I used to be more active on Usenet than I am now. After a while, it
all seems so pointless. Two groups in particular are symbolic of this
new-found apathy: rec.arts.sf.written and alt.radio.old-time. Both are
ones I used to get a lot out of and contribute to (rafsw more than
arot-t) but now seem kind of full of self-righteous assholes. In
either there are certain actions that seem harmless to me that will
bring out the wolves. In rasfw, it is a writer talking about their own
work, particularly the availability of their own books. My low point
with the group was when the Seeing Ear Theater people, a group who
does nothing but good for SF, announced that their adaptation of
Octavia Butler’s Kindred was available via
RealAudio. You’d think they pissed on Hugo Gernsback’s grave! The
prickly hordes arrived to decry this horrible crassness. Nevermind
that 50% of the posts in the group at any time are absolutely idiotic,
off-topic nothingness, usually smart-assed and pointless replies to
someone else’s smart-assed post. THIS wrong must be stopped. I
killfiled many of the hair-shirt, usenet purity crowd around
them. Most of those filters have expired, but I’ve never really posted
much or even read much since then. I have upfilters on a few people
and topics. I’ll read everything Charlie Stross or Lois Tilton or
Brenda Clough or Lawrence Watt-Evans posts, but that’s about it. Most
of it is of low enough value taht I don’t miss it when it is gone.

In aro-t the hot button topic is
mentioning the sale or even *purchase* of anything to do with old time
radio. It is impossible to say “I have this for sale” without a
furor. One might argue that those are off-topic in a non-marketplace
group. OK, I’ll agree. The same people that protest that protest
people that mention buying things! One guy posted information about
a stack of reels he had purchased at on OT Radio convention. The group
consensus was that he was an asshole for talking about radio stuff
when he wasn’t going to post MP3s of them. Nevermind these are on
reels and he may or may not even have the capacity to do it, unless
you post the stuff you are just bragging (actual words used by a
poster.) To this day, I have more killfile entries in that group than
any other.

The thing that bugs me most is the fundamentalism. I don’t believe in
zero tolerance rules, and this is what exists in these groups (or
would, if they were evenly applied but that isn’t even true.) The
atmosphere that this stuff engenders is a generally chilling effect on
conversation. A few years ago, the late George Alec Effinger made a
post on rasfw, and rather than being greated warmly (as such a great
and friendly guy deserved), a group of the same people who got under
my skin during the above replied with “How do we know that is really
GAE?” It was all too ridiculous, even more because GAE had the most
unique voice in posts I’ve ever run across. Everything he wrote,
whether fiction, e-mail or a GEnie post shone with its own weird
light. The only person who could successfully mimic that would be,
well, George.

I probably have posted fewer than once a month since then, almost always
answering a specific question on a narrow topic. Today I posted in
response to a query about Michael Moorcock reading order. I can’t see
ever really hanging out as a social thing there unless I stop hating
most of the residents so much. Hate is a waste of time and resources
anyway, better to just put that heat elsewhere.