But sometimes, ya just get clutzy and awkward and fubar the whole game. Here recently, a few good folks have volunteered to help w/ the growning admin functions around here. All hail MGDP for saving us from spam and tweaking a few things that have been begging for tweaking. And, as he wanted RB to assist, and I figured everybody was up to speed by now on the sanctity of anonymity around here, I said sure, why not?
But it's a subtle issue and I guess, as it turns out, it does bear another discussion. So how about a little bit of that right here?
Here's something of the thinking that led me to set up these forums. I had been hanging out on Usenet for some time and had watched pretty closely and participated enough in lists and newsletters growing out of it to be fairly impressed with how things go down when nobody's really in charge. Wes Fager had tried starting a Program themed usenet group, but there wasn't the interest. I tried sparking interest in vaguely relavent exant groups. No luck there either. Usenet never was really what you'd call mainstream, even by Cyberian standards. So the odds of running into anyone there who had been through a thought reform program were not good.
So web forums were starting to take on popularity. But all of them were ad sponsored and mostly subsidiaries or potential, future acquisitions of deep pocketted, big companies. It's just more cost effective and business wise for them to hit the delete key than to chance incurring legal expenses and bad PR. So there were no web forums where anyone could really throw down on something as outrageous and emotionally charged as any discussion about the Program almost always is.
That's one way they hold together by keeping us apart. You just can't have this talk without people getting very agitated and nasty and it's become politically incorrect and legally dubious to show any sort of strong emotion or condemned opinions anymore. It's a snitch culture, people are scared to say what they really think.
So I've been hard line about protecting people's anonymity. Even if I don't like them, even if I disagree heatedly with their mother's decision to go through with it, even when people use it to fuck with others in cruel and destructive ways, it's not my call. Anything anybody can say, any of those tired old slight of mind routines they may try and play on us, I say bring it! Those only work until you understand the trick and a good many of us are master level students of them all. Shit, some of you staffers are mere novices. It's almost laughable. Like looking down on the pip squeek freshmen from the lofty perch of seniority. :lol: Shit! I would have bested you by the time I was 12 and only 6 years into the Program.
For them that don't see it there are those of us who are happy to explain it. It's a good stress reliever sometimes. And you have to admit, freedom has fostered just about the most spectacular trolling culture to be found anywhere on the net. :nworthy:
But on a more serious note, it has been my policy to protect anonymous communications for all the same reasons why the New York City newspapers published The Federalist anonymously in 1788. And these are the same reasons I read about defending the anon pennet system by which dissidents in repressed circumstances could get word out to the free world. Man, can I identify with THAT now! That would have made a world of difference 20 years ago; if only we could have spoken confidentially w/o fear of reprisal.
And that's happened so many times and in so many ways around here. I'd never want to stiffle that. I should have given another rendition of that before giving anybody access to server data. I think everybody understands that now, right?
We now return you to your regularly scheduled trolling.
