From: dsmither@superior.carleton.ca (Diane Smithers)
Subject: Re: twirps and calm and the angst-gatekeepers
Organization: Carleton University
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 00:56:51 GMT

In <o1N2XB2w165w@noncomf.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca> pmarlowe@noncomf.tdkcs.waterloo.on.ca (philip marlowe) writes:

>> Argh. Communication breakdown.

Major.

>> > Besides, what do you mean by "tried"? By whom? alt.justice.tribunal? 
>> >alt.angst.lynch-mob?
>> 
>> No, I was meaning by "me", according to your argument.  I was not
>> describing what happened literally, I was describing what I understood
>> to be your argument to tell you that I don't agree with it.  

> You just lost me. Maybe I need some coffee.

Sigh*. This is impossible.  I think you lost me with your first post.

>> > Yeah...hell, I was chuckling at the venom in your diatribe. What made me 
>> >want to correct you was your motivation.
>> 
>> Please .... please, please, please.  Be very careful in interpreting
>> others' motivation through a computer network.  Geez.

> Why? It's just as (un)reliable as such guesswork can be even in 
>face-to-face communication. 
 
True, face-to-face communication can be unreliable, but on the
network there are fewer cues through which people gauge meaning, cues
that are necessarily context-dependent. 

> Besides, you seemed to be doing as much to Hermes.

Ok. Fair enough. I was hoping you wouldn't point that out. Um, really,
(innocent voice), that my posts were irate is just, a, uh ... coincidence
.... there is no deeper significance and I was not projecting anything!

>> >> But on the melodrama scale, I am pretty darn skeptical that
>> >> anything I said  was so inflammatory and divisive that it will "burn
>> >> us all up along with the two(?) of you".   
>> 
>> > Why not? We're STILL discussing it...and NOT posting angst. 
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This is part of what I mean when I say "angst policeman" - that we're still
discussing this seems to be a problem and is contrasted with what
we're *not* doing, which is "posting angst".  I don't like to think of
myself as a waste of time that could be better spent angst-ing.
Responding in an inappropriate way and being reprimanded is angst-ful
for me.


> You're playing with semantics. If I seemed to be playing "Angst 
>Policeman", it was only to try to get YOU to stop doing the same.

I am not 'playing' with semantics - that's not necessary; there do
exist legitimate (and significant) differences in meaning construction
and interpretation by different people.  And I think that is partly
why we are having such difficulty communicating.

I appreciate your comments and as I have said on about 3 different
postings, I will be more careful next time as I learn what is
considered an 'appropriate' response to an irritating person.  But
before you posted a response to me the *first* time, I had already said
that I wasn't going to reply to Hermes anymore.  So there wasn't a lot
of reason for you to try to get ME to stop doing the same.  Clearly it
was important for you to tell me that the way I responded was not ok -
you said yourself that she was annoying but that I should have just
snapped at her rather than going hog-wild.  I did not intend to act as
spokesperson, I just have strong opinions about certain things and I
guess the effect may have been the same as if I had been *trying* to
be angst-spokesperson.  
  
Anyways, to make it more formal, I hereby declare all of my future
postings "hermes-free zones".  


Diane




dsmither@ccs.carleton.ca

- I just put my address here because I haven't figured out how to do a
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