[pct-l] trolls and flames: nothing new under the sun

[David Hough on pct-l]

As it used to say in news.announce.newusers:

 Wallace Sayre said, 
 "Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter
 form of politics, because the stakes are so low."  
 He didn't know Usenet: welcome to the next level.

[USENET could be thought of as a predecessor to yahoo
groups.]

But back to pct-l:
What can one do about mailing list postings one
doesn't like?    ONE CAN IGNORE THEM.   
Most of the folks whose opinions one would
really care about don't keep track
of whether one publicly responds to everything one
doesn't like.     

Or one could send PRIVATE email to the sender.
Or one could realize that it's built into the genes
of the medium somehow, as has been amply demonstrated
over the years:

http://gocamino.oakapple.net/deterioration.txt
http://www.angelfire.com/space/usenet/
http://gocamino.oakapple.net/humor.txt 

Maybe by the time one has reread all these, 
the urge to respond will have subsided.

OR one could take a hike and run off the negative
energy that way. 

One almost longs for the days when it was all about
illegal
immigrants bearing guns and riding bears and stealing
dog owners off the PCT.     Or something like that.
It hardly matters does it?   As the URL's above
suggest, the form of the emotional 
interaction is about the
same independent of the nominal subject matter of the
discussion group.     And almost nobody wants to 
read it.