Facts of Online Life

[Kim L. Serkes]

The "Jules Situation" is just one of those features of online life. Railing
about it is useless; it's like complaining that it snows in St. Paul or
it's hot in Cancun.

Jules is clearly a self-aggrandizing jerk, determined to use his fleeting
connection with TRP to garner attention and perhaps a few bucks. He's
utterly immune to calumny, scorn, derision, or statements of fact which
conflict with his internal reality.

The people who respond to him feel it's their *duty* to "set the record
straight." They may in fact provide a useful service to the newbie or to
some future researcher. Rising to "troll" bait may be a weakness; indeed
I've succumbed to it on more than one occasion.

Yes, listening to it can get tiresome. But all of us are equipped with a
highly sophisticated filtering device: our brains. Backed up by the
"mechanical" filters available in e-mail programs, we can pretty much tune
out whatever we don't want to see.

Those are the facts, unless/until a moderated list comes into being. These
things are going to happen in any free forum, and bitching about it is even
more of a waste of time than arguing with a dolt who cares nothing about
other people's opinions.

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Kim L. Serkes -- kls at newmediacenters.org -- San Francisco, CA, USA