Creepy people

[j4]

Okay, now, I'm used to people indulging in flirtatious (and at times obscene) banter on newsgroups. I don't mind people making comments about bits of my body, items of my underwear, and so on, particularly if those comments are funny. If the wordplay's good, anything goes.

But there's one person on uk.misc who is pissing me off. He's clearly only about 18 so I suppose he'll grow out of it, but he's made a couple of comments about removing my knickers and "rummaging around in my bra" which just make me feel really uncomfortable. I think if I got on with him in other threads -- if I felt he was a friend, or at least a generally decent person -- then I wouldn't object, though I still wouldn't think he was being particularly funny. But he's certainly not a friend (I've already got into one argument with him about cars -- he believes cars should be as fast as possible; he believes that he should be allowed to pay only one lot of road tax for 2 cars; he also believes that the size/power of the car has no effect on the cost of insurance) and when he's not shouting about how big his cock^H^H^H^Hcar is, he's quoting 20-page posts and only adding "ROTFPMSL!!!!" at the end. In other words, he's a wanker.

The problem is, I don't feel I can object on the group (and I certainly don't feel I can respond the way I want to, i.e. something along the lines of "fuck off, you top-posting wankfisted teenage sleazemonkey") without everybody else calling me a hypocrite, and/or telling me that if I can't take the good-natured banter I should get out of the group.

I don't like killfiling individuals but I suspect it's the only thing to do; but it makes me feel as though I've failed -- I don't want to react to something so stupid, something that basically amounts to a small boy sniggering at rude words. But I still feel uncomfortable with it.

Maybe I'm just overreacting.

Comments

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

Killfiling isn't failing, it's the only way with uk.misc.

I get worried when the killfile catches fewer posts than it lets through.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I do use killfiles on uk.misc, but AFAIR I only have one rule that killfiles an individual, and that's screamingbitch. Oh, and I keep meaning to killfile timr and possibly Deborah whats-her-name (the one with the paranoid delusions about people poisoning her fences with bad energy, but I never quite get round to it. But mostly my killfiles are based on amount of crossposting, or crossposts to specific froups; I do try to judge (if judge I must) the post rather than the poster.

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

Debs has been driven away from uk.misc by all the people moaning at her, so there's no need to killfile her. A shame really, because she has the uk.misc nature under all the wackyness.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I hope you're not accusing me of driving her away.

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

No, of course not, she went of her own accord. I just think it's a shame that her eccentricities provoked such heated reactions, and the heated reactions provoked her to leave, since I enjoyed her presence, but such is life, and I have her e-mail address.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll be very happy together.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

I agree with Scat about Debs; she had that supreme live and let live "but I'm going to tell you about the way I live anyway" amiableness/tolerance that largely characterizes uk.misc. It's difficult for me to explain. But she took a lot of flack with very good humour, and was outwardly focussed rather than inwardly focussed. That is, she was who she was, she would talk about her obsession, but she remained aware of the fact that other people are different and had different obsessions, and that didn't make them any the less valuable. I can't explain it very well, I'm sorry. But Debs was never mean to other people. And could be very funny.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I don't think I ever saw her being funny (or maybe I just didn't get her sense of humour). I just found her annoying. Personality clash, I guess, but I certainly didn't mean to drive her away; I'd got to the point where I'd realised I just wasn't going to get anything out of anything she posted (because the 20% that was literate enough to be readable just irritated the fuck out of me) and I'd realised I might as well just ignore her. I'm sorry she didn't feel she could just ignore me. Yet another reason for you all to hate me, I guess.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

That's a little egocentric; yes, you were involved in that final argument with her, but so were several other people. And there had been several arguments surrounding other NorthAmericans, some of which I had been involved in, and Debs clearly was beginning to feel got at. So there was a history there. I suspect that the main reason for her going was actually Firth, tbqh.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Hurrah, now I'm egocentric as well as intolerant.

I am having such a good week.

[deadpidge.livejournal.com]

You worry too much!

Nobody dislikes you (AFAIK) and if they do, who cares?

Life's too short!

[nja.livejournal.com]

"fuck off, you top-posting wankfisted teenage sleazemonkey"

YAHugeAICMFP.

I think "P. Hucker" goes well beyond good-natured (or even bad-natured) banter, probably due to extreme social gaucherie and innate sexism rather than intentional malice, but either way I don't want to read him, especially if he's going to do those one-line ROTFPMSL posts, so he's in the killfile. I think he's possibly become confused by the amount of flirtatious stuff in the newsgroup between people who have known each other (online or in real life) for a long while.

[j4.livejournal.com]

I think "P. Hucker" goes well beyond good-natured (or even bad-natured) banter, probably due to extreme social gaucherie and innate sexism rather than intentional malice

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. I've seen a couple of people tell him that he'd fit in just fine if he could only stop top-posting, learn to trim, etc., and I've felt extremely uneasy -- if he fits in "just fine", then I certainly don't fit in at all.

I don't think he's being intentionally malicious, no; I'm more worried that he thinks he's being irresistably funny and sexy, and slowly but surely worming his way into my, er, affections.

As a slight sidetrack, I'm not sure I believe that sexism is ever "innate". I think it's learned, and can be unlearned.

I think he's possibly become confused by the amount of flirtatious stuff in the newsgroup between people who have known each other (online or in real life) for a long while.

Maybe. I never fail to be amazed by the way people do this on usenet, though, and I can't help wondering if they're the same in real life -- I mean, if they fail to notice that people let their friends get away with things that strangers wouldn't get away with, and if they're just as quick in real life to jump in with "affectionate" insults.

To be honest, though, for me it's not even necessarily a question of how long I've known people. There are people I meet (online or IRL) with whom I just 'click'. Some of the miscreants felt like people-I'd-known-for-a-while quite quickly, possibly because misc is quite similar in tone etc. to ox.* (where I idled away most of my undergraduacy).

[nja.livejournal.com]

"Innate" ain't quite wot I meant. "Ingrained" is probably better. PH doesn't have a lot of information on his website other than millions of pictures of parrots, but my guess is he's even older than me and probably has a very old-fashioned worldview and better relationships with parrots than with other human beings. I think a lot of people of the generation that I guess he's from (50s-60s) really don't quite appreciate the distinction between sexual liberation and freedom to sexually harass. I grew up with a mother who was a feminist in the seventies and used to read Spare Rib, so I'm possibly over-sensitive in the other direction.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

He's new. He needs to adjust to the milieu. He may, or he may not.
I suspect not. The fukts crew call him a troll, so it may very well be he's posting the way he is very deliberately. otoh, _they_ call everybody they disagree with a troll - they seem to think that's the definition. I dunno - I suspect he won't be around long. Some of his stuff has been funny. Some of it's rubbish. Watching brief.

[karen2205]

Maybe I'm just overreacting.

Possibly - see if you feel the same way tomorrow. I often get very cross about something not very important but calm down within a day or so.

If he's engaging in sexual banter, sometimes the best response is to play him at his own game - see if he can take what he's been dishing out. And I don't see why criticising his poor netiquette would be hypocritical.

uk.misc is a bit of an odd place - I've read it on occassion and was surprised to find real posts amongst the spam - and yes even more surprised to find posts from you and a couple of other LJers I think I know. Why does the world keep getting smaller on me???

[j4.livejournal.com]

see if you feel the same way tomorrow

Well, I first saw these messages last week, and have gone back to them a couple of times and thought "No, they still make me uncomfortable".

I tried to resist ranting at him, because I generally try not to get into slanging matches with small boys any more; but I've been fairly snippy in some of my replies to him so far & I think if the choice is between killfiling him and having a fullscale flamewar then I'll just have to killfile.

If he's engaging in sexual banter, sometimes the best response is to play him at his own game - see if he can take what he's been dishing out.

Hm, I suspect he'd take it as encouragement, to be honest. And I don't want to have sexual banter with people who make me feel dirty. It's something I do with people I like and trust.

And I don't see why criticising his poor netiquette would be hypocritical.

Because I've made plenty of apparently-similar comments to other people (k425 will tell you that I'm utterly shameless in some of the things I've said to her! -- though I hope she'd tell me straight away if she minded) and it would look like hypocrisy to somebody who didn't understand that friends can get away with things that strangers can't.

Also, I've had my wrists slapped before now on uk.misc for making the same mistake -- I took the piss out of somebody who everybody takes the piss out of (and I didn't think I'd done it maliciously, I thought it was only banter, he doesn't normally seem to object) and I got told that I was nasty and vicious and unfair for doing so. It would be even more hypocritical for me to object to somebody else only being as fuckwitted as me. :-/

[karen2205]

Well, I first saw these messages last week, and have gone back to them a couple of times and thought "No, they still make me uncomfortable".

I tried to resist ranting at him, because I generally try not to get into slanging matches with small boys any more; but I've been fairly snippy in some of my replies to him so far & I think if the choice is between killfiling him and having a fullscale flamewar then I'll just have to killfile.

*nod* - fullscale flamewars are generally best avoided - except when I'm cross and need to rant, when I head over to uk.legal;-)

Hm, I suspect he'd take it as encouragement, to be honest. And I don't want to have sexual banter with people who make me feel dirty. It's something I do with people I like and trust.

Ah OK. Have you thought about taking pity on him/pleading to his good nature and emailing him telling him this? I don't know whether it's worth it, but maybe it'd make you feel less guilty about killfiling him if you'd given him an explicit last chance?

Because I've made plenty of apparently-similar comments to other people (k425 will tell you that I'm utterly shameless in some of the things I've said to her! -- though I hope she'd tell me straight away if she minded) and it would look like hypocrisy to somebody who didn't understand that friends can get away with things that strangers can't.

But surely someone who doesn't understand that the boundaries are different for strangers than they are for friends is fairly high on the fuckwittedness scale?

Also, I've had my wrists slapped before now on uk.misc for making the same mistake -- I took the piss out of somebody who everybody takes the piss out of (and I didn't think I'd done it maliciously, I thought it was only banter, he doesn't normally seem to object) and I got told that I was nasty and vicious and unfair for doing so.

*nods* - these things happen. Are you on speaking terms with him now? I'd have thought that he'll have long since forgotten/forgiven that incident.

It would be even more hypocritical for me to object to somebody else only being as fuckwitted as me. :-/

It would, but I think that he's probably gone far beyond what you did (grr - you've got me all intrigued; I'll have to go in search of uk.misc this evening;-))

Even if you don't feel you can criticise his sexual banter, there's no reason not to put down his top posting/other breaches of netiquette.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Have you thought about taking pity on him/pleading to his good nature and emailing him telling him this? I don't know whether it's worth it, but maybe it'd make you feel less guilty about killfiling him if you'd given him an explicit last chance?

I hadn't thought of that, because it just doesn't seem to be the way misc works... I doubt if he'd take any notice, anyway; but maybe that's just me giving him a bad name and hanging him.

But surely someone who doesn't understand that the boundaries are different for strangers than they are for friends is fairly high on the fuckwittedness scale?

Well, I dunno. Not realising that the boundaries are different, maybe; but then it's harder to tell on news than IRL, I think, where you stand in relation to somebody -- whether you are considered a "friend" or not. Some people don't believe it's possible to be "friends" with somebody they've never met in real life; some people make friends quicker than others anyway, etc.

Are you on speaking terms with him now? I'd have thought that he'll have long since forgotten/forgiven that incident.

No idea -- he never said anything about it, it was the rest of them who had a go at me for it. I apologised to him, got no reply, he carried on posting without apparently being bothered, though he's been quieter recently (sufficiently far after the incident that I doubt it's connected). Still feel guilty, still feel certain that one miscreant (if not more) hates me as a result, but what more can I do than apologise & not do it again?

Even if you don't feel you can criticise his sexual banter, there's no reason not to put down his top posting/other breaches of netiquette.

Oh, I do that. I'm on much less shaky ground thinking that top-posters are evil, than thinking I have a right to tell people to stop talking about my knickers. That's usenet for you, though.

[taimatsu]

You have a perfect right not to have people talk about your knickers if you'd rather they didn't, no matter who else you might permit to do so.

I understand where you're coming from as OxIRC included similar banter and there was at least one regular that I'd have rather not had involved. I never found a way to prevent it. IT was a major case of whichever 'geek social fallacy' is it that says 'Thou Shalt Never Leave Anyone Out, Even If You All Dislike Them.'

If the killfile would help, I think you should use it. If there are reasons why that would not help, or would make you feel bad in other ways, then a message conveying the idea that, whoever else may make flirty/sexy/etc comments about you, He May Not, might work.

I hope you get it sorted in a way that makes you comfortable. You don't have to put up with it.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

Also, I've had my wrists slapped before now on uk.misc for making the same mistake -- I took the piss out of somebody who everybody takes the piss out of (and I didn't think I'd done it maliciously, I thought it was only banter, he doesn't normally seem to object) and I got told that I was nasty and vicious and unfair for doing so.


The Alex thing? It's a strange sort of arena, that. One can - has to be, sometimes - very blunt with him. There's a fine line, though, and some people thought you went over. I think the people who told you off for it rather overdid it. My advice would be to excise the entire incident from your memory banks, I doubt anybody else (Alex included) thinks about it at all anymore.
You fit fine with the miscreants. Alex fits as well as he can, and better then he used to.

[nja.livejournal.com]

The Alex thing? It's a strange sort of arena, that. One can - has to be, sometimes - very blunt with him.

I've just googled back to one of my first encounters with Alex - I had quoted a green-ink letter from the local paper, making it abundantly clear it was a quote, and he had interpreted it as being written by me. Here's the result:

On 23 Feb 1999, Chris Brown wrote:

> Don't you love it when people follow up to news postings without
> reading them and end up looking really silly?

Don't you love it when people follow up to my postings. Everyone knows I'm
a paranoid fuckwit.

Cheers,
Alex

He's still making the same excuses for not reading things properly today - I don't accept his deafness as an excuse, he seems to be pretty intelligent and basically a good person, but he's got an extremely irritating habit of not thinking at all about things and then shrugging his shoulders and saying "I'm fucked up, what do you expect?"

Chris Eilbeck, Giles Todd, Rod Begbie and someone called "Dom" also contributed to that thread. "Dom" - hat sounds like a pseudonym to me.

[deadpidge.livejournal.com]

Chris Eilbeck, Giles Todd, Rod Begbie and someone called "Dom"

Hey, them were t'days!

S'funny - Alex is the one miscreant out of that lot that I haven't met (apart from Giles, and I will get round to a visit, dude!) and yet I genuinely like the guy.

He's honest. What more d'you want?

[chrisvenus]

If you don't like killfiling people then take my appropach. When you see somebody like that in the From field at the top sit there and decided if you can be bothered to read it. Given it sounds like there will be no useful content then more often the answer will be no and you skip on merrily ignoring him.

And you won't have failed. You'll just have optimised the time used to read newsgroups. If you ever do feel like seeing if he's grown up or anything you can stop and read something. Either make you think maybe he wasn't so bad or just remind you why you started skipping his posts.

Dunno if its any better but its certainly my plan and what I'd go with.

[k425.livejournal.com]

No, you're not over-reacting. Peter is yet another new poster who has jumped in without looking at how things work first, and thinks that to become a 'respected regular' (if you will) he has to reply to everything and be as objectionable as possible. The emotional maturity involved in picking a screen name like Peter Hucker told me most of what I needed to know about him straight off!

I don't think anyone would call you a hypocrite, unless they're also hypocritical. Look at Huge - he is objectionable in some posts, witty in others, is quite prepared to tell someone to fuck off if they won't play nicely, and flirts well.

Do you read uk.misc because you feel everyone should be able to say whatever they want to you, or because you want to have interesting/fun/deep discussions on your own terms? If the latter, killfiling the people who aren't doing much to add to your interest/fun isn't failing, it's sorting wheat from chaff.

Or something.

[j4.livejournal.com]

Peter is yet another new poster who has jumped in without looking at how things work first, and thinks that to become a 'respected regular' (if you will) he has to reply to everything and be as objectionable as possible.

But I feel like that could just as easily be a description of me. :-(

The emotional maturity involved in picking a screen name like Peter Hucker

? Am I missing some reference here?

Do you read uk.misc because you feel everyone should be able to say whatever they want to you, or because you want to have interesting/fun/deep discussions on your own terms?

The latter; but I also know I haven't been there long enough to be allowed to define my own terms!

[k425.livejournal.com]

1. You aren't objectionable. And even if you were to say something objectionable, it is unlikely you'd do so every post.

2. P. Hucker. Phucker. Fucker. He may be 28 physically, but he's still 14 emotionally.

3. You've been posting to misc for, what, a year or so? That's long enough, believe me. And of course you can define your own terms - that's why they're yours! If you define your terms (to yourself) and post according to them and people keep responding, you're doing fine.

[j4.livejournal.com]

P. Hucker. Phucker. Fucker.

Oh, I see. D'oh. Sorry.

And of course you can define your own terms - that's why they're yours!

Um, yes, but there has to be some sort of consensus of whatsits. And I worry that if I define my own terms everybody else will just say "Your terms are wrong" and ignore me...

[k425.livejournal.com]

I did say if people keep responding you're doing okay!

[rmc28]

When I was reading high-volume newsgroups, I had a quick-killfile macro which would block the poster of an article for a month. The idea being that they had a chance to improve over time ... most likely if they were still annoying when they came out of the month-block I would just month-block them again.

This brought a couple of newsgroups down from 'impossible' to 'readable', but I have a much more interesting job now so don't read news nearly as much.

[j4.livejournal.com]

a quick-killfile macro which would block the poster of an article for a month

That sounds fantastically useful. Could I snaffle it? (I wouldn't have the faintest idea how to write my own, I'm afraid.)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Is killfiling an individual really all that different from, say, happening not to read their livejournal?

[j4.livejournal.com]

Er, yes, it's quite a lot different.

For one thing, their livejournal doesn't form bits and pieces of a supposedly coherent thread formed of other people's livejournals, so not-reading-their-livejournal doesn't (usually) render other people's livejournals less comprehensible.

For another thing, a personal blog is an individual's own space, where AFAIAC they can say pretty much what they like (people may disagree, or object, but the person who owns the blog generally has some kind of moderator's rights over who posts what, so essentially they can quash anything they don't want to appear there, or prevent people commenting at all if they want).

For a third thing, I think there is a -- moral? conceptual, maybe? -- difference between taking active moves to block somebody's writings from your view, and passively refraining from seeking out what they write. That's why I try not to use killfiles on individuals, and I don't delete objectionable comments from my LJ, but (funnily enough) I don't actually read everybody's LJ. Generally refraining from reading an LJ is more like not reading a group which is irrelevant to me (e.g. if somebody only ever posts about knitting or golf or something else which doesn't really interest me -- same as I wouldn't read alt.rec.sports.golf or alt.rec.knitting or whatever); in other cases it's more to do with attitude than content (e.g. if somebody only ever whinges, or only ever rants -- same as I wouldn't bother reading alt.flame); but in either case I wouldn't want to block all comments from the individual (which would be more like killfiling them), because they might comment on something that I was interested in.

[perdita-fysh.livejournal.com]

I've only kept him out of my killfile so far because some of the other guy's are giving him the benefit of the doubt. That buys him an extra week, then he gets dropped for a couple of months. If he's still irritating by the end of that, he goes for good.

Anything else would be a waste of my life.

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

Having finally finished caught up with the weekend postings, I'm with Perdita on this one. He'd be in my killfile if the others weren't replying, but it's only for context to their replies that he remains.

I expect they'll get bored of replying, then he'll get bored of not ever getting any replies, and then he'll piss off. Or he'll stop being a prat, and their benefit-of-the-doubt will pay off, but that seems less likely.

[juggzy.livejournal.com]

Phucker is a prat. He's absolutely different to you, imo, so no need to get paranoid. He doesn't bother at all about what other people might think of him, for starters.

And Secondly, I am fairly certain that he came in intending to wind people up. i.e. determined to do things to irritate people and end up trolling mightily. Which is why both Tone and me went "Aha!" when he made the comment about not believing in FAQs. Play along with him, kill file him, whatever you want, you don't need anyone's permission. He's not a nice person, imo.

[deadpidge.livejournal.com]

He's a tosser.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

fuck off, you top-posting wankfisted teenage sleazemonkey

ROTFPMSL!!!! [grin]

Oops. [snigger] And even I, petrolhead that I would be if I had the finances, appreciate that road tax is an essential thing, and don't really begrudge paying more because I drive an older car, and fully appreciate the size/power to insurance ratio (hence being rather pleased that the snowmobile seen above is only a 1.6, but enough vehicular geekery ... for now ...)