From: johnf@Auspex.COM (John Fereira)
Newsgroups: soc.singles
Subject: Re: SM ISO MAIL
Date: 22 Jan 93 22:10:28 GMT
Organization: Auspex Systems, Inc.

First of all, I don't condone posting personal ads in soc.singles.  That
said:

In article <1993Jan22.040131.21412@sol.UVic.CA> atovorni@engr.UVic.CA writes:
>In article 10561@ringer.cs.utsa.edu, sgokhale@lonestar.utsa.edu (Shashank S. Gokhale) writes:
|
|>hey you yes you. why do you make fun of people like this?
|
|I will attempt to answer your question because you are the only one in
|history to reply to one of these very volatile flames. Man, do you have
|guts! 

Volitile flames?  Hardly. I'll elaborate in a minute. 

|Essentially, soc.singles is a discussion group where regulars go around
|exchanging ideas about any topic that comes to mind. I would have blasted you
|no matter what you wrote because what you wrote was a PERSONAL AD!!!!
|
|I am giving you a clue: soc.singles regulars like myself get extremely
|PISSED OFF when they see personal ads.

I'm not sure that you should be speaking for soc.singles regulars when you
make the claim that they get extremely PISSED OFF by the mere appearance
of a personal ad in soc.singles.  I seriously doubt that a whole lot of
people were even mildly annoyed by his ad.  
  
First of all,  with the emergence of the anonymous posting service personal
ads are finding their way onto soc.singles with great frequency.  As a
result, a neophyte reader is going to see them and might figure that they
are acceptable here. Your initial "flame" did little to discourage any
future personal ads.  In fact, it served no purpose whatsoever.  To another
new reader of the group it merely looks like some asshole making fun of
an Indian stereotypical style of speech because the person happened to have
an Indian surname.  If you're going to flame someone just for the sake
of flaming them set the followup to alt.flame.  I found the phonetic
translation to be in poor taste.

Second, the personal ad was basically pretty innocous.  He sounded sincere,
didn't do a lot of chest pounding,  and it certainly didn't warrent the
kind of abuse that you felt was necessary.  You might notice the also
posted to the alt.personals groups and soc.penpals.  The mere inclusion of
soc.singles in the newsgroups line is hardly a cause for great alarm.  Your
response looked more like an ego boost to show that I know more about the
net than you do.

| If you go into a pub and scream out
|"HEY! ALL YOU GIRLS OVER THERE! I'M LOOKING FOR WOMEN! I WANT TO TALK TO YOU!!!"
|What do you think their reaction would be?
 
I've used a similar arguement (except that it involved a cocktail party and
a walking billboard) in an attempt to convince someone that personal ads
were not an effective way to meet someone in this forum.  How you expected
Shashank to derive this message from your original flame, I don't know.
Again, the flame had no socially.singles redeaming value.

|Understand me on this: I was not being a racist or anything, I was blasting
|your approach.

He never insinuated that you were racist.

| You made yourself look stupid posting an ad in this newsgroup.
   
So you translated his posting using a impersonation of the grammer and
accent of an Indian person that was just learning the English language.  
That didn't make him look stupid.  It just made you look insensitive to
a persons feeling and culture.
 
|
|Yes, but never so bluntly. 
|I might be looking for one today, 
|but with a bit of finnesse, my friend.

Finesse.  Like your response?

All that said.  This is just an observation but did you ever notice that
when your talking to an Indian speaking person that they shake their head
just noticibly from side to side when they're listening to you?



-- 
-john
Newsgroups: soc.singles