Ramblings of an itinerant rocket scientist...

Well said. I myself prefer to simply not frequent such fora. But it sounds like you took the whole situation and used it to improve yourself in valuable ways. Kudos.

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serenejournal.livejournal.com

Okay, the thought of not participating on Usenet just gave me a cold chill. ;-)

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I think that would be very hard. I admire your willingness to let yourself be vulnerable in those places. Without a basis for trusting all of the participants on those groups, that was a huge risk with an uncertain benefit.

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serenejournal.livejournal.com

*nod* That makes sense to me. I guess I decided that if I didn't know most of these people personally (and at the time I didn't, though I do now), I had very little to lose except my reputation for being, how did one woman put it, "A fluffy-barfy I'm-so-above-labels bisexual". :-)

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the-ogre.livejournal.com

"...they may be overtly hostile, looking for opportunities to throw scorn and snideness in my direction."

Yes, of course people are out there for the sole purpose of ambushing you. There's no possible way that you could be bringing it on yourself, is there? The rest of us are just supporting charachters in you soap opera, right?

Beg, borrow, steal , do what you have to - get a damn clue.

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Thank you for your beautiful demonstration of

brian1789's point.

I can certainly understand why you are frustrated at being apparently "cast as a bad guy" in Brian's universe. Is there some way in which you could communicate this that might be more effective than humiliation or the very snideness that he's talking about? I'm guessing that might work a little better.

Yes, there are things he needs to learn. Yes, I find some of his choices in HOW to learn them odd at best, and irritating at worst.

However, he IS striving to learn, and THAT is what I try to support.

In this case, however, you have chosen to use his personal journal as a forum for humiliation, rather than education in a way that might possibly get through. Although your thesis (that he's bringing this on himself) is quite likely correct at least in part, the way you chose to express it is nearly certain to create the exact opposite of the conditions required for learning. Why is that? In what way does it serve YOU to keep this as contentious as possible?

My experience says that folks learn best when they are given empathy and understanding about the choices they have made up to now. Only THEN are they able to look at their situation and see the places where positive change could be made. Without the empathy and understanding, all information is likely to be seen as evidence in favor of why maintaining this pattern (whatever dysfunctional pattern we are discussing at the time) is the only logical and sensible thing to do. If you really want to educate Brian on this topic, I'd suggest revisiting this post and reconsidering how you are presenting the information. Otherwise, I'd suggest confining your heavy sarcasm to arenas where it's more appropriate, such as the public fora or your own journal.

(And of course you are free to ignore my unsolicited advice, since as always, YMMV).

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However, he IS striving to learn, and THAT is what I try to support.

From my vantage point I am not seeing behaviors from Brian that I associate with what might be called "striving to learn" but rather map in my experience to "trying to get attention in ways I find unappealing."

Obviously, Mileage Varies all over the place.

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Yep. And the only way to avoid a negative attention spiral (as any parent will --HOPEFULLY!-- learn at some point!), is to ignore it all together. Any other response, no matter how well-meaning, will only serve to reinforce the behavior.

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Well, ignore those things that are ignorable.

Letting a child urinate on the living room carpet and doing nothing seems a poor parenting choice to me, but then I have no children of my own, yet.

Dumb question: why did you choose to reward

the_ogre's behavior with your attention?

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In order:

1) I wouldn't let her (I've only had girl kids to deal with so far!) pee on the carpet with no consequence. That's actually destructive, and would require a different course of action than, for instance, "mere" inappropriate shouting and yelling (which this more closely resembles).

2) Not a dumb question at all. At least part of the answer is: because I erroneously interpreted his comments as intending to educate or change Brian's behavior through his words. As I have found (in private e-mail; he seems to think that Brian deleted his comment and the subsequent thread--which is patently untrue, since we're conversing in it now), in fact his comment was simply intended to serve as a "I won't take any more of this BS" notice. If his intent was to effect change through communication, then theoretically if I provide better communications tools, then the community at large will be more harmonious and a better place for ME as well as everyone else.

The rest of the answer is: I'm no good at ignoring Allegra's bad behavior, either! Working on it. :^)

Speaking of whom--gotta run and get her from school.

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1] What I'm getting here is that voluble yelling and emotional outbursts don't register as being "actually destructive" to you. Is that a correct interpretation?

2] "If his intent was to effect change through communication, then theoretically if I provide better communications tools, then the community at large will be more harmonious and a better place for ME." At least you are an honest busybody. :-)

I'm curious: did you make your personal motivation for intervening clear from the start or was it presented more in the language of "bettering the community?" I am not

the_ogre but I can see how a person's response to one motvational underpinning would be far different from the other. Specifically, I can see having a much more positive response to personally-motivated meddling than I would to meddling that seemed to be coming out of a community or "collective will" sort of place (especially if there was no agreed upon mechanism for validating or accurately determining the collective will).

Before you ask: my motivation in all of this is curiosity.

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Before you ask: my motivation in all of this is curiosity.

In which case, it seems to me that this thread would be more appropriately discussed in a general forum, or in private email, rather than in my journal...

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A capital suggestion. I shall remount this particular discussion in my journal with a link to this thread for reference.

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Sounds better (I had been wondering that myself, actually). But you should know that I am having a time with Allegra, so probably can't answer any of that till later, possibly tomorrow.

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1) What I'm getting here is that voluble yelling and emotional outbursts don't register as being "actually destructive" to you. Is that a correct interpretation?

No. When "voluble yelling and emotional outbursts" are used as a means of getting attention, the appropriate (in fact, the only EFFECTIVE) response is to ignore them. They can certainly be destructive in their own way, especially when repeated over time.

What I was trying to say was that active PHYSICAL destruction like your example of a small child peeing on the carpet requires a DIFFERENT approach. The key there is to respond to the action with an appropriate consequence (having them clean it up might be part of it for instance), and not to give in to the temptation to "make a scene" about it, which would only reinforce the notion that such behavior will get them attention. In actual practice, this is much easier said than done.

Regarding my personal motivation: You can see quite easily for yourself what I wrote above and come to your own conclusions. There was no communication on this topic prior to that post. I claimed no "community will," labeled what I had to say as coming from my own experience, and even stated outright that he was free to ignore what I had to say, as it was indeed unsolicited.

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Well, ignore those things that are ignorable.

Sounds like an excellent strategy...

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Becsuse, frankly, around your vantage points I'm not safe, and I'm constantly on the defensive. Any changes I try in how I interact with others are unlikely to show up.

And you've written more about my communication habits lately, both here and on sfbay-poly, than I have. So, I might wonder who is really the one that is attention seeking, here? You could have simply registered a disagreement and dropped it, but have instead climbed on a soapbox...

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Becsuse, frankly, around your vantage points I'm not safe, and I'm constantly on the defensive.

So to promote your own safety, it seems you place disproportionate risk on other people without their consent as they try to interpret your words meaningfully. I can understand why you would feel defensive about this.

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Ummm, RJ? I thought you had already agreed to move this discussion to your own journal? The timestamps would seem to indicate that you had already agreed to that when you made this particular ~~dig~~ comment.

Since you already think I'm a busybody, it clearly won't hurt my reputation in that department to say that I think that it's in very poor taste to continue to whack at someone in their own journal AFTER you've already agreed to move it elsewhere.

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Yes, I'm moving the discussion about questionable behavior in general and responses to it to my LJ.

Other aspects of the discussion I may decide to respond to here or not.

Sorry about the confusion.

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patgreene.livejournal.com

While I might be tempted to defend the substance of what you say, flaming someone in their own journal when there are plenty of other opportunities to do so is in poor taste at best or despicable at worst, your call.

You don't agree with what he says? Might I suggest you just ignore him? No one is making you read his stuff on LJ, and no one is requiring to to respond to it.

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p3aches.livejournal.com

Brian,
I just spent some time scanning Sfbay poly digest and not reading a bunch of stuff because it stopped being thoughts and became a flame war. and filled with personal attacks. There are better things to discuss. The delete key is my friend. QTIP. (dont take it personally) The flip side of QTIP is if there is an opportunity to grow based on what someone said run with it, if it is an oportunity to beat yourself up Qtip. Hugs T

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I *really* doubt that those folks on sfbay-poly are actually interested in my personal growth... thanks.

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True. But as

serenejournal said above (and very well), YOU can turn this into an opportunity for growth within yourself, whether or not THEY are interested in your growth. It's always your choice. And it's equally your choice to ingore them, refuse to frequent fora where you get flamed, or to engage in the flames yourself.

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geekchick

I was going to say something very similar to what

dawnd said, but now I'll just add "Yeah, that."

Brian, I do very much believe that as you encourage other people to register objections and then let things drop, you should probably seriously consider doing the same. If you think someone is consistently baiting you, drop them in a killfile and be done with it. Much heart[ache|burn] could probably be avoided all around if you would do something like that.

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hopeforyou.livejournal.com

I don't understand why you have to be careful about attack-angles. Spelling and grammar, maybe...I've seen nit-picking about that online many times. But attack-angles?

I've managed to have plenty of informative and useful exchanges on a variety of fora (including sf-bay poly) without having to play devil's advocate without informing others and without having to constantly defend myself from others.

All I did was speak from the first person, and be myself. If you ask a direct question, you can get a direct answer.

Some people will flame other people no matter what you do -- you can choose to ignore them, and follow a more productive thread. There's no need to defend those whom can hang themselves with their own words. If you have acted honourably, other people will think they are jerks -- even if they stand back and do not respond to them to tell them such.

However, if you go about writing with the mindset that others are hostile and choose to communicate in an indirect fashion, I think the result is that others genuinely think that your indirectness and line of obtuse questioning really represents who you are and that you expect others to be hostile to you. So they respond based on that.

I don't think you've gotten soft and sloppy on LJ. If anything, I've seen more of who you are here than I ever did on sf-bay poly and I don't think that's a bad thing. Good and bad and neutral, features and flaws. It's all here.

I expose myself daily to scorn and ridicule here, and sometimes I've had it hurled at me here. Here I tend to listen to others more than on huge mailing lists, though, because it really *is* about me here and not about a wider audience. I view whatever I've heard here as something to think about personally and to see what I can learn from it, even if it hurts.

Outside of here, people on Usenet or elsewhere know less about who I am, so I give their opinions less weight. The most weight I give to those who live with me and know me well, even if sometimes what they have to say hurts. Sometimes the truth hurts, but out of that is an opportunity for healing and growth.

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oakdragon.livejournal.com

For me, this medium is about connection as much as the sharing of ideas. I tend to prefer the environments where I can be open about who I am and not have to be on-guard. Yes, from time to time, it leaves me open to hurt, but to me, that's the risk I'm willing to take. I don't want to set up barriers and artificial personas.

I've often felt that online communication has fostered to main types. Those, like me, who found that the lack of face to face allowed one to drop the façades and allow me to be more connected. Perhaps it could be seen as community connection over the individual ego. For others, the medium creates a separation and it becomes more of an intellectual exercise. Perhaps this one could be seen as the indivitual ego over community connection. I know I've gotten some flamage with acusations that I'm advocating the suppression of the individual for the sake of the group, but that's not true IMHO. I've been amazed and a bit disheartened to see how these ego conflicts arise in lists centered on spiritual connections.

If I will adapt my mode, it will be to try to take into account the way the other listens, to make sure that I'm being heard and understood.

BTW, I noticed I've slipped off your friends list again.

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