USENET REC.MUSIC.REM
TYPES OF "LAME" POSTS AND HOW BEST TO RESPOND

by Ron Henry <rgh3@cornell.edu>
(Original version co-written by
Michael Baer <calbear@stanford.EDU>)
v. 1.3, 3 Feb 1997

Anyone who's haunted Usenet for more than a couple weeks has seen "lame" posts: you know, "MAKE.MONEY.FAST," "R.E.M. sucks you losers," "Kirk Cameron/Kurdt Kobain Suicide," "What's rem's singer's name?" "Only an idiot would like Fables!"  "Yeah well you're a <blankety-blank>!"   "I am Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth and let me tell you..." etc.   Such posts are "lame" because they have nothing to do with the real purpose of Usenet -- to provide a constructive forum for people with similar interests to communicate intelligently with each other.

This document discusses what responses seem most effective in response to such off-topic and controversial posts.

Contents:

• "Spam"
• "Trolls"
• "Forgeries"
• "Urban Legends"
• "R.E.M. sucks"
• "Flames"
• "Net.cops"
• "Newbie" posts

"Spam"

Spamming is posting the same article to many newsgroups simultaneously, usually by someone trying to sell something or scam people.  Think of it as Usenet's version of infomercials. (Why "spam"?  Remember the Monty Python sketch with people singing "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam...", repeating over and over and over? That's where the term comes from). Always check cross-postings before replying to a lame post -- spams are frequently cross-posted to dozens of different newsgroups.  Remember that following up to a cross-posted message might mean that your follow-up will go to all the groups on the "Newsgroups" line of the header, so be wary!

"MAKE.MONEY.FAST" is the classic canonical spam, and is often repeated as a form letter describing how a pyramid scheme (sending a dollar, or five, to everyone on a list, and then sending the letter on to ten more people) will make you rich, as it did to the person writing the post. Be aware that these schemes are usually illegal con games, considered a form of mail fraud, and you should not believe their claims of easy money.

In any case, the best reaction to a spam is:

• don't patronize these people;
• don't follow-up with complaints on the newsgroup and waste yet more time and space (the spammer does not read the newsgroup and the only people to read your invective are other newsgroup regulars; and
• if you do respond, do it by email in the form of a protest against their methods. (This last option, when done by a great many people, is called "mail-bombing," and is sometimes more harmful to the person's system administrator then to the spammer. So be careful.) 

But often if people make it inefficient for a spammer to sort out 1000 fake or angry responses from one real one, he or she might not continue. Also, if the volume of mail is enough, their sysop will take note and take action accordingly (like cancel the spammer's account, which has happened in a few cases).

"Trolls"

A type of net.anarchism, trolls are posts containing deliberate misinformation or provocative insults, designed primarily to create confusion and controversy -- since everyone will want to follow up to correct the obviously wrong facts or to express their anger at unfair comments -- and possibly inadvertently add to the misinformation and insulting themselves.

The term trolling comes from the image of the author "trolling" around Usenet, like a fisherman on a lake, "fishing" for someone to take their bait and respond.

Signs of trolls: unexplained cross-postings, especially to any of the several infamous newsgroups haunted by those who consider it great sport to humiliate others. Obvious misinformation and confusing of facts, urban legends, fake celebrity rumors, and controversial subjects highlight many trolls. Cross-posting that sends the same controversial posts to two different newsgroups likely to argue with each other (say alt.fan.rush-limbaugh and alt.liberalism) is another tactic to start random controversy.

Best response: none at all. Trollers delight in any response, e-mail or follow-up, flames, complaints, or even polite requests to desist all amuse them, and give them a chance to further mock people. Just don't do it -- instead, imagine the troller's ego shriveling in the gaping silence when no one takes his or her bait; this is by far the best prevention.  One hopes that one day every FAQ will mention trolls so everyone will know what to do -- or what NOT to do...

You might also add the name of the thread begun by the troller to your newsreader's killfile, or filter, if your program has one, so that you will not personally be bothered by anyone else who follows-up on the article.

"Forgeries"

A popular thing for some not-very-clever hacker wannabes is to attempt to impersonate a celebrity -- this has especially happened in the case of rock stars who visit the net but whose actual email account is (understandably) secret.  If you see a post -- particularly if it is rude or insulting -- bearing the name of someone like Thurston Moore, Courtney Love, or some other celebrity, you can bet that, although it may be true you read in Spin they were on the Net somewhere, this is not them.  (There are of course a few exceptions including Michael Stipe's brief stint on the net in 1995, and bassist Mike Watt's posts to Usenet.)

It's often useful in such cases to check the full headers of a post (most Mac and Windows newsreading programs can do this now) to see where it really came from (since few amateur hackers are skilled enough to do more than a superficial job of impersonating someone).

"Urban Legends" -- e.g., 'Sick Boy Needs Your Business Cards'

Sometimes well-intentioned people will get suckered into passing along a bogus story about a sick child who's collecting some common item or  trying to get into the Guinness Book of Records by receiving the most get well cards, or business cards, or bottle caps, ever.  These stories are almost always mutations and repetitions of very old stories and the child in question has always either recovered long ago or passed away.  In fact almost all of these stories trace back to a single British child from the 1980's, Craig Shergold, who had cancer and collected the most get well cards ever.  (Because the story took on a life of its own, it has made his life difficult in the years following his recovery.) 

If someone emails you a story like this and asks you to pass it on, request their source for the story before even considering re-posing.  If they cannot or will not tell you where it came from originally, just discard it.

"R.E.M. sucks"

Okay, think about it for a minute.  People who post that they hate a band to a newsgroup dedicated to that very band's fandom obviously have nothing worthwhile to do and just enjoy getting a rise out of people who do. 

Don't respond, don't follow up, don't take their insults personally; just let them remain as pathetic as they were before posting.

"Flames"

Some people take what should be just a difference of opinion and turn it into something personal. Most people consider "ad hominem" attacks (that is, criticizing the speaker and not what he or she said) a silly way of participating in a supposedly adult conversation. While it is best to ignore such people, as with the "R.E.M. sucks" posts, sometimes a person may feel the need to defend themselves against such attacks.

However: it's always best to cool off for a time before posting a response to something that has made you angry -- in other words, never post in anger; turn off your computer and come back later and see if it still seems worth the effort. If you do respond, try to make it a well-thought-out post in which you explain what you believe to be the actual situation, and suggest that it might be best to take it to e-mail in order to avoid wasting newsgroup readers' time.

Also -- if you're not involved in the dispute, stay out of it.  Don't post any "I wish you idiots would just shut up!" type posts -- they are just as annoying to most people as the "flame war" itself.

"Net.cops"

These posts are made by those who take it upon themselves to determine what is "right" and "wrong" for posting in the newsgroup.  Of course, sometimes a person making a sincere and helpful suggestion will get labeled as a net.cop, and sometimes a total bully will get away with intimidating people; these matters are subjective.  Best to ignore those who tell you what to post and what not to post, *unless* it's common sense (don't be mean to the other kids), or a consensus opinion of long-time group members (i.e., something in the FAQ document which people have agreed they are sick and tired of hearing about). 

The most enduring flame-war emerging from "net.cop" posts (both pro and con) on rec.music.rem involves whether or not it is appropriate to discuss Michael Stipe's sexual preferences (one that, no matter what our opinions, we're all tired of seeing people arguing over -- and our mentioning it here is not an invitation to start discussing this again!)

"Newbie" posts

You've seen them -- once, you were them!  They've only been on the Internet a week; maybe they're connecting through some commercial service that gave the a hundred free hours but no instructions on what to do with it; maybe they're a college freshman with a brand new college account and no clue.  Perhaps they post the word "test", or the same silly question, over and over. Maybe they ask a question that's in the FAQ (or should be), one that they wouldn't ask if they had read through the group, or post some supposedly shocking information (like "Stipe is bisexual!") that we oldtimers have heard at least a million times before. Perhaps they want to know what everybody's favorite song is, for the millionth time.

How annoying!  What fools! I'm sure that I was never that dumb! (Yeah, right.)

But many long-time posters may make the situation worse by repeatedly following-up with "Read the damn FAQ!" messages, or by insulting the newbie. This not only wastes even more time and bandwidth -- and hurts the newbie's feelings -- but it doesn't tell the newcomer what he or she needed to know: what a FAQ is, why they should read it, or how to get it. (Chances are good that if someone hasn't read a FAQ on r.m.r or some other group, they don't even know what the letters stand for.)

The best thing you can do when someone asks a FAQ-covered question is to politely reply (by email -- almost all newsreader applications can do this) to the person sending the message, telling them what the FAQ is and where it is located on the web. Oh yeah, answer their question too, since they still may not want to go sifting through the FAQ. Wastes no USENET bandwidth, and makes things convenient all the way around.

If you don't have time to answer their question, then you shouldn't have time to insult them, either.

Posts that Don't Seem to Know You Already Announced Something

Keep in mind that just because you think you were the first person to post about a concert date (for example) on your university/organizational news-server -- this doesn't mean that every newsfeed will show your article first!  So, when you see someone posting about something for the umpteenth time, they may actually have been the first (from their perspective) to post, and it just took some hours/days to get to your system.  Remember, Usenet is composed of many servers all around the world which are updating each others' systems on various schedules.  So you might not even want to post something major you just saw on MTV (esp. if you are hazy on the details-- if you don't really know what you're talking about, don't post!), even though there may be no posts yet about it; odds are in a few hours there'll be a dozen threads all asking "Why hasn't anyone posted anything yet about this...?" and then a day or two later when all the servers catch up with each other, people complaining "Why the hell is everyone posting the same thing over and over?" -- neither of these comments is very useful, if you know how Usenet works.

In summary:

• Read the rec.music.rem FAQ before posting to the group;
• Use your head. Rudeness is almost never worth the effort, honestly. Don't say something in a post or email you wouldn't say to a person's face.
• Email instead of post whenever possible with material not intended for everyone on the list.
• Be aware there going to be a lot of jerks with lots of free time on the net, and they don't necessarily have to be confronted personally by you each and every time they display what you consider rude behavior. Let it go.
• Request and read the FAQ for any heavily-trafficked Usenet newsgroup (rec.music.rem or any other) you are interested in.  Lurk for several weeks in a group before posting to it, to get a feel for how the group operates.
• Look for advice in these newsgroups: news.announce.newusers, news.newsusers.questions, news.software.readers, and rec.answers; or, look at information for new users on the following web pages: http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Lab/6882/ , http://www.fdn.fr/fdn/doc-misc/usenet-faq.fr.html , and http://www.intuitive.com/social-faq.html .

Any questions or suggestions about this text? Email ronhenry@clarityconnect.com .

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