From: gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch)
Subject: Re: Newsgroup Vandalism
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1992 16:21:27 GMT
Organization: mydog in exile
Followup-To: alt.postmodern

This is about the cascades in alt.postmodern, but I note that they
also occurred in several other newsgroups, such as alt.drugs, so
they are not a particularly "postmodern" manifestation and are
relevant to the net as a whole.  Which is why I've kept the original
distribution.  However, as it's mostly about alt.postmodern, I'm
setting the follow-up line to that newsgroup; alter it as you
wish.

k085431@hobbes.kzoo.edu (Jason A. Wold) writes:
| >Cascades and such...
| >
| >I imagine it has to do with the whole lack of definition that defines
| >the Postmodern, as it stands..
| >
| >I mean, the complexity ad absurdum of the whole holistic (as far as
| >combining disciplines) approach to truth, as well as the questioning of
| >what we mean by truth (the whole Will to Knowledge thing of Foucault),
| >often leads to absurdity as a release.

sasbmt@jjoyce.unx.sas.com (Bruce Tindall):
| Right on.
| 
| Duke University will probably revoke my freshly-minted M.A. for this,
| but there are a couple of reasons why the complaints about "newsgroup
| vandalism" on alt.postmodern are rather disingenuous.

This is one step beyond "_postmodern_ is an oxymoron", so I'll
try to answer it, but don't expect me to do this every time.

| 1.  To call the cascades "vandalism" *privileges* some texts on this
| newsgroup (the non-cascades, the "serious discussion") over other
| texts (the cascades).  How elitist!  Are you trying to establish a
| *canon* of postings?  Horrors!

Your problem seems to be that you're stuck in the habit of
supposing a monopolar universe, one where only one set of values
can exist.  Thus, either some texts are preferred (privileged)
or they aren't.  But texts are preferred from a point of view,
and there can be many points of view.

In point of fact, alt.postmodern readers have been pretty
tolerant of nonsense and ignorance, as well as postings about
Silly Puppy and other rock groups who are called "postmodern"
for some reason.  However, the cascades thing, by putting up two
or three hundred articles, ensured that everything else in the
newsgroup would be buried for those who don't know how to
manipulate the software needed to filter them out.  In other
words, they trashed the "rights" of people who wanted to use the
group to discuss, say, recent architecture, or even Silly Puppy,
under that particular title.  Even other kinds of _nonsense_
would be obscured.

Of course, "respecting the rights of others" is yet another
canon, straight from good old classical liberalism.  So rather
than _complain_ about the cascades -- as if some overarching
authority should remove them -- I thought it would be more
entertaining to analyze or "deconstruct" them, and show the
political basis for what was going on.  I guessed, correctly it
seems, that exposing the power relations involved, and
hypothesizing a bit about how it related to the authoritarian
academic and corporate environments of the cascaders, would
touch a nerve and lead to a more interesting discussion.  Which
it did.   In fact, I got one person to more or less openly
exhibit precisely the kind of fascistic contempt which I 
suspected lay behind at least some of the vandalism.

Of course, alt.postmodern is a small thing, but it is in small
things that people often reveal themselves, rather than in great 
things, when everyone is watching.

None of which solves the essential problem for Usenet News as a
whole.  Usenet is an anarchy, a harbinger of the world to come.
Suppose vandalism -- what _I_ call vandalism -- becomes
widespread, so that even "important" groups become unusable?

| 2.  To call them "vandalism" imputes authorial intent to the persons
| posting the cascades:  the person posting the cascade intends the
| texts have a particular effect.  But hasn't postmodernism announced
| "the death of the author"?  If there's no author, and no authorial
| intent, how can the author be intending to vandalize the newsgroup?

Again, you see something called "postmodernism" as a
prescriptive movement.  "Postmodern" is a category (actually, a
sort of rat-bag), not a movement.  I've explained this before,
but repetition is the soul of Usenet: movementism, if I may coin
a word, as in "impressionist movement", is dead, or at least
dispersed.  We no longer perceive art and culture in general as
proceeding -- _progressing_ -- toward some single pinnacle of
perfection, to which all good artists move at once.  The term
"postmodern" was coined to cover cultural phenomena which fell
outside the canon of Modernism -- the last of the movements.
The paradoxical quality of the word "postmodern" is deliberate.

Since postmodernism does not prescribe anything, although some
postmodern authors do, there can be all kinds of authors and
authorial intent -- from some points of view, under some form of
analysis.  Mine, for example.  However, I'll concede that if you 
wish to say that the cascaders lack intent, like the famous room
full of monkeys banging on typewriters, you could probably make
a pretty good case for your theory on the evidence.

| 3.  The cascades are positively subversive of established, prescriptive,
| linearly-logical notions of language.  How much more postmodern can
| you get?

Cascades are, indeed, postmodern in that sense (although
similar procedures can be found in poetry from a long time ago;
for instance, there was an ancient Gaelic poetic game in which 
the participants made up successive couplets commenting on, and
generally sounding like, the foregoing couplet(s).  The only
difference with our present cascades, in fact, was that some
kind of wit was expected.)  However, there are other newsgroups
-- in fact, whole bulletin-board systems -- for that sort of
thing.  The fact that alt.postmodern is _named_ alt.postmodern
instead of alt.exploding.kibo shows that it is not, itself,
quite postmodern.  It's on the boundary between the modern or
classical world, and the postmodern world.  The unestablished,
unprescriptive, non-linear can be discussed and reflected in
discourse reminiscent of, and organized like, the old, the
established, the prescriptive, the linear.  Or at least I'd 
like it to be like that.

| --------- sarcasm off -----------

But, you see, it wasn't really on.  Or it was on but it was
not total; it meant something after all.

| "'Tis the sport to have the enginer / Hoist by his own petar."

Hope this helps.
-- 
* Gordon Fitch    |    gcf@panix.com 
Xref: sparky news.misc:935 alt.config:2961 alt.drugs:7689 alt.postmodern:1277 alt.angst:1304