Re: Hot topic

I am top-posting. You can scroll to the bottom if you like doing
that sort of thing, but I'm not adding anything below the attribution
line other than my sig, so ...


Josh, a coupla years ago I used to try to 'explain' Geno. People
called it defending him and while I denied that at the time, I guess
in retrospect it very much was defending him. I somehow naively
thought that if people only knew the "real" Geno that I had met and
talked to, the guy I occasionally exchanged e-mails with, and whose
deeper insight I had come to understand, well, then, they'd be *less*
unhappy with his trolling. They'd be *less* likely to spend all that
time thrashing him and trashing him.

It, um. Didn't work. At all.

For the very reasons UV has very aptly outlined here. Why the hell
should someone change their mind about what they have perceived here,
just because *I* had met Geno and understood his game to some extent,
and knew he wasn't really the way they thought he was, etc.?

After a time, I got totally pissed off at Geno because he was a total
ass to me privately as well as publicly, when I was trying to help
him and it finally sank into my ego-thickened skull that he did not
want or need my help, that he was having a good time spinning people
up into latte toppings, and I could just *** off and play my own
games. What I was doing wasn't making the slightest difference. It
was a waste of my time and emotion.

I suppose it helped that I had learnt a few more Usenet lessons, some
of them at the tender hands of our lovely Miz UV here, in fact, that
toughened me up emotionally.

Anyhoo.

Few are going to change their minds about Ray, Josh. They figure
their own brains are smart enough to figure out what they want to
figure out, and resent the hell out of your attempts to set them
straight. And, really, Ray doesn't need you to come trotting to his
defense. He's playing his game, which undermines your efforts
anyway, to suit himself. If he fucks up and gets in over his head
and ends up with someone mucking about on other newsgroups trying to
trash him, he'll have to go over there and fix things for himself.

You're not helping him.

But. If it makes you happy to be Ray's Sir Galahad, then knock yer
sox off, dude.

'trib line comin' up. Nothing new below it, remember.

Le sot est comme le peuple, qui se croit riche de peu. so that's why
i read misc.writing, where i found Josh Hill <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx>
saying:


4On Sat, 24 Nov 2007 07:36:42 -0800 (PST), UV
<paula.light@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Nov 24, 5:01 am, Josh Hill <userepl...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

<>

*My* meeting Sylvia would change *your* mind about her? You
trust my opinions that much? Wow.

Why not?


I find it very strange to the point of unbelievability that you
would trust my opinion of someone over your own when you and I
have never met or even interacted all that much. In any case,
there would still be the issue of MW-persona v. RL-person, and
some people *choose* to present a different self here, so it makes
no sense that you would alter your behavior toward someone here
over something that I described happened out there.

It would be a matter of trusting your opinion over my own so much
as it would be a matter of recognizing the limits of my own
knowledge of Sylvia and wanting to peak beyond the persona-curtain
to which you referred. As to whether it would change my behavior,
well, that would depend. Misunderstandings abound on Usenet, and
I've seen people's behavior towards one another change here as
they learned more. If, for example, I learned that someone didn't
mean any harm by an insult, I'd feel more disposed to give him a
second chance. If I learned that somebody had been wounded
seriously by something I was doing I'd back off. If I learned that
it was all a game to him I might lose my reticence about
insulting. I can see lots of possibilities.

Did you see forex the thread with Gekko's impressions of Ray,
both here and and in person? It's pretty amazing close to what I
would have written.


That's nice. Gekko isn't trying to change anyone's mind about him
as far as I can tell. Seems to me she doesn't care about that or
how others here perceive him here. Seems to me she's happy to
smack him around here as she always has because of the icky self
he presents here, despite the fact she had a pleasant time with
him out there. And you have said a few times that you know Ray
deliberately presents a different self here, yet he insists this
is "real life." Gosh, what to believe? I'll just stick with my own
impression and react to people here as they behave here.

When I came back to MW Ray was the victim of a smear campaign that
made claims about his personal life. It would never have occurred
to me to withhold knowledge that I thought might have bearing on
that, within the bounds of confidentiality.

Like Gekko, I didn't attempt to deny or justify Ray's trolling:
I've called him a weasel as many times as anyone here.

As to Ray's description of Usenet as real life, well, it is and it
isn't, isn't it? Usenet isn't imaginary -- when Ray trolls someone
here, he's really saying what he's saying, and it's understandable
that he'd want to accept responsibility for that. But at the same
time, we refer as a matter of convention to the time we spend as
flesh and blood and alcohol as "real life." So the contradiction
is only apparent, a matter of semantics -- the use of the term
"real life" in two overlapping but different senses.

<>


Maybe. All I can say is that both the person and the
circumstance have a lot to do with the degree to which I trust
them. This person (it's no secret) was Wendy, who doesn't strike
me as the sort to make things up, and it was a story about
something that affected her deeply.


Wendy, right. She was the one who thought it was funny to ***
over Zero by taking the domain name he mentioned.

Don't think I ever heard about that one. I remember her as having
been slyly humorous at times, otherwise straightforward almost to
a fault.

<>

Well, then, if it's unique, I'm the one responsible, because I
mentioned several times online that Ray was different than I'd
thought and that his motives here weren't what I'd imagined. Why
I wouldn't (since I breached no confidentiality and hurt no one
in doing so) isn't something I understand: if people have
erroneous impressions of someone, whether Ray or Me or Dubya, it
seems to me a good idea to fix them.

You've fixed nothing. No one here has altered their opinion of Ray
because of your continual harping on that meeting.

Then either they were either more perceptive than I was, or
they're making a mistake.

<>

As I said, I was surprised by that. People came up with all
sorts of elaborate rationalizations to explain why my opinion of
Ray wasn't correct.


Are you still surprised? Are you still not getting it?

Yes. People here can be pretty idiotic sometimes, as I know from
having been the *** of my own share of ludicrous accusations and
whacked-out theories. I inferred from them that when people
weren't just trolling or being malicious, they were being honestly
dense -- and that I presumably had no more idea than they did
about why people were doing what they were doing.

One of the reasons I argue so vociferously here is that the
contrast between what people say and the reality can be so damned
grotesque. That's why Ray mentioned the $2000 hill manse. Anyone
would have. Hell, anyone who had walked in my front door would
have reacted with the same astonishment.

But to me it seems evident that real life tells us a lot that
online doesn't, and that when we haven't met someone ourselves,
the account of someone who has can improve our understanding,
subject to the obvious caveats -- how perceptive is the other
person, do they have an axe to grind, are they habitually
honest, what motives might they have to distort the truth, and
so forth. Someone vetting my opinion of Ray, for example, might
have taken into account the fact that we'd argued here and I'd
plonked him. And now that she's posted her impressions of Ray
here, Gekko's opinion serves as a confirmation and verification
of mine.

I guess not.

I can see not believing one person, but if people aren't going to
believe two people who have very different agendas and are
frequently at odds then they're concerned with something other
than the truth.




--
gekko

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain
the largest amount of feather with the least amount of hissing --
Louis XIV's finance minister
.