Chat Asylum?

Posted on July 9, 2002 in IRC/Chat

I’ve become the confidant for a few people who drop by #peanut_gallery to tell me about the latest shenanigans in #news_garden. One disenchanted liberal came by to tell me that a particularly obnoxious complaintant was now an op there. He also reported what he thought was a feigned disagreement with between the channel owner and one of the rogue ops. I told him that it did not surprise me.

The process that is used to drive off what many consider to be “fair-minded ops” at #news_garden is pretty much the same: one of the chief agitators from the right attacks and attacks and attacks until at last the op, who has been refraining from reacting, comes down on him, often for a genuine infraction. The agitator complains to the channel owner and the op is accused of being obsessed with the chatter. It’s a classic example of the muddled middle in this country, what some of my confidants call “the friendly fascism” that uses one side or the other to ride herd over malcontents. It strikes me that they live to suck off disenchantment and strife behind a veneer of “niceness”. The Nasty Nice brook no suggestion of their mean motives or their oppression. To disguise their lack of character and lack of a progressive program, they maintain a constant state of agitation, of suspended extremes in which no reasonable person who attempts to drive a sensible course can possibly survive. Perhaps smirks was right. Perhaps it is just a gladiator’s pit.