In article <ff22d5bc.0404151640.58679588@posting.google.com>, Charles C.
<charles_casey_google_groups@yahoo.com> writes
>Davey has been especially cruel with his words and intentions towards
>me and selected others. I would like to believe that he doesn't acts
>like this in what he calls "the real world" so it's almost as though
>he has set up a "Morton's Demon" where he suppresses the knowledge
>that there are people behind these words and he treats them as though
>they are nothing more than adversaries in a computer game. He has
>basically created a wall that separates "Usenet people" from "real
>world people."
>
>Since he has suppressed the awareness and understanding that "Usenet
>people" are "real world people" who are just using a communication
>protocol that appears unique to someone of his age who has grown up
>with telephones and radios as the standard for communicating he feels
>free to treat those people as though they are nothing more than
>characters in a Castle Wolfenstein shoot'em up type game; the
>difference being that text is the only weapons used. Over the years he
>has fortified this wall developing an unhealthy perceptivity; an
>outlet which allows him to act out the darkest side of humanity. It
>has also given him a sense of power which would explain the obsession.
There's a phenomenon that I know as 'email-blindness' (I don't think it
is a term of my own invention, but I couldn't find other uses), where a
user of email (or mailing list, UseNet groups, and other discussion
groups) fails to internalise that he's communicating with real people,
and that the group consists of more than a single individual. It occurs
disproportionally in kooks (it's almost the criterion to distinguish
kooks from cranks and crackpots, except that kooks have a parallel
tendency to classify everyone as a friend or enemy), but has been
observed in otherwise reasonable people known to function well in
society.
It's possible that some of the nastier trolls suffer from this (the
other alternative is that they genuinely enjoy inflicting pain).
I don't think that it applies to the alleged accountant - the claims
that UseNet is not real-life seem more like denial than non-
understanding. He seems more like an attention-junkie (which is a hazard
for everyone on UseNet; not only does a version of Gresham's Law apply
(bad posts drive out good), but the nature of the medium provides
perverse incentives, as one gets more attention from being controversial
than for being constructive.)
--
alias Ernest Major
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