Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 00:49:27 +0100
From: Fredric 
To: Ahuva F
Subject: Re: Paper on AGM 

> Hiya everyone,

Hiya, smiling Huva-person :)
Here's some thoughts on your Internet paper subject. Not much, 
but I wanted to contribute, just because you have so pretty ears.
Hope it isn't all too late...

> -why is the anti flame rule so important to AGM?  How is the AGM 
> community shaped so that flaming is considered a serious offense? 
> (or as serious as they come in a newsgroup...)

I think what attracts us to AGM, is that it is different to
other newsgroups. To me it feels like something I would like 
to call the virtual distance. What I mean with that, is that
when I read AGM I feel much closer to the persons behind the
posts, _also_ the persons I've never met before. It is like we
are all sitting down a the same table, coming and going quite
randomly, but never very far away. In other newsgroups it is
often more like screaming over a lake. Flaming might be aceptable
when you're on a lake distance, but at the same table it would
not work. What attracted me in the beginning was the playful
sillyness, but even more the absence of flames compared to other
groups I was reading. [Evidence 1] I think it is also due to our
anti flame rule that we have been able to attract such a wide
range of posters, in age, sex and backgrounds.

> -How did AGMers deal with the "invasion"?  (i.e. this mailing list that
> evolved, suggestions to move AGM to another name, deciding to just
> ignore, and the side issue of what happened with Karl.)

One factor of stress as I perceived it, is the wide span of computer
background in the group. Our experienced users could more easily spot
the crossåosts and the forged posts, and ignore them. The more it 
annoyed them that others kept replying to the posts. Several persons 
tried to email the persons repeatingly replying to the hate-posts. I know 
Sophie did, I did [Evidence 2], and I think Alexis did. As the hate posts 
intensified the invasion became the number one discussion topic on 
the talkers. I felt personally attacked, in that I feel I have a long time 
relation to this group. I sometimes even considered retailiation, but 
realised how dangersous and futile it would become to challenge a 
person  so filled with anger, as to have devoted himself to regular posting 
on a group with a name like alt.nuke.the.USA. It was obvious that they 
were observing us and spending a lot of time planning the invasion, judging
from posts in the flame-groups, where I have been told, they discussed
Seekers posts about the origin of the invasion and what a good idea it
would be to do just what he was warning for.

> - What were the healing proccesses that occured in the group?  (I was
> thinking along the shape picture created by Alex and Morten and others,
> and Phil's "dangerously inclined to Eggplant" continuos post.) 

As our group is so heterogenous, it is very difficult to control it, and 
communicate to all of it. The spontaneous mailing list I think filled people 
with the feeling that we would never give up, no matter how many would 
attack us. But the same list, ended up ecoming a serious nuisance to 
people filling their mailboxes, and interrupting their work. Many tried to 
reply telling that they wanted to get out of the list, but only half succeeded, 
because there was nobody who was in control of it, and there was no 
"up to date" version of the list. I know persons who tried to get out and 
mailed that to the last sender, but that person could do nothing.  It was 
enlightening to continously see posts refusing to acknowledge the invaders, 
making happy posts. They helped us to ride out the storm.

> - Any aftermath effects.

This wasn't the first time, and I think it would be too optimistic
to think this is the last. I seriously think an even more dangerous
threat can slowly evolve from the drowning of serious posts, in tons
and tons of junk post advertisements, "make money fast", "check this 
out" etc. 

Evidence 1:
-----------
Newsgroups: soc.culture.soviet
From: [deleted]
Subject: In Defense of Verbitsky
Organization: The Phallogocentric Cabal
Date: January

In article [snip] writes:

>>Anyway, somebody at last payed Misha back for humiliated Vlad, -

>I pust eshche poprobuet. Ya Vladu zhisnyu obyazan kak i dva desyatka
>chelovek. Pust, pust esche hot slovo skazhet - priedy i yayca na ushi
>natianu. Tozhe mne harvardski student, paskuda vonychaya. On by ot 
>straha  tam v svoem gavne utonul, kuda Vlad nas vyzvoliat yezdil, sam 
>pri etom  riskuya. Etogo gavnuka Verbitskogo na pary mesacev v tu 
>yamy k atamanu  Rahamatulle gde on ludei gnoil. Zla ne hvataet. 

>>I think the case should be closed. Davno pora.
>- DM

FINE!!!  I fuck your Vlad and you both, plus your entire drooling idiot
families, dead, comatose, and living, with the Tabasco-lubricated and
razor-wire-wrapped 18" metal-shrouded barrel of a 7.62 NATO battle rifle.
You whingeing and gushing flatulent douchebags may now regard me as 
Misha Verbitsky's volunteer West Coast champion.  Accordingly, I hereby 
do solemnly proclaim before the assembled worldwide audience, that all his
fatuous philistine detractors are naught but worthless scum-sucking pathic
mutant dog-pigs, thoroughly infested with the combined stigmata of herpes,
papilloma, and chlamydia, obtained from habitually and enthusiastically
felching the corroded, polluted, swollen, and distended arsehole of Igor
Rostislavovich Shafarevich, whilst being cornholed, reamed, abraded, and
pumped full of piss and jism by the pus-dripping virile member of Vladimir
Vol'fovich Zhirinovsky.  May your fetid, putrescent, knotted, and cancerous
intestines be permanently turned inside out by the armor-plated syphilitic
member of a rabid battle elephant.

I heartily fart in your general direction.  Now come and get me.

>Lenya

Cordially, - Mikhail | Why is it that all those who have become eminent 
                     | in   philosophy  or  politics  or poetry  or art 
UCLA Philosophy Dept | are clearly  of   an   atrabilious  temperament?

Evidence 2:
-----------
To: [snip]
Subject: Re: Crossposts.
Newsgroups: alt.good.morning
Organization: KTH
Date: December [snip]
From: Fredric 

In article [snip] you write: 

> I had recent started to send a semi mild flame to some jerk that
> posted from alt.nuke.the.USA.
> 
> If everyone would please start checking the headers when they are
> sending the mail out to this newsgroup and then eliminate the other
> newsgroups except for this one, then we would eliminate the outsiders
> trying to invade the group with their nonsensical (SP) crap.
> 
> Please try and help out, if you want to flame someone back, please do
> it in E-mail, or make it go to one group or the other, not into both.
> Obviously these morons that are doing the flaming into this newsgroup
> from alt.nuke.the.usa aren't smart enough to see that they are
> condemning something, but then they are going to do it back to the
> groups.
> 
> Please join the efforts. If the jerk is in this newsgroups, then he'll
> get a taste of his own medicine. Thanks for understanding.
> 
> Troy

No, Troy, I do not understand. Not at all.
All that the crossposters want is response.
They add newsgroups to the headers and they flame people.
They make troll posts pretending to be newbies and then follow up
to them themselves, like "Dying boy".

Don't email them!
Don't followup on their posts!
Not even if you remove the crosspost from the header!

Believe me, Troy, The only thing that helps is silence.
Completely ignoring them for as long as possible.

I do not appreciate your posts on AGM to these people.

I love AGM and what it stands for, I hope you do too.
Have a good Sunday,

Fred


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