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Date Posted: 08:34:18 12/08/02 Sun
Author: Don
Subject: Beside oneself
In reply to: Buffy's vampire 's message, "Dominance by BV on WF" on 11:48:02 12/07/02 Sat

I've always admired novelists who create believable characters and can switch with no apparent effort among them. I imagine that such a person could do the same using any medium where only the written word is used and WF is definitely such a medium. Unlike a novel, where the writer can control everything, WF is an open forum so when any character makes any statement there's no guarantee that the responders will be fictional even if the originator is.

Enter the Ego factor. Feelings can run strong when the topic is dear to the heart. Respondents will not always respond rationally. Flame wars ensue and unless the author is very careful, the true self begins to bleed through into the character's ego and the next thing you know, you're arguing with yourself.

As an example I cite a mailing list forum of which I have been a member since at least 1996 and perhaps even longer. At the end of 1996, I took a new position with a company that had not yet provided all employees with email. When the email addresses were provided a few months later, I immediately subscribed from my new address and discovered that the list had been taken over by a very strong personality and a strong tendency toward nuclear flaming. Anything of which he disapproved was immediately subjected to ridicule and personal attacks on its author. One of his attacks on another poster resulted in an angry letter to an administrator at the academic institution which hosted the listserv and the list host was moved. As a result, he could no longer exercise list owner priveleges. Without that power to back him up, he began to adopt other dramatis personnae but eventually became irrelevant, was ignored, and disappeared.

In the earliest days of WF, the poster's I.P. address was not picked-up and added to the header of the msg. At that time I had an alter-ego who used a different name, different (but valid) email address, and even a different style of formatting his messages. He was allowed to be a bit coarser and inflammatory than I would commonly be. When the posting of I.P. addresses was added, I decided to kill him off and he disappeared. More recently, when I was working at the ElPaso corporation I would post from there under the name of Marty Robbins[1]. And I have also used Don Quixote from time to time but I doubt that anyone with the basic intelligence of slime molds would have been mislead by it.
In general, I stick to myself. It's easier for me to be me than to be someone else. And while I can understand that some people may not be in a position to use their own name, I have never seen the point in saying something that I wouldn't admit to having said. Doing this also helps me to catch typographical errors when I proofread what I've said before hittint the Send button.

[1] As I have mentioned elsewhere, Marty Robbins was famous for the song ElPaso among others including "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation" which was lampooned by Jimmy Buffett when he issued an album featuring lobsters and called "A White Sport Coat and a Pink Crustacean".

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