Newsgroups: alt.magick

Re: hostility on alt.magick, fear of being flamed, `inner circle' etc.

When I started posting on Usenet (it was talk.religion.newage as alt.pagan
and alt.magick didn't exist) I found it very hostile. Each posting I made,
and the responses it provoked in me, aroused the strongest possible emotions.
After a while I figured that anything which got me so worked up about
the *form* and not the *content* had to be useful, and I began to use
the hostility of the Usenet as a tool.

I started to write long articles, and as I wrote those articles I invoked
in my mind the most hostile of readers (and I can mention a few names of
almost legendary stature, but I won't) and let them sit on my shoulder as
I wrote. I studied their style in detail so that I could nit-pick my
articles more effectively. Then I'd post, and I'd see what happened, and
I'd go back and try again. By internalising all the hostility I've been
able to make massive changes to the way I think about things and the
way I write.

On the way I've evolved a few personal rules which I mostly observe:

   1. if someone expresses an opinion, and I have different opinion, but
      the state of the world in no way depends on who is "righter" or
      "wronger", I let it pass. Thus 95% of postings go unremarked.

   2. if someone says something really daft, I ignore it. I have no personal
      obligation to rid the world of daftness, and there is usually
      someone who will respond more kindly than I would. The tally this
      year is one semi-flame and a sudden outburst of sarcasm, which isn't
      too bad given the level of provocation ;-)

   3. I try to flag my own opinions, beliefs, prejudices etc. as such. This
      means using the word `I' a lot - `I think', `I believe'. If I say
      "book X is a heap of shit" this is much more likely to be flamed
      than "I think book X is a heap of shit".

   4. when responding to a post I try to add something to what the other
      person has said, without detracting from the value of it. 
      Text is an extremely difficult medium for communication,
      misunderstandings take place even between to most well-intentioned 
      of correspondents, and one has to take the greatest care to reassure
      the other person (who is probably waiting to be flamed) that one
      is not delivering a gratuitous attack. Unless one is of course.

I think life would be extremely boring if everyone followed such a pious set
of rules, but it's a place to start if you want to reduce burn damage.

Incidentally, the current level of flaming and intolerance on alt.magick seems
very low to me compared with the early days of alt.pagan, where flaming
attained the status of an art form. And the sickening moral w.r.t hostility
(and morals are usually sickening) is that magicians don't moan, they get
on and find a way of using whatever happens to be at hand.  

Mark Peterson has kindly offered to ftp several megabytes of smileys from
Wisconsin, so you'll be pleased to know that the crisis in south-west
England has been averted. I feel I can spare a few for the needy, so here
goes:

;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)
;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)
;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)
;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-) ;-)

Colin.