www.debito.org
HASHIMORI HUMBUG
EPILOGUE TWO (PS)
(Received Wed, 25 Mar 1998)
From: "Taiwan!"
To: dave
Subject: note on how some people can spoil mailing lists (FYI)
DAVE, Food for thought. (snip) Talk to ye later, DB
Death of a Mailing List
by LC, March 12, 1998
For several years I subscribed to the Brave Combo mailing list. It's populated by a cross-section of humanity so diverse that if you saw it in a petri dish, you'd run screaming from the lab.
Brave Combo is a polka band, and our list was the smartest, funniest, kindest, weirdest list in the world. I'd claim biggest, too, but I'm not as big a liar as most Texans. If I could use only one word to describe our list, I'd say friendly. Sure, there were occasional differences of opinion, but tolerance and genuine kindness resolved most differences.
Then one day a stranger came to town.
Spring of '97, a new poster -- we'll call him Frank -- joined the list. He was a little more prolific than is usual for newbies, but he seemed to really dig the band and the music, and he was eager to interact with the regulars. How did that go over? If you subscribe to a mailing list, you know that regulars prefer that newbies take it easy in their initial postings. The new kid at school is supposed to be humble, not run for class president. Maybe that's why when Frank made a minor political comment, it called forth a fairly sharp rebuke from an old-timer.
The list split into two camps. Camp #1 thought that Frank should be allowed to say whatever he wanted on the list, it wasn't a big deal, etc. Camp #2 said that the list was only for topics pertaining to Brave Combo, that political and religious discussions didn't belong there. A normal newbie would probably have laid low for a while, everyone would have chilled, and life would have gone on as usual.
Did I say normal newbie? Frank demanded that his accusers give him exact, cut-and-pasted quotations of his alleged inappropriate remarks, then followed them up with more of the same.
You've subscribed to lists. You know what happened next. Invective, uppercase shouting, lots and lots of postings and bilious disagreements. Frank decided there were deep political messages woven into the fabric of many of Brave Combo's songs, esp. the Mystery Spot Polka. Several people tried to explain what Mystery Spots were, but to no avail. Voices of reason were raised and then promptly shouted down. Ever seen one of those old "Twilight Zone" episodes where the whole town (except for one sane person whom they stone to death) goes vigilante, and neighbors pour into the street ready to accuse everybody else? Worst of all, as soon as you said/posted something nasty you'd clap your imaginary hand over your mouth and think, "I can't believe I said that." What happened to the happy lads and lasses who liked to form a giant circle and do the Chicken Dance?
It's easy, a year later, to see who was really to blame: AOL. Before you dismiss this, go back, back, back in time to the spring of 1997. Kazillions of aggravated users who couldn't log on. So much mail pouring in that it backed up the servers. Frank thought his messages were being censored because they didn't appear immediately. Things were bad, and they got way worse. Pressure came, pressure won. Censorship started. As fast as our listmaster blocked one address, Frank would create another. Finally a combination of filters and fatigue silenced him.
Silence fell blessedly over the list, but somehow nothing was quite as it had been before. The spontaneity was gone. People didn't post the first weird thing that sprang to mind anymore. The goofy nicknames no longer seemed funny; now they were silly affectations. We were faster to criticize others. Took umbrage at perceived slights. People left. Almost a year went by.
I think Frank put a reminder on his calendar: "March, 1998: Pester the hell out of the Brave Combo List". Pretty much everybody who had ever posted a message to the list was in Frank's address book, and he started writing to us on the same tired old topics as before. This time, since the mail wasn't going to the list, our brave listmaster couldn'tsave us, and for every piece of mail we got, he got 20. Frank REALLY resented being prevented from posting. This time we knew better than to post messages saying "Leave us the hell alone, Frank!" That just encouraged him. How did I cope? Delete, delete, delete.
Date: Sun, 01 Mar 1998 20:48:34 -0500
From: David C
Subject: pulling the plug
bravecombo and bravecombo-digest are going down, at least for a while. all of you who want to communicate with each other or with me feel free to mail me with any ideas or observations. Franklin K has created such a weird and hostile ruckus that it's no longer worth the trouble it takes to fight him.
If we get hassled in meatspace we can get help, even call the cops. But there is no defense or redress on the Net, at least none that we're found. Who's the cyber sheriff? Do we need one? Yeah, I think we do. Because someone murdered our list. And that's not right.