-510-655-8604 <fa...@netcom17.netcom.com> wrote:
> From: Beth Haddrell <ehad...@hejira.Hunter.CUNY.EDU>
> Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.fandom
> Date: Wed, 28 Apr 1999 00:53:41 -0400
>
> The kids who *did* the shooting also had pretty strong and overt racist
> (neo-Nazi?) attitudes (*not* a defining characteristic of Geekdom), but
> for some reason, *that* is getting far less attention than the fact that
> they liked playing Doom and that they had web pages and that they listened
> to Marilyn Manson.
>
> I think it's probable that they picked up on the neo-Nazi schtick as a
> result of being outcasts, like "I'll give you a REAL reason to dislike
> me". It's a defense, I think. I certainly did some equivalents when
> I was that age.
> 73, doug
Counseling! Five sessions! Room 101, just down the corner.
--
Victor Gonzalez: <sq...@galaxy-7.net>
Squib webpage: <http://www.galaxy-7.net/squib>
Paul Birnbaum
It's not, but it's close enough to remind me that it's not disseminated
enough. And I just came from posting a short skreed about off-the-topic
postings, too. But I made an exception for tangents...
"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up
because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came
for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
- Pastor Martin Neimoller
P Nielsen Hayden
<372eae08...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>:
>April 29th is a really bad day to wear black in sympathy with outcast
>geekdom--it has the same sort of connection that April 20th did to our
>young killers, but at the other end of AH's life (well, OK, the night
>of April 29-30). I don't think I care to associate myself with that
>particular mediocre watercolorist in any way whatsoever, despite once
>having had a certain high-school geek fascination of my own with the
>SOB.
Dear me, I hadn't thought of that.
>I now submit the question: What can we do to let these kids know that
>there are, indeed, adults who have been there, understand, and can
>provide a reasonably safe and accepting social haven _before_ they
>decide that the answer is unreasoning violence?
Well, walking into a meeting of a local Phoenix fan group when I was
sixteen, and finding that the adults there would talk to me and that fandom
offered the opportunity to have actual social standing and do meaningful
stuff, did quite a bit for _me_.
In fact, fandom was an excellent lifeline for a lot of alienated teenagers,
for many years. These days, though, many of us tend to assume that any
teenagers we see at cons are the Wrong Kind Of Fans. And we wonder why the
average age of "core" fandom is going up.
Elisabeth Carey
>
> >P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
> > >Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
> > >While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
> > >the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
> > >frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
> > Maybe. I would like to say that I hope this thread doesn't become a gun
> > thrash.
> >
> > Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
> > But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
> > week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
> > outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>
Conventions are dominated by many of the kinds of people who are
outcasts in high school. Klebold and Harris shot up the perceived
power structure at the school, the jocks and popular kids and "good
kids". At conventions, the geeks, nerds, goths, people who hang out
with their weird sci-fi friends ARE the power structure. Klebold and
Harris didn't shoot their fellow "trench coat mafia" friends; they
shot the people who made them feel threatened and excluded. The ones
that find sf fandom and feel safe and accepted there don't have any
reason to shoot up conventions.
> Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
> psychologically
> very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
> that
> you off people.
Of course. Most geeks, nerds, goths, etc., don't respond to the
pressures of being outcasts by embracing Nazi ideology, building
bombs, buying guns, and then using those things to kill their
perceived enemies. Something else was wrong with these two kids, that
they responded to these pressures in this way. That doesn't exonerate
the people who subjected them to those pressures.
> I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
> don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
> you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
> name-calling,
> snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
> So what?
>
> If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
> societally-neutral),
> that should be all that matters. Why waste any time worrying about what
> people
> think about you? I think one of the clearest signs that you've emerged
> from
> adolesence is being extremely choosey about whose opinion matters. Most
> people's
> opinions shouldn't.
Yes, Laurie, but it's getting through adolescence that's hard. Most
people, including most social outcasts, survive it. Some don't.
Lis Carey
John Foyster
Y2K...
After all, Y2K is a problem only for a minority of human (except for
this damned English Imperialism....).
John Foyster
Elisabeth Carey
>
> In article <8DB5CE4...@news.panix.com>,
> P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> quoted:
>
> >
> >http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/04/22/2136230&mode=thread&threshold=0
> >
> >http://slashdot.org/articles/99/04/25/1438249.shtml
> >
> .. . .
> >"Many of these kids saw themselves as targets of a new hunt for oddballs --
> >suspects in a bizarre, systematic search for the strange and the alienated.
> >Suddenly, in this tyranny of the normal, to be different wasn't just to
> >feel unhappy, it was to be dangerous.
>
> Some geeky kids were treated badly, cracked, and killed the people who
> mistreated them. The "solution" is to torment other geeky kids. Why
> do I think this is a suboptimal idea?
>
> I strongly suspect that if they changed the rules to "it's OK to be
> different" and "it's good to be very good at something (no matter
> what)" (from "nonconformists are there to be tormented" and "only
> sports count") then there's be a lot fewer people being pushed past
> their breaking points.
NPR just aired a commentary by Frank DeFord, in which he suggested
that perhaps part of the problem is the excessive amount of adulation
we heap on athletes, including high school jocks who have colleges
fighting over who gets to give them a free college education. There's
all this attention and money heaped on student athletes, but not on
student actors, or student computer experts, or even student scholars,
although student scholars do get _some_ of the money. He suggested
that perhaps the increase in money, attention, and adulation directed
towards athletes in recent years might be responsbible for the
awkward, the unatheletic, the geeks and the nerds, feeling _even more_
excluded and despised than when he was in high school.
I expect the demands for an apology for this outrageous expression of
sympathy for the killers will be flooding in to NPR even as I type.
Lis Carey
Graydon
> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
> But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
> life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
> week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
Some years ago, a friend of mine who was then working for a large
corporation with its own office building got into a discussion with a
couple of his co-workers about someone who had recently gone postal at
their place of work, and got jokingly asked -- this friend gets angry
obviously, and has no tolerance for a lot of common workplace stalling
tactics -- if he was planning on coming in and trying to shoot
everybody.
His reply was that trying to shoot everybody was silly; if you really
want to kill all your co-workers, you lock the doors and use gas.
This horrified his co-workers; it made perfect sense to me. (Which is
part of why I heard about it; he wanted to check that his was a normal
reaction to the question, more or less. (Yes, there is a culture in
which I'm very close to baseline normal. It's just small.)
What he couldn't explain to his co-workers, and which I've never
managed to explain in similar circumstances, is that capability and
intention are different. I'm pretty much used to a lot of people
being deeply confused on that point.
The thing I find most baffling about the attempt to suppress the
obviously odd is the question of what the folks doing the suppressing
think it will accomplish, what insecurity they think they're
addressing, because they're not addressing _either_ capability _or_
intention.
Pretty obviously, the great majority of socially outcast teenagers
never do anything violent, and on those rare occasions when they _are_
violent, they're bad at it. So the capability is not, in the
statistical general case, there at all; if it _was_, the recent tragic
events wouldn't be shocking on the grounds of having happened at all.
Equally obviously, there isn't a whole lot of listening going on, so
the worry isn't intention, which is what it usually is -- many earnest
explanations of how one could be liked, really, if only one would make
the right kind of effort. It's entirely incompetent advice, but it's
there, and it's intended to address intention.
This stuff, though, I haven't a clue what the various authority
figures think they're going to get out of it.
--
graydon@ | Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre,
lara.on.ca | mod sceal þe mare þe ure maegen lytlað.
| -- Beorhtwold, "The Battle of Maldon"
Graydon
> Laurie, most non-fan outcasts don't start shooting either, though
> there is enormous provocation and the media provide many models. I
> think one very important question--perhaps the important question--is
> why do most smart outcast teens choose peace? Salon gives an
> account by someone who picked up the gun, thought about it, and put it
> down. I know two other people who just decided not to. How 'bout
> here? Does anyone else have that experience?
Sure.
I couldn't possibly kill enough people to force social change, and I
have had the concious sense of tactics from way young, so I never
_didn't_ know this at a time when I could imagine killing people.
(and I never thought it would be all that useful to just kill people;
killing people is always a means to an end, and it's important to
think about _which_ end.)
Dad taught us how to read, and to have a concious sense of tactics,
and I am very glad he did both, but I'm also very aware it's not the
usual experience of being an outcast as an adolescent.
Jo Walton
> Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
> <3726692F...@worldnet.att.net>:
>
> >> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
> >> >
> >> >Wear your blackest clothes.
> >
> >They're the only ones I've got.
>
> Well, yes. Teresa and I looked at each other when that showed up on our
> mailbox. "How would anyone know anything was different?" she said.
Damn near all my clothes are blue.
I've one black pair of cords, two black t-shirts and one black shirt.
I doubt anyone will notice, but it's surely not what I usually wear.
Sasha has black joggers and one black jumper with red and white bits
on, but effectively black. He's not obliged to wear uniform, and I
wouldn't be surprised if he'd be happy to wear black to support the
right of other kids to roleplay and be different.
Somehow everyone wearing the same clothes to say they approve of people
non-conforming is very, very funny.
But it's not much effort and worth it.
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
Jo Walton
dum...@aol.com "Doug Wickstrom" writes:
> April 29th is a really bad day to wear black in sympathy with outcast
> geekdom--it has the same sort of connection that April 20th did to our
> young killers, but at the other end of AH's life (well, OK, the night
> of April 29-30). I don't think I care to associate myself with that
> particular mediocre watercolorist in any way whatsoever, despite once
> having had a certain high-school geek fascination of my own with the
> SOB.
By giving his anniversaries sufficient significance to remember are you
are making him more important than necessary.
I mean, gosh, we couldn't do it on the 25th because that's Cromwell's
birthday. And the 27th is when the Emperor Basil of Byzantium got
murdered. The 28th, that's today, raise a glass please, is the
anniversary of the battle of Pataye.
There's so much history it's only worth commemorating the things
that are important. What Hitler _did_ is important and terrible and
shouldn't be forgotten. Biographical trivia, well, I only care about
the birthdays and death-days of honourable people.
Jo Walton
p...@panix.com "P Nielsen Hayden" writes:
> We all know these stories, and we don't know these stories. After all,
> here in the fairy circle of fandom, we're the ones that got out.
Thinking about this, and thinking about those D&D clubs being shut
down and those offers of "counselling" and all this clamp-down, makes
me wonder what we can actually and practically do for these people
who are having their lives squeezed like this.
One thing would be that we could offer them the chance of playing with
the grown-ups. Write to these same local papers that are reporting the
closure of these clubs and pressure on the geeks, to say that 13-18s
are welcome at our clubs - our SF clubs, our cons, our meetings, our
roleplaying clubs, with the grown-ups. Maybe even our individual
roleplaying groups, those of us who have them - anyone couldn't fit in
a couple of teens who aren't allowed to play in school? Maybe here and
there we could organise our get-togethers at times and places teens
could make - in a cafe instead of a bar, early evening instead of late,
or maybe on a Sunday afternoon. Oh, and if there are ridiculous US
rules about underage kids being in places where there's drinking then
maybe we could make sure the drinking is in one place in a con or
whatever. And we are grown-up, we can reassure their parents if need
be - look, here we are, interested in those things and normal, with
jobs and lives, not scary.
If we could do some of this, locally, we could spread this information
around on the net. They're on the net - that's one of the complaints
about them. It might be inconvenient for us - but I think we could
probably take a little inconvenience in a really good cause, they're
putting up with a lot worse. They're us, as Patrick said.
I think what I needed more than anything at that age was a belief that
there was a future out there which more more damn fun than this. Seeing
adults having fun, doing things with them when they weren't patronising
but they were doing the things they wanted to do made a big difference,
even if it looked like I was just sitting there.
If we could just let those kids know that it isn't only their parents,
and the idiot schools, that we are out here, that there's a here here,
that it's worth struggling through, then we'd really have achieved
something even if none of them ever turned up anywhere, if they only
heard that some effort was being made.
The specific hysteria all seems to be in the US, but I'm going to put
an ad up in the local RPG shop tomorrow to say I'm looking for players
aged 13+.
James Nicoll
Randolph Fritz <rand...@efn.org> wrote:
>On Tue, 27 Apr 1999 22:48:43 -0400, Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
>wrote:
>>
>>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>>something psychologically very different from being outcast and angry
>>to being so far out of it that you off people.
>>
>
>there is enormous provocation and the media provide many models. I
>think one very important question--perhaps the important question--is
>why do most smart outcast teens choose peace? Salon gives an
>account by someone who picked up the gun, thought about it, and put it
>down. I know two other people who just decided not to. How 'bout
>here? Does anyone else have that experience?
People in my family live a long time [unless they die in a
memorable accident]. While leveling Waterloo Oxford DSS might have
provided a momentary visceral pleasure, spending a good chunk of
my life in jail wouldn't. I would never kill someone just because
I had an urge to: there'd have to be some kind of profit in it for
me.
And heh heh, the people who made my life miserable went on,
on the whole, to have miserable lives and eventually will all die of
natural causes. Not that I am vindictive.
James Nicoll
--
"Can i have my midlife crisis now while I am young and agile enough
to enjoy it?"
James Nicoll
P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> wrote:
>Loren MacGregor <churn...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
><3726692F...@worldnet.att.net>:
>
>>> >Thursday, April 29 is Worldwide Blackout Day.
>>> >
>>> >Wear your blackest clothes.
>>
>>They're the only ones I've got.
>
>Well, yes. Teresa and I looked at each other when that showed up on our
>mailbox. "How would anyone know anything was different?" she said.
>
just think I'm a Mennonite, plain and simple.
Nancy Lebovitz
Paul Birnbaum <bul...@nyct.net> wrote:
>
>It's not, but it's close enough to remind me that it's not disseminated
>enough. And I just came from posting a short skreed about off-the-topic
>postings, too. But I made an exception for tangents...
>
>"In Germany they first came for the Communists and I didn't speak up
>because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't
>speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
>and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came
>for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
>Then they came for me -- and by that time no one was left to speak up."
>
>- Pastor Martin Neimoller
Anyone know the exact real-world sequence? I've heard some stuff
suggesting that the killing started with inmates of mental institutions.
James Nicoll
>>there are, indeed, adults who have been there, understand, and can
>>provide a reasonably safe and accepting social haven _before_ they
>>decide that the answer is unreasoning violence?
>
>Well, walking into a meeting of a local Phoenix fan group when I was
>sixteen, and finding that the adults there would talk to me and that fandom
>offered the opportunity to have actual social standing and do meaningful
>stuff, did quite a bit for _me_.
>
>In fact, fandom was an excellent lifeline for a lot of alienated teenagers,
>for many years. These days, though, many of us tend to assume that any
>teenagers we see at cons are the Wrong Kind Of Fans. And we wonder why the
>average age of "core" fandom is going up.
AFAIK, there are fans in KW but no organised SF fandom. How
might one set one up? It isn't like I have any problem dealing with
teenagers as they are my core clientel [Dunno if the reverse is true,
though].
I seem to be in a pretty good position to help one along [So
could Harry over at Now and Then. Maybe I'll bounce it off him].
mike weber
1999 00:16:23 GMT,
>There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
>Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers, play D&D,
>hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends, and don't fit in with
>the jocks or the gang types, are under suspicion. Who are these kids?
>Fellow SF fans: these kids are _us_. Only younger, and with fewer options.
>Someone needs to stand up for them. Not many people are.
>
Kate's daughter, Helen, got called to the Principal's office yeaterday
((Dacula, GA)) -- someone had said she had a "Hit List".
Last time she got in trouble, for something rather more real, it was
the Assistant Principal's office.
This time it was the Principal's office, with a Guidance Counsellor
and a cop standing by.
Nothing specific was said, apparently, and Kate hasn't heard anything
-- yet -- but a LOT was implied.
Yesterday was Helen's 15th birthday.
She tends to be a bit mouthy at times, is very young for her age in
some ways and quite mature for it in other ways; is on the Governor's
Honors Program, and is significantly ahead of normal grade, being in
the 10th grade. She is a Good Kid.
One off-hand joking remark and she gets hauled before the gestapo.
"This used to be a pretty good country..."
--
"History doesn't always repeat itself... sometimes it just
screams 'Why don't you listen when I'm talkingto you?' and
lets fly with a club." JWC,Jr.
<mike weber> <kras...@mindspring.com>
Ambitious Incomplete web site: http://weberworld.virtualave.net
Nancy Lebovitz
>
>Some years ago, a friend of mine who was then working for a large
>corporation with its own office building got into a discussion with a
>couple of his co-workers about someone who had recently gone postal at
>their place of work, and got jokingly asked -- this friend gets angry
>obviously, and has no tolerance for a lot of common workplace stalling
>tactics -- if he was planning on coming in and trying to shoot
>everybody.
>
>His reply was that trying to shoot everybody was silly; if you really
>want to kill all your co-workers, you lock the doors and use gas.
>
>This horrified his co-workers; it made perfect sense to me. (Which is
>part of why I heard about it; he wanted to check that his was a normal
>reaction to the question, more or less. (Yes, there is a culture in
>which I'm very close to baseline normal. It's just small.)
Imho, the other piece of it is that (at least in fandom), focusing
on the instrumental details for killing is a bonding mechanism.
Anyone else remember that very detailed discussion here of the
best structure and materials for Molotov cocktails? On the other
hand, it's unusual to talk about the best way of killing fans--or
at least I've never heard it discussed. On the third (and perhaps
gripping hand), fans are better than most [1] at focussing in on details
and logic, and ignoring emotional implications of metaphors and topics.
I don't think it's just love of detail, either--I do think there's
some element of background anger involved, but it's obviously made
harmless in fandom.
>
>What he couldn't explain to his co-workers, and which I've never
>managed to explain in similar circumstances, is that capability and
>intention are different. I'm pretty much used to a lot of people
>being deeply confused on that point.
Thanks for the lead-in to a rant I've been wondering about where
to put.
"The future happens first in the imagination, then in the will, and
finally in reality."
This is a handy way to organize proposed methods of preventing violence.
There's limiting imagination, there's getting people to not want to
be violent, and there's restricting means of violence.
Sub-rant: I believe that one effect of the gaming culture is that a
lot more people are thinking about tactics than used to--this shows
up in the two most recent school shootings. I don't think there's
anything to be done about it, but I think it's a strong part of the
situation.
>
Back to main point: I agree with you that intention is the bottleneck,
though it may be that the most effective control is on the imagination
if you can manage to do it. In this society, it's *much* too late to
control imaginations.
I believe that there are five categories of reasons for not engaging
in random violence--compliance, empathy, fear of personal punishment,
belief that a functioning society is a good thing, and belief that
random violence won't acomplish one's goals.
I suspect that compliance and empathy are the most common (and perhaps
the most reliable for most people), and the problem is that teaching
them takes time and attention.
Part of what's entertaining [3] is that compliance and empathy are
somewhat opposed. Training people to just not think of destructive
behavior as part of their repetoire requiring ignoring how much they
don't like being limited.
>The thing I find most baffling about the attempt to suppress the
>obviously odd is the question of what the folks doing the suppressing
>think it will accomplish, what insecurity they think they're
>addressing, because they're not addressing _either_ capability _or_
>intention.
You don't think it's possible to enjoy exerting power over other people?
This is a chance to have more rules.
It's also a chance to look busy and effective, and thus justify being
in charge. There's more to life than being insecure about mass murder.
Actually, the snarky hypothesis is that people in charge deal with
insecurity by getting power--attempting to control imaginations and
weapons will add a lot to their power whether it works or not.
Another piece of it is that addressing intention is hard work, and
might actually involve being kind to people who've been designated
as outsiders.
Actually, I think a lot of people want 100% security (yes, I know,
that's very bad insecurity management) and believe in free will and
general depravity--thus, they think that addressing intention isn't worth
the trouble.
By the way, what would you consider to be good insecurity management?
>
>Pretty obviously, the great majority of socially outcast teenagers
>never do anything violent, and on those rare occasions when they _are_
>violent, they're bad at it. So the capability is not, in the
>statistical general case, there at all; if it _was_, the recent tragic
>events wouldn't be shocking on the grounds of having happened at all.
>
>Equally obviously, there isn't a whole lot of listening going on, so
>the worry isn't intention, which is what it usually is -- many earnest
>explanations of how one could be liked, really, if only one would make
>the right kind of effort. It's entirely incompetent advice, but it's
>there, and it's intended to address intention.
>
>This stuff, though, I haven't a clue what the various authority
>figures think they're going to get out of it.
One more rant: It's recently come out that the killers were [{flourish
of trumpets}] DRUG-FREE. We aren't going to hear any suggestions
that if they'd mellowed out a little, they might not have started
shooting, or at least been less effective when they did.
Actually, it's interesting how many commonly praised virtues those
two showed--they chose their own goals, they thought and worked hard,
and they delayed gratification.
[1] Better than *most*, I said--I didn't say that fans are entirely
focused on logic and denotation.
[2] Anyone have the source for the quote?
[3] There's a part of my mind that I call the martian sociologist
which gets entertained by that sort of thing. The martian sociologist
would also have liked to have seen what would have happened if Quayle
had become President.
Ailsa N Murphy
>
>>I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had books.
>
>If you were a high school student in many American schools this week, and
>you said that in class, you would at minimum be dragged off for
>"counseling." If not suspended immediately.
>
Ever since this happened, I've been protesting (to my household,
anyway) "but building pipe bombs and other explosives and hating
jocks is just what guys _do_". I shudder to think what would have
happened to the guys in my D&D group (and, I imagine, me) in this
atmosphere.
-Ailsa
--
Stand in the fire an...@world.std.com
Go to the wire Ailsa N.T. Murphy
Dreams and desire
They will lead you home. - Jefferson starship (?)
Ailsa N Murphy
>But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
>life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
>week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
>outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>
will make people realize how dysfunctional high school culture is.
Maybe now that taunting the outsiders is shown to have dangerous
consequences, adults will actually try to teach kids a little kindness,
a little decency." There I go, overestimating the American public
again.
>
>We all know these stories, and we don't know these stories. After all,
>here in the fairy circle of fandom, we're the ones that got out.
>
that, odd as they may be, they have company. The rest of us have
to find it on their own.
Lowell Gilbert
> What he couldn't explain to his co-workers, and which I've never
> managed to explain in similar circumstances, is that capability and
> intention are different. I'm pretty much used to a lot of people
> being deeply confused on that point.
>
> The thing I find most baffling about the attempt to suppress the
> obviously odd is the question of what the folks doing the suppressing
> think it will accomplish, what insecurity they think they're
> addressing, because they're not addressing _either_ capability _or_
> intention.
Brilliantly put. I've been worried by the fact that there seems to be a
widespread opinion that the capability is difficult. I still support gun
control, but the sort of relatively small antipersonnel bombs these kids
in Colorado had simply aren't very difficult, and there's not a lot of
hope of censoring knowledge of the technology (the fright from realizing
that was what took the fun -- for me, back when I was a teenager -- out
of blowing things up). On the other hand, It's not really any easier to
do something about the intention than about the capability, either.
It's hard to keep perspective about an event that qualifies to be called
a "massacre." Nonetheless, before changing our policies in schools, we
must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all,
schools *are* the safest places in American kids' lives, and have been
getting more so, not less (impressions notwithstanding) for the last few
years.
I'm also uncomfortable with drawing too many parallels to our own teenage
years, particularly if those teenage years were more than a handful of
years ago. Teenage life *is* different, even if nobody has managed to
quantify the changes. Furthermore, the meaning of "outsider" status has
changed as well; being a non-conformist is absolutely essential (and, in
an ironic twist that makes it meaningless, universal as well). Fifteen
years after "Revenge of the Nerds," its message of universal outsiderhood
has been achieved. How this plays into the natural alienation of
adolescence isn't for today's adults to say; my contribution is,
hopefully, to demonstrate that there is nothing wrong with outgrowing
adolescence. That can sound revolutionary these days, but in the end,
*being* an adult has *always* been the most important part of the example
adults can set for adolescents.
Be well.
Lowell Gilbert
--
"All bad precedents begin with justifiable measures."
-- Julius Caesar
Ailsa N Murphy
>>
>> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
>> But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
>> life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
>> week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
>> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>
>conventions?
These kids didn't off their friends, remember.
>Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
>psychologically
>very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
>that
>you off people.
>
True, but sometimes that difference is only in not having the means.
Those kids may noe be you, but they are just like ths guys I hung
out with in high school (and my daughter's been obsessing on this
story, so I know rather more about these boys that I would otherwise
want to). The guys made pipe bombs, and frag grenades, and homemade
napalm, and at least one of them had fantasies of carpet-bombing
Harlem and throwing all drug users in death camps. And they used to
go out on weekeneds and blow up people's mailboxes. I've been
wondering what's different, then & now, was it the times & the
community, or was it just that D & D & K weren't as crazy as all
that. I'm quite sure K was, but his mother realized, and packed him
off to live with his father.
But I ramble, I'm sorry. The "Damn, that could have been us"
feeling is very strong, though.
>I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>name-calling,
>snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
>So what?
>
Easy when you're 30 and 40, very difficult when you're 12-18 or
so. I think working on being masters of the nasty putdown is a
bit more common than collecting guns (it's cheaper, for one).
The way you develop calluses is by repeated pain to the same
spot over & over again until you have a layer of dead skin
between the sore place and the world. Teens are in the
middle of callus formation.
>If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
>societally-neutral),
>that should be all that matters. Why waste any time worrying about what
>people
>think about you? I think one of the clearest signs that you've emerged
>from
>adolesence is being extremely choosey about whose opinion matters. Most
>people's
>opinions shouldn't.
>
True enough, but IIRC the problem is teenagers, who are still _in_
adolescence. They care, sometimes desperately.
Joel Rosenberg
> Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604 <fa...@netcom15.netcom.com>
> wrote in
>
>> I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had
>> books.
> If you were a high school student in many American schools
> this week, and you said that in class, you would at minimum be
> dragged off for "counseling."
Which may not be an entirely bad thing. Learning that one has to pay
a price for a lack of discretion -- even an officially-encouraged lack
of discretion -- is a lesson that many folks would probably be better
of learning young. (Like what you do when the cop smiles and says,
"Hey, you don't have to talk to me, and if you want a lawyer you can
have one -- hell, we'll even pay for it if you can't afford it -- but I
think we can clear this up with just a few quick questions, if that's okay?")
The next lesson, in all likelihood, is how to plead guilty to a lesser
-- not for having had bad thoughts, in this case, but for having
expressed oneself with a lack of sensitivity. (Given how marginally
legal it is to send somebody off for reeducation for having expressed
bad thoughts, it's a bargain that a high school administration would
likely go for.)
That's probably not how the world should be; but it's probably how the
world is.
-------------------------------------
This is my signature file. There are
many like it, but this one is mine.
-------------------------------------
P Nielsen Hayden
<925289...@bluejo.demon.co.uk>:
>I think what I needed more than anything at that age was a belief that
>there was a future out there which more more damn fun than this. Seeing
>adults having fun, doing things with them when they weren't patronising
>but they were doing the things they wanted to do made a big difference,
>even if it looked like I was just sitting there.
>
>If we could just let those kids know that it isn't only their parents,
>and the idiot schools, that we are out here, that there's a here here,
>that it's worth struggling through, then we'd really have achieved
>something even if none of them ever turned up anywhere, if they only
>heard that some effort was being made.
That's what finding fandom did for me.
And, in fact, this morning I got email from a Minneapolis fan who'd read
the Jon Katz pieces I posted the URLs for, and who wrote a brief, eloquent
note to Katz pointing out that SF fandom offers an excellent outlet for the
kinds of put-upon, self-identified high-school geeks-n-nerds who are
writing despairing letters to Katz. A very sensible letter to write!
P Nielsen Hayden
<rd6k8uw...@world.std.com>:
>It's hard to keep perspective about an event that qualifies to be called
>a "massacre." Nonetheless, before changing our policies in schools, we
>must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all,
>schools *are* the safest places in American kids' lives, and have been
>getting more so, not less (impressions notwithstanding) for the last few
>years.
This is in fact true. Lots and lots more kids die as a result of injuries
suffered at the hands of their parents or caretakers than die because of
school shootups, but this doesn't get the front pages of all the newspapers
and magazines. And I was amazed to discover that the actual record for US
deaths suffered in a school at the hands of a student was set way back in
1927, in the town where I was born, Lansing, Michigan, when a student
literally blew up his school with home-made explosives.
>I'm also uncomfortable with drawing too many parallels to our own teenage
>years, particularly if those teenage years were more than a handful of
>years ago. Teenage life *is* different, even if nobody has managed to
>quantify the changes. Furthermore, the meaning of "outsider" status has
>changed as well; being a non-conformist is absolutely essential (and, in
>an ironic twist that makes it meaningless, universal as well). Fifteen
>years after "Revenge of the Nerds," its message of universal outsiderhood
>has been achieved.
I'm not sure this isn't a bit of a stretch. Yes, there's a lot of
comformity pretending to be "outsiderness," but there are also plenty of
real outsiders. The actual hierarchies inside the average American
suburban school would probably be perfectly familiar to time-travellers
from the 1950s.
Joel Rosenberg
Ailsa>
Ailsa>
Ailsa>
Ailsa> In article <3726770B...@city-net.com>, Laurie
Ailsa> D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com> wrote:
>>> P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
>>>
>>> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have
>>> plenty to say. But I'm more interested in heirarchies and
>>> outcasts in modern high-school life, in geek/nerd/goth culture
>>> as a response to that, and in the past week's sudden and
>>> apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
>>> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>> But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>> conventions?
Ailsa>
>> psychologically very different from being outcast and angry to
>> being so far out of it that you off people.
>>
Ailsa> the means.
Oh, horse hockey. Propane tanks, gasoline, and other combustibles
were easily available when and where I grew up -- and I doubt that's
aytpical -- and shotguns are and have been common throughout the US
for more than a century. Converting one into an easily-concealed
sawed-off shotgun shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes with
a hacksaw, less with a Dremel mototool. (It's also a serious felony,
but I think we can assume that somebody bent on committing mass murder
isn't going to be bothered by the fear of committing a lesser felony.)
(As far as weapons go, throughout my time in elementary school and
high school, I regularly carried a knife to school -- a Scout knife,
usually, or sometimes a Swiss Army Knife -- without so much as a
second glance.)
And, for that matter, cars are all over the place, and smashing a car
into somebody -- or many somebodies -- in a parking lot is a means
that's available to just 'bout anybody who can reach the pedals.
Anybody who wants to start a fire can just put a gallon of gasoline in
a two-gallon pot, put the pot on a stove or hotplate, turn on the
stove and/or hotplate and then run like hell. Or light a fire in a
wastebasket with the old cigarette and match trick that I learned
about from watching Stalag 17 in a high school social studies class.
And we haven't even gotten started on poisons, or terroristic use of
recreational drugs, or combining common household chemicals in
incredibly deadly ways like, well, nevermind, but if you've read
Heinlein, you've been given at least one recipe.
The means to do great, widespread damage is always there. The reason
that almost all people don't use that means isn't because they can't,
but because they choose not to.
Nancy Lebovitz
Michael R Weholt <awnb...@panix.com> wrote:
>In article <7g71h0$s...@netaxs.com>,
>
>>Back to main point: I agree with you that intention is the bottleneck,
>>though it may be that the most effective control is on the imagination
>>if you can manage to do it. In this society, it's *much* too late to
>>control imaginations.
>
>people's imaginations is a good thing, right?
>
Yes, though if I spend too much time thinking about how Nazism grew
out of an artistic vision of a clean world full of pretty blond people,
I begin to wonder.
Seriously, though--aside from being impossible, a world where imaginations
can be controlled is worse than the alternative.
Nancy Lebovitz
><rd6k8uw...@world.std.com>:
>
>>It's hard to keep perspective about an event that qualifies to be called
>>a "massacre." Nonetheless, before changing our policies in schools, we
>>must be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. After all,
>>schools *are* the safest places in American kids' lives, and have been
>>getting more so, not less (impressions notwithstanding) for the last few
>>years.
>
>This is in fact true. Lots and lots more kids die as a result of injuries
>suffered at the hands of their parents or caretakers than die because of
>school shootups, but this doesn't get the front pages of all the newspapers
>and magazines. And I was amazed to discover that the actual record for US
>deaths suffered in a school at the hands of a student was set way back in
>1927, in the town where I was born, Lansing, Michigan, when a student
>literally blew up his school with home-made explosives.
>
set an explosion in an elementary school. He was afraid that an increase
in taxes for the school would cause him to lose his farm.
Nancy Lebovitz
Ailsa N Murphy <an...@world.std.com> wrote:
>>
>When this happened, the first thing I thought was "Well, maybe this
>will make people realize how dysfunctional high school culture is.
>Maybe now that taunting the outsiders is shown to have dangerous
>consequences, adults will actually try to teach kids a little kindness,
>a little decency." There I go, overestimating the American public
>again.
A lot of people *have* been recommending more civilized schools,
including teaching conflict resolution. (I admit I'm a little edgey
about applying "conflict resolution" to bullying--it sounds as though
it's assumed that both sides need to change their behavior, but maybe
it's more reasonable than that in practice.)
Ailsa N Murphy
Joel Rosenberg <jo...@winternet.com> wrote:
>>>>>> Regarding Re: Some American lives; an...@world.std.com (Ailsa N Murphy) adds:
> Ailsa> the means.
>
>Oh, horse hockey. Propane tanks, gasoline, and other combustibles
>were easily available when and where I grew up -- and I doubt that's
>aytpical -- and shotguns are and have been common throughout the US
>for more than a century. Converting one into an easily-concealed
>sawed-off shotgun shouldn't take more than ten or fifteen minutes with
>a hacksaw, less with a Dremel mototool. (It's also a serious felony,
>but I think we can assume that somebody bent on committing mass murder
>isn't going to be bothered by the fear of committing a lesser felony.)
>
I wanted to kill. I had quite distinct plans to kill the people
I wanted dead, and they included stuff I couldn't get. Had I been
able to get it, I'd've had to consider whether I was really that
sort of person, of course.
>(As far as weapons go, throughout my time in elementary school and
>high school, I regularly carried a knife to school -- a Scout knife,
>usually, or sometimes a Swiss Army Knife -- without so much as a
>second glance.)
>
Heck, I carry one now. Damned if I woudl kill anyone with my
own personal knife, though. I wasn't _stupid_.
>And, for that matter, cars are all over the place, and smashing a car
>into somebody -- or many somebodies -- in a parking lot is a means
>that's available to just 'bout anybody who can reach the pedals.
>Anybody who wants to start a fire can just put a gallon of gasoline in
>a two-gallon pot, put the pot on a stove or hotplate, turn on the
>stove and/or hotplate and then run like hell. Or light a fire in a
>wastebasket with the old cigarette and match trick that I learned
>about from watching Stalag 17 in a high school social studies class.
>
>And we haven't even gotten started on poisons, or terroristic use of
>recreational drugs, or combining common household chemicals in
>incredibly deadly ways like, well, nevermind, but if you've read
>Heinlein, you've been given at least one recipe.
>
>The means to do great, widespread damage is always there. The reason
>that almost all people don't use that means isn't because they can't,
>but because they choose not to.
>
Most of the stuff you've listed are great recipes for getting caught
immediately afterwards or within days. Granted, the boys in CO
killed themselves immediately afterwards, but in my crowd, we
valued Not Getting Caught.
If you're arguing gun control, I'm certainly not.
Dave Weingart
and it was to laugh. I mean, I was one of the geeky social outcast,
playing in the computer room and with RPGs and drawing violent comics
in my adolescence. Of course, I don't think I ever actually so much
as HIT anyone. And I suppose I know too many Goths to take seriously
the threat of Goths being violent...other than a tropism for clove
cigarattes a few years ago, they're generally gentle souls.
Maybe it's time for people to say, out loud, "No, it wasn't the music
they listened to, or the books they read, or any of that. It was
two very sick individuals who planned this and carried it out. No,
they weren't basically good kids...they were Evil-with-a-capital-E and
they did it. Not Marilyn Manson, not the NRA, not anyone else."
But it's too human to want to blame it on someone
--
73 de Dave Weingart KA2ESK Powerpuff Nerds. Saving the
mailto:phyd...@liii.com Net before bedtime
http://www.liii.com/~phydeaux
Peter Hentges
>
> Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote
> >I think what I needed more than anything at that age was a belief that
> >there was a future out there which more more damn fun than this. Seeing
> >adults having fun, doing things with them when they weren't patronising
> >but they were doing the things they wanted to do made a big difference,
> >even if it looked like I was just sitting there.
> >
> >If we could just let those kids know that it isn't only their parents,
> >and the idiot schools, that we are out here, that there's a here here,
> >that it's worth struggling through, then we'd really have achieved
> >something even if none of them ever turned up anywhere, if they only
> >heard that some effort was being made.
>
> That's what finding fandom did for me.
>
> And, in fact, this morning I got email from a Minneapolis fan who'd read
> the Jon Katz pieces I posted the URLs for, and who wrote a brief, eloquent
> note to Katz pointing out that SF fandom offers an excellent outlet for the
> kinds of put-upon, self-identified high-school geeks-n-nerds who are
> writing despairing letters to Katz. A very sensible letter to write!
Since Patrick brought it up, and quite politely didn't post the private
mail, here's the letter I sent to Katz and copied to Patrick:
-----
Jon,
Thanks for your efforts to reveal the truth of the life of geeks
out there. It is sad that the backlash of a tragedy is to create
yet another group to be vilified by the media and harassed in
their everyday lives. Your efforts to bring the truth to light
are very much appreciated.
You wrote in your column that many were asking what they could do
to help the kids suffering social injustice in high school. Well,
in every major metropolitan area of the U.S. and around the world
there are organized clubs of people who feel much like these kids.
You see, we were those kids when we were in high school. We read.
We played with computers. We dressed differently. We thought
differently. We are science fiction fans.
What these kids need to know is that there is a social group in
which their "differences" are the norm. Where people understand
what they are talking about and are eager to both listen and to
explain more to them. So tell these kids to find their local
science fiction club. Probably the owner of their local SF book
store or comic shop can point them in the right direction. Or
their local library might have information. If nothing else, they
should look for fliers for a local science fiction convention
where they will be able to find hundreds or thousands of people
like them.
For me, and many like me, SF fandom has become a family of choice.
My fan friends provided the support and encouragement that got me
through depression and near-alcoholism. I've heard the stories of
how it has worked similarly for others. So the message is: if you
don't fit in where you are, there are other options. You can find
a place where you fit and the strength to bear your visits into
the "normal" world.
-----
[O] Peter Hentges
[O] Sheep get rent
[O] JBRU
Peter Hentges
> But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
> conventions?
Not that there aren't other forms of violence in and around
conventions.
One reason that pops to mind for me is that one of the things
fandom brought to my conscious mind was respect for weapons and
what they can do. From my first Minicon, the weapon policy was
evident and well-explained. I still remember looking over a
huckster's display of swords and knives, casually pulling one
from its sheath and having the guy next to me firmly say "Clear!"
> Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
> psychologically
> very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
> that
> you off people.
[Begin personal gun rant. No, I don't want this to be about guns, either.]
One of the reasons I am morally opposed to firearms is that I think
they make the psychological line too easy to cross. I think there is
a vast psychological difference between walking up to the object of
your hatred and/or fear and sticking a hunk of steel in its guts and
standing at a safe distance and pulling a trigger. I think there is
a smaller line between the thinking about and doing for the latter
than there is for the former.
I have no facts to back up this opinion and readily agree that my
morals should not be legislated. Nor do I suggest that any others
subscribe to them. Some of my best friends.... It's just me.
[End rant]
Jacque
Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com> wrote:
>>P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
>>
>> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
>> But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
>> life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
>> week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
>> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>
>psychologically very different from being outcast and angry to being so
>far out of it that you off people.
I would think that the answer to this should be rather obvious, but
I'll say it anyway: conventions are the haven, not the hell. Why would
you lay waste to all about you in the one place where you feel safe?
>I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
>So what?
I recall hearing several Columbine students interviewed about the
shooters, and reporting, "Well, yeah, they were teased and made fun
of." I feel very angry when I hear this kind of comment. It completely
trivializes the sort of abuse that outsiders suffer, and negates the
(IM not particularly HO) entirely justifiable pain inflicted on the
victim. Yeah, thick skin. That's all very well and good, but IME, at
least, it's cold comfort on those long lonely walks down the hall when
nobody will talk to you.
But at the same time, the question I've been finding myself asking a
lot the last few days is: why the hell haven't we stood up sooner? For
some reason, verbal and physical abuse and ostracization by school
peers are completely acceptable. (Like, say, domestic violence or --
dare we say it? -- racism, in past decades.) Why?
I'd have to a little bit of the responsibility at the door of those of
us who have accepted it. "Oh well. Life's like that. You just have to
make the best of it." Yes, well, that's what women were told thirty
years ago while trowling on pancake after their husbands had blacked
both their eyes.
Maybe it's time to look at changing our attitudes about peer abuse...?
>If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
>societally-neutral), that should be all that matters. Why waste any
>time worrying about what people think about you? I think one of the
>clearest signs that you've emerged from adolesence is being extremely
>choosey about whose opinion matters. Most people's opinions
>shouldn't.
As far as this goes, I think this is a valid point. I don't think
we're ever going to eliminate this kind of problem from human nature --
mammalian dominance patterns are too deeply woven into the genome. But
I do think maybe there's a danger of passing off deeper abuses as kids
"just making fun of" their classmates. And my hope is that maybe this
issue will finally get a good looking-at.
Be nice if SOMETHING positive came out of the Columbine mess.
--jm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hell is not being able to face the truth about existence. --J.M. Egolf
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacque Marshall jacquemATnetcomDOTcom
http://www.eskimo.com/~jacquem (un-spammex with actual characters)
Rachael M. Lininger
On 28 Apr 1999, Joel Rosenberg wrote:
>The means to do great, widespread damage is always there. The reason
>that almost all people don't use that means isn't because they can't,
>but because they choose not to.
Or choose not to learn how to. I actively avoided learning how to do
great damage to things. I certainly could have, very easily, and I
knew _how_ to learn it. That was a conscious attempt to prevent a
successful suicide, because most the of the time I was sensible enough
to realize that I really would get out of high school.
I think part of the problem is that the people who are despairing are
directing it outward, instead of just tidily killing themselves the
way they used to. Suicide has been one of the top causes of death for
teens for how long?
Rachael
--
Rachael M. Lininger | "Some causes of angst have not worn well."
lininger@ |
virtu.sar.usf.edu | Dr. A. McA. Miller
James Nicoll
Well, say one is the victim. One can turn the other cheek. Probably
won't stop the bullying. One can throw pepper in the bully's face and stomp
them while they are blinded. One might reasonably argue that being obviously
unable or unwilling to resort to violence makes one a legitimate target--
the bully can't mind bleeding or they wouldn't start things.
James Nicoll
Janice Gelb
>
>There's a wave of this happening in high schools all over America.
>Suddenly, unconventional, geeky kids who know about computers, play D&D,
>hang out in weird clans of sci-fi-obsessed friends, and don't fit in with
>the jocks or the gang types, are under suspicion. Who are these kids?
>Fellow SF fans: these kids are _us_. Only younger, and with fewer options.
>Someone needs to stand up for them. Not many people are.
>
Ironically, one of the things that has bugged me about this whole
incident, emphasized by a report on NPR this morning, is why the move
from trenchcoat-wearing outsiderdom to outright violent psychopathy
wasn't noticed or acted upon. The story this morning was of a mother
of one of the killers classmates, whose life was threatened after an
incident. She had been monitoring his web site and found all sorts of
threats of violence and killing against people at the high school and
the whole neighborhood that escalated over time. Numerous reports to
the sheriff's office resulted in no action whatsoever.
This persecution by adults of perfectly innocent unconventional geeky
kids is obviously an overreaction out of a guilt reflex from not doing
anything with these obvious clues (a shotgun in a kids bedroom???), and
a determination on the parts of other parents/adults that *they* won't
be caught short. Much as my sympathy is with the geeks, though, my
feeling is that once the line is crossed from introverted outsider to
threats of violence, they do have to be taken seriously, teenage angst
or not.
*********************************************************************
Janice Gelb | Just speaking for me, not Sun.
janic...@eng.sun.com | http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/
What if the hokey-pokey really *is* what it's all about?
Ailsa N Murphy
Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>In article <FAwMt...@world.std.com>,
>Ailsa N Murphy <an...@world.std.com> wrote:
>>>
>>When this happened, the first thing I thought was "Well, maybe this
>>will make people realize how dysfunctional high school culture is.
>>Maybe now that taunting the outsiders is shown to have dangerous
>>consequences, adults will actually try to teach kids a little kindness,
>>a little decency." There I go, overestimating the American public
>>again.
>
>A lot of people *have* been recommending more civilized schools,
>including teaching conflict resolution. (I admit I'm a little edgey
>about applying "conflict resolution" to bullying--it sounds as though
>it's assumed that both sides need to change their behavior, but maybe
>it's more reasonable than that in practice.)
>
But in the "both sides need to change their behavior" category,
my daughter (surprise, surprise) is growing up to be a kidgeek
outcast, and I am noticing that her behavior _does_ aggravate
the situation. Problem is, I'm a grownup geek, there's only
so much advice I can give on how to avoid ostracism.
Mike Kozlowski
>The actual hierarchies inside the average American
>suburban school would probably be perfectly familiar to time-travellers
>from the 1950s.
I don't know. I think there's more variation even between schools than
that would indicate.
In my own high school, for instance, I don't think there was really a
strong hierarchy. There were cliques, yes, but that's pretty much
inevitable whenever you get a few hundred people together. The shop kids
tended to hang out with each other, the jocks/nerds tended to hang out
together, the consciously-hip rebels hung out together, and so forth.
And while it was far, far from a world of Peace and Universal Love, what
conflicts there were tended to be conflicts between equals, not a bunch of
"jocks" picking on someone less fortunate.
Your Experience May Vary, and probably does. I'm just pointing out that
things aren't nearly that universal.
--
Michael Kozlowski m...@cs.wisc.edu
Recommended SF (Updated 4/16): http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~mlk/sfbooks.html
Steve Brinich
> I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
> don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
> you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
> name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
The cases described on slashdot.org go well beyond that, up to and
including physical assault with lethal force. In many cases, the public
schools have the same internal culture as prisons, in which the ruling clique
of occupants has a free hand to abuse the rest without interference from the
nominal authorities.
--
Steve Brinich <ste...@Radix.Net> If the government wants us
http://www.Radix.Net/~steveb to respect the law
89B992BBE67F7B2F64FDF2EA14374C3E it should set a better example
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
Steve Brinich
> These kids didn't off their friends, remember.
Not directly, but it does seem that they tried to blow up the whole place.
> True, but sometimes that difference is only in not having the means.
> Those kids may noe be you, but they are just like ths guys I hung
> out with in high school (and my daughter's been obsessing on this
> story, so I know rather more about these boys that I would otherwise
> want to). The guys made pipe bombs, and frag grenades, and homemade
> napalm, and at least one of them had fantasies of carpet-bombing
> Harlem and throwing all drug users in death camps.
That bit I hadn't heard, though I don't doubt it given that there is an
obvious reason (i.e. the fact that it differs only in degree from the
on-the-record opinions of many "respectable" people) for it to be swept down
the memory hole.
Martin Wisse
>In article <3726770B...@city-net.com>,
>Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com> wrote:
>>
>>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>>conventions?
>>Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
>>psychologically
>>very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
>>that
>>you off people.
>
>There's a weird sort of chunking that's going on about those kids who
>did the killing--most people (including me, for a while) heard the
>"outcast" bit much more loudly than the "neo-Nazi" part.
It may very well be related. Being outcast the way they were, the nazi
ideology and symbols must be tempting, if only for shock value. I don't
know how it is in the US, but over here that is the ultimate taboo, exactly
why some friends of mine went for it as teenagers.
>>I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>>don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>>you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>>name-calling,
>>snideness and just general childish behavior?
>>
>This suggests that you went to a fairly safe high school. In some
>cases (though not mine) being low status enough means being physically
>attacked.
I have to say that the stories coming out in the wake of Littleton make me
appreciate my own time in highschool that much more. I never was the most
popular of the class, but neither an outcast, nor was anybody else actually.
Most people were just content to struggle through highschool, neither loving it
nor really hating it. It may have been special circumstances (a nominal
christian school) or culture, it seems high school is much more conformist and
gung ho towards sports etc.
Martin Wisse
Rob Hansen
<appalling stuff snipped>
Do many US schools have e-mail, and are these addresses easily
accessible en masse? If so, would it help to send them *polite* mail
expressing our concern and explaining that we were once like the kids
being persecuted yet grew up to be non-violent and productive members
of society? Perhaps getting enough of these might at least make them
*think* about what they're doing.
--
Rob Hansen
================================================
My Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/
Peter Hentges
>
> In article <8DB67EA...@news.panix.com>,
> >suburban school would probably be perfectly familiar to time-travellers
> >from the 1950s.
>
> I don't know. I think there's more variation even between schools than
> that would indicate.
I agree; and I don't think Patrick meant that all schools would be
familiar to all 50s time-travellers. (And isn't it bizarre to think
of your generic 1950s time traveler?) My high school was small
enough that while we had our cliques, we also all knew each other.
Furthermore, bright students were rare enough in rural Minnesota
that the teachers very gladly supported us. I was aware of being
liked by my teachers during high school and the opinions of those
adults mattered more to me than the social pressure I felt from my
peers. (I probably have more signatures in my senior yearbook from
teachers than from other students ... other students that I cared about
and didn't just want to get close to with a valid social excuse,
anyway....)
With all of that, however, I think that the tropes of high school are
probably more or less evident in each school. As Mike pointed out
later, anytime you get a few hundred people together, they tend to
form subgroups. The fanzine fans hang out separately from the gamers.
(We tend to cross subgroups more frequently and easily and to form
and dissolve "free-radical" subgroups with ease, I think. I know at
this year's Minicon, I fell in with the late night/early morning
"scare quote" "crowd" after the music crowd dissolved and before I
joined the poker group. All in one session of consciousness.)
Pierre Jelenc
> In article <7g7a1h$g...@netaxs.com>,
>
> >I just read that the record was 45 deaths in 1928--a school board member
> >set an explosion in an elementary school.
>
> Mayor who wants to blow up the public schools.
Hmm. No. The schools have been blowing up for 30 years, and the mayor, the
city council president, and the governor want to rebuild them. But the
sovi^H^H^H^Hboard of education would rather not jeopardize their jobs.
They might have to go out there and teach, for one thing, instead of
sitting in committees.
Less than 40% of our school budget goes to instruction.
Pierre
--
Pierre Jelenc | The Cucumbers' "Total Vegetility" is out!
| Pawnshop's "Three Brass Balls" is out!
The New York City Beer Guide | RAW Kinder's "CD EP" is out!
http://www.nycbeer.org | Home Office Records http://www.web-ho.com
John Lorentz
wrote:
>On 28 Apr 1999 03:55:16 GMT, P Nielsen Hayden <p...@panix.com> caught
>my attention by saying:
>
>>Laurie, the "these kids" I was referring to have never shot anyone.
>>
>>I'm not talking about that sad unhinged pair who killed thirteen people in
>>Colorado. I'm talking about all the nonconformist kids all over America
>>who've been peered at and harassed and suspended and dragged off for
>>"counseling" in the week since.
>
>Or during the last 10-15 years, for that matter.
>
To a general extent, yes.
But in the last week, the harassment has increased exponentially,
especially from the school officials. Lincoln High here in Portland
is only one of many schools which sent students home simply because
they wore a black coat to school.
Students have been suspended simply because they've disagreed with
their administration viewpoint that "_Our_ school has no problems."
(John Barnes, who--beside being an SF writer--is a teacher at a
college near Columbine, posted on Genie that this high school has had
problems for years. Athletics, the administrators feel, is the only
reason to have a school, and heaven help any student who isn't a jock
or a fan of the jocks. And heaven help any student who's complained
about the unfair treatment.)
Students have been given the choice of suspension or counselling,
simply because they like to participate in RPGs.
And readers of science fiction have come under official scrutiny,
because as SF readers they're "different".
Yes, many of these things have happened in the past--but the fact
that so much of the harassment is now coming from "educators" is
new...and frightening.
--
John Lorentz (Thurston High School, Class of '70, student of Bill
Kinkel 1964-65, 1967-70)
David G. Bell
J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk "Jo Walton" writes:
> In article <372eae08...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>
> dum...@aol.com "Doug Wickstrom" writes:
>
> > April 29th is a really bad day to wear black in sympathy with outcast
> > geekdom--it has the same sort of connection that April 20th did to our
> > young killers, but at the other end of AH's life (well, OK, the night
> > of April 29-30). I don't think I care to associate myself with that
> > particular mediocre watercolorist in any way whatsoever, despite once
> > having had a certain high-school geek fascination of my own with the
> > SOB.
>
> By giving his anniversaries sufficient significance to remember are you
> are making him more important than necessary.
>
> I mean, gosh, we couldn't do it on the 25th because that's Cromwell's
> birthday. And the 27th is when the Emperor Basil of Byzantium got
> murdered. The 28th, that's today, raise a glass please, is the
> anniversary of the battle of Pataye.
>
> There's so much history it's only worth commemorating the things
> that are important. What Hitler _did_ is important and terrible and
> shouldn't be forgotten. Biographical trivia, well, I only care about
> the birthdays and death-days of honourable people.
And, if there has to be any significance in the death of Adolf Hitler,
surely it is in that he died, by his own hand, with his Thousand Year
Reich in ruins about him. The war in Europe lingered on for a few days,
and Hitler wasn't the only sicko bastard running a country in 1945, but
at least we'd dealt with one of them.
--
David G. Bell -- Farmer, SF Fan, Filker, and Punslinger.
David G. Bell
lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu "Rachael M. Lininger" writes:
>
> On 28 Apr 1999, Joel Rosenberg wrote:
>
> >The means to do great, widespread damage is always there. The reason
> >that almost all people don't use that means isn't because they can't,
> >but because they choose not to.
>
> Or choose not to learn how to. I actively avoided learning how to do
> great damage to things. I certainly could have, very easily, and I
> knew _how_ to learn it. That was a conscious attempt to prevent a
> successful suicide, because most the of the time I was sensible enough
> to realize that I really would get out of high school.
>
> I think part of the problem is that the people who are despairing are
> directing it outward, instead of just tidily killing themselves the
> way they used to. Suicide has been one of the top causes of death for
> teens for how long?
Probably for far longer than anyone has cared to count. Historically,
with the sinfulness of suicide in mind, there has been a tendency to
look for alternative explanations for a death -- the farmer stupidly
carrying a loaded shotgun while he climbs over a gate, rather that
deliberately killing himself.
One thing's for sure: suicide alone doesn't get you anything like the
same headlines.
David G. Bell
jan...@eng.sun.com "Janice Gelb" writes:
There are some obvious similarities here to the Hungerford and Dunblane
massacres in the UK -- the same accumulating evidence of a person
becoming dangerous which was ignored. And it does seem that there is
some of the same sort of irrational response building in the USA.
Gary Farber
[. . .]
: The kids who *did* the shooting also had pretty strong and overt racist
: (neo-Nazi?) attitudes (*not* a defining characteristic of Geekdom), but
: for some reason, *that* is getting far less attention than the fact that
: they liked playing Doom and that they had web pages and that they listened
: to Marilyn Manson.
Not to mention the kids being picked up by The Man, questioned for hours,
and held overnight in jail, for the crime of being interested in chemistry
and Things That Go Boom (ask 15-year-old Kurt Hamilton of Keystone
Heights, Florida).
It also drives me nuts to read and hear the news media reporting on "the
Internet-derived bomb information," etc.
"Internet" as scare quote.
I wish these reporters would simply try substituting the words "library,"
or "bookstore" or "book" for "Internet" in their sentences, and seeing
what they think of how that reads, and what it implies.
"We should investigate this use of libraries as the source of dangerous
information." "Children should have limits placed upon their usage of
books, given how easily lethal information can be found in them."
I've played hundreds of hours of Doom, by the way. As I recall, the last
time I struck someone was when I was 11-12, and I was forced into that.
That's practically the only physical fight I recall in my life. I've not
noticed that Video Games, or Computer Games, or toy guns, or movies where
people are shot or blown up, or any other "violent media," have had the
faintest effect upon me towards making me prone to violence.
Amazingly, like most people, I am able to distinguish between fantasy and
reality.
[. . .]
: And it can
: be absolutely hellish to be in an environment where, rightly or wrongly,
: you feel (or are made to feel) as if you are a freak.
Thread-tying, this is one of the formerly key elements of What Is A Fan,
of course.
[. . .]
: I was talking about the alienation/Geek/youth theme the other day with a
: friend, and it struck me how lucky I had been to go through high school
: surrounded by people who were all relatively disinterested in what other
: people thought of them.
As a fellow geek, I hope you will be tolerant if I point out that
"disinterested" does not mean "uninterested." <insert
smiley-as-don't-hit-me here>
: I went to high school in the mid-seventies at a
: magnet school, where at least half the school population was geekish kids
: working to graduate early. Most of my senior class was 16 years old.
: Needless to say, there wasn't much glamor attached to being on our
: too-young and relatively-weak school football team (or cheerleading for
: the team), so other things became more important than sports. It was okay
: to read books...it was okay to play chess...it was okay to paint...it was
: okay to be actively interested in chemistry...it was okay to act or write
: or wear "funny" clothes or do volunteer work. Being different was a good
: thing in an environment with no obvious heirarchical structure; difference
: had *value*.
Where the hell did you go to high school, and why couldn't I have gone
there? (I was likely to screwed up to have truly benefited, and besides,
I'd already found fandom, but still.)
: But to be young and insecure in environments where difference has no
: value, where difference becomes something to be scorned, despised, spit
: on...and now feared? -- well, it's just not so easy for all these kids
: around the country who are being seen (or at least believe they are being
: seen) as the "next shooters" to convince themselves that other people's
: opinions don't matter.
I was immensely, nearly psychotically, misanthropic as a result. I'm
still a Recovering Misanthrope, and will be my entire life.
[. . .]
: ("L'Geek, c'est moi" - pnh)
Do we get a disco dance? Or at least a head-banger, or a swing, or a
freeform, or something?
--
Copyright 1999 by Gary Farber; For Hire as: Web Researcher; Nonfiction
Writer, Fiction and Nonfiction Editor; gfa...@panix.com; Northeast US
Steve Brinich
> NPR just aired a commentary by Frank DeFord, in which he suggested
> that perhaps part of the problem is the excessive amount of adulation
> we heap on athletes, including high school jocks who have colleges
> fighting over who gets to give them a free college education. There's
> all this attention and money heaped on student athletes, but not on
> student actors, or student computer experts, or even student scholars,
> although student scholars do get _some_ of the money. He suggested
> that perhaps the increase in money, attention, and adulation directed
> towards athletes in recent years might be responsbible for the
> awkward, the unatheletic, the geeks and the nerds, feeling _even more_
> excluded and despised than when he was in high school.
>
> I expect the demands for an apology for this outrageous expression of
> sympathy for the killers will be flooding in to NPR even as I type.
I made similar observations, mentioning examples from the slashdot.org
article, to a distinctly right-of-center audience. In response to the first
assertion that I was making something unwarranted out of normal juvenile
behavior, I summarized the case thusly: The school culture is teaching the
next generation that you can get away with anything if you're popular enough.
You never saw something so unanswerable in your life.
Samuel Paik
> AFAIK, there are fans in KW but no organised SF fandom. How
> might one set one up? It isn't like I have any problem dealing with
> teenagers as they are my core clientel [Dunno if the reverse is true,
> though].
How about host a weekly/biweekly/monthly get together?
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
Solyent Green is kitniyot!
Lydia Nickerson
>>P Nielsen Hayden wrote:
>> >Laurie D. T. Mann <lm...@city-net.com>
>> >While I don't think guns are "the cause" of the appalling behavior of
>> >the boys in Colorado, the easy access to them is turning adolescent
>> >frustrations and revenge fantasies into tragic realities.
>> Maybe. I would like to say that I hope this thread doesn't become a gun
>> thrash.
>>
>> Guns are a tempting issue, and one on which many of us have plenty to say.
>> But I'm more interested in heirarchies and outcasts in modern high-school
>> life, in geek/nerd/goth culture as a response to that, and in the past
>> week's sudden and apalling crackdown on this whole range of self-identified
>> outsider kids. L'geek, c'est moi. These kids are us.
>But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
>conventions?
>Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
>psychologically
>very different from being outcast and angry to being so far out of it
>that
>you off people.
I'm sorry, but I don't agree. I don't think they are very different from
me. The times I've been most interested in killing myself were also the
times when I was most interested in murdering other people.
Murder/suicide seemed like a quite nice way out, some days. In all
honesty, I don't know why I didn't. Probably fear of my parents, which
was also the reason that I didn't commit suicide. The idea of them
finding me before it was too late was terrifying, far more terrifying than
being dead. All I see is that the kids fury was turned somewhat more
outward than mine ever was. A difference of aim, and intensity, not of
kind. I used to dream of a fully automatic weapon and a stadium full of
sports fans -- what a nice way to go.
>I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
I never developed a thick skin in high school. It took years of therapy
to do that. In high school, every insult cut deep, every slight was an
open wound with salt in it, every humiliation vivid and keen. I _still_
hate the civics teacher who sang the Groucho Marx song at me on the first
day of ninth grade.
>So what?
>If people can either be societally-positive (or at least
>societally-neutral),
>that should be all that matters. Why waste any time worrying about what
>people
>think about you? I think one of the clearest signs that you've emerged
>from
>adolesence is being extremely choosey about whose opinion matters. Most
>people's
>opinions shouldn't.
This is the lecture my mother gave me, over and over again. The only
result was that I was angrier, more frightened, and had one less
confidant. Maybe these things work for some kids. But if the kid you're
talking about comes from an unsavory home environment, has low
self-esteem, and no access to sympathetic adults, these types of responses
are just more salt, not supportive or healing. I don't know what it would
be like to have a loving and stable family that could reassure me that all
this horror was not because I was a horrible person. I bet the boys in
Colorado didn't, either.
--
----
Lydia Nickerson ly...@ddb.com
Lydia Nickerson
>I don't know how else to put it except to say that many of the
>oddball kids seem genuinely troubled by the world. Maybe that's part
>of the difference between those guys in Colorado and most other
>odd-balls. Yer run-of-the-mill odd-ball is sick of the taunting and
>the abuse and so forth, who wouldn't be? But the thing that troubles
>them is not how the world treats them particularly, but how the world
>*is*. When the taunting and abuse gets ratcheted up to Official Blots
>On Your Permanent Record, and so forth, then they obviously have to
>take a hell of a lot more notice of it. But it seems (from this
>distance anyway) that the Colorado kids seemed more bothered by how
>the world treated them, but didn't particularly care all that much
>about how the world is -- that is, how the world treats *everybody*.
I think that you raise a very interesting point. Especially as a
teenager, I felt as if injustice and violence rubbed on raw skin. I've
developed some scar tissue there, which over all is probably a good thing,
as I couldn't live with the pain. But I still don't think that these boys
were all that different from the kid I was and the kids I knew when I was
their age. For all that I was an empathy-sink, I still dreamed of
murdering people. The thought of hurting people made me nauseous, but
killing them seemed like a perfectly fine idea. Some of the boys I knew
were far more seriously interested in physical violence, and they were not
aliens, they were soul mates.
Gary Farber
[. . .]
: I think part of the problem is that the people who are despairing are
: directing it outward, instead of just tidily killing themselves the
: way they used to. Suicide has been one of the top causes of death for
: teens for how long?
Ever, I expect.
Martin Wisse
> Students have been suspended simply because they've disagreed with
>their administration viewpoint that "_Our_ school has no problems."
>(John Barnes, who--beside being an SF writer--is a teacher at a
>college near Columbine, posted on Genie that this high school has had
>problems for years. Athletics, the administrators feel, is the only
>reason to have a school, and heaven help any student who isn't a jock
>or a fan of the jocks. And heaven help any student who's complained
>about the unfair treatment.)
>
> Students have been given the choice of suspension or counselling,
>simply because they like to participate in RPGs.
>
> And readers of science fiction have come under official scrutiny,
>because as SF readers they're "different".
But what about their parents? If your kids are expelled from school or
forced to undergo counseling just for playing RPG's or wearing black
surely you would protest? Or are most parents so f*cked up they
automatically take the school's side? I hope not!
Martin Wisse
Loren MacGregor
"Laurie D. T. Mann" wrote:
>
> But if these kids "are us," why aren't there more shootings at
> conventions?
This is a red herring, and the dye is coming off in my hands.
There are not and haven't been any shootings at science fiction
conventions because 99% of those who are alienated shoot off
their mouth or fire off their typewriter equivalent; the 1%
who are on the extreme edge of alienation probably don't
attend conventions except to escape from their daily life.
> Has never happened as far as I remember. There's something
> psychologically very different from being outcast and angry
> to being so far out of it that you off people.
No, there isn't, and believing that there -is-, in part,
creates the problem we're talking about.
I hesitate -- briefly -- to mention Alice Miller and (among
others) "The Drama of the Gifted Child" and "Poisonous
Pedagogy," but there is -not- an invisible line over which
one steps to become, on the one side, an innocent alienated
youth, and on the other, a crazed killer, any more than
there is a rigid line between "a child abuser," "a strict
disciplinarian" and a "good parent."
You see before you, in the news, in the discussion here,
in the documents provided using the URLs Patrick posted,
the explicit danger in deciding that there are a set of
strict guidelines that can be used to identify potential
killers -and we know what those guidelines are-. So far,
what nebulous "guidelines" have been used have been used
to further marginalize kids who are being pushed away
from the center of our warm, cozy groups as fast as we
can distance ourselves from them. (I use "we" and "our"
to point out that if -we- are deciding there is something
"psychologically very different" in one set of kids vs.
another, -even when we may be right,- -most- of us are
not competent to figure out the components of that
psychological difference, and we are quite capable of
being wrong and ostracizing people whose only crime is
to feel out of step with our culture.)
> I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if
> people don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date
> as soon as you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts
> to name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
And so what if the school board, the principal, other school
mates or the general community decides that if you weren't
picked for volleyball, don't date as soon as you "should,"
and have a smart mouth, you're a danger to your school and
to your community? Hell, develope a thick skin! That'll help!
-- LJM
--
--------------------------------------------------
| Loren MacGregor - Sales & System Support |
| CADIX Intl. Inc - Oregon Research & Development |
| lmacg...@cadix.com - http://www.cadix.com |
| CATV Design and Management Software |
---------------------------------------------------
John Lorentz
Wisse) wrote:
>
>But what about their parents? If your kids are expelled from school or
>forced to undergo counseling just for playing RPG's or wearing black
>surely you would protest?
In many cases, I'd say yes (they would protest).
Would it do any good? In many cases, no.
--
John
Lydia Nickerson
>how it has worked similarly for others. So the message is: if you
>don't fit in where you are, there are other options. You can find
>a place where you fit and the strength to bear your visits into
>the "normal" world.
Nice work. Thanks.
Mike Kozlowski
Steve Brinich <ste...@Radix.Net> wrote:
>behavior, I summarized the case thusly: The school culture is teaching the
>next generation that you can get away with anything if you're popular enough.
No, you're thinking of the recent impeachment trial.
-Mike K., tying political threads together since 1995
Rachael M. Lininger
On 28 Apr 1999, Janice Gelb wrote:
>This persecution by adults of perfectly innocent unconventional geeky
>kids is obviously an overreaction out of a guilt reflex from not doing
>anything with these obvious clues (a shotgun in a kids bedroom???), and
>a determination on the parts of other parents/adults that *they* won't
>be caught short. Much as my sympathy is with the geeks, though, my
>feeling is that once the line is crossed from introverted outsider to
>threats of violence, they do have to be taken seriously, teenage angst
>or not.
Definitely agreed. What scares me, though, is the way people who feel
they _understand_ the kids are apparently being treated. I mean, don't
we _need_ to understand them better?
Me, I understand it. I wouldn't do it, but I certainly understand it.
Luckily, I'm supposed to be an adult, which makes it more difficult to
commit me.
Rachael
--
Rachael M. Lininger | "Some causes of angst have not worn well."
lininger@ |
virtu.sar.usf.edu | Dr. A. McA. Miller
Jo Walton
ste...@Radix.Net "Steve Brinich" writes:
> lm...@city-net.com wrote:
>
> > I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
> > don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
> > you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
> > name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
>
> The cases described on slashdot.org go well beyond that, up to and
> including physical assault with lethal force. In many cases, the public
> schools have the same internal culture as prisons, in which the ruling clique
> of occupants has a free hand to abuse the rest without interference from the
> nominal authorities.
Isn't there any way out of that - aren't there any alternative schools?
Is there any way of starting a school for geeks where the kids could,
you know, learn stuff and have fun?
--
Jo - - I kissed a kif at Kefk - - J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk - Interstichia; Poetry; RASFW FAQ; etc.
Rachael M. Lininger
And many kids are doing those things because their parents are such
complete and utter fuckups.
Ailsa N Murphy
Rachael M. Lininger <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
>
>On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, John Lorentz wrote:
>>On Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:41:07 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
>>Wisse) wrote:
>>
>>>But what about their parents? If your kids are expelled from school or
>>>forced to undergo counseling just for playing RPG's or wearing black
>>>surely you would protest?
>>
>>In many cases, I'd say yes (they would protest).
>>
>>Would it do any good? In many cases, no.
>
>And many kids are doing those things because their parents are such
>complete and utter fuckups.
>
into RPGs, it'll be through parental assitance, I imagine.
If the protests don't work, the ACLU is always there.
-Ailsa
--
Stand in the fire an...@world.std.com
Go to the wire Ailsa N.T. Murphy
Dreams and desire
They will lead you home. - Jefferson starship (?)
Ailsa N Murphy
Steve Brinich <ste...@Radix.Net> wrote:
>Ailsa N Murphy wrote:
>
>> These kids didn't off their friends, remember.
>
> Not directly, but it does seem that they tried to blow up the whole place.
>
school is hell. Cons are not hell. Blowing up a con doesn't
make sense. Kids have bene singing "Mine eyes have seen the
glory of the burning of the school" forever.
>> True, but sometimes that difference is only in not having the means.
>> Those kids may noe be you, but they are just like ths guys I hung
>> out with in high school (and my daughter's been obsessing on this
>> story, so I know rather more about these boys that I would otherwise
>> want to). The guys made pipe bombs, and frag grenades, and homemade
>> napalm, and at least one of them had fantasies of carpet-bombing
>> Harlem and throwing all drug users in death camps.
>
> That bit I hadn't heard, though I don't doubt it given that there is an
>obvious reason (i.e. the fact that it differs only in degree from the
>on-the-record opinions of many "respectable" people) for it to be swept down
>the memory hole.
>
I was unclear. "The guys" I am referring to are my high school
friends. But the killers in CO espoused similiar ideas.
Allen J. Baum
> >I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had books.
>
> If you were a high school student in many American schools this week, and
> you said that in class, you would at minimum be dragged off for
> "counseling." If not suspended immediately.
Another (true?) datapoint:
I just heard about a programmer owning a trenchcoat who was at a mall,
wearing it as usual. He was surrounded by police (hands on weapons) and
told forcefully to leave and not come back.
Rachael M. Lininger
On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Jo Walton wrote:
>Isn't there any way out of that - aren't there any alternative schools?
>
>Is there any way of starting a school for geeks where the kids could,
>you know, learn stuff and have fun?
I am going to what bills itself as an alternative school. It's been
pretty bad. (For me. Not for others. But this school has an abysmal
retention rate, and for a good reason. )
It also depends on what _kind_ of geek you are. All geeks are not
alike, and finding yourself in the wrong geek villa can be worse than
being stuck in mundania. After all, I had lots of practice dealing
with mundania.
But I'm graduating Real Soon Now.
Rachael M. Lininger
On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, David G. Bell wrote:
>In article <Pine.GSO.4.02.990428...@virtu.sar.usf.edu>
> lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu "Rachael M. Lininger" writes:
>> On 28 Apr 1999, Joel Rosenberg wrote:
>>
>> >The means to do great, widespread damage is always there. The reason
>> >that almost all people don't use that means isn't because they can't,
>> >but because they choose not to.
>>
>> Or choose not to learn how to. I actively avoided learning how to do
>> great damage to things. I certainly could have, very easily, and I
>> knew _how_ to learn it. That was a conscious attempt to prevent a
>> successful suicide, because most the of the time I was sensible enough
>> to realize that I really would get out of high school.
>>
>> directing it outward, instead of just tidily killing themselves the
>> way they used to. Suicide has been one of the top causes of death for
>> teens for how long?
>
>with the sinfulness of suicide in mind, there has been a tendency to
>look for alternative explanations for a death -- the farmer stupidly
>carrying a loaded shotgun while he climbs over a gate, rather that
>deliberately killing himself.
Well, I meant that rhetorically. Of course it's been like that
forever.
>One thing's for sure: suicide alone doesn't get you anything like the
>same headlines.
And people wonder why it keeps recurring.
One of the fantasies suicides have (I certainly did) was that everyone
would realize how much they missed you when you were gone.
And here, we have _national mourning,_ and "why didn't we see the
signs," and stuff like that. It seems awfully close to me. Is it any
wonder that this happens again and again?
The problem is that we've detached "fame"--people have wanted to be
famous and remembered for thousands of years and such forever--from
worthy causes of same. It used to matter what you were remembered for.
Now, it seems like it just matters that you have your fifteen minutes.
Rachael M. Lininger
On 28 Apr 1999, Lydia Nickerson wrote:
>I'm sorry, but I don't agree. I don't think they are very different
>from me. The times I've been most interested in killing myself were
>also the times when I was most interested in murdering other people.
>Murder/suicide seemed like a quite nice way out, some days. In all
>honesty, I don't know why I didn't. Probably fear of my parents,
>which was also the reason that I didn't commit suicide. The idea of
>them finding me before it was too late was terrifying, far more
>terrifying than being dead. All I see is that the kids fury was
>turned somewhat more outward than mine ever was. A difference of
>aim, and intensity, not of kind. I used to dream of a fully
>automatic weapon and a stadium full of sports fans -- what a nice
>way to go.
I never wanted to kill others.
This was probably a very bad thing for me.
>This is the lecture my mother gave me, over and over again. The only
>result was that I was angrier, more frightened, and had one less
>confidant. Maybe these things work for some kids. But if the kid you're
>talking about comes from an unsavory home environment, has low
>self-esteem, and no access to sympathetic adults, these types of responses
>are just more salt, not supportive or healing. I don't know what it would
>be like to have a loving and stable family that could reassure me that all
>this horror was not because I was a horrible person. I bet the boys in
>Colorado didn't, either.
I had a a lot of reassurance that all this horror was because I was a
horrible ungrateful person. That can't be uncommon.
Bernard Peek
<c...@itga.com.au> writes
>Part of the problem is that - to the people in power - having strong
>and overt racist attitudes is not a problem, unless you get called on
>them. Mainstream politicians in particular seem rather reluctant to
>confront these unacceptable attitudes in a forthright manner.
>Often they appear to fear alienating their own constituency.
>(Rightly or wrongly.)
>
>A fondness for violent computer games (rather than hunting with a real
>gun), and listening to that evil rock'n'roll - now that's something
>they understand as unbalanced. It's different to _them_.
>
>No, it doesn't make a lot of sense.
Oh but it does.
The kids who play computer aren't voters. The adult racists are.
--
Bernard Peek
b...@shrdlu.com
Rob Hansen
Wisse) wrote:
>Most people were just content to struggle through highschool, neither loving it
>nor really hating it. It may have been special circumstances (a nominal
>christian school) or culture, it seems high school is much more conformist and
>gung ho towards sports etc.
The social hierarchies in US high schools, as presented in the media
(and I don't know how accurate that is), bear only a slight
resemblance to those in the UK I remember from my own school days. I
was a bit of geek - SF obsessed, nose always in a book, etc. - but
this didn't lead to much social opprobrium. And the school jocks were
mostly OK guys. Indeed, the captain of the school soccer team, one
Robin Cohen, was also captain of the chess team and believed by our
aged maths teacher to be the most mathematically gifted pupil he'd
ever taught. He was also good-looking, real-popular with the girls,
and so modest, unassuming and friendly you couldn't help liking him.
It goes without saying he was also the school's Head Boy, of course. I
wonder if the fact that such a big deal is made of school sports teams
in the US - some matches are even televised, I gather - could account
for the difference?
--
Rob Hansen
================================================
My Home Page: http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/rob/
Feminists Against Censorship:
http://www.fiawol.demon.co.uk/FAC/
Rachael M. Lininger
On Wed, 28 Apr 1999, Ailsa N Murphy wrote:
>In article <Pine.GSO.4.02.990428...@virtu.sar.usf.edu>,
>Rachael M. Lininger <lini...@virtu.sar.usf.edu> wrote:
>>>On Wed, 28 Apr 1999 19:41:07 GMT, mwi...@ad-astra.demon.nl (Martin
>>>Wisse) wrote:
>>>
>>>>But what about their parents? If your kids are expelled from school or
>>>>forced to undergo counseling just for playing RPG's or wearing black
>>>>surely you would protest?
>>>
>>>In many cases, I'd say yes (they would protest).
>>>
>>>Would it do any good? In many cases, no.
>>
>>And many kids are doing those things because their parents are such
>>complete and utter fuckups.
>>
>How about, wearing black is cool and RPGs are fun? If Kathy gets
>into RPGs, it'll be through parental assitance, I imagine.
>
>If the protests don't work, the ACLU is always there.
Sure. The point was that there are a lot of parents who _won't_ stop
that sort of thing. (Mine needed to be stopped themselves, but that's
a whole 'nother can of worms.)
Rachael M. Lininger
On 28 Apr 1999, James Nicoll wrote:
>In article <7g7a71$g...@netaxs.com>,
>Nancy Lebovitz <na...@unix3.netaxs.com> wrote:
>>A lot of people *have* been recommending more civilized schools,
>>including teaching conflict resolution. (I admit I'm a little edgey
>>about applying "conflict resolution" to bullying--it sounds as though
>>it's assumed that both sides need to change their behavior, but maybe
>>it's more reasonable than that in practice.)
I'd bet that depended on who was teaching it, like so much else.
> Well, say one is the victim. One can turn the other cheek.
>Probably won't stop the bullying. One can throw pepper in the
>bully's face and stomp them while they are blinded. One might
>reasonably argue that being obviously unable or unwilling to resort
>to violence makes one a legitimate target-- the bully can't mind
>bleeding or they wouldn't start things.
There is a middle ground, of course. But it's goddamn hard to find,
and not something kids in that situation are generally equipped for.
Nancy Lebovitz
Jo Walton <J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <7g7lk0$l04$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>
> ste...@Radix.Net "Steve Brinich" writes:
>
>> lm...@city-net.com wrote:
>>
>> > I know one thing that helps is getting a thick skin. So what if people
>> > don't pick you for volleyball? So what if you don't date as soon as
>> > you might wanted to have? So what if some person resorts to
>> > name-calling, snideness and just general childish behavior?
>>
>> The cases described on slashdot.org go well beyond that, up to and
>> including physical assault with lethal force. In many cases, the public
>> schools have the same internal culture as prisons, in which the ruling clique
>> of occupants has a free hand to abuse the rest without interference from the
>> nominal authorities.
>
Yes, but that depends on whether there's a suitable alternative school
available.
>
And I'll reserve a special ring of hell for those who oppose vouchers
because vouchers might damage the public school system....and I went
to relatively good public schools.
(There are some good reasons for oppposing vouchers, but that isn't
one of them.)
>Is there any way of starting a school for geeks where the kids could,
>you know, learn stuff and have fun?
Yes, but it isn't easy. That's one of the reasons for the home-schooling
movement.
>
Janice Gelb
>In <Pine.SOL.4.10.990427...@hejira.hunter.cuny.edu> Beth Haddrell <ehad...@hejira.hunter.cuny.edu> wrote:
>
>: I went to high school in the mid-seventies at a
>: magnet school, where at least half the school population was geekish kids
>: working to graduate early. Most of my senior class was 16 years old.
>: Needless to say, there wasn't much glamor attached to being on our
>: too-young and relatively-weak school football team (or cheerleading for
>: the team), so other things became more important than sports. It was okay
>: to read books...it was okay to play chess...it was okay to paint...it was
>: okay to be actively interested in chemistry...it was okay to act or write
>: or wear "funny" clothes or do volunteer work. Being different was a good
>: thing in an environment with no obvious heirarchical structure; difference
>: had *value*.
>
>Where the hell did you go to high school, and why couldn't I have gone
>there? (I was likely to screwed up to have truly benefited, and besides,
>I'd already found fandom, but still.)
>
I've always felt grateful that I went to a high school where although
athletics had its usual cachet, academics were equally valued. I went
to a public high school in Miami Beach that was about 70% Jewish, also
during the mid-seventies, and although I hate to reinforce stereotypes,
the only athletic teams that were any good were the golf and tennis
teams (and marginally the baseball team). The members of the debating
team, which was consistently in the top 5 in the country, had just as
much social status as the athletes, if not more so.
I can't say that we had quite the same artistic bent as Beth's high
school, but certainly no one was outcast for liking to read, being
intelligent, or being interested in science or drama and the like.
(Although people would have sweated to death wearing black all
the time :-> )
*********************************************************************
Janice Gelb | Just speaking for me, not Sun.
janic...@eng.sun.com | http://www.geocities.com/Area51/8018/
What if the hokey-pokey really *is* what it's all about?
Mitch Wagner
> Pnh writes:
> > Doug Faunt N6TQS +1-510-655-8604 <fa...@netcom15.netcom.com>
> > wrote in
> >
> >> I know exactly what those two boys were feeling. But I had
> >> books.
> > If you were a high school student in many American schools
> > this week, and you said that in class, you would at minimum be
> > dragged off for "counseling."
>
> a price for a lack of discretion -- even an officially-encouraged lack
> of discretion -- is a lesson that many folks would probably be better
> of learning young.
In what way is it indiscreet to express sympathy with the Littleton
killers?
I agree it might be indiscreet to do so in the presence of someone who
actually was a victim of the Littleton killers - one of the survivors in
the school, or one of the family members. But that's not what we're
talking about here.
And even if it IS indiscreet to express sympathy for the Littleton
killers, what's the appropriate reaction? Is it appropriate to drag the
kids off for "counseling," or suspend them from school, rather than
simply talking to the kids?
Make no mistake about it: I believe those two kids were evil monsters.
Sometimes I am sympathetic with them. Sometimes of the time I feel
nothing but hatred for them, and I reserve my sympathy for the people
they killed and the other people they caused to suffer. (Surely at least
ONE of those dead kids and teachers was himself, or herself, an overly
intelligent, overeducated geek who felt like an outcast.) Most of the
time I feel both sympathy AND hatred.
--
mitch w. thri...@sff.net
http://www.sff.net/people/mitchw
''He stood six feet four at least and exhibited more postures and attitudes of
masculinity than are necessary except in times of national emergency.'' - P.J.
O'Rourke