Lambton worm

[Joanne Manees]

	I've subscribed for a while but have been lurking.  J is for Joanne,
and I am a real middle aged woman, not a child prodigy or anything like
that.  I cherish Pynchon, Joyce, and Flann O'Brien.  I admire Monica's
wit; whoever she is or how old.
	I have not known what to make of Dixon's conclusion after telling the
Lambton worm story, that "Christ had won the day."  His listeners are a
bit dubious ("Well, Christians won the day.") I have an impulse to think
of Dixon as our normative character (does anybody talk about normative
characters anymore?) but I don't know that I can here: 9 generations of 
the innocent being punished: yikes.  

jbor wrote:
> 
> It's a fascinating phenomenon, but basically pretty sad. It's actually all
> about "control" - even when it's parading as anarchy - and it's anathema to
> Pynchon's work.
> 
> There's a small crop of long-time listers who post using multiple
> pseudonyms, partly in order to upset discussions they don't like or to deter
> new subscribers who they suspect hold alternative points of view to their
> own. Sometimes the anonymous name or identity change is benign, and
> sometimes it's clever and funny, but sometimes the pseudonym contributes
> unintelligible or half-intelligible posts in order to abort a discussion.
> Other times they'll invent a new persona to try and get a thread going: "Hi,
> I'm Kyle Winkler and I want to talk about .... ", usually something
> unrelated and superficial, but sometimes it's something which is potentially
> quite interesting or fun. Trouble is, when the pseudonymous identity fools a
> couple of real people into engaging with it and then can't go on with it the
> discussion quickly collapses. People soon get jack of that.
> 
> There are a few who pop up every now and then to decry the subject or
> quality of the discussion, again, because they don't agree with what's being
> discussed or they haven't got any substantive rebuttal. These same people
> will vehemently support the NP "political" discussions, but only as long as
> it's *their* political opinions which are being voiced.
> 
> But it's the offlist intimidation tactics which are the most puerile and
> destructive. Most recently we've had "Jerky" sending abusive and
> intimidating messages offlist to new subscribers, and I recall "Kyle
> Winkler" trying to start up an on-list flame war by baiting another poster
> offlist. When I first posted to the list a few years back (I'd been lurking
> for a couple of months so I had a fair idea of what was what) Doug sent me a
> series of off-list posts asking what my intentions were and instructing me
> in no uncertain terms which posters I should not respond to. When I replied
> to him politely that I was big enough to make up my own mind thanks very
> much he told me rather brusquely to piss off to a chat-room. I know other
> people have had the same and similar experiences with him. In the past this
> sort of tactic has been an on-list one also - "Peter Redzinger" and
> "slothrop666" are two troll-names which spring to mind, but there have been
> many more, and not all of them Doug.
> 
> Terrance used to be among the clique of course, and he was obviously coached
> in using similar sorts of tactics, but it's obvious that they regard him as
> a quisling now. I remember getting a couple of offlist queries from his
> "Jane Suete" persona which I took time to respond to thoughtfully and
> honestly, and then ... nothing.  Before "her" true identity was uncovered it
> was definitely an attempted disguise on his part, nothing transparent about
> it at all. I doubt that he's Monica - though Weaver's paranoia seems
> well-reseached - but Terrance as "public domain" is still throwing his
> accusations and insults around. He's all bitter and twisted but, as far as I
> can recall, he is yet to make a coherent or substantiated point about
> Pynchon's work even though the list is about 200 gazillion words in the hole
> with him. Perhaps he has, I don't bother to try and make sense of what he
> posts any more.
> 
> Basically it means that the delete button does get a pretty good workout,
> and that interesting discussions, whether about Pynchontext, or NP topics
> (politics, literature, film etc) are few and far between, and can't be
> sustained for long. Having said that, there are still many good people on
> the list too, and lots of interesting information and ideas and links get
> posted. Overall, though, it's the tactics of a few selfish and
> self-opinionated people which have served to decimate the list. I know of
> quite a few posters who have been driven away because of the shenanigans,
> the constant baiting and flame-wars, the offlist bullshit, the hijacking,
> the ad hominem. Another problem is that the trolling has been so endemic for
> so long that when legitimate new subscribers do come along they're either
> ignored, like the fellow who posted about McLuhan recently, or accused of
> being Doug. It isn't just Doug, of course, it's a group of about two or
> three. I think they think of themselves as a "Counterforce" or "We-system"
> but, in reality, they're just "naughty little boys".
> 
> I thought the idea was to attract new subscribers and, correspondingly, new
> readers of Pynchon's work, not to deter them. Perhaps what's needed is a
> warning on the Pynchon-L welcome page. Murthy? "Oxymoron"?
> 
> best