The best way to undermine a system of open and cooperative wordplay is to assert, in various and yet similar formulaic patterns, an ongoing replay of the obstacle. The obstacle is a bonding of words designed to accomplish the following: a weakening or complete breakdown of the host?s ability to ignore or deal constructively with insults, a reduction or elimination of the host?s rational faculties in favor of irrationality and acute anger, and a momentary or lingering loss of the host?s ability to articulate thoughts clearly.
The endgame for those who seek to subvert a group is threefold: a breakdown of trust, a collapse of clear communication, and the coveted result of group member against group member, which is the prize of the saboteur.
The recent surges in word attacks seem almost calculated. They are too virus-like in their one-sidedness, too self-aware to be progressive manifestations of so many people word-jostling each other and growing sickened by the monotony of it. So why assume that every word attack originates in the fingers of a survivor? Why not consider the alternative?
