It isn't generally someone's flame that makes the target look bad, it
is generally the target's response to the flame that makes him look
bad.
Eh? You've been on my wavelength for the most part, so this is ...
jarring. You actually bought that, hook, line, and sinker?
It is disproven by the very behavior of the flamers. If the main
negative consequences of their flaming would fall on them rather than
on their target they wouldn't start; their behavior, and its
moderately widespread nature (not just one aberrant individual but as
many as a dozen), implies that there is something they stand to gain
by their behavior. Given their nasty disposition toward me, it seems
likely that their gain, whatever it may be, will be my loss, and I
must act in opposition to their aims. The obvious consequence of their
namecalling is that people believe them and shun me in the future as a
result, so attempting to disabuse anyone of any notions hostile to me
that get bandied about here seems the logical defense. Calling
attention to the horribly rude behavior of the attackers might also
damage their credibility, and the observation that some of them have
few to no on-topic posts in the history of the group, and noting that
the issues they keep pressing and will not let go are off-topic, and
so forth.
Particularly interesting is that I'm the only one with anything at
stake here; the others could stop at any time and would walk away with
a tie game or its equivalent. I never cost them something that they
now seek to regain. However, they have cost me and so I end up behind
if I quit first. It's rather as if a thief ran up to me and grabbed an
object of mine. I grab it back, he grabs it again, and so forth. If I
grab it back and he quits, I leave no worse than I started and he
leaves no worse than he started. If I quit while he still has my
object, however, I do leave worse than I started. It's clear which
outcome is not Pareto-optimal.
Similarly here; they started it so I must finish it in order to
balance it out. All the insulting points claimed by the one side
(objects taken) must be matched by equally vehement assertions of the
insults being untrue (objects taken back) to leave a balanced result.
My simply quitting will let them just insult me and insult me with
impunity, leaving me in the virtual poorhouse with all my objects
taken and massive debt, in effect. Future people will find that the
"consensus" about Twisted, to the best of their ability to determine,
is a chorus of voices saying "Twisted is an idiot" without any
comparable amount of material pushing an alternative viewpoint, and I
know a substantial fraction will just go with whatever seems to be the
majority or loudest voice. Unfortunately I can't easily manufacture an
equally large number of distinct voices defending me, not without
resorting to dishonest tactics, but I can make my single voice equally
loud to their combined voices; that I can do and that I must do to
ensure that the opposing view is present at an equal volume level
wherever someone runs into this.
I'm surprised that you don't seem to understand this. Perhaps you're
new to this whole thing; once experienced, you'll know (perhaps
through bad experiences, unfortunately) that letting nasty stuff be
said about you and go unchallenged does result in damage; people will
believe the BS they hear about you and it will affect the way they
treat you in an adverse fashion.
The really hard lesson is this: ALL people will. Some will be more
resistant to persuasion than others, but ALL people, however
supposedly independently-minded or even loyal, will turn on you or at
least turn their backs on you if they hear enough repetitions of nasty
lies about you with far fewer opposing claims. Some will turn on you
quickly after hearing just a few nasty claims about you; the best will
only do so after months or perhaps years of running into oft-repeated
nasty claims without much opposition. None -- NONE -- will hold out
forever against a frequently repeated mantra of this sort; it's simply
human nature. The Nazi propaganda minister back in world war two
realized this and called it the Big Lie technique: repeat a load of BS
often enough and consistently enough without a strong voice opposing
your claims and eventually any given person will come to believe it.
Given the chance (lack of a strong opposing voice) these people WILL
destroy me. They will convince you that I'm an idiot or evil or
whatever. They'll convince everyone else. They'll convince my future
prospective employers, wife, or whoever, if they are able to identify
my real name and tie all of this convincingly enough to that name, as
well. In short, they will effectively destroy my ability to have a
life worth living, to make any money or to find love. Most likely,
they intend to ensure against my ever having a career in Java
programming in particular; this would explain why their insults focus
on my Java competency and on my general intelligence and (of course,
as this can put off any potential employer as well as anyone else) my
state of mental health. It also explains the so-far-failed attempts to
determine and loudly announce my real name (and sooner or later, that
Paul guy they think I am is going to stumble onto fallout from this as
well, wonder what all the fuss is about, and probably also find he has
a bone to pick with these assholes!) ... the only real question I have
at this point is what caused them to develop this motivation. I
attempt to be useful around here and only rarely ask questions that
could place demands on someone else myself. Such innocuous behavior
logically should not provoke any such motivations to develop in anyone
here, and especially not selectively. Logically if someone disliked my
being helpful here enough to want to destroy Java as a potential
source of income for me, they should be equally virulently hostile to
e.g. Patricia Shanahan. However I see no evidence of this; there is no
sign of long, flamey threads attacking her, or even of isolated
attacks on her by them that inexplicably went by unresponded-to by
her. Instead they've singled me out from all the people here, and with
a discernible pattern: starting with somewhat subtle put-downs and
niggledy nitpicking to suggest I'm a know-nothing, then graduating to
more explicit and nasty insults of my intelligence, followed by
insulting my mental health as well. In fact, each of the attackers
seems to be at a separate point in that progression, though not all
progressed through those stages visibly -- Mike Schilling is in the
early phase of put-downs and subtle digs and generally arguing with me
everywhere pointlessly for the sake of arguing, and trying to trick me
into leaving myself defenseless, but none of the more violent insults
yet. Others visibly progressed from that point to serious viciousness.
Some, such as that Jack T, just jumped in with guns blazing directly
from being a lurker. All in all, the uncoordinated behavior suggests
an ad-hoc mob behavior instance rather than an orchestrated campaign.
That's a good sign; orchestrated smear campaigns aimed at a single
individual on the 'net are invariably highly destructive and the
individual can only, at best, limit the damage somewhat but can rarely
salvage much even so. If the person's real name is exposed accurately
in the bargain, then God help them. A self-organizing mob is bad, but
not as bad, and tends to center around a few linchpin "bellwethers"
whose behavior the others follow. Pull the plug on the mob's main
source of momentum and it dissipates. Shaming the lesser participants
helps as well. This suggests a strategy similar to one I'm following:
* The initiator -- whoever attacked me first without any provocation
at all -- is target numero uno.
* Others joined in because they were swayed by the initiator, or later
by the existing mob; they began to believe the insults and joined in
the attacks as a result. Some are now fairly entrenched as especially
violent and are also primary targets.
* Others are relatively fresh, or ambivalent, or somewhat hostile but
not fully committed to the anti-Twisted ideology being born here.
For the "primary targets" swift and crushing rebuttal is called for of
every virulent flame or suspicious post, along with pointing out their
bad behavior to others to discourage anyone else from following their
example. It's also perhaps advisable to actually goad them into
crossing the line into violating their ISP's ToS so they can be
forcibly unplugged, and so their extreme behavior once pointed out is
even more shameful to the weak followers.
Weak followers may be directly shamed, see the leaders shamed, or see
the leaders inexplicably disappear while hearing rumours that they got
their access yanked for their misdeeds.
Ultimately, the hangers-on boost the morale of the leaders, and
outnumber them, so dissuading them from continuing is critical to
putting a stop to the mess. On the other hand, the leaders are by
definition those who have fully bought into believing wholeheartedly
in the mission of destroying Twisted. They can be given no quarter. If
they won't get themselves banned by their providers they need to run
out of momentum and morale by mass desertions from their side and by
it degenerating into he-said-she-said endless repetition. Sooner or
later they'll give up.
In actual practise, several of the worst bunch have, and some have
likely lost their net access already; others have apparently been
suspended for a time, also taking some wind from others' sails.
The stupid suggestion of ignoring them can easily be predicted to have
devastating consequences: the groundswell of negative opinion grows
unchecked. Every post I make (in this hypothetical scenario, helpful
on-topic ones) gets blasted by someone; absent rebuttals to post nasty
responses to, announcements of my alleged idiocy will just me made at
random, or they'll respond to each other with tons of me-too posts and
also start inventing and embellishing stories about me. (I've seen
this before too.) It's fairly likely that forged postings by "Twisted"
will even be made to provide targets to attack in the absence of real
ones, or if the real ones are not sufficiently numerous. Regardless,
those who have made an ideology out of Twisted-idiocy will work hard
to keep it alive and feed off each other. Meanwhile, unopposed by
countervailing opinions being voiced, the same ideology will gain new
converts, starting as dabblers and often becoming serious devotees.
And of course it will spread beyond the one newsgroup given time and a
lack of coherent opposition strategy.
In practise, I've observed the results of a target of such a
phenomenon simply trying to ignore it and killfiling half their
attackers. The result was an initial drop-off in nasty attacks, due to
the absence of very many posts by the target and the habitual behavior
of the attackers being to wait for such posts and pounce on them.
After a while, however, the attackers realized they weren't getting
enough posts by the target anymore for followups to those posts to
make their "quota" and redoubled their viciousness. They began
creating really embellished tall tales about the target, replying to
one another with ever more garish and bogus embellishments, and the
frequency with which they polluted newsgroups with whole new off-topic
threads devoted to their new pet religion ballooned. This particular
target eventually, so far as I am aware, quit the 'net entirely in the
late 90s or early oughts, and it's quite possible they committed
suicide. It's definitely the case that in that particular instance the
attacks escalated to offline stalking and violence as well as
rendering the target a social outcast in, at minimum, the entire town
they grew up in and the university they graduated from. I lost track
of this individual after university, but know that they cut off most
contact with other people in their third and fourth years, except for
me, and became more distant with me, probably out of fear of
rejection, that I'd eventually turn my back on them too due to the
cloud of BS smothering their reputation. This individual spent those
last two years basically just attending classes and taking necessary
tests and exams. I'm fairly certain they took to skipping classes
except where assignments were due to be handed in or tests taken to
minimize their exposure to a socially corrosive atmosphere. The
individual in question, whose name and gender and other identity clues
I will not reveal out of respect for them, was a fairly bright if
somewhat awkward young person who indeed graduated with honors and
some special mentions and a stratospheric GPA, only to disappear off
the face of the earth. Suicide or recluse, but definitely not the
prominence someone with those grades could likely have had in their
field.
This is the fate that awaits me if these goons guess my real name
correctly one day and if I do nothing.
I do not believe at this point that it's the fate you'd wish on me. So
I think you won't mind if I eschew your flawed, but probably well-
meaning, suggestion.
Consider the source though! What you said is almost a direct quote of
Mike Schilling, whose opinion of me has been made clear. He sides with
the attackers and believes what they claim. It is absurd to treat
anything he says with anything other than serious suspicion. It's
biased at best and a trick at worst. Not allowing a belief to be
swayed by the words he strings together is the safest course of action
for me, and the safest for anyone who doesn't want to be sucked into
this mess as well.
It is the
well written flames you should worry about, and these are few and far
between. (Mark Twain would be scary on Usenet . . .)
Well written flames might accomplish destruction of the target more
quickly, but I've seen a mountain of badly-written ones and
(*absurdly* tall) tall tales do the job adequately. I will not
underestimate the danger posed by this rabble of hostile lunatics even
given their evident disorganization and poor skills at writing and at
logic. And if they get organized ... time to retire the Twisted gmail
account and get a new one that can't be traced back to this one.
There's also the matter of Paul. I don't see any way to rescue him
though. Several of these fuckwits have come to the erroneous belief
that he and I are one and the same, and as a result they're
effectively insulting and threatening him to the same extent they're
threatening me. Most likely, Paul is doomed, without my being able to
do much about it. I can't even defend him since I don't know beans
about him and as they believe he's me anyway, defending me is probably
more effective for this purpose anyway(!) as well as rebutting the
erroneous claims that we're the same person.
But ultimately Paul's on his own and Twisted is probably going to have
to "die" soon and be replaced by someone or something untraceable to
Twisted. That this is a repetition of history in this group makes it
clear that at least one person (Joe Attacki) has a long-lived grudge
(amazing given *he* started it) and any post at all, however
innocuous, by Twisted here in the future risks inflaming the newsgroup
again and, in all likelihood, damaging that Paul guy's reputation
further as well as my own. A clean break seems only prudent. Of course
the attackers can never guess the new identity is Twisted, or they
will randomly attack and nitpick his posts, flame him more openly and
viciously, and accuse him of being Twisted (AND of being Paul no
doubt) and we're back to square one.
Of course, there's still the matter of what provoked the first of
these attacks in the first place. Unfortunately I'm unsure. Of course
my posts before ever having been attacked here were all harmless and
sometimes helpful. One or more of these somehow drew undeserved fire
from someone, someone who apparently was simply spoiling for a fight.
My guess is that whoever it was was the type to think they had some
sort of entitlement or superiority to others, so when I actually
rebutted whatever they claimed about me instead of acquiescing to it
it made them genuinely angry, and they attacked again a few times.
When I had the sheer unadulterated nerve to also rebut those attacks
and openly defy them, they flew off the handle and more viciously
flamed me, and also developed a grudge persisting to this day. I'm not
sure who this individual was but I don't think it was Joe Attacki, who
I recall emerging relatively late in the previous conflagration to
this one. Joe is the most virulent at the moment, with Jack's net
access terminated and some of the other nasties shamed or demoralized
into quitting, but he too started off as someone who read someone
else's crap about me and came to begin believing it, and then
repeating it himself.
The thing is I don't see any way to assure history isn't repeated. The
attacker that got so incensed that I'd dare to defy him after he'd
publicly passed judgment on me may do likewise to the new identity. Or
someone else with the same type of personality. And if they flame me a
bunch and others start to believe the crap they spew, the same process
will have begun again, although at least that Paul guy will likely be
left out of it.
Perhaps I should do it for his sake more than for mine then.
Obviously I can't just start posting under some new name the same day
I stop posting as Twisted or some jerk with a grudge will guess and
attack. Best to disappear for a while first, after first ending this
mess of course, again more for Paul's sake than for mine, and so that
the fuckers who did this to me don't get the last laugh.
Finding a news provider other than google fucking groups would help
too in making the replacement identity less obviously mine. Any
suggestions? (Must be free, allow posting without unreasonable limits
of any sort, allow address munging when posting, and carry the big 8,
but need not carry binaries; IP address munging would be nice.)
